[WikiEN-l] New policy proposal

[Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales]

James Rosenzweig wrote:
> There is already a vote of sorts taking place -- a
> list of "support" and "oppose" votes is growing
> slowly.  I am not clear as to why a vote is taking
> place so early, or whether the vote is intended to
> have any force.

I consider such decisions to remain firmly within my range of
discretion, so any such vote would necessarily just be a poll of
community opinion, which is of course always a valid thing to do.

As it stands, it seems that community opinion is, as always, firmly in
favor of openness, a position which I wholeheartedly endorse.

I *do* think there is a serious problem which needs to be addressed,
and I actually agree with Adam Carr's comment that "Unless Wikipedia
takes some policy initiative such as this, it will not only be unable
to achieve its objectives, it will begin to deteriorate in quality as
serious editors are driven away."

But I think this is the wrong approach -- editing by anonymous ip
numbers is barely a problem at all.  Under current blocking rules,
anons are not given the same "due process" protections as logged in
users, and so it's easy enough (other than some very annoying
technical limitations which could eventually cause me to change my
mind) to deal with.

Our biggest problems within the community are not anons trolling and
vandalizing, but rather egregious trolls and pov pushers who log in
and take advantage of our boundless good will.  Making it harder to
sign up will not help with this at all, and can actually hurt it if
the overall rate of participation by the (good willed) general public
declines in the face of some extra burdens of signing up.

POV pushers will jump through the hoops of signing up.  Making it
harder to sign up does nothing to discourage them.  So, yes, we need
to do something about how long it takes us to get rid of difficult
people -- and this is a difficult problem to reconcile with the
demands of NPOV and openness and quality.

--Jimbo