On 22 Feb 2006 at 06:40, "Daniel P. B. Smith" <wikipedia2006(a)dpbsmith.com>
wrote:
1) It's still free, isn't it?
That word has a number of different senses, some of which apply to
Wikipedia and some that don't. It can be accessed at no charge, but
people using it are not free to do things that its admins and Jimbo
don't allow them to do.
2) Wikipedia is still an encyclopedia, isn't it?
Surely you can have
an encyclopedia without an article on Brian Peppers in it. Many other
encyclopedias get by without such an article.
Yes, I wouldn't expect the Encyclopedia of 18th Century French
Revolutionaries to include such an article, nor the Encyclopedia of
Star Wars Planets. An Encyclopedia of Internet Memes, on the other
hand, might well have such an entry. So the question then becomes
just what sort of encyclopedia is Wikipedia.
3) Anyone can still edit Wikipedia, can't they?
Other than the people who are banned, anyway.
4) If this deletion was made "unilaterally"
then who are the twenty
or so other sysops who also deleted the page? Are they all Jimbo's
sockpuppets?
They're one side of an edit war, obviously, with those who undeleted
or recreated it on the other side.
Jimbo ended up taking sides in this war, something he's been doing
more often lately, and perhaps necessarily, given the apparent
increasing inability of the community to reach stable consensuses
(consensi?) by itself.
--
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