[WikiEN-l] Before reverting blanking, please read the text

Fri Oct 20 12:06:38 UTC 2006

On 10/19/06, Peter Ansell <ansell.peter at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I have encountered people who are worried about pages, and rather than
> blanking, they post messages on the "discussion" page.

And it's great when that happens.

I know I always
> listen to those messages, and they are infinitely more informative
> than a new user blanking a page repeatedly.

And you do no favors when you don't even bother to initiate dialogue if you
find someone who seems to have an objection to the article.

I still do not see why we
> should be beaten down because of a mistake which was caused by their
> lack of communication.

Our lack of communication is equally to blame, and it's the responsibility
of "longtime respected editors" and "vandal fighters" alike to follow our
policies, assume good faith, and find out what the problem is.

Instead, what was the reaction? Blind Revert, Blind Revert, Block user - all
by the same admin Darwinek - without a single talkpage message or message to
the editor in question that I know of.

This is the same sort of behavior I was complaining of when I shut down
using my admin account. I've stayed talking on email thus far hoping that
maybe, having brought these concerns to the list and to Jimbo, something
might change. Instead, I'm watching over half of the thread's participants
defending what ought to be undeniable, inexcusable behavior (not the
reverting or the blocking necessarily, but not bothering to check the
article for problems and not bothering to make any effort to contact the
user, absolutely).

As was said before, their should be informative
> messages before blanking is allowed, so they can see the intelligent
> options more clearly.

There should be a lot of things. That still doesn't excuse the behavior by
the "respected editor" who didn't do their job properly.

Possibly even link directly to the BLP
> noticeboard, which gets a large volume of traffic and can deal with
> the sort of things that were so worrying in the single case that has
> been demonstrated here.

It's not the only case, or the BLP page wouldn't have a line about how
oftentimes biography blankings happen because there's something problematic
in the article, and I'll thank you and whatsisname to stop throwing the
"well this is the only case we have on record" strawman around right now.

Parker