On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 10:17:14 -0700, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
No, you should not shrug your shoulders, but you should also not get into a tizzy over predictable phenomena. If you think there "ought to be a rule", please go and make one to the effect that rules are to uniformly applied, and so on although that is already part of the unwritten rules under which the Arbitration Committee proceeds. We'll enforce it best we can, but remember the old Russian proverb: "Laws are like spiderwebs, they catch flies, not bumblebees."
I fear I'm breaking a rule now, "Don't feed the trolls."
No, don't stop. I'm glad to hear some frankness, and it's good to hear two points of view.
Fred, you appear to be condoning rankism - a concept described and talked about at some length by Robert W Fuller in his book "Somebodies & Nobodies" - as if it were something like racism or sexism that happens and we should learn to live with it. I can see the point you are making, but it's not something I'm comfortable with.
Nas, you are right to express amazement that this is being brought out in the open. I must confess that I was likewise astonished to see something like this stated so bluntly and, well, honestly.
I'm new here, and I'm kind of at a loss to know what else to say in a discussion that I seem to have inadvertently sparked. I must confess that I had hoped that Wikipedia would be something where if the absolute truth could not be laid down, then at least, like a reputable newspaper, all sides of the story could be given proper respect. But so much of the activity of the site seems to be taken up with trivia. A couple of weeks ago I looked at one of the pages that dealt with recent edits and I was perplexed to see that an all-in brawl was being waged over the clitoris article, of all things! I hadn't imagined that there could be much dispute over such a thing, but there it is. As I hastily scurried away from the battlefield it seemed to me that all of the contestants were male, which perhaps says a great deal about the level of debate. Perhaps, as Murphy Brown once suggested, the participants could drop their pants, measure themselves against a plastic ruler, and sort out arguments that way.
Which brings me back to rankism, I guess!