On 07/04/2008, Phil Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
There is no clear decision point here, though. It was a death by a thousand papercuts as far as I can tell, where statements steadily deformed from their original (and sensible) meanings to a detached slogan that is transparently silly to any reader not steeped in the most wonky of our wonky policy discussions.
Indeed. "Verifiability, not truth" is not English, it's Wikipedia jargon. And it's almost as incomprehensible in usage to normal people as the Wikipedia jargon word "notability" is compared to the English language word.
I submit that we actually mean something much more like - to use actual English rather than internal jargon - "Be accurate in describing the points of view, but verifiably so."
- d.