On Apr 29, 2008, at 10:51 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
One of my actual ideas is that "So what, we have 2 million articles" strikes me as not a very helpful approach to improvement. We don't look at the problem of heart disease by pointing out that almost everyone makes it through the day without dying of a heart attack.
I think the response is better summarized as "it is impossible to reduce the error rate to 0 with a population of this size." Accordingly, anecdotal evidence does not seem to me to be significant, which is why I find the particular problem you raised here so frustrating - because I don't think a lone article where our vandalism reversion is going slower than is optimal is evidence of anything. Hence it feels rather like scolding.
I'm open to the possibility that vandalism reversion is something that there is still room for improvement about. I have numerous thoughts on the subject. But that doesn't seem to me the conversation you started. A high-level, programmatic look at our treatment of vandalism would be useful. But I do take offense when an isolated instance of something that can be minimized, not prevented, is taken as an occasion to reflect on whether we are reflecting "the values we all hold for our project." It feels condescending.
In an effort to separate this issue from what I take to have been the discussion you were trying to start, I'll make a separate reply with some thoughts on the issues you're trying to raise. But I urge you to avoid the sort of parenting "let's all reflect on this" approach. The project is too big to get anywhere that way - some amount of actual politics-playing in which specific proposals and approaches are advanced is going to have to happen, and you're going to have to play an active part in it. The community, in its current configuration, is not capable of high-level and programmatic action. And if you want such action to happen, you are going to have to engage with it on a level of practical "I would like some input on a plan that will actually be put into place."
-Phil