[WikiEN-l] Two Comments on the Siegenthaler Situation

Tue Dec 6 03:01:41 UTC 2005

On point #2: Wouldn't the easiest way to kill two birds with one stone
be to write up a little bit about his accusations against Wikipedia,
the explanation of how they got there that Jimbo gave earlier (created
by anon, checked but not "checked", not super important, etc.), quote
the "libelous" material, then delete the original material from the
edit history?

The end result would be that the history of the material would be
there ("Siegenthaler's page said 'XYZ'."), but the unattributed,
this-is-a-fact version would not be.

Plus, it would be a very, very clever form of reflexivity, and
demonstrate our undiminishing openness, even on topics which make us
look bad.

FF

On 12/5/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> 1: If we are going to begin protecting pages because of news coverage
> (Which is not unreasonable at all), we should have a protected
> template that makes that clear. After all, the first page people hit
> is also a place where they are going to want to try to edit - it's
> important to take those people and invite them to look at other
> pages. I've created [[Template:P-protected]] for this.
>
> 2: I understand the need to remove the Siegenthaler libel from the
> page history. On the other hand, I think A) It is a matter of
> important historical record at this point, and B) It sets an unseemly
> precedent. Can we move the deleted history out of that article and
> into an archive page, perhaps with a permanant front page that notes
> what it is, and that it is a collection of vandalism?
>
> -Phil Sandifer
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