On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 9:43 AM, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Oct 28, 2008, at 12:33 AM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
You're still treating this as some sort of theoretical exercise as opposed to an article about a real person, and you're drawing inane technical distinctions that have little to no bearing on the real
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The article sucked. We got a complaint. And because we disliked how the complaint was lodged, we ignored it. That is a case of process trumping outcome in the most toxic way imaginable,
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Wikipedia is very complex to outsiders. Much of the complexity exists for good reasons or, at least, it exists where don't have obviously better solutions.
Because of the complexity, outsiders should have the benefit of an advocate when they come to Wikipedia. (Even if we don't know for sure who the person is, we could still investigate their complaints).
I think every Wikipedian should see being an advocate for the public as part of their 'job' on Wikipedia. Unfortunately, it seems most see being a defender /against/ the public as a more important and mutually exclusive job.
I agree with Phil. We could have handled this better: We can't expect an outsider to know to claim "undo weight" vs "thats wrong!". We could have gotten better results if we listened and used that information to guide our search for verifiable information or if we communicated our limitations and concerns to the person complaining. Too often on Wikipedia does communication not extend beyond snarky comments in edit summaries.
Our mission in this regard is to provide accurate and neutral information. Verifiability, citations, NPOV, etc. are how we get there. Don't confuse the means with the ends.
I do think, and I hope the subject would agree, that this is a really minor case. But it's still an example where we performed poorly. The correct response it to think about how we could have done it better. Maybe we can't do it any better, but that doesn't justify denying the problem. It's still a problem even if we can't (yet) fix it.