-----Original Message----- From: Anthony wikimail@inbox.org To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org; wjhonson@aol.com Sent: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 6:04 pm Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of l...
On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 5:05 PM, <WJhonson@aol.com> wrote:
Right, Wrong, True, False, White, Black, and so on do not exist. They
don't. No existence. They aren't there. Nowhere. Ok ... Is that why the standard for Wikipedia is verifiability, and not truth?>> -----------------
If I can cite to the New York Post stating that "Britney Spears likes to walk her poodles every morning at 8 AM" then I've done my job. I do not have to interview Ms Spears myself to confirm that. I do not need three separate sources to confirm it. And if she were to show up, or some imposter and claim face-to-face that it's wrong and it should say "Dobermans" not poodles, not *only* should I do nothing to remove the sourced claim, but rather if I were to, that itself would be original research. There is no way I can know if the imposter is truly Britney Spears and there is no way I can know if she has poodles or dobermans directly.
It is impossible to "take the word" of some random passerby and use that to modify content. Any viewer can *contest* any article without sources. We add a {{fact}} tag. They can as well spout off20on the Talk page. We however cannot be in the position of second guessing who anyone is or isn't. If they feel strongly about it, they can post a rebuttal. If they are not willing to type two sentences on an official site, but ARE willing to type a hundred in-project, than I submit it's *highly* unlikely to be the person in question in the first place.
IF they write a blog where they complain about process, that is simply more free publicity for us. There is no such thing as bad publicity.
Will Johnson