[WikiEN-l] Another notability casualty

[Gwern Branwen]

On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 7:31 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7 March 2010 00:00, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <abd at lomaxdesign.com> wrote:
>> Onus? No, I'm seeing masses of highly experienced editors leaving the
>> project, with those replacing them being relatively clueless, as to
>> the original vision, which was itself brilliant but incomplete.
>
> You aren't allowing for the typical length of intense participation in
> *any* online environment typically being 18-24 months (MMORPGs, etc),
> and that the stated reason may not be the reason.

This, incidentally, allows for a third option to Abd's dilemma: an
editor can just be patient.

Here's a personal example, lightly fictionalized (because I know that
if I specify the page and edits, *someone* will take it upon
themselves to undo them just to make a point).

3 or 4 years ago, there was a certain controversy, which got written
up into an article. The article included a chronology with
referencing/links to the site which first noticed the discrepancy
which started the whole shebang.

This site was considerably disapproved of, and the Powers That Be
decreed that links to it were banned, and of course, without the
referencing links, the initial entries in the chronology were now
unreferenced & OR* & to be removed. Bans were spoken of.

I gave up on the subject, and instead added a reminder to revisit it
in a few years' time - roughly 2 of the canonical cycles.

That timer fired a few months ago. I took the material as it was in
the last removal, and added it back in.

Not one person has commented about or opposed the addition.

* I'll note in passing that OR has policy-creeped considerably since
the early days; certainly the people who originally were invoking OR
against Time Cube or Archimedes Plutonium or the electric universe
would be a little surprised at current usage.

-- 
gwern