On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 5:45 PM, Bjoern Hoehrmann <derhoermi(a)gmx.net> wrote:
* Nathan wrote:
It's simple. The WMF didn't do anything.
The English Wikipedia did. That
project effectively changed the content of the entire encyclopedia for
political reasons. That is the condicio sine qua non for abandoning
neutrality. You might say it was done for great reasons, and that it
doesn't corrupt the principle of neutrality generally or imperil the
reputation of the project, etc. But it's impossible to rationally argue
that the SOPA/PIPA protest didn't temporarily set aside neutrality.
"Neutrality" is an "article" concept, not a "project"
concept and the
protest did not change articles, it rendered them hard to access and
different content was rendered in their stead, and that fact was very
obvious. If the "project" was "neutral", in the sense the concept is
defined for articles, it would be defined be how it is seen by others.
I disagree - I think it is a content concept. Content being what people
looking for encyclopedic content will find; just as people have often
argued against advertising on the grounds that it becomes non-neutral
content that questions the impartiality of the encyclopedia, the same is
even more obviously true if all articles are replaced with a political
banner. There is a degree of cognitive dissonance for people who believe
both in neutrality and in protesting SOPA/PIPA, which understandably leads
to tortured arguments like "neutrality is an article concept" and not a
content concept... but such arguments are plainly not true. Anyway, this is
most definitely a sidetrack from the topic of this thread.