On 05/02/2008, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Of *course*
it's our place to make subjective editorial decisions on
whether or not content is appropriate - where appropriate is a
broadly-defined mixture of "acceptable", "useful",
"well-placed", etc
etc. We do it all the time, as a community and as individuals or
ad-hoc groups. There's no 'Big Book of Encyclopedic Merit' we refer
back to...
We don't use those measures to decide, though. We use verifiability
(which is pretty objective) and notability (which is not, but appears
to be pretty much unavoidable if we want to be realistic).
"Verifiability" and "notability" are more aspects of the same
decision. The decision, in the end, is always "does this improve the
article". There's no checklist, whatever nebulous policy terms we may
have pulled out of thin air - we have people looking at text and
making an editorial decision on "better or worse this way".
We do think about our content. We do judge our content in a myriad of
ways. It's simply *wrong* to pretend we always sit there and boil
everything down to some little two-step process of "is it verifiable
yes is it notable yes in it goes".
On the other hand, maybe you use a very broad definition of
"notability" which encompasses all my subjective balances. In which
case, we're making the same arguments just calling them by different
names :-)
Censorship is clearly subjective and avoidable, so
should be avoided.
This is a fairly nonsensical point; its use in this argument is to
assert "what they want is tantamount to censorship and censorship is a
bad thing therefore we don't do what they want".
But, imagine a demand that we don't include hardcore pornography -
certainly a form of "censorship", albeit one you and I (probably)
agree with. It doesn't mean that we should, or that by not doing so we
have somehow "given in" to the demand and are morally tainted by it.
We don't include it because *our editorial judgement* says not to, and
if it happens to coincide with what some external group desire? Well,
good for them.
We have a history of this same kneejerk reaction with people who
complain about their biographies, and it leads to worse articles there
as well. "They're complaining? Well, we're not censored! Fuck them!
Dig up more dirt, that'll show them!" It's... not good.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk