On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 6:56 PM, Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 10:50 PM, Andreas K. jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
I never assumed that, and it is not consistent with basic Wikipedia policies that have existed for almost as long as Wikipedia has existed. Wikipedia
is
based on professionally published sources. They are privileged as the
most
(or for practical purposes almost only) reliable sources on which to base Wikipedia content.
Wikipedia is set up to reflect and summarise these sources, not to
provide
an alternative worldview. We do not allow unsourced statements, or self-published sources (except in well-circumscribed exceptional cases).
I never said Wikipedia provides an alternative worldview. Let me quote myself "amateur alternative to the professionals", as in an encyclopedia written by amateurs, non-academicians, the general public, or just about anyone, as opposed to a straight-forward publication written by professionals, as in only scholars, intellectuals, academician.
What you did say was,
"What professional standards? I always assumed, Wikipedia was the amateur alternative to the professionals, the same white, grey, male academicians that skew the professional standards."
That sounded like you were hostile to the standards according to which our sources are written, and considered them skewed. If I misunderstood you, you have my apologies. (Incidentally, many of those sources are written by women.)
Please stop re-stating general Wikipedia policies and ideologies. Most of us here are editors, and well aware of how the content came to be. Your constant use of 'We' includes most of us, repeating 'We' as if you are explaining things to an outsider seems slightly condescending, just in case it is intentional.
English is a poor language in a way, as it is unable to distinguish between inclusive we (= all of us) and exclusive we (= we over here as opposed to you over there). When I said "we do not allow unsourced statements", I was quite confident that that included all of us here – all of us here "swear allegiance" to the editorial judgment of reliable sources when it comes to text.
However, that allegiance to sources' editorial judgment is less unanimous when it comes to illustrations, for no good reason that I can discern. I find that an interesting anomaly worth noting, analysing and questioning.
Andreas