Yes, cataloging is the basic way of discrimination about what's
important. We see what's there and we sort it out. As we are
interested into providing an encyclopedia for reading as well as
reference, and not just a biographical database, we need to sort
biographies into manageable units, which means selecting the ones
important enough to any significant group of the users of the
encyclopedia to be worth the attention. We are not writing it as a
Book of judgement, we are writing it just as a non-authoritative
online encyclopedia for the purpose of being used. We are not judging
DB, or anyone else. We are recording what is said about people for the
befit of those who will read it.
Some of the arguments here seem to be taking WP too seriously. We want
to be used, so we want to be --and be perceived as being -- objective,
and fair, and reasonable, and unprejudiced and uncensored. Those are
the principles on which we should form our ethics.
On 6/20/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
geni wrote:
I think
it's good that we recognise that there is an ethical question
involved in such an act. It isn't as neutral an act of cataloguing as
we sometimes like to pretend.
Cataloguing runs into the "wikipedia is not an indiscriminate
collection of information"
What's indiscriminate about cataloguing?
Ec
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David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.