[WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content

Sun Mar 20 08:27:45 UTC 2005

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> So there is a policy to provide sources when requested? Then enforce it. 

That is an over simplification.  There is composition, explaining and summarizing in the introduction to a complex subject.   According to Jimbo, in his nature interview, the no original research was intended for things like keeping crackpot physics theories from getting into wikipedia.   

Disallowing a particular word order or a dependent clause just because someone hasn't used it in a citation before is abusing the rule and results in a lot of the awkward language so many complain about in our articles.  I've read the proposed introductions to the capitalism article most have seemed good faith attempts to capture the various nuances.   Perhaps critics of capitalism want to keep the definitions fluid so that it can be used as a perjorative, but the very ways they use it, usually mean they have identified some negative property they want to claim is intrinsically associated with it, rather than merely co-existing with it anecdotally.

In its simplist form, capitalism is using tools to increase the productivity of labor, a rather intrinsic, almost definitional human characteristic.  Because this is not the direct use of labor to meet ones needs, it requires a little forsight, planning, investment, and even  the forgoing of some current consumption.   Because it flourishes so vibrantly in a system that rewards deferral of consumption with profit (surprise, surprise), the term capitalism has come to be associated and confused with and ultimately to actually MEAN those conditions which allow it to flourish, i.e., systems with low information and transaction costs (free markets, contract law, a culture of honesty and opposition to fraud) and which ease the raising of capital with limited liability artificial legal entities.

                    -- Silverback