On 1/4/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 1/4/06, Anthony DiPierro
<wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote:
Yes, information is bad. We should definitely blame the spread of
information for the fact that idiots act like idiots. This fits in
perfectly with a foundation whose mission is giving people free access
to the sum of all human knowledge.
I think you're failing to draw an adequate distinction between
"encyclopedia" and "webhosting/blogging/forum service". On the
former
we seek to provide information of encyclopedic value, on the latter we
let people chatter away, troll. argue about politics, anathematize or
proselytize various religions by turn, insult one another and all the
other delights of online interaction. In general the kind of behavior
that is commonly observed on the latter is frowned upon on this
encyclopedia.
Not at all, if you look above at my first post in this thread, I
stated that "it seems blatantly obvious to me that knowing more about
a person facilitates consensus building. In case you don't understand
where I was going with that, building consensus is the way Wikipedia
builds an encyclopedia. "This was in response to the statement by
Tony who "feel[s] it's beneficial for editors to share their
background and personal views, so as to make it easier for someone
else to judge bias that may creep into their edits."
My comments about information were in response to your statement that
"the harder it is for people like that to play hunt-the-thimble when
searching for people who might agree with their nonsense, the better."
Just because information can be used for bad doesn't mean it should
be eliminated. Your argument that it should is directly in
contradiction with the very principles on which the WMF was built.
It's a lot easier to get along with somebody if you know who they are,
what they believe in, etc. Do you disagree, or do you just think it
isn't important for Wikipedia editors to get along with one another?
Anthony