On 8/18/06, stevertigo vertigosteve@yahoo.com wrote:
In the context of WP:OFFICE, as well as more recently, Jimbo and others have written somethings about "hurt feelings," as if it was a policy ( WP:CODDLE maybe) which could circumvent even important policy ( WP:NPOV maybe). Could you explain this?
Here's my attempt to reconcile things: We all have different experiences at Wikipedia and think various things are more or less important depending on what part of the system we're in contact with. Some of us think fighting vandalism is very important because we see a lot of it. Some of us think it's really important to reduce bias in articles regarding the Middle East. Some of us think it's really important to avoid hurting the feelings of people who might be written about in Wikipedia.
However: Some things are so important that everyone needs to take them seriously, whether you find them personally interesting or not. Concrete legal advice like "do not allow unsourced defamatory statements about living individuals to remain or we will get our arses sued off" are like that.
Steve