[Foundation-l] Is random article truly random

Thu Oct 20 18:29:13 UTC 2011

On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 6:56 PM, Theo10011 <de10011 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 10:50 PM, Andreas K. <jayen466 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > I never assumed that, and it is not consistent with basic Wikipedia
> > policies
> > that have existed for almost as long as Wikipedia has existed. Wikipedia
> is
> > based on professionally published sources. They are privileged as the
> most
> > (or for practical purposes almost only) reliable sources on which to base
> > Wikipedia content.
> >
> > Wikipedia is set up to reflect and summarise these sources, not to
> provide
> > an alternative worldview. We do not allow unsourced statements, or
> > self-published sources (except in well-circumscribed exceptional cases).
> >
> >
> I never said Wikipedia provides an alternative worldview. Let me quote
> myself "amateur alternative to the professionals", as in an encyclopedia
> written by amateurs, non-academicians, the general public, or just about
> anyone, as opposed to a straight-forward publication written by
> professionals, as in only scholars, intellectuals, academician.
>

What you did say was,

"What professional standards? I always assumed, Wikipedia was the amateur
alternative to the professionals, the same white, grey, male academicians
that skew the professional standards."

That sounded like you were hostile to the standards according to which our
sources are written, and considered them skewed. If I misunderstood you, you
have my apologies. (Incidentally, many of those sources are written by
women.)

> Please stop re-stating general Wikipedia policies and ideologies. Most of
> us
> here are editors, and well aware of how the content came to be. Your
> constant use of 'We' includes most of us, repeating 'We' as if you are
> explaining things to an outsider seems slightly condescending, just in case
> it is intentional.

English is a poor language in a way, as it is unable to distinguish between
inclusive we (= all of us) and exclusive we (= we over here as opposed to
you over there). When I said "we do not allow unsourced statements", I was
quite confident that that included all of us here – all of us here "swear
allegiance" to the editorial judgment of reliable sources when it comes to
text.

However, that allegiance to sources' editorial judgment is less unanimous
when it comes to illustrations, for no good reason that I can discern. I
find that an interesting anomaly worth noting, analysing and questioning.

Andreas