[WikiEN-l] Re: What we need

Fri Nov 22 14:45:22 UTC 2002

Larry Sanger wrote:
> First, I DON'T think there is a unified band of people who *call*
> themselves anarchists with all the same views.  I frankly don't care about
> the word.  The point is that there are now a lot of people about who hate
> one or more part of what, in my opinion and it so happens yours, defines
> Wikipedia, and that they're trying either to eliminate it or to weaken it
> radically (as Cunctator, just for example, would like to do with the
> nonbias policy).

I'm not aware of him wanting to eliminate or weaken radically the NPOV
policy.  I think he has trouble with some of the
explanation/definition, but I think he agrees with the general thrust
of it.  At any rate, I haven't seem him saying that the wikipedia
should be deliberately biased.

> Anyway, you want examples: Cunctator (he is now perfectly clear and
> unambiguous about it: see
> http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/006575.html ).
> So I trust that Cunctator disapproves of your recent banning of Lir.

I imagine that he does, to a degree, although he's said nothing
against it.  His views are well-known and not extraordinary.
WikipediAhimsa explains it quite well.

When possible, and to the best of our finite and flawed abilities, we
should work to never have to ban people.  It is better if the system
is set up in such a fashion that through humility, forbearance, love
and diligence, we bring people into our community in a positive
fashion.

Cunctator says "I think that most people would agree that in an ideal
situation, banning would be unnecessary."  I certainly do.  I hold
forth hope that over time we will develop both social customs and soft
security procedures that make outrights bans largely unnecessary.  A
ban is a primitive and crude tool with great risk of abuse.

[Having said all of that, let me add that I do think that there is a
very tiny minority of people who are just plain evil assholes.  I
don't imagine that such people can be reached at all.]

> To put this all in perspective, it really would help to read through
> Wikipedia-l discussion from October and November.  It won't be fun, but I
> predict it will be enlightening.

Well, I've been reading it on a daily basis as it has happened -- I
always read everything on wikipedia-l, with a few exceptions.
(I.E. sometimes I get bored with a particular thread and skip over
parts of it).  I try to especially pay attention to big-picture policy
issues, since I consider attentiveness to that my primary WikiDuty.

I think it's very important to distinguish between "Person A advocates
that Wikipedia have no standards of any kind" and "Person A advocates
policy changes that _in my view_ would lead to Wikipedia having no
standards of any kind".  

If we take someone to be of the first type, when they are really of
the second type, we will have a hard time listening to and
understanding their position.

--Jimbo