[WikiEN-l] Zero information is preferred to misleading or false information

[Erik Moeller]

On 5/16/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> I think a fair number of people need to be kicked out of the project
> just for being lousy writers.  (This is not a policy statement, just a
> statement of attitude and frustration.)

I realize it's written out of frustration, but you really have to
appreciate much more how difficult it is to "kick out" people. You do
know that Lir is still around, right? How many times did we block the
guy? The fact that problem users become invisible in terms of
traceable identities doesn't make them go away. It makes the problem
worse. And you also remember User:Michael, I'm sure. I think that
experiment is generally considered to be successful?

Wikipedia is an open system. Creating a new account is trivial; so is
circumventing a block. For most people who have dynamic IPs, it
doesn't even take any effort other than waiting a few hours. Heck, we
don't even _require_ people to register, and when they do, we don't
require email address confirmation (which itself is trivial to
circumvent - mailinator.net, etc.).

Unless we want to radically reduce that level of openness, we need to
stick to our usual patience in dealing with problem users. Otherwise
we risk to turning an incompetent good faith editor into a malicious
sock puppetteer. The fact that we have all these complex processes and
policies - RfC, ArbCom, mediation, etc. - makes it all work.

That doesn't mean that we can't do more. We should make better use of
the key advantage we get from _not_ blocking problem users and bad
writers: traceability. There's nothing wrong with telling someone: "We
appreciate your contributions, but their quality is not yet up to our
standards, so we're going to put you in a different class of users."

Highlight their edits. Create a page where volunteers can sign up as
mentors to deal with them. Only in the worst cases, tell them that if
they don't find someone to mentor, they will be blocked. And I
probably should polish my "School of Wikipedia" idea a bit more.
Writing is a skill that can be acquired.

Erik