[WikiEN-l] Funny joke...

[Ray Saintonge]

geni wrote:

>On 10/18/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>  
>
>>I fail to see the connection between the principle of keeping
>>discussions open forever, and your anti-obscenity project.  Your
>>response is a total non-sequitur.
>>    
>>
>If you look at that case it caused a lot of problems. Fortunety there
>was a built in time limit on the process which ment that ultimetly it
>was self limiting. You wish to take that away. You are failing to
>think through the consiquences of your proposals.
>
The problem is in letting a particular issue guide the more general 
policy.  That is bound to create injustices in places where they are 
unforseen.  I did personally delete the now famous lolicon image from 
Wiktionary, and I'm in constant debate with people who want to generate 
lists of unverified "naughty words".  But I would not be so naïve as to 
blindly resist any community consensus to keep these.

At the same time I believe in perpetually open process that can change 
results with the times without the need for newcomers to feel left out 
of the decisons.  If there is a general consensus that pedophilic images 
should be banned from the project I don't think that leaving that debate 
open is going to change anything; it is reasonable to expect that 
newbies will divide in the same ratio as established editors.

There is an unfortunate tendency in established communities to believe 
that what has happened in a community up to a given point in time is the 
best that could be.  A really open Wiki community needs to leave room 
for new ideas, and needs to be open to changing virtually all policies.  
This is especially important for policies where the support for either 
side is marginal

Now that Wikipedia has become such a huge Wiki it is important to have 
decision-making become scalable.

Ec