[WikiEN-l] New York Times article

Tue Jun 20 20:40:34 UTC 2006

On 6/20/06, Lord Voldemort <lordbishopvoldemort at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/20/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > [snip] It's
> > difficult to tell and Wales isn't particularly interested in doing
> honest
> > critical analyses of the effects of his policies.
> [snip]
> > This is a complicated matter and neither the NYT, nor Jimmy, nor
> BoingBoing
> > is helping matters by oversimplifying the debate.
>
> Well, to be fair to Jimmy, it really isn't _his_ policy. By framing
> the debate with this in mind, I think you too are oversimplifying. ;-)

It was a policy decided by community consensus.

For certain definitions of "community" and "consensus". But I see your
point. I used "his" because I was conflating it in my mind with a policy
that really did come primarily from him (see below) and also because it's
less important where an idea started than who champions it and how. Jimmy is
certainly laying claim to the impassioned defense of the present-day
Wikipedia policies in the public sphere.

But I would agree with you on some points. As someone who doesn't
> really care for WP:SEMI, I think it does place some restrictions on
> *how* people can edit, rather than *who*.
>
> Just keep in mind that basically every policy is generated by the
> community, and basically every policy places a limit on what we should
> do.

Right. Which is why people who argue that something is either TERRIBLE or
PERFECT should tone down the hyperbole. (Which is a fair criticism of me
ofttimes, but then I don't have the soapbox of the Times nor am I one of the
Time 100).

 But I think it can be argued that these fall under the
> "restrictions to make us freer" heading.  --LV

Yup.

Ah, right, this in particular was Jimbo's "experiment":

On 12/5/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Today, as an experiment, we will be turning off new pages creation for
> anonymous users in the English Wikipedia.
>
> It seems to me that the first thing we can do is try to reduce the
> workload on the people doing new pages patrol.  A fairly extensive
> monitoring and survey of new pages conducted by me over the past few
> days, coupled with discussions with several people who keep an eye on
> such things, suggests that we can have a substantial improvement here by
> eliminating the ability for anons to make new pages.