[WikiEN-l] Re: Response to Ray Saintonge - more in favor of the status quo for the Israel-related articles

Fri Oct 3 10:23:30 UTC 2003

Abe,

in general I am sympathetic to your point, which you will allow me to 
paraphrase as

     For contentious political topics, Wikipedia is a sandbox where
     loudmouthed extremists on both sides fight it out in an often ugly
     manner, but at the end an OK article will emerge.

Now, it's important to realize that *we* set the boundaries of that 
sandbox. For instance, threatening another Wikipedian's life is 
completely unacceptable and people have been banned for it, with wide 
support.

One might argue that we should adopt stricter boundaries, for instance 
throwing out those kids (on all sides) who repeatedly personally abuse 
others. The extremists who can live inside that boundary would then have 
to fight it out in the now smaller sandbox. It is not at all clear to me 
that that smaller sandbox would produce worse results.

Axel