diff --git a/memos/memo-good-faith b/memos/memo-good-faith index 0ecbcf6695c554541731fd3b1ae4c47bb18a2b60..16a1b30053331b293a31d9f974ef696a47d09606 100644 --- a/memos/memo-good-faith +++ b/memos/memo-good-faith @@ -3,11 +3,13 @@ Good faith is a term used by the Wikipedia community itself. Most prominently in the phrase "Always assume good faith". -As I recently learned, apparently this guideline (Gebot!) arose/took such a central position not from the very beginning of the existence of the collaborative encyclopedia. +As I recently learned, apparently this guideline arose/took such a central position not from the very beginning of the existence of the collaborative encyclopedia. It rather arose at a time when, after a significant growth in Wikipedia, it wasn't manageable to govern the project (and most importantly fight emergent vandalism which grew proportionally to the project's growth) manually anymore. To counteract vandalism, a number of automated measures was applied. These, however, had also unforseen negative consequences: they drove newcomers away~\cite{HalKitRied2011}(quote literature) (since their edits were often classified as "vandalism", because they were not familiar with guidelines / wiki syntax / etc.) In an attempt to fix this issue, "Assume good faith" rose to a prominent position among Wikipedia's Guidelines. +(Specifically, the page was created on March 3rd, 2004 and was originally refering to good faith during edit wars. +An expansion of the page from December 29th 2004 starts refering to vandalism. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith&oldid=8915036) Today, in vandalism comabting (?), there are cautious guidelines and several escalation levels, before an editor is banned. (TODO: elaborate, maybe move to vandalism) Users are urged to use the term "vandalism" carefully, since it tends to offend and drive people away.