On 3/15/06, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote:
I agree wholeheartedly, which is why I find
Jimbo's actions on
[[en:Justin Berry]] so disturbing. I have no problems banning a user
(either entirely, or from certain types of articles) if they can't edit
neutrally; I have no problems reverting their non-neutral edits and
removing inaccurate/slanted information; and so on. A blanket
prohibition on any text ever touched by the user being in the article,
though---even going so far as to insist that their neutral contributions
be independently rewritten by someone else---seems to be a bit of a
witch-hunt. Is there a legitimate reason for it besides fear that some
jackass in the media is going to say "lol wikipedia lets pedophiles edit
articles relating to pedophilia"? Self-identified Satanists who've
edited [[en:Satanism]] had better hope the U.S. media doesn't have a
recurrence of its 1990s moral panic over Satanism!
Not a very good comparison, that; how about, say, self-identified
members of Stormfront editing [[Simon Wiesenthal]]?
Which is not to say that it would be completely impossible for them to
edit that article in a neutral fashion. But AGF doesn't mean being
hopelessly naive; when the presumption of ulterior motives -- and
highly malicious ones, at that -- is so strong as to require that even
superficially neutral and well-referenced edits be exhaustively
verified, it seems easier for everyone just to not have the individual
editing the article in question at all.
Kirill Lokshin