Jonathan, you are right that people turn to an encyclopedia for facts.

However, when facts are in dispute, one new fact springs into being like Venus emerging from the half-shell: to wit, that there is a dispute over the facts! Well, duh!

That's why Jimbo and Larry created NPOV, and that's the sheer genius of it -- which I'm sure a talented guy like you can understand and appreciate.

Later today, I'm going to take a look at the pages in question. I hope that by then you have gotten out of the warrior mind-set and have accepted Jimbo's NPOV policy.

Because a "clutchless" Wikipedia won't get us to our destination any faster then standard transmission (of facts). Get it? ;-)

-----Original Message----- From: Jonathan Walther [mailto:krooger@debian.org] Sent: Monday, December 09, 2002 9:24 AM To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Clutch is on a POV tirade

On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 05:45:02AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:

This discussion should probably proceed primarily on the Talk page for the article.

However, it's worth noting that you wrote "Social workers are the foot soldiers of the ivory tower social engineers that governments and big businesses hire to keep the masses under control."

I have a valid and extensive historical basis for saying that, from the history of Margaret Sanger, to the old English "work houses" and religious charities like the Salvation Army, on to the modern behavior of welfare workers in intruding on peoples privacy and human dignity as a precondition to providing them with the necessities of life. I could go on for quite a while on the topic, showing all the evidence for that view. I see now that my view is not widely shared by the relatively affluent contributors to the Wikipedia; and now that I think about it, it is understandable given their lack of background.

To people with sufficient background, the above quote is not a controversial statement. I need to make clear that I wrote what I did in good faith. My intent wasn't to spark debate and make other people do all the hard work by writing something egregiously POV.

to simply delete it. The Wikipdia itself should make no controversial claims.

People turn to encyclopedias for facts. Once a fact is established, it should present it, even if the Joe Sixpack may find the fact startling, or contrary to what he expects. Naturally in such cases we should give enough detail so a person can verify these facts for themselves.

Jonathan