[WikiEN-l] Re: The whole point of wikipedia

[Martin Richards]

> I hold this truth to be self-evident: the whole point of Wikipedia is to
> produce a free encyclopedia.
>
> To secure this goal, policies and practices have been instituted. Whenever
> current policies and practices becomes destructive of this goal, it is
> appropriate that the community institute such new practices as seem as to
> them shall seem most likely to secure the goal of producing a free
> encyclopedia.
>
> Prudence, indeed, will dictate that practices long established, such as 
> zero-
> threshold editing should not be changed for light and transient causes.

"Light and transient"!! are you serious? These vandals waste so much of our 
good editors time and effort that it is an extreme problem.

We have to ask ourselves "is wikipedia a social experiment or not?"

answers;
YES!
Then let absolutely everyone edit freely (well everyone who has a computer 
with internet and is not blocked by other means, including being on an IP 
shared with a blocked vandal) and live by our artificial rules and see what 
happens.

NO!
This is a project to make the best encyclopedia ever, policy and procedure 
should evolve as our problems evolve, and vandalim is one of the biggest 
problems, it discredits us, wastes our time, and puts off good users. The 
least we could do is be able to block vandals properly when they do surface.