On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 7:17 AM, David Gerard
<dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
An objectivist in a liberal blog? It happens.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jimmy-wales/what-the-msm-gets-wrong-a_b_29280…
(It's a piece about our remarkably accuracy-deficient coverage in the
media in the last month or so. What happens when there's nothing to
write about and people like me end up on telly.)
Hmm, I feel that Wales' post is kind of at cross-purposes to the meme
he's trying to defeat:
1) Meme: Newbie editors who make edits to random articles will require
those edits to be approved before going live.
2) Rebuttal: Newbie editors will now be able to make edits to
currently protected articles, albeit with those edits requiring
approval.
He never explicitly address the issue of editing non-BLP,
non-protected pages. So to me it comes across like a politician's or a
corporation's misdirect ("This isn't a tax, this is extending
healthcare!" or "You think our prices are going up, but we're actually
introducing the cheapest product we've ever had!")
(I'm not accusing Jimmy of anything underhand or any conspiracy - but
I think his post promises a bit more rebuttal than it actually
delivers.)
I think in this case the proof of the pudding will really be
in the eating.
If what happens with the roll-out of FR is going to be
a reduction of pages semied or protected fully, that will
be awesome and a definite proof of Jimbos thesis.
If however the actual result is a shift in editing cultural
attitudes (measured for instance in the rate of non-BLP
articles being semied or protected after the introduction
of FR) towards a stricter and more defensive attitude
towards addition of new information, there clearly are
metrics to evaluate that, and that will be proof of the
other sort.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen