-----Original Message-----
From: Travis Mason-Bushman [mailto:travis@gpsports-eng.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2007 11:33 PM
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Libeling NFL players; or, our abject failure to protect living people
how can we possibly hope to protect the ordinary,
average Joe who happens to wind up with a page on Wikipedia for being caught
up in someone else¹s scandal? Who are we kidding, anyway?
I believe that we should immediately make all articles about living people
into ³stable versions,² editable only by administrators based on talk page
consensus, so that we have at least some degree of control over what we say
about people. We are doing way, way too much damage, and it has to stop, and
stop now, before we really cause permanent harm to someone.
As one of the Internet¹s top-10 Web sites, we have a moral and ethical
responsibility to the people and topics we write about. We cannot continue
to let anyone say anything they want, pending reversion because as this
case makes clear, that reversion might not come for weeks or months, if
ever.
-Travis Mason-Bushman
This is the best argument for not accepting articles which will receive no significant
attention, either from the public or from us. We have long passed the point recent changes
patrolling will catch all such vandalism.
Fred