On Wed, Mar 5, 2008 at 9:55 AM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 3/5/2008 1:00:06 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, erik@wikimedia.org writes:
I have had my fair share of arguments with Jimmy over the years - but it does mean rejecting the destructive, malicious behavior that we have seen in recent days.>>
Maybe you could be direct about exact what you perceive to be "destructive, malicious behavior" separating it from that behavior that could be characterized as "reporting the news".
When an article, achieves the level of notability that it comes to the front page of Google's news service, it's hard to blame the community for that. When we discuss what that article states, we are not hiding our heads in the sand.
Ok your turn :)
Will Johnson
The only reason that the recent spate of press stuff got that notice was because it was Wikipedia ("Yay! We've arrived!") and salacious ("Sob! We've arrived!") and coming from "internal sources" (though previously internal rather than current).
Had J Random nutball out on the Web asserted that Wikipedia was involved in white slavery in the Sudan, it wouldn't have taken off.
Erik's point is that we're at a point in time in project size, community, and real-world significance where significant numbers of people associated with the project can do significant harm if they chose to attack the project, and I would add "...or by mistake or bad handling of public statements."
I assume good faith by the participants in this snafu. Danny, though he's moved off to the periphery, was very helpful for a long time, and I believe clearly wants the project to be successful and ethical and positive.
We should protect whistleblowers - much fraud and abuse in the world is revealed and addressed following such reports.
Even so, it's important to remember that if you throw the grenade out in public, it's going to explode and hurt people.
This has not evidently helped the project.