[WikiEN-l] Re: Suggestions for a work-safe encyclopedia

Thu Apr 14 14:44:07 UTC 2005

On 4/14/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sean Barrett wrote:
> 
> >>>Perhaps we can identify some reasonable notion of "work-safeness"
> >>>
> >>>
> >>No.  It's a dumb term only used by people who can't operate a web browser.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Wow, that's an amazingly helpful comment, Tony.  I'm so glad you're
> >here; you're such a valuable contributor to this project.
> >
> >
> >
> That's enough, both of you. Sollog is winning. I'm not calling either of
> you Sollog; but this is *exactly* the kind of thing that the detractors
> of the Wikipedia want - for the project to fall apart through petty
> flame wars. We'll already lost enough valuable contributors - we don't
> need you to go as well. Now take a deep breath, and forget about this
> whole thing. It's not worth it. The topic of content suitability has
> been raised before, will be raised again, and I suggest that we all
> ignore it until a suitable proposal from the Wikimedia foundation is put
> forth.
> 
> --

Alphax,

I agree that the petty flame-wars -- including bickering and
thinly-disguised name-calling -- needs to stop. It seems that some
email messages have little purpose beyond one-upsmanship; they don't
seem to contribute anything to the goal of creating a great
encyclopedia.

But I don't know that we can simply ignore this issue until the
foundation makes a proposal. I'm not sure that the foundation is
inclined to do that. Nor am I certain that it would be desirable for
them to do so.

I believe that the Wikipedia community still has enough thoughtful
people that a workable consensus can be achieved on controversial
issues such as this.  It will take time and effort, and it will take
some of the same skills that we use to create NPOV articles. Isn't the
ability to see and understand POV's other than your own important, if
not essential, to our task?

However, that particular skill seems to be quite lacking in some
recent conversations. I'm guessing that many involved Wikipedians who
have that skill in abundance are not interested in engaging in the
type of dialog that has been common of late. I suspect they're busily
working on generating NPOV content. Perhaps when the flames die down,
some real progress can be made.

-- Rich Holton

[[W:en:User:Rholton]]