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.
Is anyone aware of a discussion to this end that I am not? Is there actually a point where we clearly and deliberately decided that the goal of Wikipedia is not accuracy?
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.