On Wed, 24 May 2006 17:07:04 +1000 Mark Gallagher wrote:
>Our definition of "public interest" is not the same definition as the
>PRC's. While we're flinging about the "slippery slope" argument with
>gay abandon, I could argue that you are in favour of us throwing away
>all editorial standards. We would no longer be able to argue that
>such-and-such is irrelevant, because That's Censorship, And Censorship
>Is Bad. We would have to print everything we could get our hands on; we
>could not decide not to include something of no import, because if it's
>negative and we leave it out we'd be as bad as the Chinese government ...
And how do you know that your definition of public interest is a Good one while that of PRC is a Bad one? It's all in the Interest of the Public, as decided by some appointed moral guardian who has nothing to do with the Public and most probably doesn't give a fuck about what happens to the Public. I repeat, Wikipedia is not the moral police and it must not start deciding what information are in public interest and what are not, that way lies madness.
>Wikipedia does not and should not report lies as truth merely because
>some filthy rag has published them. Being truthful is an inherent
>component of neutrality --- if we do not report the truth, we are
>showing bias towards those who want to spread lies.
Wikipedia should not report anything as Truth. Why do you get to decide the Truth when the owner of Wikipedia Review doesn't? What objective benchmark are you using to decide that your Truth is superior and more in Public Interest than jis one?.
>Example A:
>"Lyndon LaRouche is a popular and powerful American politician. He has
>become famous worldwide for his expos?s of Dick Cheney's plan to flatten
>Iran with nuclear weapons, the Queen of England's secret Satanic
>connections, and the influence of Masonic Jewish Bankers in
>international politics. He earned critical acclaim in 2004 after
>finally completing the construction of the Eurasian Land Bridge, and has
>been hailed as a modern-day Marco Polo. His critics, however, deny this."
That violates the existing policy of NPOV, not some imagined one about Public Interest. What we should be saying is "Lyndon LaRouche has made these claims [insert source], but his critics have opposed him[insert source]". We are not asserting the Truth of anything, just reporting everything in a neutral way without concern about whether Lyndon's claims are in Public Interest.
>Example B:
>Lyndon LaRouche once had sex with a 15-year-old girl while he was 16 (or
>17 while 18, or insert your own age of consent laws here). So far the
>authorities have refused to do anything about this accusation since it
>surfaced in 2005, sixty years after the fact, but a small group of
>dedicated Internet slander-mongers are working hard to bring this
>troubling issue to light.
Again, the problem is NPOV and not Public Interest. If some source has claimed that Lyndon had sex with a minor then we attrinute the statement to that source, otherwise we remove it. Defamation suits can be avoided by not making assertions. An encyclopedia is a tertiary source. making assertions and presenting the Truth is not our job. [[WP:ROUGE]] has some interesting views about the consequences of trying to report the Truth rather than the NPOV.
Molu
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