[WikiEN-l] "should not be written by an interested party"

[Jimmy Wales]

Phil Boswell wrote:
> You're assuming that someone entirely unfamiliar with Wikipedia should, when
> alerted to an unsympathetic and possibly damaging article about them, be
> able to understand when the mantra "anybody can edit" suddenly becomes
> invalid, and furthermore deduce the alternate avenues of change which they
> should pursue, all the while leaving a version of their article on display
> which might well be somewhat distressing to them?

Bingo!  Phil has it exactly right.  The problem we are seeing, again and
again, is this attitude that some poor victim of a biased rant in
Wikipedia ought to not get pissed and take us up on our offer of "anyone
can edit" but should rather immerse themselves in our arcane internal
culture until they understand the right way to get things done.

I do not know what is going to change, but something BIG has got to
happen and SOON about this issue, because the amount of time it is
consuming for some of our best editors is getting way out of control.

> We should be more careful not to bite newbies, especially when we
> have...however inadvertent it might have been, and I'm AGFing here like
> crazy...caused them distress before they even arrive here. We do not exactly
> improve our general reputation by fostering an atmosphere which potentially
> allows people to insert damaging and downright mean disinformation into a
> biographical article, lie in wait for the subject should they turn up, and
> add insult to injury by castigating their well-meaning if naive efforts to
> correct the situation.

That is a very brilliant statement.

And we need to recognize that this is an accurate statement of the facts
of a great many of the problem cases that end up in WP:OFFICE.  Not
everyone is a wikipedian, and some of these non-wikipedians are using
Wikipedia to troll other people.  We need to find a new way.

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