[Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

Sun Oct 3 15:40:18 UTC 2010

On Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 09:14, Peter Damian <peter.damian at btinternet.com> wrote:
> 1.  Is there a quality problem in certain areas.  Yes or no?
>
> 2.  If there is a problem, are there any underlying or systematic reasons?
>
> 3. If there are any underlying or systematic reasons, can they easily be
> addressed?
>
There was an adjournment debate in the House of Commons in 1999 about
the importance of philosophy in education, in case anyone's interested
in reading it. http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm199899/cmhansrd/vo990701/debtext/90701-33.htm

The MP who raised it, a former academic philosopher, touches on some
of the issues we've raised here. Because children routinely ask
themselves philosophical questions -- "What is right and wrong?" "Why
should I obey the law? -- adults tend to think they know the answers,
or that they''re questions without answers, or that as soon as you
identify something as a philosophical issue, you're saying it's a
waste of time.

This is absolutely the attitude I've encountered on Wikipedia, where
everyone thinks that if you know how to ask "what is truth?" you're
also able to have a go at answering it. But that's the basic error
right there, and it has driven off several of the specialists who
might have written some good articles on those issues. And it's not
only in article space that academic philosophers would be able to help
improve things.