2009/1/8 Mike Godwin mgodwin@wikimedia.org:
Thomas Dalton writes:
I guess if you leave it up to the editor to do it themselves, it could work, although it would still require someone to go along after them fixing the mess that would inevitably result from removing random chunks from the middle of articles. There would also be disputes over how much should be removed - can you remove a word because you corrected the spelling of it? (probably not) can you remove an entire sentence because it's an expansion of a sentence that you wrote? (probably, since there isn't an alternative, but that's going to really piss off the person that did all the work expanding it) And then you have to deal with disputes over whether the text that is put in to replace the removed chunks is sufficiently different so as not to infringe on the editor's copyright. I think it would end up being a lot of work for more than just the editor in question.
I agree with you that an editor who chooses to remove some large number of minor edits is going to be quite disruptive, but I think it goes without saying that some very tiny minority of editors is quite willing to be disruptive and antisocial in order to score to (a) vindicate their perceived rights or (b) (and less charitably) to score an ideological point.
I hope it is not news to anyone here that some (very tiny) fraction of editors values making a point over making information freely available to the world.
Very true. That's not a reason to support them in doing so, though. Do you think there is a legal requirement for us to allow people to opt-out, or are you just suggesting doing so as an act of good faith? I'm not sure I have enough good faith to let someone mess up a large portion of the encyclopaedia...