By the way, I didn't say that the subject is "the only person who CAN address the particular specific instance". I said that the responsibility for doing so, rests on them.
We are not and should not feel obligated to root all every negative statement made about every public figure from every page. That would be a truly ridiculous position. We can try to find some, and address some, which we *already do*. And when *others* which can't be simply blanked out (which can by done by anyone) are brought to the attention of oversighters, etc they can be addressed as well. There is no need for anything more than that.
Doing what we're already doing, addresses our own feeling that we should do something versus nothing. But we have no responsibility (note that word) to police the actions of others. There is no crime in progress here.
Will Johnson
************** Looking for a car that's sporty, fun and fits in your budget? Read reviews on AOL Autos.
(http://autos.aol.com/cars-BMW-128-2008/expert-review?ncid=aolaut000500000000... )
Will, a couple of points from this conversation that I think you are missing:
1) NYB mentioned a continuum of problem edits and discussions. Not all discussion about inaccurate and negative claims against living people needs to be oversighted, nor could it realistically be done. On the other hand, very little if any of this needs or should be available at the top of Google search results.
2) Oversight is an imperfect tool - oversighters respond to complaints, but can't remove edits they aren't aware of. The segment of "uncaught" edits, many of which are likely to be outside article space where policing is more uneven, remains available to search results unnecessarily. If a subject doesn't regularly Google him or herself, or isn't aware of how to address problems on Wikipedia, or tries to do so incorrectly and gets blocked (! - it happens), then this perfect system of oversight you describe breaks down. Much damage can be done through falsely negative info featured in search results before an alert is passed to an oversighter.
What no-indexing non-article space pages does is simple: it limits the opportunity for damaging and false information to make it into circulation because of Wikipedia's popularity. It doesn't solve this problem - indeed, it doesn't at all address the problem as it exists in article space. But it does make progress, and the arguments against it (seemingly navigational, and eminently correctable through improvements to the internal search system) are weak.
You argue against the ethos for not indexing these pages - we don't create the false claims, we aren't publishing them ourselves, and policing such things is the responsibility of the subject. I think you're wrong - the moral responsibility (if not the legal) absolutely lies with our community. Even so, while you disagree with its motivation the fact remains that the tangible harm to this sort of change is all but nonexistent - and the benefits are quite significant.
Nathan
On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 3:27 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
By the way, I didn't say that the subject is "the only person who CAN address the particular specific instance". I said that the responsibility for doing so, rests on them.
We are not and should not feel obligated to root all every negative statement made about every public figure from every page. That would be a truly ridiculous position. We can try to find some, and address some, which we *already do*. And when *others* which can't be simply blanked out (which can by done by anyone) are brought to the attention of oversighters, etc they can be addressed as well. There is no need for anything more than that.
Doing what we're already doing, addresses our own feeling that we should do something versus nothing. But we have no responsibility (note that word) to police the actions of others. There is no crime in progress here.
Will Johnson