On 3/30/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin(a)gmail.com> wrote:
What we should be asking is whether what we're
doing is reasonable. Is
it reasonable to host pages about living persons that can be edited by
any anonymous person of any age in the world, when we have no clear
way of patrolling those pages to make sure anything negative or unfair
is removed immediately?
I'd say yes, it is reasonable. Every free webhosting site on the
Internet does exactly what you described. And I'd note that the only
way *not* to have the situation which you describe would be to
disallow anonymous editing or to run every edit through a review
board.
And when, even when such pages are spotted,
getting rid of the bad stuff often involves a giant fuss, with admins
unsure of what action they're allowed to take, because if they go too
far they risk being desysopped?
That's unreasonable, but I think you'd have a hard time blaming the
WMF for such a situation.
Anthony