On 11/13/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman(a)spamcop.net> wrote:
Yes. And sometimes, at present, this is then reverted
with "how
dare you suppress this! censorship!"
Well, as someone who has, on occasion, cried censorship, let me be
clear here. I don't care about censoring any given <insert Enemy of
the Project>. They aren't long censored anyway, as they easily take
it off wiki.
What we don't want censored is Wikipedia. That's the super-precious
thing to cling to. That's the point of the project. That's why this
is special and magical.
There have been encyclopedias before-- having an encyclopedia isn't
that special-- especially not an encyclopedia you can only kinda
trust. And we brag about being Free, but let's be fair-- every
library in the developed world has many free [as in beer]
encyclopedias-- so that's not really special. Some people might say
the fact that you personally can edit Wikipedia is special, but to me,
that's just a sidenote.
What's special about Wikipedia is that Wikipedia is not Censored..
It's breadth is so beyond anything that's ever existed. We have an
article on anything and everything.
I can remember being a kid and reading "Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy" and wishing there really was a guide like that-- which hand
entries on practically anything. I remember watching star trek and
being jealous of their library computer which knew everything about
everything. That's why Britannica doesn't have. THAT'S why we're
different. That's why we're amazing. We are building the Hitchiker's
Guide, we are building the Enterprise's library computer.
I didn't get to help build The Greay Pyramid. I wasn't an engineer on
the Apollo Program. But I get to come home every day and work on a
Wonder of the World-- Wikipedia. It takes your breath away, when you
think about it.
---
Too often, when we hear "Don't censor that", I think people hear
"Don't censor Brandt or Bagley or whomever". But that's missing the
point. The point is: Don't Censor Wikipedia.
(and yes, yes, not all deletions are censorship, and half our value is
in what we prune away, as opposed to the internet at large where there
are no AFDs. But we must be ever vigilent against deleting or banning
what we don't like because we don't like it.)
Alec