On 2 Jul 2006 at 7:40, keith helgesen wrote:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of David W. Fenton Sent: Sunday, 2 July 2006 7:19 AM To:
> [email protected] Subject: Re: [Finale] Comments appreciated

[]

> If *you* find an inaccuracy in a Wikipedia article, then check out the
> discussion page for that article (to see if it's an area of ongoing
> dispute among the article contributors) and then FIX IT YOURSELF. If
> you don't, and just complain about it being inaccurate, then you're
> PART OF THE PROBLEM.

> Sorry- David- you're saying FIX IT yourself- thereby asserting
> that the fixer is right and the others are wrong. In your opinion
> you are right- but that's quite usual. The classic example given of
> somebody consistently changing someone's birthday to the wrong date
> because they believe they are right- proves the point that a
> self-regulating is only as correct as the last person to edit it! A
> sort of open debate if you like. Again as quoted- people who
> believe, or otherwise, in the Holocaust can have a contest to see
> who stops correcting first. Meanwhile anyone simply looking up info
> gets the latest entered opinion- right or wrong! 
>
> Surely a list 'moderating committee' or some such body would fix
> this? 

The collection of contributors to the article, those who are 
interested enough to edit it, are the "moderating committee" for any 
article. If things get out of hand and a contributor breaks the rules 
(too many reverts, sock puppets, violoates NPV, etc.), then a 
moderator is brought in and protects the article for a while from 
further edits. There is an adjudication process, but my understanding 
is that it is not used nearly as often as you'd think, because what 
usually happens is that the disruptive individuals break any number 
of simple rules that all contributors are supposed to abide by and 
get their edits tossed and even end up banned.

If you examine the history of any controversial articles, you can see 
this process at work.

What it takes is a commitment to the truth and you have to have a 
greater commitment than the troublemakers. If you don't, then, again, 
I think you're part of the problem.

-- 
David W. Fenton                    http://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates       http://dfenton.com/DFA/

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