[WikiEN-l] Don't push POV into the Wikipedia software and policies

Wed Feb 23 22:51:07 UTC 2005

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 17:10:24 -0500, Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 23, 2005 at 08:17:56PM +0800, John Lee wrote:

> In contrast, any kind of censorship / filtering regime necessarily
> contains within it the assumption that some material is _lesser_ than
> others, by dint of offending the protected group ... and moreover, that
> some people's offense is unimportant, while other people's offense is
> important.  It is not presented as a guess, but as a moral injunction
> ("this material IS offensive, it MUST BE turned off by default") which
> it is not within Wikipedia's purview to make.

No we are making the judgement that wikipedia can more effectivel
atchive it's goal with certian material presented in certian ways.
Further more since since what is offensive is largly decided at the
level of socierties it is an ethical descision rather than moral

> I don't think we actually have sufficient evidence on that.  Again,
> consider _Ulysses_, a work of text (no images) that was once banned in
> the U.S. for obscenity.

This appears to be the sliperly slope logica fallacy.

> That position generalizes very poorly to other classes of articles,
> though.  (And generalizability is a must for rules.)  The fact that
> people get "damn pissed" about something is no reason not to keep it in
> an encyclopedia.  There are an awful lot of _historical facts_ it's
> worth being damn pissed about.

More slipery slope logical fallacy (and stawman).

> Sure, and I'll just go make an "editorial decision" that homeopathy is
> bunkum, and put that all over the article [[Homeopathy]].  When someone
> accuses me of an NPOV violation, I'll just tell them it was nothing of
> the sort, it was an "editorial decision".  :)

Have you read the homeopathy article? because for the most part it
pretty much does say that.

> Or, in another sense, there's nothing wrong with being extreme about
> NPOV.  It's what we do here.  Wikipedia _is_, in this sense, an
> extremist project; that's why there are so people from Britannica,
> mainstream media, and other "normal" "middle-of-the-road" publications
> who can't figure us out, and assume that we're doomed to failure.

i can't recall anything in wikipolicy saying that we must be an
extreamist policy. In fact this extract from what wikipedia is not:

Wikipedia is not an experiment in anarchy

Wikipedia is free and open, but restricts both freedom and openness
where they interfere with the purpose of creating an encyclopedia.
Accordingly, Wikipedia is not a forum for unregulated free speech. The
fact that Wikipedia is an open, self-governing project does not mean
that any part of its purpose is to explore the viability of
anarchistic communities. Our purpose is to build an encyclopedia, not
to test the limits of anarchism. If you want to do so, you can use the
Wikipedia fork Anarchopedia (http://www.anarchopedia.org/).

Rather destroys your position.

> Sounds to me like your proposal would be more of this, rather than less.
> 
> It would end up with nasty, unresolvable arguments over what should go
> in the "off by default" categories, because of what those categories
> would really mean:
> 
> If the category "Nudity" is off by default, then the meaning of that
> category would really be not just "these images contain nudity" but
> rather "these images contain nudity AND Wikipedia believes nudity is
> offensive".

No we belive that switching it off would help our goals 

> And that is a judgment that Wikipedia still has no business making; and
> it is a judgment that would cause endless dispute.  Just as Wikipedia
> does not have an opinion on the issue of whether homeopathy is bunkum,
> Wikipedia does not have an opinion on whether nudity is offensive.

No we are making a judgement about what helps us towards our goals.

> I don't see how you get the idea that your proposal is defusing, rather
> than escalating.  Defusing means that people quit fighting and go find
> something else to do ... not that you give them a whole brand new arena
> to fight in, and make the issues over which they're fighting all the
> more important.

Most cases are pretty clear cut and those which aren't will got lost
in the normal background noise of edit wars.

geni