[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia moderators and moral authority

Tue Nov 12 00:13:33 UTC 2002

Larry Sanger wrote:

>The Cunctator wrote:

>>There seems to be a pretty fixed number of Wikipedians who write "write
>>nonsense, brazen political propoganda, crankish unsupported stuff" on a
>>consistent basis.
>>And that fixed number can be counted on one hand.

>I'm not just concerned about the ones who do it "on a consistent basis."
>I'm really concerned about the behavior, not the people.  Moreover, the
>number of people who have polluted Wikipedia to any very significant
>degree in these ways would easily run into the many dozens.  That's not
>counting the mere vandals.  We've just forgotten about them because
>they've gone away, in many cases very quickly.  The ones whose names
>immediately come to mind can be counted on one hand, yes.

If they come in, cause some trouble, and then go away,
causing little enough trouble and going away quickly enough
that we've forgotten about them, then I'm OK with that
(much as I'm OK with the fact that anaesthesia wouldn't work as well
if they didn't include amnesia inducing agents in it).
That's the price of being a wiki -- people can cause trouble.
Enforcing community standards will get rid of them --
which we did, without needing to take it to the list.
So the system works.

>I remember writing at one point (for the "replies to our
>critics" page, I think) that we hadn't had many problems with cranks and
>internecine warfare.  Now, I really couldn't write that, and I suspect the
>"replies" page should be updated, if it hasn't already been.
>What do the rest of you think?

I think that we haven't had many problems with cranks and internecine warfare.
It would be wrong to say that we haven't had *any*.
Perhaps you and I differ about what "many" is.

-- Toby