On 10/20/07, Marc Riddell
<michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net> wrote:
On 10/20/07, Oskar Sigvardsson
<oskarsigvardsson(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 10/21/07, George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> It's not a routine protection; it's a longstanding, active, serious
abuse
> case.
Even so, this is not what we've ever done! What this is is an
effective elevation of admins into a specially protected
"super"-editor class that have full powers to decide and control what
goes in an article. That is NOT what an admin is supposed to do,
article contents have always been decided by community consensus. It
is a foundational issue, right up there with Free Content and NPOV.
This is counter to what wikipedia is. We're not Citizendium.
--Oskar
on 10/20/07 6:58 PM, George Herbert at george.herbert(a)gmail.com wrote:
If this has to become a regular occurrence then we will clearly have
lost a
core battle somewhere. I do not disagree with
that point.
This is an *extremely* unusual case. There are very few organized and
persistent campaigns by fringe groups to significantly attack knowledge
on
Wikipedia; this is one of them. They are not
editing to improve the
state
of knowledge in the world or represented on
Wikipedia. They're using it
as
a venue to fight their battles.
Denying them this venue to fight in is orthogonal to our goal to be a
reference source, open to contributions. Letting them fight here is
contrary to our goals. Unfortunately, we need to take this article (and
potentially others on the topic) "out of play" and end their use in the
fight.
Groups and their individual members always will want to slant Wikipedia;
we're all human. We have lots of policy and precedent to deal with
that.
But extended, organized campaigns are another
thing entirely.
George, this does, however, look and feel like a very slippery slope. Is
there not another way to deal with this without what seems to be an
abandonment of a very basic principle of the Project? By taking this
course
of action you are allowing them to control us.
Marc Riddell
on 10/20/07 7:56 PM, George Herbert at george.herbert(a)gmail.com wrote:
It's changing the nature of the control or influence they have.
They already have a degree of control - numerous accounts, many of them
sockpuppets, editing and inserting POV and removing material they consider
hostile.
The point of Wikipedia is that giving that control widely to everybody will
build an encyclopedia, data repository, positive community project.
But there are exceptions. We have to ban editors, protect articles (semi or
full), and other actions already in response to numerous types of vandalism
and abuse, some of it random, some focused or organized.
We've made exceptions already, because it would be insane not to, because
there are enough vandals and easy enough scripting of editing that pretty
much any talented individual who wanted to utterly destroy Wikipedia could
if we never took any defensive measures such as blocking IPs or locking
articles. These defensive measures are not controversial here and now.
One can call it a slippery slope, but it's a slope the project has always
been balanced on, for obvious reasons.
It is an entirely valid question to ask if this new measure is a better
balance for our core goals (being the best encyclopedia and having the most
open editing we practically can), or the start of rolling down the hill.
If this does not work or has significant negative effects, then I will have
made an error, and hopefully I and others will see that and correct it. I
do not assert that this could not possibly be a mistake. In my current
judgement, this is a good thing to do now, and necessary. I invite ongoing
review and discussion.
George, thank you for your clarity - and for your well-made argument. I
trust your judgment.
Marc