-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The hard work of NPOV From: "Fred Bauder" fredbaud@fairpoint.net Date: Thu, December 6, 2007 12:15 pm To: dgoodmanny@gmail.com
I was in an evil mood and confess to trolling; there are a lot of good thoughts at http://yudkowsky.net/virtues/ besides the sentence I seized on. We have published a "consensus of the most widespread error" from time to time, particularly in the run-up to the Iraq War. (I was one of the parties in error). Especially with current events, it is hard to know when you are doing that as our favored sources, in my case The New York Times, are fostering the error.
It would be interesting to go back and look at the development of those articles and see how much "air time" we gave to the view that there were no weapons on mass destruction. Some modesty is in order. Even some intelligence services were taken in. We can aspire to do better then they, but without good sources on the ground, and willingness to use what they might tell us, which is their failing too, we cannot expect to surpass them.
Fred
perhaps we should redefine it our goal, as the nearest practical approach to truth the wiki process can obtain, obtained at in a spirit of impartiality. That's what people reasonably expect from us, not a consensus of the most widespread error.
On Dec 6, 2007 9:17 AM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
Please discuss.
- d.
"If you fail to achieve a correct answer, it is futile to protest that you acted with propriety."
NPOV is a measure of propriety, not of truth.
Fred
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