WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 4/29/2008 10:42:02 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, jwales@wikia.com writes:
This sort of harm is a direct result of Wikipedia policies and procedures, and is most likely *significantly* avoidable without significantly compromising on neutrality, quality, openness, and our other values.>>
This seems like an overemphasis that somehow we (the policy-abiding editors) are the cause instead of the vandals being the cause. The primary cause of the vandalism rests with the vandals. Our policies address this case spot-on, but nobody fixed the article. Why didn't they? Maybe we need more editors. Maybe we need an automatic "bad-word robot" to collect examples and create a "bad word page". That would make it a lot easier to monitor. But this case is not a result of our policies, our policies say "don't do this".
I have said: I see no particular reason to blame any particular person.
Yes, our policies... quite ineffectually... forbid this. But a mere prohibition completely misses the point.
There are policies in place which led to this:
1. Policies biased towards inclusionism mean that we have targets like this to start with, and people are afraid to delete them because they may get beaten up for being "overzealous" by people who think it is no big deal to call a private person names like this.
2. Policies which make it harder than it should be to semi-protect things.
3. .... others....
I don't think it is about robots: it is about changing attitudes and empowering people to get things done.