[WikiEN-l] Thoughts on #wikipedia - threat or menace?

[Joe Szilagyi]

On 5/22/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> #wikipedia is a wasteland of stupidity and a public relations disaster
> in lots of ways. It's also a lively and useful hangout for a lot of
> editors.
>
> I welcome your thoughts on what, if anything, to do about this.


Either fully associate them with Wikipedia/Foundation and make them 100%
liable, publically logged, and actionable per all Wikipedia policies, or
else completely disassociate, unendorse, and cut off any and all sanctioned
relationship between the encyclopedias/WMF, Freenode, and the channels. The
former extends full accountability and would be an endorsement of IRC as a
tool. The latter gets all of it out of the WMF's hair, since it's
technically "not ours". The latter also means that no one can get in
'trouble' for IRC actions on-Wiki generally speaking, for better or worse,
since they will have no relationship to the WP project at that point. I.e.,
flame and re-post logs to your heart's content, etc. Endorsement obviously
is better here. Any word entered on #wikipedia or en-admin will be logged,
and you are as responsibile. NPA, CIVIL, HARASS, etc., all rules apply. If
the channel moderators/owners refuse to acknowledge or endorse this,
disassociate it all, and cut it off.

If someone then tries to complain on-wiki about reposting stuff breaking the
channel rules: so what? The channel has nothing to do with Wikipedia or the
Foundation! It needs a bullet, one way or the other.

Extend any such action to any and all WMF related IRC channels, including
the admin channel of course.

Regards,
Joe
http://www.joeszilagyi.com