[WikiEN-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Most read US newpaper blasts Wikipedia
Snowspinner
Snowspinner at gmail.com
Wed Nov 30 17:06:56 UTC 2005
I am responding to nobody in particular, because there's such a wide
variety of hysteria to respond to that I can barely choose.
The objection that Seigenthaler is having to Wikipedia is not even to
the process or to the speed at which we fix vandalism. It is not to
our current quality, it is not to anything fixable.
The fundamental objection that Seigenthaler has is that we allow
people to post freely. His objection is to the belief that we ought
not carefully monitor our users and that we ought avoid turning them
in to the legal authorities in a dispute. His assumption that the
article was posted by a vandal is dodgy at best - I would be shocked
if he were not the subject of some conspiracy theory or another, and
if whoever posted the article were anything more than a particularly
stupid POV pusher. If Wikipedia were to in any way assist with
turning a mere stupid POV pusher in to legal authorities, I know my
support for the site would drop off swiftly.
The entire goal of this project is freedom and openness. That opens
us to stupidity, and we have an obligation to deal with the
stupidity. And if Seigenthaler wanted to criticize us for our
failings in reverting this stupidity and to the process that let it
sit there for 153 days, he'd be right. But to criticize us for being
open and free in the first place is not a problem we can or should
fix. And to my mind, it is a problem that puts Seigenthaler so far
outside of any of the core beliefs of this project that the point is
only narrowly worth debating.
A final comment - we have been adamant and active about finding ways
for our Chinese contributors to participate even as their government
tries to shut them down. On what possible grounds can we even
consider acquiescing to an argument that amounts to "It should be
easier to sue if I don't like my Wikipedia article." Think of what
would have happened in the Bogdanov Affair, or with John Byrne, or
with dozens of other cases if what Seigenthaler were calling for were
to come true.
-Phil
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