[WikiEN-l] Reflections on the end of the spoiler wars

[Steven Walling]

two words I hope to never hear used in conjunction again on the mailing
list...dynamite and enema. Lovely imagery. Lovely.

But speaking seriously now, what you can do is grin and bear it. Open
discourse is just that, and as much as it produces loud mouthed cranks with
an ax to grind, it facilitates useful collaboration. That's the nature of
the beast. If commentators really and truly become  substantially disruptive
to the encyclopedic process, one of two things happens(or should): we ignore
them. or they get banned. Other than that, putting up with debates that
never seem to fade is just part of the game. Not to mention that what seems
like mindless annoyance to you seems useful and important to others. If you
don't support open discourse for everyone, you don't support it at all.


On Nov 14, 2007 6:58 PM, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On Nov 14, 2007, at 7:41 PM, David Gerard wrote:
>
> > Yeah. This is a live working draft - although articles will *tend* to
> > get better with time, any given article may be in a HORRIBLE condition
> > at any moment. This is not a finished product. (Arguably, it's barely
> > started - [[WP:WIP]].)
> >
> > Don't forget to put at least one good red link in every article you
> > edit today, by the way ;-)
>
> Sure - and the possibility of utterly insane things is important -
> particularly in the article space. Which is why I'm less annoyed about
> the 2004 election controversy articles than, well, the spoiler wars.
> On the other hand, though, the utter amount of time-wasting in the
> policy space is a problem, and I think it's why so much of our policy
> reads like it was written for obsessively tenacious killbots - in too
> many cases, it was.
>
> -Phil
>
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