Rich Holton wrote:
Perhaps you're using the idea of
"defending" an article differently than
I am. From the context of Parker Peter's original post that you were
replying to, we're talking about someone who is, in good faith, trying
to improve the article, and an admin "whacking" them for doing it.
As I see it, one can legitimately defend an article against vandalism,
against overall POV, against the addition of questionable and
unreferenced "facts", and against unintelligible incoherence. There may
be others I'm not thinking of right now, but these are specifically
defined violations of policy (except perhaps for the last one), and we
all want to defend articles against these.
But one can not legitimately "defend" an article against a newbie being
bold in a good faith effort to fix an article. A newbie being bold is
not, in and of itself, a violation of any policy. Quite the contrary, we
encourage it. If a change to an article does not violate policy but is
reverted, and then the change stonewalled on the talk page, the
"defender" is violating policy ([[Wikipedia:Ownership of articles]]),
and this is particularly damaging when the "defender" is an admin.
A person who makes a good-faith effort to explain his position on the
talk page needs to be fairly considered. If he does this, and receives
no good-faith replies (which may include a link to a previous
discussion) in 24 hours, he is perfectly justified in restoring his
bold edit. Stonewalling could have the person waiting indefinitely.
Ec