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

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 10/19/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/19/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> >
> > So the other take-home message is that when blanking an article you
> > should give some indication of _why_ you're blanking it. Saves trouble
> > all around.
>
> I couldn't agree more. I can't just assume a blanking is valid if the person
> doing it provides no reason whatsoever.

Hopefully you have something around 1.2 KG of greyish white mush
between your ears. This mush has the amazing ability of enabling you
to read as well as make decisions and a reader who wishes to 'fix' it
but is unaware of exactly how they should do so.

A lot (most?) of blanking happens as a result of accidents or bad
behavior but a non-trivial amount of blanking happens because we have
libelous or otherwise bad information.

The bot issue is a complex one which we will address over time. We can
add heurestics to the bots to identify potential trouble articles and
send them to humans for review rather than just autounblanking.

But it is ABSOLUTELY INEXCUSABLE for a human to act in a manner which
is no more intelligent than a bot. If you are not going to read when
you revert a blanking, you should leave the work to a bot which will
generally do a better, faster, and more consistent job than you ... a
human who is pretending to be a bot.

The argument that these users are breaking our rules about blanking is
entirely bogus:  We allow open editing by anyone, even people who have
not read a single rule.   If you don't like that, argue to close
membership.. don't make excuses for mistakes with the argument that
the mistake wouldn't have been made if only some new user was aware of
one of our numerous esoteric rules.

It would appear that WP:NOT needs a new line: "Wikipedia is not a video game".