Philip Welch wrote:
On May 13, 2006, at 5:21 AM, Mark Gallagher wrote:
Of course it is vandalism, if it's a deliberate act to reduce the quality of this encyclopedia.
That's a dangerous definition. Sooner or later, if we use that definition, we'll get people who write Pokémon articles accused of "vandalism".
No, because the intent of writing Pokemon articles is not to reduce the quality of the encyclopedia, whether or not it actually does so.
...and surely the encyclopedia is better if it says nicer things about me, right?
Defining (and communicating) what is good for "the quality of the encyclopedia" is hard enough as it is, without _also_ trying to divine the intentions of random contributors regarding it. Of course, in some case it is obvious -- for example, I doubt the Squidward guy really thinks his edits improve the encyclopedia -- but generally it's not that easy. Does adding valid criticism improve the encyclopedia? What about removing _in_valid criticism? Who gets to decide what criticism is or is not valid? Surely these allegations about his cousin's financial activities in the 70's are *exactly* the kind of thing people *need* to know about Joe Bloggs in order to make an informed decision in the upcoming election...?
There's also the fact that many people simply do not see how an encyclopedia (a freely editable one in particular!) _could_ serve any other purpose _but_ to promote a given POV. In fact, they may not even be entirely wrong -- there's a reason why the N in NPOV stands for "Neutral", not "None".