On 07/12/2007, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
Personally I wouldn't encourage the sort of irresponsible reporting El Reg frequently engages in, and I don't approve of editors who would do the same, but at the same time, I don't see why editors shouldn't be free to do this. Making this verboten will only force them to become anonymous and complicate matters further. It is irresponsible to drag disputes off-wiki as was done here, but it will happen regardless of what we do - that's the whole lesson of the BADSITES debacle.
Absolutely - we respond to stuff because we feel that doing so will advance the encyclopedia and the project to write the encyclopedia. The problem is that the only agenda advanced by feeding an ad-banner troll is that of the ad-banner troll.
But I certainly wouldn't deny anyone the important educational experience of having done so, nor the powerful personal in just how reliable those things that have been arbitrarily deemed "reliable sources" actually are.
(I would also take exception to the suggestion that simply answering questions from a tabloid hostile to Wikipedia is automatically tantamount to dragging our good name through the mud - the chair of Wikimedia UK has responded to El Reg in the comments section, but this doesn't mean she has somehow harmed Wikipedia simply by virtue of participating.)
Though she did gain a powerful personal lesson in the effectiveness of feeding the ad-banner troll.
The more openness, the better, if you ask me. Sometimes it is better for us to comment when newspapers pose questions to us. The risk of tabloids abusing our openness is just something we have to tolerate.
Definitely. Mostly, being ourselves to press queries is just the right thing to do. I'm surprised and pleased how well random normal Wikipedians the press talk to tend to come across.
- d.