[WikiEN-l] semi-stuff (was Re: New York Times article)

Fri Jun 23 13:03:57 UTC 2006

G'day Jimmy,

> Mark Gallagher wrote:
> 
>>We've all seen users completely blocked because of a regrettable 
>>tendency to upload copyvios or create POV forks or move-war.  Now, they 
>>could be otherwise intelligent people who think they know about 
>>copyright law but don't; or useful contributors when they're being 
>>supervised by other people on controversial articles, but who feel free 
>>to let rip on their "own" fork articles; or people who insist on 
>>treating the "move" button as a toy and causing unnecessary work for 
>>admins and unnecessary stress for non-admins.  In that last case, Curps' 
>>bot caught at least one offender, but that's hardly reliable.
> 
> It is unclear to me that there really are that many cases of people who
> are extremely annoying in some areas, but whose help would be so
> valuable in other areas.

Images is the obvious case.  There are *many* editors on Wikipedia who 
have no clue about copyright ("it was on the web, therefore it's public 
domain"; "the picture looks fair [i.e. pretty], therefore it comes under 
Fair Use"; etc.), but are otherwise extremely good editors.  Some of 
them might get blocked for being idiots, and we lose their valuable 
efforts.  For the most part, though, people look and say "do we *really* 
want to do send away this excellent editor?"  We shouldn't have to make 
that choice.

There's other editors who are incredibly good at, say, numismatics, or 
trams (AmE: "shopping baskets"), but who *also* have a deep and abiding 
love for Joseph McCarthy and tend to rant about left-wing conspiracies 
in the space where our neutral article on the man is supposed to go. 
I'm not convinced that banning them from highly emotive areas of 
Wikipedia only isn't worth it, if we get to keep their calm and rational 
work on the mating habits of an obscure species of ape, say.

>>It would be nice to be able to prevent certain people from doing 
>>obnoxious things without blocking them completely.  We shouldn't have to 
>>block otherwise sane users because of a minor foible.
> 
> Perhaps.  But "being an idiot" is not normally a tendency which is
> confined to easily identifiable areas of activity.

We have admins with such qualities.

(Come to that, it might be nice to prevent certain admins from blocking, 
deleting, protecting, or saying "I'm an admin, I know these things" ;-))

> I am not totally opposed to the concept, but we have to think carefully.
>  Every change to the tools gives rise to changes in the equilibria.
> Will we have to sit through watching some troll be successively banned
> from one action after another as people cry "Why prevent him from
> editing articles about Chemotherapy? All he was doing was uploding
> goatse to articles on homosexuality?  He might be a good user."

A fair point, and while it's one I'd be keen to argue ... erm ... well, 
I see the way that A7 is being used to argue for borderline deletions. 
And I see the way that semi-protection requested needlessly.  And I see 
the way that people on AfD complain when someone removes {{prod}} from 
an article.  And I see the way that Good Articles has become a 
stepping-stone to Featured Article status, rather than a recognition of 
good articles in their own right.  And ... let's face it, whenever 
someone comes up with a good idea (not that I'm saying this is a good 
idea; just that I thought of it ;-)), someone else will come along with 
a way to bollocks it up completely.

The question is: is it worth it?

-- 
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse