[Wikipedia-l] Helga

[Vicki Rosenzweig]

At 03:59 PM 8/26/02 -0400, you wrote:
>We should not "stop" her; rather, we should neutralize her writings. Write 
>things like:
>
>         Some advocates blame the Daily Express article for starting the 
> war, although most historians agree that...

It still gives it too much credence: "some people" believe that the earth 
is flat, but that
doesn't mean we give them equal time in the article on Magellan.


>I'm not sure what goes in the ellipsis, but my point is, there is nothing 
>wrong with Helga's views that attribution can't fix.
>
>Look what I've done with the Arab-Israeli Conflict articles: Palestine, 
>Palestinian, Palestinian homeland, etc. There hasn't been an outbreak of 
>edit war in nearly 2 weeks, which is epochal in terms of internet time.
>
>I bet if I start following Helga around, I can neutralize anything she 
>says faster than she can say it; I can type 80 words a minute, and my 
>English is superb. I am offering up to 5 hours per week to this end.
>
>All I need is the ability to track "all articles written by a single IP", 
>so that when she forgets to log in I can still see her contributions. Or 
>maybe Jimbo can give her a parole condition: if she agrees to contribute 
>only while logged in, we won't ban her.
>
>I didn't realize people were so upset with Helga. I may have made a 
>mistake in encouraging "H. Jonat" to stay in the first place. But she 
>hasn't threatened anyone with physical violence, and she is answering 
>Jimbo's e-mails. I say, teach her the norms of the community rather than 
>exile her.

We've been trying to teach her the norms of the community for a very long 
time. She
isn't interested in learning them.
-- 
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org