On 1/1/09, David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com> wrote:
much more complicated one that most Wikipedians do not
understand
and which is much more likely to be confusing.
You can help Wikipedia by explaining it to other Wikipedians (unless
of course you're speaking for yourself).
to try the complicated one first is playing technical
games with the
encyclopedia.
Oh, the one that lets you edit after 4 days, 10 edits, and 0 [[brownie points]].
I forgot who it was that recently drew an absurd parallel between BLP
issues and handgun fatalities, something to the effect of leaving
articles unprotected being comparable to "giving a child a loaded
gun".
Maybe so but an adult (or an "autoconfirmed" account) who has no
experience handling a loaded gun before (or driving a car, or whatever
you want to compare it to) isn't going to handle it much more safely
than a child. Sure they've "seen more of the world" but have no
experience specific to a potentially dangerous task.
On the other hand we could argue all day about the difference between
a waiting period for you at the pawn shop counter and a waiting period
for the bullet after it takes flight.
Personally I think it's a very important one!
—C.W.