[WikiEN-l] An example of a bad biography

[Philip Sandifer]

On Apr 29, 2008, at 11:36 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> Please read all of the following, and ask whether it reflects the  
> values
> we all hold for our project.
>

With all due respect, no, of course it doesn't. You know that. You  
also know that in a project of this size things like this are going to  
happen - the article was a frequent target for vandalism. It was  
reverted frequently, generally, it looks like, by non-admins. On the  
17th it became the target of vandalism for a spree that lasted three  
days. The vandalism was frequently reverted.

So what, exactly, do you see as the problem? That it often took a few  
hours for the vandalism to get noticed? That one of two million  
articles fell through the cracks such that it wasn't instantly noticed  
on people's watchlists? What, exactly, do you see as the egregious  
problem here?

And furthermore, you know better than to argue via anecdotal evidence  
like this. An article was the subject of a vandalism attack and was  
fixed a bit more slowly than we might like. And? What's the systemic  
problem you see? Where's your evidence that the problem is actually  
systemic?

What do you think we should be doing differently? It's unfair and  
insulting to the community to pop up and take us all to task for  
failing to deal with one case. What do you want changed? What's your  
actual idea here? Because otherwise this feels a lot like a bit of  
random scolding with no actual content or thought.

-Phil