-----Original Message----- From: William Pietri [mailto:william@scissor.com] Sent: Friday, October 12, 2007 12:29 PM To: 'English Wikipedia' Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Can you all stop carrying on about whether Slate is an attack site, please?

Christiano Moreschi wrote:

Oh, come off it, that's ridiculous (I assume you're all still talking about attack sites). Attack sites cannot possibly be relevant to more than a score of articles. The fact that such a tiny number of articles clogs up so much drama is ridiculous. Wikipedia has much more grave problems.

Respectfully, I disagree.

It's true that the issue itself is tiny. But I think the proposed solution -- one apparently currently in use -- undermines one of Wikpedia's fundamental mechanisms, that of open discussion leading to community consensus.

I feel similarly about a number of things that the Bush administration has gotten up to. On the grand scale, their current transgressions -- the Iraq war aside -- really aren't that large. A little snooping, some dubious arrests, a little God mixed in with government, a bit of crony capitalism. But I believe that accepting them puts the US on a path that could result in the destruction of core principles that I value deeply.

I'm glad to let go any number of things where I'm on the wrong side of the consensus; I trust that we'll work them out eventually. But I believe that a damnatio memoriae policy a dose of mandatory goodthink will harm our very ability to work things out.

William