[Wikipedia-l] Our options; your opinion requested

Mon Nov 11 22:50:30 UTC 2002

| ISSUE 1.  The problem or lack thereof.
|
| PRO: There is indeed a serious problem now on Wikipedia.  Many newbies
| (and some people who have been here for a while) brazenly violate the
| basic defining rules of our community, and presently, neither peer
| pressure, nor following violators around constantly, nor the occasional
| actual sanction seems to be solving this problem.  Well-respected, clearly
| productive members of the community are driven away by having to deal with
| these people or such behaviors, and this is a really serious problem.
|
| CONTRA: While there are of course people who abuse Wikipedia, their
| numbers and effects are perfectly manageable and are not particularly
| egregious.  Either "well-respected, clearly productive members of the
| community"--whose value is probably overrated--are not being driven away,
| in fact, or if they are, so much the worse for them, if they can't thrive
| in an open, free atmosphere.

CONTRA: While there are of course people who abuse Wikipedia, their
numbers and effects are manageable. Well-respected, clearly productive
members of the community have become tired of spending their time on
janitorial work, and in some cases have declared that they are leaving
altogether. Some of these users have since returned, now concentrating
on producing articles rather than fighting trolls and vandals. There is
as yet no indication that there are insufficient people willing to
perform the clean-up work.

| ISSUE 2.  What to do about the problem, if anything.

1.
| The Anarchist/Radical Freedom Option: We should strip everyone of
| powers to ban and to delete pages permanently[1]. "SoftSecurity" alone
| is adequate as a safeguard against Wikipedia's abusers.

2.
| The Status Quo Option: We should continue on as we have been in recent
| months, viz., everyone has, for the asking, the power to delete pages and
| to ban IP numbers.  There doesn't need to be set policy on when this is
| appropriate and when not.

3.
| The Status Quo, Plus Clearer Principles Option: We need to debate and
| settle upon some clear principles about when sanctions are to be meted out
| by our sysops.

Option 3 is best if the rule is that we should rely on soft security as
much as possible. Otherwise, option 1 is better.

-M-

[1] Deleting pages is a separate issue. If history-preserving delete
isn't working yet, I think we should do without the ability to delete
pages until such a time as it is -- it's just too divisive. We can live
with just blanking them.

If/when we have history-preserving delete, then I see no good reason not
to make it available to all users.

[Wikipedia-l] Our options; *your* opinion requested

[Wikipedia-l] Our options; your opinion requested