When I posted a draft decision in the "Sarah Palin protection wheel war" case, I proposed a principle reading:
"Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and is [[WP:NOT|not to be used]] for ideological warfare or to score political points for or against a candidate for electoral office or political party. Slanted edits motivated by political or ideological factors or by personal respect or distaste for a candidate violate the core policy of [[WP:NPOV|NPOV]], our guidelines against [[WP:COI|conflicts of interest]], and in many cases the BLP policy as well. Nonetheless, especially as elections approach, many articles relating to candidates for office are subjected to these types of inappropriate editing. Just as readers are cautioned not to rely on the content of Wikipedia articles for medical, legal, meteorological, or other advice, so too, voters should not rely upon the content of Wikipedia articles as the basis for their voting decisions."
The comments on the workshop were to the effect that this didn't belong in an ArbCom decision, so I didn't include it in the final decision, but it's still true.
Newyorkbrad On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 11:24 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
I quite like the last sentence:
"In a post-Wikiepdia [sic] universe, in which the quantity of information may too easily be conflated for its quality, such mistakes may be all the easier to succumb to."
I think that's an excellent point. People using Wikipedia need to know what they are using - a fantastic source for wide ranging information, but not a specialist resource that can be trusted to have everything you need to know about a given subject (and have it it correct). There must be better ways to research politicians (political who's whos, looking at actual polls, reading transcripts of their actual speeches, reading manifestos, etc.) than looking them up in a general encyclopaedia.
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