Perhaps I should have thought of this example sooner: one extreme instance that comes to mind is the following biography:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Sanchez
Which was nominated for deletion three times and kept: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Matt_Sanchez http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Matt_Sanchez_(2...) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Matt_Sanchez_(3...)
and caused an arbitration case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Bluemarine
The biography subject was the target of a long term harassment and impersonation campaign across multiple sites on the Internet, which spilled over onto Wikipedia, and during the arbitration that harassment culminated in his computer getting hacked and his bank account getting emptied. The offsite harassment continues, although fortunately (after about two years of volunteer effort) its effects on Wikipedia have been minimized.
The subject himself is no boy scout. When he gained attention a ghost from his closet emerged, and his attempts to deal with the resulting problems at Wikipedia were so counterproductive that he got sitebanned. Wjhonson (who posts actively to this list) was also active in that dispute and our perspectives on it differed, so I hope this amounts to a brief neutral summary. For purposes of this thread, that's background. Here's the substance:
BLP vandalism at Wikipedia is not all random one-offs. It also consists of persistent or strategic damage. Wikipedia does a much poorer job at handling the latter problems.
In this instance the article subject was completing his education and looking for work while Wikipedia's article persistently violated BLP, RS, V, and NPOV. A series of experienced volunteers were unable to resolve the problems without arbitration. The net result was two editors sitebanned, one indefinitely blocked, and another topic banned.
Looking back on that long ordeal, that dispute might not have grown so long and bitter if it were possible to noindex that BLP while the problems were getting addressed.
-Lise
Now as an act of good faith I'm going to offer to initiate a request to have that topic ban lifted. It's been about a year and the editor otherwise had a good onsite record.
On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 10:47 AM, philippe philippe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Jun 5, 2009, at 9:47 AM, Jim Redmond wrote:
As several others have mentioned, noindexing won't prevent vandalism, won't prevent mirrors from showing the hidden content, and won't prevent direct visits to the hidden content.
Pardon the dumb question, but do we have a "{{nomirror}}" or similar feature? If so, some combination of {{noindex}}, {{nomirror}}, and flagged revisions might be a temporary panacea...
Philippe
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