On Wed, 4 Apr 2007, Steve Bennett wrote:
I don't think much good will come from telling people to fix libel in their own articles. Because a) They shouldn't have to b) It will quickly get confused and sound like you can change *anything* in your own articles c) It will probably cause an argument, especially because it will always be a newcomer who doesn't understand wikipedia, and things will end badly.
It's much better the existing way, where libelees complain to OTRS or something, and something with a clue handles it.
Letting people fix it themselves, though, has one advantage: it's removed *immediately*, not when some volunteer gets around to it. Moreover, figuring out who to complain to is itself something that newcomers may find difficult to do.
It's stupid to tell people "you can edit anything in Wikipedia except the one thing which is affecting your life. You must figure out the proper bureaucratic procedure to use and go through that instead."