charles matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: "Tom Cadden"
wrote
As has been pointed out repeatedly, the MoS does not
say 'do what
Brittanica does' Brittanica is a business-orientated hardcopy encyclopædia
which follows governmental usage to avoid offending native populations
because it needs them to buy their product. It is called sometimes
'Strategic Naming'.
They follow their own MoS. We follow ours. Ours is not
business based but
based exclusively on the most common name principle.
[[Wikipedia:Wikilawyering]]: "Wikilawyering is attempting to
inappropriately rely on legal technicalities with respect to
Wikipedia:Policies or Wikipedia:Arbitration."
'Wikilawyer' is pejorative; 'policy wonk' is not.
If blindly insisting on 'following policy' makes the English Wikipedia
factually worse, and offends our community members, and offends 'native
populations' (my God, do people still express themselves like this?) why the
hell should we do it? Making 'exclusively' a universal override is
wikilwayering.
Charles
It comes down to the simple option: amateurishness or professionalism. You may think an
amateurish make-it-up-as-you-go-along approach is OK. Many on Wikipedia find it
Wikipedia's biggest flaw. Accuracy is not "making the English Community" it
is knowing what you are doing. Frankly what you seem to hold up as a model is
'WikiIncompetence', You don't seem to have noticed that Wikipedia is supposed
to be an encyclopædia, not a tabloid. Encyclopædias have standards and if Wikipedia wants
to be respected as a source book and not become an internet joke it has to have standards.
Just because you have problem with definitions, professional organisation and encyclopædic
standards does not mean that everyone has.
Thom
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