[WikiEN-l] The royal "we"

Tue Jul 1 22:55:47 UTC 2003

Hi folks,

I think the royal we might be appropriate in some cases. For example, when talking 
to a newcomer to Wikipedia, an editor might say "Welcome! (link) We try to write 
from a neutral point of view (link) here, so I've edited your recent changes to 
attribution theory (link). What do you think?". Here, the editor can be pretty confident 
that Wikipedia, as a whole, agrees with the neutral point of view.

On other occasions, the royal we might not be appropriate. For example, in the 
sentence "We support anarcho-communism and the abolition of capitalism", the 
word "we" is not appropriate, because most Wikipedians do not support anarcho-
communism, and a few may even have a soft spot for capitalism, though they'd 
obviously never admit it in public.

Oh, and royalty and folks with multiple personalities get special priviledges. Which is 
nice. Anyway, since RK accused me of "jew-baiting" and "adopting Neo-Nazi-like 
revisionism", (grr) I'm probably not going to be able to be very impartial here. I'll 
stick to writing something at [[we]].

-Martin "MyRedDice" Harper