On 4/7/08, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 07/04/2008, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
I've been working on figuring out the history of this bit of wording, since it's, on the surface, transparently untrue (we, in fact, do want to provide truth as well - not necessarily big-T absolute truth, but certainly the little-t truth that is a synonym for "accuracy" - i.e. the word as normal people use it).
How can we know if something is true or not? (With or without a capital 't') You're into the realms of philosophy there. The best we can do is show that something is verifiable. It's impossible to show that it is true.
As far as I can tell, there has *never* been a consensus discussion of the phrasing "verifiability, not truth," nor was there a discussion about removing the statement that Wikipedia strives to be accurate from WP:V. These changes were inserted, albeit years ago, without discussion, and long-standing principles were pushed to the side and minimized in favor of increasingly context-free restatements of the changes. But I cannot find *any* evidence that the position "accuracy is not a primary goal of Wikipedia" has ever garnered consensus.
The fact that it hasn't been changed is implicit evidence of a consensus. That's how consensus decision making works in the majority of cases on Wikipedia - someone does something and if no-one objects, it sticks.
There's a strong consensus that Wikipedia should publish only what reliable sources have already published on a topic, so that readers can check material for themselves. That is the key idea of the encyclopedia.
Wikipedia is most useful as a resource in allowing readers to follow its leads. Readers don't swallow wholesale what it says. They look up what the Wikipedian has looked up, then they make up their own minds about the accuracy of it.
We don't try to impose "the truth" on people, and we don't expect that they should trust anything just because they read it in Wikipedia. All we do is provide what we hope are the best and most appropriate sources, and a surrounding text that sums up what good sources are saying, in a way that we hope is readable and that makes readers want to know more. We enable them to inform themselves.
That's the difference between us and, say, the Encyclopaedia Britannica. We empower readers. We don't ask for their blind trust.
Sarah