[WikiEN-l] Getting hammered in a tv interview is not fun

[William Pietri]

Mark Ryan wrote:
> Assuming good faith comes easily to some people. I'm just naturally
> suspicious. I don't assume bad faith, I just don't assume good faith
> readily. There needs to be a balance between gullibly believing
> everything any random tells us, and disbelieving everything anyone
> tells us until they show proof.

For what it's worth, I don't think assuming good faith prevents us from 
watching for potential troublemakers. It's like "trust, but verify". 
Checking things out allows us to turn our assumption into a sincere belief.

Even when people are clearly up to something, I think it's still worth 
assuming the best possible motives. A great example is {{uw-joke1}} and 
related templates:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Uw-joke1

Yes, after the eleven millionth reversion on [[Bong]] or [[Dildo]], 
their jokes aren't remotely funny. Ditto for those "testing" Wikipedia 
by inserting junk. But both are mistakes I well could have made once 
upon a time, and with the best of intentions.


William