[WikiEN-l] Libeling NFL players; or, our abject failure to protect living people

[Travis Mason-Bushman]

I picked up an OTRS ticket this evening to find this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chris_Massey&diff=124008591&oldid=
117178455

Unreverted, disgusting and depraved libel against an NFL player that had sat
for nearly a month before someone reported it to us. Absolutely stupefying.
How long would it have stayed there if we hadn¹t been notified? What if
instead of telling us, the person had sent an e-mail straight to the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch? I can see the AP headlines now... ³WIKIPEDIA FALSELY
ACCUSES NFL PLAYER OF BEING PORN STAR.²

If we can¹t even keep professional football player biographies from being
blatantly vandalized, how can we possibly hope to protect the ordinary,
average Joe who happens to wind up with a page on Wikipedia for being caught
up in someone else¹s scandal? Who are we kidding, anyway?

I believe that we should immediately make all articles about living people
into ³stable versions,² editable only by administrators based on talk page
consensus, so that we have at least some degree of control over what we say
about people. We are doing way, way too much damage, and it has to stop, and
stop now, before we really cause permanent harm to someone.

As one of the Internet¹s top-10 Web sites, we have a moral and ethical
responsibility to the people and topics we write about. We cannot continue
to let anyone say anything they want, pending reversion ­ because as this
case makes clear, that reversion might not come for weeks or months, if
ever.

-Travis Mason-Bushman