On Fri, 29 May 2009, Ian Woollard wrote:
Please explain how removing publicly available, legal, verifiable, information from the wikipedia is common sense again?
Because whether it's common sense to remove the material doesn't depend on whether it's publically available, legal, or verifiable.
You didn't answer the question. I want to know why legal information that can be googled up in a minute or so shouldn't be in the wikipedia.
Because that's like saying "if everyone else litters, why shouldn't I litter, too". We have an obligation to avoid harm caused by us, even if other people may cause similar harm.
And anyway, the other Googleable sites * are much less prone to vandalism and errors * are less trusted by Internet users * are much less *prominent*.
(And anyway, it's only verifiable under ideal circumstances.
Straw man.
It's not a straw man. You wanted to know why we should remove verifiable information. The answer is that if we have this particular verifiable information we will have time periods where it's vandalized (and therefore not verifiable at that moment).
If we have it, it will get vandalized.
Unlike... the rest of the wikipedia? And nobody ever checks for and removes vandalism of course.
If it gets vandalized and the vandalism is fixed, there's an interval of time when the vandalism is in existence. This is an acceptable cost if the article is about George Washington's birthdate; it's not an acceptable cost when someone could get hurt. Moreover, the time it takes to fix vandalism can vary greatly, and several factors make it more likely that vandalism will stick around on drug articles than on, say, the Obama artlcle.
So on that 'logic' we should remove all information that even theoretically could be harmful from the wikipedia immediately, because ummm... it might get vandalised! So I think we should start with the hydrogen article. Knowledge of hydrogen could get people killed! It's an EXPLOSIVE GAS!!!! We should definitely remove the flammability limits- it's heinous that people should know how much hydrogen you need to burn it!!! People could die.
Chances are very low that someone who wants to burn hydrogen is going to go to Wikipedia to find out how much they need to burn. Likewise, chances are low that someone's going to use Wikipedia's information to build an aircraft. This is where the common sense comes in: some types of information are more likely than others, *in practice*, to be used in situations where someone can get hurt.