On 3/30/07, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 3/30/07, doc <doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com>
wrote:
I'm sorry, with due respect to Geni, this is
the type of myopic response
that drives me crazy. Let's worry about our policies, in house-rules,
and that the rights of Wikipedians are respected - because that's
obviously more important than doing the Right Thing, unharming real
people, or otherwise focusing on article quality? (That was sarcasm).
Wikipedians are real people. You are not an infallible judge of what
would improve an article. The community at the present time has not
indicated a willingness to trust you in that sense and you should
respect this.
Maybe it's time to clarify briefly what the ultimate goal of the
project "Wikipedia" is:
A. To write a encyclopedia (with the labels associates such as
"quality", "accuracy" and "neutrality"
B. To have a nice little community thing, where we have endless votes
and discussions about the (inclusion of the) messed-up divorce of John
Doe, biologist.
Of course, certain internal policies (or house-rules) are necessary
and should also be applied, but there are certain things on the world
which overrule house rules. These "certain things" are not limited to
legal aspects but also our aim to have an **encyclopedia** which is as
accurate as possible, as neutral as possible and which does not seek
to destroy somebody's life by bringing up every dirty little fact
about their life that can be found. Remember, our guides (and
competitors) should be encyclopediae as the EB and neither tabloid
papers as The Sun nor investigative bloggers which dig through court
records et al. to find out interesting things about George W. Bush's
former life. Both of these have their merits (the latter maybe more
than the former) but this is not what an encyclopedia should do. And
if somebody tries to insert not properly sourced harmful material into
a biography of a living person, this should just be deleted on sight.
If a policy cannot cope with a) reality amd b) the absolute goal of
the project, you should change neither reality nor the goal of the
project but the policy.
Michael