[WikiEN-l] Re: The userbox fad

[Michael Snow]

Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>On 1/5/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>While I'm generally in favor of broad latitude for user behavior,
>>there are some people who are simply net negatives, and it is in our
>>interest to get them to go away. I've come to steer away from most
>>of that kind of debating, because the encyclopedia benefits more
>>from me applying myself in areas where I have specialized skills,
>>knowledge, and reference sources. But sooner or later we're going
>>to have to develop better ways to filter out the unhelpful.
>>
>>Stan
>>    
>>
>You could always turn Wikipedia into an exclusive club that people can
>only get into if they can prove themselves worthy.
>
Hardly what he's suggesting. Filtering out the unhelpful means removing 
people from the "club" after they've proven themselves unworthy, not 
requiring them to prove worthiness before getting in at all. We already 
do the former, but optimizing the filtering process is a bit challenging.

For similar reasons, we constantly struggle with the filtering process 
currently known as "Articles for deletion". Since this one deals with 
people even more directly, it should not be surprising that a happy 
medium is difficult to find.

--Michael Snow