On 11/30/05, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
The root of the problem is that using our software and site a person is able to do harm to another anonymously. This harm is then "innocently" spread by Google and our mirrors ... Perhaps we should run two versions: a public version which could be googled and mirrored and a semi-private version which could not be googled or mirrored.
Fred has raised an important point here. I'd like to see our talk pages not be googled or mirrored, if that's possible. I'm dealing with a situation at the moment where two registered users are out to cause harm to a semi-notable, real-life person. They inserted insulting material about him into an article, he kept deleting it, ended up being blocked for 3RR, complained to Jimbo, and after much back-and-forth, the material was removed. Now, the users who inserted it are discussing the situation and how terrible this person is on the article talk page. I think they're doing it deliberately to get the information out there, but they're not violating policy, so there's nothing I can do to stop them. With the whole site being picked up by google, whether something's in an article that's monitored for unsourced material or on a talk page that isn't, actually makes no difference in terms of how far the material ends up getting spread.
Sarah