On 5/10/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
"Assume good faith" ignores one important fact: people lie.
Or are wrong for a variety of other reasons (ignorance, accident, confusion, translation issues, etc.). One can still assume good faith and also assume that people are, well, people. "Assume good faith" doesn't mean "be unskeptical." It just means, "don't assume maliciousness" -- it doesn't mean "assume they are correct."
In copyright issues I assume first that the user does not understand our copyright policy or copyrights in general. After that, I move into the realm of "...and maybe they don't care." After that, I move into, "well, whatever the case, they're doing the wrong thing and that won't do." In rare cases do I suspect people of being legitimately malicious in their actions (though there have been more than a handful of that, of course).
FF