[WikiEN-l] Moderation on this mailing list

[Ray Saintonge]

Rich Holton wrote:

>Perhaps you're using the idea of "defending" an article differently than 
>I am. From the context of Parker Peter's original post that you were 
>replying to, we're talking about someone who is, in good faith, trying 
>to improve the article, and an admin "whacking" them for doing it.
>
>As I see it, one can legitimately defend an article against vandalism, 
>against overall POV, against the addition of questionable and 
>unreferenced "facts", and against unintelligible incoherence. There may 
>be others I'm not thinking of right now, but these are specifically 
>defined violations of policy (except perhaps for the last one), and we 
>all want to defend articles against these.
>
>But one can not legitimately "defend" an article against a newbie being 
>bold in a good faith effort to fix an article. A newbie being bold is 
>not, in and of itself, a violation of any policy. Quite the contrary, we 
>encourage it. If a change to an article does not violate policy but is 
>reverted, and then the change stonewalled on the talk page, the 
>"defender" is violating policy ([[Wikipedia:Ownership of articles]]), 
>and this is particularly damaging when the "defender" is an admin.
>
A person who makes a good-faith effort to explain his position on the 
talk page needs to be fairly considered.  If he does this, and receives 
no good-faith replies (which may include a link to a previous 
discussion) in 24 hours,  he is perfectly justified in restoring his 
bold edit.  Stonewalling could have the person waiting indefinitely.

Ec