On 11/30/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The objection that Seigenthaler is having to Wikipedia
is not even to
the process or to the speed at which we fix vandalism. It is not to
our current quality, it is not to anything fixable.
The fundamental objection that Seigenthaler has is that we allow
people to post freely. His objection is to the belief that we ought
not carefully monitor our users and that we ought avoid turning them
in to the legal authorities in a dispute. His assumption that the
article was posted by a vandal is dodgy at best - I would be shocked
if he were not the subject of some conspiracy theory or another, and
if whoever posted the article were anything more than a particularly
stupid POV pusher. If Wikipedia were to in any way assist with
turning a mere stupid POV pusher in to legal authorities, I know my
support for the site would drop off swiftly.
That's exactly the problem with his article; I was wondering if
someone had posted this already. He's not objecting primarily to the
bad info (which could be deleted as soon as he noticed it, at the very
least), but to the fact that he couldn't find out who posted it.
This is a problem with the internet in general. If it was posted on a
geocities site he'd have *exactly the same problem* except that it'd
actually take him *much longer* and probably be *much harder* to
remove the incorrect information.
The only reason he thinks we should have different standards in this
respect than geocities is because we are a "big deal," I imagine.
Which is the "peaked too early" problem, but also might just be a
phantom in the end -- I suspect Wikipedia does, or will, occupy a
unique position between don't-even-trust-it (geocities) and
oh-yeah-it's-almost-entirely-reliable (EB). Which isn't so bad. I
don't see any other way around it, though I know Jimbo would rather we
aspire for the latter category (but hey, I'm willing to try!).
FF