[WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Cool Hand Luke]

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 12:02 PM, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:

> "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I
> reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind
> me." eh?
>
> You older Wikipedians run along now; you've had your day. The adults
> are talking now - I are serious editors, this are serious website.
>
>

This is a radical misunderstanding of what I said.  This isn't an old editor
vs. new editor issue.  David Gerard is hardly an arrogant upstart, and Jimbo
Wales (one of the original Wikipedians) surely is not.  Both are firmly on
the side of change with regards to retaining shoddy BLPs.

It's a question of what policies would be best for the project right now.
Policies that were good in 2001 no longer strike the right balance in 2010.
Originally, our goal was generating content, but we now have tons of
content--so much that readers are more concerned about reliability.  BLP
subjects are most especially concerned that we get their entries right, and
our project's credibility suffers most when they are harmed.  At this point
in time, retaining shoddy BLPs is bad for subjects and frankly bad for
Wikipedia.

Cool Hand Luke