On 10/19/06, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
I have encountered people who are worried about pages, and rather than blanking, they post messages on the "discussion" page.
And it's great when that happens.
I know I always
listen to those messages, and they are infinitely more informative than a new user blanking a page repeatedly.
And you do no favors when you don't even bother to initiate dialogue if you find someone who seems to have an objection to the article.
I still do not see why we
should be beaten down because of a mistake which was caused by their lack of communication.
Our lack of communication is equally to blame, and it's the responsibility of "longtime respected editors" and "vandal fighters" alike to follow our policies, assume good faith, and find out what the problem is.
Instead, what was the reaction? Blind Revert, Blind Revert, Block user - all by the same admin Darwinek - without a single talkpage message or message to the editor in question that I know of.
This is the same sort of behavior I was complaining of when I shut down using my admin account. I've stayed talking on email thus far hoping that maybe, having brought these concerns to the list and to Jimbo, something might change. Instead, I'm watching over half of the thread's participants defending what ought to be undeniable, inexcusable behavior (not the reverting or the blocking necessarily, but not bothering to check the article for problems and not bothering to make any effort to contact the user, absolutely).
As was said before, their should be informative
messages before blanking is allowed, so they can see the intelligent options more clearly.
There should be a lot of things. That still doesn't excuse the behavior by the "respected editor" who didn't do their job properly.
Possibly even link directly to the BLP
noticeboard, which gets a large volume of traffic and can deal with the sort of things that were so worrying in the single case that has been demonstrated here.
It's not the only case, or the BLP page wouldn't have a line about how oftentimes biography blankings happen because there's something problematic in the article, and I'll thank you and whatsisname to stop throwing the "well this is the only case we have on record" strawman around right now.
Parker