[WikiEN-l] Re: The whole point of wikipedia

Wed Oct 19 13:21:21 UTC 2005

>From: "Fl Celloguy" <flcelloguy at hotmail.com>

>What's wrong with not letting the 25 million + AOL users not edit 
>anonymously? I thought the whole point of Wikipedia was that anyone could 
>edit - this has already been discussed extensively on the Village Pump, and 
>this is taking us one step closer to the precipice of not letting anonymous 
>users edit. We don't want to stop anonymous editing for a significant 
>portion of users.

I hold this truth to be self-evident: the whole point of Wikipedia is to 
produce a free encyclopedia. 

To secure this goal, policies and practices have been instituted. Whenever 
current policies and practices becomes destructive of this goal, it is 
appropriate that the community institute such new practices as seem as to 
them shall seem most likely to secure the goal of producing a free 
encyclopedia. 

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that practices long established, such as zero-
threshold editing should not be changed for light and transient causes.