On Nov 6, 2007, at 11:43 AM, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On Nov 6, 2007 11:31 AM, Philip Sandifer
<snowspinner(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Mine, at least, is to point out that we seem to
be having no problems
skyrocketing in the Alexa rankings and in popularity despite this.
That does not mean we should not fight vandalism. But it does mean
that our userbase seems relatively accepting of the fact that
sometimes you'll load an article on Earl Grey tea and get a picture
of
a man's distended anus. Yes, we get a few upset e-mails from people
who are not accepting of this every day at OTRS. But it doesn't seem
to be having a crippling effect on our perceived usability at
present.
The trivial counter to your argument is that there have been plenty of
products that caused harm slowly enough or at a infrequently enough
rate that LOTS of people still purchased/used them.
It's not that people who smoke think "I don't mind cancer", it's
that
they don't experience the negative effects often enough to encourage
them to make another decision.
Along that line of thinking, on Wikipedia it's not "I don't mind the
fact that looking up a connector on Wikipedia might instead bring up
some child porn that could get me fired from work and investigated by
the police" ... it's either complete unawareness or "it won't happen
to me".
This seems to me a hysterical response, though. Or, at least, I would
expect that if this had happened in practice, we'd have a news story
about a guy who was fired from work and investigated by the police
because the [[SCSI]] article had child porn.
Or maybe I'm just old fashioned in thinking that
there are way to
define success or correctness which don't consider popularity. ;)
Sure. We should try to make the encyclopedia better. But we have to
remember that for our project better doesn't *just* mean serving up
accurate and well-written articles. It also means meeting a standard
of usability.
The issue I have here is that I have an easier time finding concrete
damage caused by overzealous vandal-fighters than I have finding
concrete damage caused by vandalism. (Note that I am defining damage
here as a negative effect beyond the initial bad thing - obviously
each instance of a bad page being served up and each instance of a mis-
applied warning is bad in and of itself. But the warning seems to
cause more negative effects after it takes place, whereas the bad page
being served up seems to wrap itself up somewhat neatly.)
-Phil