From: Phil Sandifer
<Snowspinner(a)gmail.com>
Obviously [[WP:V]] and (to a lesser extent) [[WP:RS]] are absolutely
vital policies that cannot be discarded. On the
other hand, in their
current form they are abominations that fundamentally undermine key
aspects of Wikipedia's mission.
I'd like to thank Phil for his unusually thoughtful posting.
I'm not sure that I agree with all of it, but there is one point
that I want to emphasise.
1) They actively encourage removal of material
that is accurate
Admittedly, our standard for inclusion is "verifiability, not truth."
We ought not, however, fall into the trap of deciding that we are
therefore against truth. Our goal is to offer the sum total of human
knowledge. If information is true and significant, we ought be trying
to find a way to get it in.
Hear! Hear! The problem with the current policy, starting with that
appalling slogan "verifiability, not truth" is that it presents
verifiability
and truth as alternatives. What on Earth are we doing here if we don't
care whether our articles are true or not? (Before you tell me that we
do care, please find a statement to that effect on [[WP:V]].) Why
can't
we have verifiability AND truth?
What the policy should say FIRST (in my humble opinion) is that we
at Wikipedia would love to have the most accurate and complete
encyclopedia in the galaxy. That's the AIM. Then it should say,
SECOND, that the task of approaching that aim is constrained
by the proven need to avoid certain serious problems (personal
research, material from dubious or unknown sources, etc) and
therefore we have established policies on which sources of
information can be cited, and guidelines on ranking of sources.
Then those policies and guidelines can be explained.
I suggest that rewriting the policy in this fashion would avoid the
impression that in order to embrace verifiability we rejected truth.
Zero.
"Verifiability, not truth," taken literally, means that you can have several
normally reliable sources all report the same incorrect piece of
information, and without contradicting evidence, and in the absense of an
expert, the incorrect fact would be considered verified.
Perhaps the slogan should be "verified truth" or "verifiable truth."
This
puts them both on an equal plane and requires both.
Carl