On Oct 22, 2008, at 8:28 PM, WJhonson(a)aol.com wrote:
And what exactly is "unTrue" about the idea
that Britney Spears
likes cheese
?
Really it's quite silly.
Whether Jaron Lanier is a "director" or not is just as silly. What
is being
"a director" now so offensive as to raise your hackles and call me
irresponsible and immoral for citing sources ?
And as we all know, a made up example and a single real example prove
that there are no actually problematic cases.
You as well as anyone can weigh in on the appropriate
policy board for
Attribution/Verifiability and change the way we do things.
No I can't, because the policy pages are overrun by idiots who want to
be able to write an encyclopedia by robot and who have no regard
whatsoever for respectable or usable standards of research. Believe
me, I've tried.
But really, if we cite
reliable published sources, we're doing our job. We don't need to
feel the
great burden of the world for citing things that turn out to be not
accurate.
No. Our job is not to mindlessly parrot. Our job is to provide useful
and accurate information for our readers.
It's ...done... every... day. And yes by
encyclopedias as well as any
newspaper.
And when it goes wrong and verifiability does not match up with truth,
encyclopedias and any newspaper screw up.
EB puts out correction sheets all the time. We're
not in a
fishtank alone
here.
Sure we are. EB actually corrects its errors. We stamp our feet and
say "You didn't update your website like we asked you to so it's not
an error."
-Phil