Wikipedia:Give The Author A Chance debate

Hmm, I guess I don't support this rule at all. Basically, I think everyone should feel free to improve any page on the wiki. With the exception of pages that are obviously personal essays (which are perfectly acceptable, as far as I'm concerned, as long as they're marked as such), I think all pages are fair game. Of course, it's very important to be polite (I'll do my best there but I ain't makin no guarantees :-) ). Let me give you some examples. If someone writes a page on topic T that I think pretty much gets the subject wrong factually--is straightforwardly mistaken, for whatever reason--then I'll feel perfectly free to replace the page with a completely new one that gets the facts right. On the other hand, if someone simply has overstated his case in one or two paragraphs, then I'll feel free to tone down the language. All of these things I'll feel free to do without asking anyone's permission. It's better that way simply because it's more efficient. This being a wiki, the author can always change things back--but if he's reasonable, he'll probably change it part-way back, and we can achieve a nice sort of consensus. -- Larry Sanger (violating his oath not to talk about the wiki process...now I'll go write an article)

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And who is the ultimate judge of what is overstated or biased...other than you...:-).

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I guess, anyone who wants to change the page. Wiki being what it is, every person accessing can edit anything. --Jimbo Wales

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Have a look at neutral point of view and make a Talk page there if you like. To answer your question, each competent, honest, unimpaired, intelligent person is capable of making this judgment, and I expect there would be considerable agreement on many cases. -- Larry Sanger---- I hope we are not heading to TheReasonableMan in law, or any such norm...Ouch!

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I don't support this rule either, because the very mindset that a Wiki page has "an author" (as opposed to being an emergent property of the collaborative process) restricts the process by which pages can evolve. There is, however, one exception: commentary that is specifically credited to an author should not be changed for content, because that is tantamount to making a false quotation claim. It might still be OK to fix obvious spelling or grammar bugs. -- Lee Daniel Crocker

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The "Give the author a change"-rule is in violation with/the same thing as/with a serious overlap of the editing policy. Would it be a good idea to join the two debates? LinusTolke

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I regard this rule as a very bad idea. It would seriously get in the way of editing bad articles, of which there are plenty. Perhaps the rule was intended for hot-button topics like abortion to avoid constant flip-flop rewrites. In that case, the proposed rule should explicitly say so. --Robert Merkel