[WikiEN-l] Jimmy Wales post on Huffington Post

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

Steve Bennett wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 7:17 AM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> An objectivist in a liberal blog? It happens.
>>
>> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jimmy-wales/what-the-msm-gets-wrong-a_b_292809.html
>>
>> (It's a piece about our remarkably accuracy-deficient coverage in the
>> media in the last month or so. What happens when there's nothing to
>> write about and people like me end up on telly.)
>>     
>
> Hmm, I feel that Wales' post is kind of at cross-purposes to the meme
> he's trying to defeat:
> 1) Meme: Newbie editors who make edits to random articles will require
> those edits to be approved before going live.
> 2) Rebuttal: Newbie editors will now be able to make edits to
> currently protected articles, albeit with those edits requiring
> approval.
>
> He never explicitly address the issue of editing non-BLP,
> non-protected pages. So to me it comes across like a politician's or a
> corporation's misdirect ("This isn't a tax, this is extending
> healthcare!" or "You think our prices are going up, but we're actually
> introducing the cheapest product we've ever had!")
>
> (I'm not accusing Jimmy of anything underhand or any conspiracy - but
> I think his post promises a bit more rebuttal than it actually
> delivers.)
>
>   

I think in this case the proof of the pudding will really be
in the eating.

If what happens with the roll-out of FR is going to be
a reduction of pages semied or protected fully, that will
be awesome and a definite proof of Jimbos thesis.

If however the actual result is a shift in editing cultural
attitudes (measured for instance in the rate of non-BLP
articles being semied or protected after the introduction
of FR) towards a stricter and more defensive attitude
towards addition of new information, there clearly are
metrics to evaluate that, and that will be proof of the
other sort.


Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen