Thread:DaNASCAT/@comment-125.39.134.57-20120324015308/@comment-3508190-20120327014704

Trolls and vandals cannot be stopped by confining them to little black boxes. Sure, it could be argued that they can do less damage, if they can only ruin their box. But in a "true" wiki setting anybody can revert or delete whatever they did, while in a regular forum the only recourse is to go look for an admin. That makes corrections more complicated and fosters a "not my problem" mentality.

But the whole troll argument is backwards IMHO. Let's not live our lifes as if the trolls run the show. Let's think about what would be useful to the rest of us!

The need to learn wikicode is a big argument, I think. Compare it to HTML! There are plenty of books about HTML. There are plenty of websites devoted to HTML. And still: Most people do not learn HTML from books or web sites. They learn HTML by reading other people's pages in the source. Because that is - unlike the wikicode I'm using right now - always available. Using HTML, teaching HTML and learning HTML go hand in hand and happen simultaneously. Given the dearth of books and web sites about wikicode, the same should be doubly and triply true here. It would be a shame to let the forums go to waste then, I think.

So is there a need to modify other's posts? Not very often, no. I'd rather not have somebody edit what I'm writing right now. But look at the list I posted above! Wouldn't it be nice if you could edit it? Wouldn't it be nice if everybody could? It would certainly become more useful and move beyond one person's personal opinion.