All depends on what the person did. Prank call 911? Leave the poor woman alone. Try to molest a minor? Have some respect for his human dignity. That's Jimbo's answer, anyway.
I'm afraid I don't understand. Could you rephrase that?
I think the 911 one is a reference to an old article that was an early deletion under BLP, and the latter is probably about Brian Peppers.
The 911 reference is to a woman, let's call her "lonely Aloha woman", who called 911 because she thought a deputy "was cute" and wanted him to come back to her house. Google "lonely Aloha woman" if you want the full story. Jimmy Wales used it on the mailing list as a strawman, saying that we should "leave the poor woman alone" and not have an article on her because we don't want that story to end up being permanently presented as the number one google hit for this "non-notable" person.
I call it a strawman because Jimmy was specifically using the hypothetical situation to attack me and my support of there being an article on Brian Peppers, and yet I don't think we *should* have an article on this woman and in fact I've always felt that personal privacy considerations should be taken into account when deciding on whether or not to cover something in Wikipedia.
I think it's clearly a sliding scale though, and on that scale I think clearly Brian Peppers deserves the least personal privacy and some Wikipedian who was banned for pissing off a few admins deserves the most. The lonely Aloha woman also did something incredibly stupid, but I don't think that justifies having a Wikipedia article come up as the top Google result of a search for her name. At least call the article [[lonely Aloha woman]] if you insist on writing about it. And as far as I'm concerned I think Wikipedia's robots.txt should read "Disallow: /" (imagine all the useless arguments doing that would eliminate).
And as far as I'm concerned I think Wikipedia's robots.txt should read "Disallow: /" (imagine all the useless arguments doing that would eliminate).
Stop people complaining by stopping them ever coming to the site? Yeah, I guess that would do it...
On 9/18/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
And as far as I'm concerned I think Wikipedia's robots.txt should read "Disallow: /" (imagine all the useless arguments doing that would eliminate).
Stop people complaining by stopping them ever coming to the site? Yeah, I guess that would do it...
This wouldn't stop people from coming to the site, only robots.
On 9/18/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On 9/18/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
And as far as I'm concerned I think Wikipedia's robots.txt should read "Disallow: /" (imagine all the useless arguments doing that would eliminate).
Stop people complaining by stopping them ever coming to the site? Yeah, I guess that would do it...
This wouldn't stop people from coming to the site, only robots.
When people want to find out information, they go to a search engine for it. If we don't get listed in search engines, we don't get visited.
On 9/18/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
This wouldn't stop people from coming to the site, only robots.
And how do people find the site if it doesn't appear in search results? I don't have the statistics, but I imagine the vast majority of visitors to Wikipedia come via a search engine.
Vast majority maybe, but not everyone.
If the bottom line is becoming the most visited website, then it's obviously a bad idea. If the bottom line is to create the worlds best encyclopedia, on the other hand, there's not an obvious winner either way.
Let's agree to disagree on this one. I highly doubt either of us would convince the other that ey's right, and I also highly doubt such a discussion is going to cause any change in policy.
Vast majority maybe, but not everyone.
If the bottom line is becoming the most visited website, then it's obviously a bad idea. If the bottom line is to create the worlds best encyclopedia, on the other hand, there's not an obvious winner either way.
Let's agree to disagree on this one. I highly doubt either of us would convince the other that ey's right, and I also highly doubt such a discussion is going to cause any change in policy.
The bottom line is to provide free knowledge to everyone. That's always been the bottom line. If the knowledge is there, but no-one can find it, what's the point?
On 9/18/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Vast majority maybe, but not everyone.
If the bottom line is becoming the most visited website, then it's obviously a bad idea. If the bottom line is to create the worlds best encyclopedia, on the other hand, there's not an obvious winner either way.
Let's agree to disagree on this one. I highly doubt either of us would convince the other that ey's right, and I also highly doubt such a discussion is going to cause any change in policy.
The bottom line is to provide free knowledge to everyone. That's always been the bottom line. If the knowledge is there, but no-one can find it, what's the point?
I think the trick is to get the knowledge there first. Then help people find it.
On 9/18/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
I think the trick is to get the knowledge there first. Then help people find it.
Wikipedia is already a very useful resource.
If you know how to use it, which most people don't.
There's plenty of work still to be done, certainly, but there's not reason for people not to use it while we do that work.
I don't suggest taking away the ability for people to use it.
On 18/09/2007, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On 9/18/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
I think the trick is to get the knowledge there first. Then help people find it.
Wikipedia is already a very useful resource.
If you know how to use it, which most people don't.
Then we teach them, we don't hide it from them.
There's plenty of work still to be done, certainly, but there's not reason for people not to use it while we do that work.
I don't suggest taking away the ability for people to use it.
Yes, that's exactly what you're suggesting. Removing Wikipedia from search results would take away people's ability to easily find the information we have.
On 9/18/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 18/09/2007, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On 9/18/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
I think the trick is to get the knowledge there first. Then help people find it.
Wikipedia is already a very useful resource.
If you know how to use it, which most people don't.
Then we teach them, we don't hide it from them.
I say do both.
There's plenty of work still to be done, certainly, but there's not reason for people not to use it while we do that work.
I don't suggest taking away the ability for people to use it.
Yes, that's exactly what you're suggesting. Removing Wikipedia from search results would take away people's ability to easily find the information we have.
It'd take away people's ability to easily find the misinformation too. And it'd make it easier to find the better information that other people have.
Anthony wrote:
On 9/18/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, that's exactly what you're suggesting. Removing Wikipedia from search results would take away people's ability to easily find the information we have.
It'd take away people's ability to easily find the misinformation too. And it'd make it easier to find the better information that other people have.
But in most cases, other people have worse information, or none. I've been using search engines as a first-line method of exploratory research for at least 10 years, and the appearance of Wikipedia has *markedly* improved the usefulness and accuracy of that approach. Ten years ago, the most likely outcome was some random guy's geocities page had a bunch of information on the subject, which might or might not have been any good. Now that guy, if he writes on Wikipedia, at least normally has a bit of peer review.
-Mark
On 9/18/07, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Anthony wrote:
On 9/18/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, that's exactly what you're suggesting. Removing Wikipedia from search results would take away people's ability to easily find the information we have.
It'd take away people's ability to easily find the misinformation too. And it'd make it easier to find the better information that other people have.
But in most cases, other people have worse information, or none. I've been using search engines as a first-line method of exploratory research for at least 10 years, and the appearance of Wikipedia has *markedly* improved the usefulness and accuracy of that approach. Ten years ago, the most likely outcome was some random guy's geocities page had a bunch of information on the subject, which might or might not have been any good. Now that guy, if he writes on Wikipedia, at least normally has a bit of peer review.
Correlation does not imply causation. Lots of things have changed over the last ten years besides Wikipedia. Wikipedia is sometimes a half-decent starting point for information *if* you know how to use it, but if you know how to use it you don't need the search engines to point you to it in the first place.
On 9/18/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
The bottom line is to provide free knowledge to everyone. That's always been the bottom line. If the knowledge is there, but no-one can find it, what's the point?
What about cases where the knowledge was there, but it was removed because somebody, somewhere, didn't like it...
—C.W.
On 18/09/2007, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/18/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
The bottom line is to provide free knowledge to everyone. That's always been the bottom line. If the knowledge is there, but no-one can find it, what's the point?
What about cases where the knowledge was there, but it was removed because somebody, somewhere, didn't like it...
We don't remove information just because somebody somewhere doesn't like it - they have to actually have a good reason for not liking it.
On 18/09/2007, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
If the bottom line is becoming the most visited website, then it's obviously a bad idea. If the bottom line is to create the worlds best encyclopedia, on the other hand, there's not an obvious winner either way.
Well, either way, there's no reason to Google-index the non-encyclopaedic parts of the site (everything but the main and image spaces). Selective indexing might be helpful for the rest, e.g. a patch could be written to add <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow"> or <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"> to pages with the click of a checkbox. Of course, the patch would have to be committed, which could be problematic.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
This wouldn't stop people from coming to the site, only robots.
And how do people find the site if it doesn't appear in search results? I don't have the statistics, but I imagine the vast majority of visitors to Wikipedia come via a search engine.
Sure enough, but it can be hard to hide a gorilla sitting in your backyard kiddy wading pool. :-)
Ec
While I agree with you that B.P. does not deserve as much privacy as people who are merely annoying (everyone), note that the point of sex offender registries is not to punish gropers by dragging their names through the dirt worldwide, but rather to warn those who might come into contact with the gropers to be careful. So, you really don't need to know about them unless you do live in the same locale.
And, for the record, the first time a guy gropes me, I will slap him. Second time, I'll slap him harder, and so on. But I won't go and write an article on a high-Google-ranking site about him. Not that I'm saying the woman he groped wrote the article - I'm saying she herself might not want there to be an article on him, at least if she is anything like me, which she may not be.
On 18/09/2007, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
The 911 reference is to a woman, let's call her "lonely Aloha woman", who called 911 because she thought a deputy "was cute" and wanted him to come back to her house. Google "lonely Aloha woman" if you want the full story. Jimmy Wales used it on the mailing list as a strawman, saying that we should "leave the poor woman alone" and not have an article on her because we don't want that story to end up being permanently presented as the number one google hit for this "non-notable" person.
I call it a strawman because Jimmy was specifically using the hypothetical situation to attack me and my support of there being an article on B.P., and yet I don't think we *should* have an article on this woman and in fact I've always felt that personal privacy considerations should be taken into account when deciding on whether or not to cover something in Wikipedia.
I think it's clearly a sliding scale though, and on that scale I think clearly B.P. deserves the least personal privacy and some Wikipedian who was banned for pissing off a few admins deserves the most. The lonely Aloha woman also did something incredibly stupid, but I don't think that justifies having a Wikipedia article come up as the top Google result of a search for her name. At least call the article [[lonely Aloha woman]] if you insist on writing about it. And as far as I'm concerned I think Wikipedia's robots.txt should read "Disallow: /" (imagine all the useless arguments doing that would eliminate).
On 9/18/07, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
While I agree with you that B.P. does not deserve as much privacy as people who are merely annoying (everyone), note that the point of sex offender registries is not to punish gropers by dragging their names through the dirt worldwide, but rather to warn those who might come into contact with the gropers to be careful. So, you really don't need to know about them unless you do live in the same locale.
Couldn't you say the same thing about [[John Couey]], though? I guess you could, and would...
You make a valid point, but in this case the interest in Brian Peppers goes well beyond his locale. And the purpose is not to punish him, or drag his name through the dirt, but to present a neutral account of him.
I also was coming from the point of view during my earlier comments on the matter that it's reasonable for Wikipedia to have any articles on living people at all. Recently I've come to wonder whether that in itself might be a flaw in my earlier reasoning.
Granted, there are arguments