[WikiEN-l] Libeling NFL players; or, our abject failure to protect living people

[Fred Bauder]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Travis Mason-Bushman [mailto:travis at gpsports-eng.com]
>Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2007 11:33 PM
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Libeling NFL players; or, our abject failure to protect living people
>
>how can we possibly hope to protect the ordinary,
>average Joe who happens to wind up with a page on Wikipedia for being caught
>up in someone else¹s scandal? Who are we kidding, anyway?
>
>I believe that we should immediately make all articles about living people
>into ³stable versions,² editable only by administrators based on talk page
>consensus, so that we have at least some degree of control over what we say
>about people. We are doing way, way too much damage, and it has to stop, and
>stop now, before we really cause permanent harm to someone.
>
>As one of the Internet¹s top-10 Web sites, we have a moral and ethical
>responsibility to the people and topics we write about. We cannot continue
>to let anyone say anything they want, pending reversion ­ because as this
>case makes clear, that reversion might not come for weeks or months, if
>ever.
>
>-Travis Mason-Bushman

This is the best argument for not accepting articles which will receive no significant attention, either from the public or from us. We have long passed the point recent changes patrolling will catch all such vandalism.

Fred