On 3/9/04 6:25 PM, "Stan Shebs" <shebs(a)apple.com> wrote:
And your idea is? Ed is right, there are an amazing
number of vandals
out there, and they seem to have not the slightest hesitation in doing
violence to us 24 hours a day.
It doesn't amaze me. The insistence on figuring out ever-more complex and
punitive strategies to deter juvenile behavior leads inevitably to a ramping
up of that behavior. The whole "vandal" label is, as I've said before, not
helpful.
More important, I should think, would be to ensure that standards and
mechanisms are put in place so that it's as easy for people to improve
entries as it is for people to worsen them.
I'm going to continue to be a believer in atomization as a way of
maintaining quality.
For example, I would consider it a much higher development priority to set
up permalinks than it would be to develop baroque ban/stall mechanisms.
I would consider it a much higher development priority for the discussion
mechanisms to be better integrated into Wikipedia (a web-based bulletin
board which uses wiki-formatting within individual posts).
There will always be an amazing amount of stupidity and misinformation on
Wikipedia. But it will also be better than the world at large.