Phil Sandifer wrote:
On Sep 18, 2006, at 8:52 PM, Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
Verifiable sources do not ensure truth. (It's not clear to me that there's any way to ensure truth... you know, observer A says it's a wave, observer B says it's a particle... blind men... elephant... etc.)
Which, when you're invested in NPOV, is truth, since our goal, at least on subjects where there's dispute, is not to say "It's an elephant" but rather "This is what seven people say about it."
Indeed... it's often missed that Wikipedia aims "only" to be an accurate *documentation* of the current state of human knowledge, not a community of researchers that *advances* the state of knowledge. If the world as a whole is confused and divided about some issue, we just write that down---it's not our job to clear up the confusion or arbitrate the dispute.
-Mark