[WikiEN-l] Slashdot article

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 9:43 AM, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Oct 28, 2008, at 12:33 AM, WJhonson at aol.com wrote:
> You're still treating this as some sort of theoretical exercise as
> opposed to an article about a real person, and you're drawing inane
> technical distinctions that have little to no bearing on the real
[snip]
> The article sucked. We got a complaint. And because we disliked how
> the complaint was lodged, we ignored it. That is a case of process
> trumping outcome in the most toxic way imaginable,
[snip]

Wikipedia is very complex to outsiders.  Much of the complexity exists
for good reasons or, at least, it exists where don't have obviously
better solutions.

Because of the complexity, outsiders should have the benefit of an
advocate when they come to Wikipedia. (Even if we don't know for sure
who the person is, we could still investigate their complaints).

I think every Wikipedian should see being an advocate for the public
as part of their 'job' on Wikipedia.  Unfortunately, it seems most see
being a defender /against/ the public as a more important and mutually
exclusive job.

I agree with Phil.  We could have handled this better: We can't expect
an outsider to know to claim "undo weight" vs "thats wrong!".   We
could have gotten better results if we listened and used that
information to guide our search for verifiable information or if we
communicated our limitations and concerns to the person complaining.
Too often on Wikipedia does communication not extend beyond snarky
comments in edit summaries.

Our mission in this regard is to provide accurate and neutral
information. Verifiability, citations, NPOV, etc. are how we get
there.  Don't confuse the means with the ends.

I do think, and I hope the subject would agree, that this is a really
minor case. But it's still an example where we performed poorly.  The
correct response it to think about how we could have done it better.
Maybe we can't do it any better, but that doesn't justify denying the
problem. It's still a problem even if we can't (yet) fix it.