Are there less radical solutions that we have not tried out yet?
Remember, we have MediaWiki:Sitenotice at our disposal to focus the
attention of all registered users. We could have a global call to sign
up for BLP patrol on
Special:Recentchangeslinked/Category:Living_people -- make sure that
hundreds of people look at the logs at least once per day.
I would not rule out more rigid application of semi-protection until
we have revision tagging, but it seems like a poorly scalable
solution. The problem certainly extends beyond BLPs to articles about
high schools and universities, where teachers and professors are often
targeted by drive-by idiots.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik
The notion that we don't need to worry as stuff gets reverted quickly is
false. I've got about 200 articles on my watchlist that I monitor
because we've had BLP/OTRS problems in the past. I went away for a week,
and came back to find a number or so had had dubious or libelous
material (re)inserted and it had been left standing until I returned.
Even where people's mothers complain and we apologise profusely and
remove it - if the character assassin returns a few weeks later there is
a high chance that the new libel won't be spotted until mum (sorry
'mom') sees it again. We can't even promise genuinely upset people that
it won't happen again.
I think semi-protecting all bios is overkill and in any case unlikely to
be accepted by the community. However, I wonder if we could get the
community to accept permanent semi-protection where there article meets
three criteria 1) it is a BLP 2) It is fairly low-nonbility/profile -
hence probably underwatched. 3) there have been real BLP problems in the
past.
At least we can then tell the offended party that we've done something.
(Yes, I know it won't solve the determined libeler)
Erik is looking for less radical solutions. I don't have the solution, but
if anyone thinks anything less than a radical solution will fix this problem
than they simply have not understood the problem. Wikipedia has a very ugly
downside - and real people are getting hurt.
Doc
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