[WikiEN-l] Ban notices, Wikipedia, and search engines.

[Thomas Dalton]

On 24/09/2007, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thomas, recently you've aggressively rejected suggestions that we make
> an effort to keep things like blocked notices out of google.
>
> Part of your argument seems to be that blocked people deserve whatever
> humiliation we can dish out. Cases of mistakes have been made, but you
> haven't seen to care.
>
> I hope you don't plan to reference your work on Wikipedia in any job
> interviews any time soon:
> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Thomas+Dalton+wikipedia&btnG=Google+Search
>
> Have I finally made a (wp:)POINT that you can understand?
>
> As a Wikipedian in good standing fixing this won't be hard... but the
> same problem can be nearly impossible for outsiders to resolve.
>
> Wikipedia isn't judge, jury, and executioner any more than we are a
> personal webhost.  We should probably complexity no-index user and
> user talk... but if we don't we should at least endeavor to keep
> block/ban notices out of the search engines.
>
> We must block people to keep the site running well... but using our
> web presence to attack people is generally unethical, and
> inappropriate even when they deserve it.

That's just someone impersonating an admin, it happens all the time.
Thanks for bringing it to my attention, I'll get it sorted (In the
interests of transparency, I'll get someone else to delete it). An
"outsider" being impersonated on Wikipedia is pretty unlikely. There
are two parts to a risk assessment. First you work out what could go
wrong and how damaging it would be (you've done that) and then you
have to work out how likely it is. You seem to have missed that part.
Losing the ability to search the user space (something tells me
MediaWiki's search will never be as good as Google's) is a significant
cost to prevent a very unlikely risk.