[WikiEN-l] More Seigenthaler fallout

Tue Dec 13 11:35:39 UTC 2005

I wrote on wikien-l:
>Matt Brown wrote:
>>Katefan0 wrote:

>>>Mr. Sigenthaler's recent experience has encouraged me to send you
this note. As you know, I have been the subject of some discussion in
one of the pages you administer. Some of those comments I consider
libelous. I strongly suggest that you, as the party responsible for
this article and discussion, and/or Wiki executives take immediate
action to purge such false and irresponsible statements, and block
such from occurring in the future.
>>>Please forward this to Wiki executives.
>>>I look forward to your speedy response.

>> My belief is that in general we should not remove things from page
>> history so easily.

>Seconded. This is an invitation to every POV pusher who doesn't like
>criticism.

I should emphasise here I don't mean John Siegenthaler - or, without
knowledge of the case, the person who wrote to Katefan0. I've dealt
with a number of cases of perfectly normal and decent people who
understand and respect our mission as an NPOV encyclopedia, but are
unhappy at being slandered by conspiracy-obsessed nutters who just
won't quit and aren't quite sure what to do about it. Usually we work
it out okay with a close watch on the article and (possibly) suitable
penalties for the antisocial editor. A recent example is [[User:AI]]
on [[David S. Touretzky]] (which AI started as a slander page and has
now been NPOVed quite well) and [[Keith Henson]] (which AI didn't
start but got heavily to work on).

However, we have *plenty* of the other sort. Examples include
[[Sollog]], [[Daniel Brandt]], [[Ashida Kim]], [[John Byrne]] (yep,
the famous comics artist), [[Barbara Schwarz]] ... I am *greatly*
reluctant to let people bowdlerise their article because they don't
like notable and well-documented facts.

Our concern is much more with getting things right than it is to
inexpertly second-guess the law. It's also far more within our
expertise! And once a case *comes to the community's attention*, the
article tends to get watchlisted by skilled and experienced editors
who will have familiarised themselves with the subject.

This may require removing particularly bad revisions in extreme cases
after due consideration, though that's a lot of tedious work that's
easily undone with one new edit re-adding the crap. But IMO, we can't
get into a habit of removing negative information on first request
just like that.

[cc: to arbcom list for consideration]

- d.