[WikiEN-l] "censorship"

Mon Jan 12 19:49:17 UTC 2004

Dear Robert.

I see you have decided to accuse me of censorship again. I (and Danny, and 
Viajero, and MIRV, and lots of other people) have already explained in great detail 
the reason for mercilessly editing the text in question. However. I thought I might 
usefully summarise the problem, with the help of an analogy.

The issue, as Ed Poor notes, is that generally we wish to state "X says Y about Z". 
However, the removed text generally went further than that, essentially stating "X 
says Y about Z and they meant W". This W is an interpretation, and as such it 
expresses a point of view.

By analogy, I might write the following:

== Wikipedians who view democracy as hatred ==

Robert Kaiser, noted for his description of Wikipedia as a "home for lying, leftist anti-
Semites", has come out strongly against democracy. In a mailing list post, to wiken-l, 
January 12 2004, he wrote that "Facts are not defined by votes. Only hatred is."

-----

This illustrates the key problem - that by taking words out of context and placing 
them under a header that expresses an interpretation of those words, it is possible to 
have text that expresses a point of view, even though the actual quotes are precise 
and well-referenced. This is precisely the problem with much of the text in question.

However, on the topic of censorship, I see you decided to deleted the entirety of 
"Support" section of the article on "alternative medicine". Given your new and heroic 
stand against deleting dodgy text and in favour of fixing it, I trust that we shall see 
you take a fresh approach on such issues in the future?

-Martin "MyRedDice" Harper