Mark Ryan wrote:
Assuming good faith comes easily to some people. I'm just naturally suspicious. I don't assume bad faith, I just don't assume good faith readily. There needs to be a balance between gullibly believing everything any random tells us, and disbelieving everything anyone tells us until they show proof.
For what it's worth, I don't think assuming good faith prevents us from watching for potential troublemakers. It's like "trust, but verify". Checking things out allows us to turn our assumption into a sincere belief.
Even when people are clearly up to something, I think it's still worth assuming the best possible motives. A great example is {{uw-joke1}} and related templates:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Uw-joke1
Yes, after the eleven millionth reversion on [[Bong]] or [[Dildo]], their jokes aren't remotely funny. Ditto for those "testing" Wikipedia by inserting junk. But both are mistakes I well could have made once upon a time, and with the best of intentions.
William