Mark Richards wrote:
If you were to ban anybody who refused to acknowledge the possible validity of a different point of view, you'd see a whole more useful discussion on talk
pages.
Stan
Well great. You say that black is white. I say that, no, black is black. You say that maybe I'm right, but you disagree - how about the possibility that black is grey? Surely that's being reasonable? I say that no, black is black, I'm not interested in compromise on this issue. I get banned for not acknowlesging the validity of a different point of view?
Surely this isn't what you mean? Mark
It's exactly what I mean. The correct response would be "well, I'm pretty sure black is black, and haven't heard of anybody besides yourself disagreeing, do you have a source for this other POV? How about writing an article on the 'black is white' theory, and we'll link to it from here?" We have plenty of mechanism to constrain the scope of alternate theories, if you're worried about that; despite people's fears, the existence of a creationism article has not compelled us to modify every reference to evolution in science articles.
When you declare that "obviously so-and-so is wrong and there's no point in further discussion", you're giving POVers an opening to make the same declarations for their POV. As persons engaged in scholarly work, we need to be ready to question any statement at any time, and so it's critical that we exclude anyone who wants to declare that their statements must be accepted without challenge.
Stan