[WikiEN-l] Porchesia

[Michael Snow]

David Gerard wrote:

> On 01/10/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> Whether we are talking about companies or fictitious islands, I do not
>> believe "block, nuke, and salt the Earth more aggressively!" is the
>> answer. That's partially because blocking is a very, very flawed tool
>> (it's very easy to circumvent), and "hard" security measures in a
>> fundamentally open environment tend to only inspire people to find
>> clever ways to circumvent them and to make themselves even more of a
>> PITA than they already are. Of course we should block individuals
>> where appropriate, but I'm not convinced that increasing the amount of
>> blocking and nuking is going to help us much right now.
>
> Yes.
>
> Danny, Brad: please understand that making up a new special rule every
> time there's a new problem is a *really bad* thing to do.

Which is why neither Danny nor Brad made up a new special rule, nor did 
either of them advocate it. They advocated strengthening and/or changing 
our attitudes and culture. An admittedly difficult task, but one we need 
to work on.

Part of the problem is the many people who sort of get the message, but 
immediately translate these calls into the "new special rule" that will 
"solve everything for all time". I understand a new speedy deletion 
criterion has already been proposed. With my tongue in my cheek, I'm 
somewhat inclined to take a page from Ed Poor's book and speedily delete 
the speedy deletion criteria.

Erik's message cautions about how we shouldn't misuse the tools we have 
in achieving this cultural change. That's a perceptive observation as 
well. He went on to advocate working on a better annotation feature, 
which might be of some help with this problem. (Though it must be noted 
that new features lend themselves particularly well to this problem of 
"new special rules".) But the thing is, we can't really wait around for 
all these promised, or merely even conceived-of, features. We need to 
address problems when they come to our attention, not simply say we'll 
get around to dealing with them later.

--Michael Snow