Has anyone done a sample of how many blps are actually vandalized at
any given time? As I understand it, we do have bots that look for
negative phrases such as the ones that occurred here--and such
vandalism was removed many times. What did not get noticed was the
pattern of repeats, and that is the fault of using bots and routine
patrol without visual check of the history. There was sufficient
vandalism to have justified semi protection 10 days ago.
As I look at BLPs, I see a great many more than are uncritically
positive--and that seems to stay a very long time without being fixed.
We could do a scan for key phrases there also, or characteristics like
referring to the subject by his first name alone, as is the current
style in public relations. If these don't get spotted when the article
is new, the can last for years.
The very last thing we need is an attitude that will inhibit the use
of fair information. And don't think it's only BLPs in the narrow
sense. I've seen frequent attempts to removed sourced highly relevant
negative information from articles about various institutions.
On 4/29/08, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 1:49 PM,
<WJhonson(a)aol.com> wrote:
This seems like an overemphasis that somehow we
(the policy-abiding
editors)
are the cause instead of the vandals being the
cause. The primary cause
of
the vandalism rests with the vandals. Our
policies address this case
spot-on, but nobody fixed the article. Why didn't they? Maybe we need
more
editors. Maybe we need an automatic
"bad-word robot" to collect examples
and create
a "bad word page". That would make
it a lot easier to monitor. But
this
case is not a result of our policies, our
policies say "don't do this".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractive_nuisance_doctrine
The vandals will vandal. The libers will libel. The haters will hate.
The POV pushers will push. They are a small but real and unavoidable
facet of reality. A healthy Wikipedia would recognize it and mitigate
it. The existing mitigation on English Wikipedia is rather limited
and highly dependent on chance. ... basically a set of rules that say
"don't do this", but very little in the way of organized enforcement.
The English Wikipedia community is aware, or at least ought to be
aware, that these things happen routinely and t the community has one
of the most potent positions from which to make improvements. As such
it's the responsibility of the English Wikipedia community to try.
The argument that the vandals are ultimately responsible isn't
productive since none of us has the power to change the nature of man.
We do have the power to change the operation of English Wikipedia.
If you think that some of the proposed improvements are too sweeping
and dramatic, then perhaps you should be working on making sure some
alternatives happen... since covering our ears and holding the status
quo simply can't last forever.
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
--
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.