[WikiEN-l] Re: The return of Prillinger.

Tue Nov 16 17:12:52 UTC 2004

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>How strange.  To apply "faith based" to anything that I have something
>to do with clearly betrays a lack of understanding.
>
>
>>Then comes the crucial and entirely faith-based step:
>>
>>3.  Some unspecified quasi-Darwinian process will assure that those
>>writings and editings by contributors of greatest expertise will
>>survive; articles will eventually reach a steady state that
>>corresponds to the highest degree of accuracy.
>>
>
>This is a very common misunderstanding of our project, but it is
>inexcusable and irresponsible for a former editor of Britannica to
>make such a claim without even doing (apparently) the most cursory of
>research into how our work is actually conducted.  The process of
>review is neither "unspecified" nor "quasi-Darwinian" but is in fact
>carried out in great public detail on talk and policy pages.
>
>There's nothing "faith based" about it -- it's good old fashioned
>*rational* hard work, undertaken by people of good will in a spirit of
>love and kindness.
>
>
It's sort of telling that he used the word "Darwinian" - for many
years even educated people dismissed Darwin's evidence for
evolution, but when the underlying mechanisms (genetics and DNA)
were uncovered, Darwin was pretty thoroughly vindicated. He
sounds like a Microsoft guy announcing that Linux is a failure
because he found a security hole.

Amusingly, the effect of the "public restroom" analogy depends
on where one lives; in Switzerland at least, the public restrooms
are more sanitary than those in US males' apartments. :-) Also,
the analogy is essentially an admission of defeat; public restrooms
are popular and heavily used - people want more of them, not fewer.

Stan