On 16 November 2012 14:38, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 2:28 PM, David Goodman dggenwp@gmail.com wrote:
There is a fundamental difference between our inefficient and sometimes unsuccessful attempts to do things right, and their deliberate attempts to do things wrong.
Yes, but we must not forget that PR people are not the only people who use Wikipedia to do things wrong. By operating the completely open system we do, we enable *anyone* to do wrong, be they PR or staff working for a company, or a company's detractors.
The community is responsible for managing Wikipedia. And whether Wikipedia is easy or difficult to abuse is the community's responsibility.
I suppose this line of argument might be of some interest to someone looking for a dissertation topic in moral philosophy (as has been noted, it is off-topic). What happens to the notion of "agency" online?
Still, I can't accept that it makes sense of some putative connection inherent in wiki technology, collective responsibility, and mere participation as an editor. Talking about the "community" as a way of avoiding talking about the intentions of the actors here is a neat trick. I think the meaning of "wrong" is being slurred here. I certainly don't think one should talk about enabling when editing is always a conditional permission rather than any kind of right, and the permission is given for a definite reason. And so on. The usual approach would surely be to look first at who is hosting the site when you seek to assign responsibility.
Charles