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(a)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