[WikiEN-l] Before reverting blanking, please read the text

[Matt R]

--- "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

> Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> You make it sound like we're asking you to chop down the tallest tree in
> the forest with a herring. We're not. We're asking you to use a little
> bit of Common Sense. How on earth is someone meant to defend themselves
> if they don't even know the crime that they've been charged with? How on
> earth is a newbie meant to learn that there are certain things they're
> not supposed to be doing something if nobody ever tells them?

Hang on, I thought we were just reverting an unexplained page blanking by a new
account without communicating with them. We're not, as far as I recall,
charging them with a crime or requiring that they defend themselves from
anything.

You mentioned common sense. I think most people have enough common sense to
realise that if they blank an encyclopedia article without giving any reason
for it, and then it's undone, they should probably try something else. Common
sense suggests that if someone's figured out where the "edit" link and "save
page" button is, they're not too far off from the "discussion" link or the
"edit summary" box. It really isn't that hard.

Assume good faith is a fine principle, but the suggestion here seems to be that
editors must engage every such page blanker in dialogue based on the remote
chance that they just might have a good reason for doing it, even though they
didn't bother giving it at the time. That just doesn't seem worthwhile to me;
the effort involved seems disproportionate to any possible harm.

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

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