[WikiEN-l] Edit Wikipedia Week is coming. How not to bite the n00bs?

[Philip Sandifer]

On Nov 6, 2007, at 11:43 AM, Gregory Maxwell wrote:

> On Nov 6, 2007 11:31 AM, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com>  
> wrote:
>> Mine, at least, is to point out that we seem to be having no problems
>> skyrocketing in the Alexa rankings and in popularity despite this.
>> That does not mean we should not fight vandalism. But it does mean
>> that our userbase seems relatively accepting of the fact that
>> sometimes you'll load an article on Earl Grey tea and get a picture  
>> of
>> a man's distended anus. Yes, we get a few upset e-mails from people
>> who are not accepting of this every day at OTRS. But it doesn't seem
>> to be having a crippling effect on our perceived usability at  
>> present.
>
> The trivial counter to your argument is that there have been plenty of
> products that caused harm slowly enough or at a infrequently enough
> rate that LOTS of people still purchased/used them.
>
> It's not that people who smoke think "I don't mind cancer", it's that
> they don't experience the negative effects often enough to encourage
> them to make another decision.
>
> Along that line of thinking, on Wikipedia it's not "I don't mind the
> fact that looking up a connector on Wikipedia might instead bring up
> some child porn that could get me fired from work and investigated by
> the police" ...  it's either complete unawareness or "it won't happen
> to me".
>

This seems to me a hysterical response, though. Or, at least, I would  
expect that if this had happened in practice, we'd have a news story  
about a guy who was fired from work and investigated by the police  
because the [[SCSI]] article had child porn.

> Or maybe I'm just old fashioned in thinking that there are way to
> define success or correctness which don't consider popularity. ;)

Sure. We should try to make the encyclopedia better. But we have to  
remember that for our project better doesn't *just* mean serving up  
accurate and well-written articles. It also means meeting a standard  
of usability.

The issue I have here is that I have an easier time finding concrete  
damage caused by overzealous vandal-fighters than I have finding  
concrete damage caused by vandalism. (Note that I am defining damage  
here as a negative effect beyond the initial bad thing - obviously  
each instance of a bad page being served up and each instance of a mis- 
applied warning is bad in and of itself. But the warning seems to  
cause more negative effects after it takes place, whereas the bad page  
being served up seems to wrap itself up somewhat neatly.)

-Phil