On 11/6/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Or maybe I'm just old fashioned in thinking that there are way to define success or correctness which don't consider popularity. ;)
Well...I think we all agree on the end/goal/aim "Wikipedia as accurate / correct / vandalism-free as possible" [choose what you like best from these terms]. However, if I understand this discussion correctly, it's rather about the means we use to get there. I.e., is there a way in which we fix vandalism (or: remedy subobtimal edits[ without at the same time driving away many new users who are potentially valuable contributors. I'm not saying that I have the solution up my sleeve but I guess mass-flooding new users with templates which are only barely appropriate to their personal situation ("Your edit was reverted, please use the sandbox for testing" triggers often something like "eh, I didn't want to test, I wanted to improve this specific article") can't be a very good approach either.
Michael