[Foundation-l] Jimmy Wales in the news

Thu Mar 6 05:01:03 UTC 2008

Ben McIlwain writes:

> I think we can do without all of the invective over who said what or  
> who
> accused whom.  Accusing someone of lying is unpleasant, but then so  
> too
> is endlessly berating someone over it.

What about trying not to be unpleasant? That seems to me to be an idea  
whose time has come.

> The simple fact of the matter is that Sue came onboard long after the
> alleged improprieties.

This is your "simple fact" premise, and this --

>  She simply doesn't know everything that happened
> before then.

-- is the logically invalid inference.

What makes it invalid?  This:  It is nonsense to assume that an  
experienced professional, especially one with training in both office  
management and journalism, can't come into a situation after the fact  
and make reasonable and accurate determinations of what likely  
happened before she got there.

In the professional world, such investigations and judgments are made  
all the time, and, if the person conducting them is competent, the  
conclusions drawn will generally be accurate and reliable. (This is  
also routinely done in the legal world, in the accounting world, in  
the world of engineering, and so on, but I trust you take my point.)

Sue's competent. You should trust her judgment.

It also strikes me as imprudent to rely on warmed-over digital gossip  
rather than on the judgment of an experienced, objective professional  
on the ground, but I may be an old-fashioned empiricist about such  
matters.  More than imprudent at worse -- it can be frivolous and even  
destructive of shared culture. I think that is not an optimal outcome.

--Mike