On Wed, 30 Nov 2005, Delirium wrote:
Delirium wrote:
I don't, in general, see a problem with this. If something is incorrect in any way, it should be corrected or removed (whether it is libelous or not is irrelevant---non-libelous misinformation has no place either).
I should add that, from both an ethical and legal perspective, this is pretty much exactly how all other publicly-editable forums works. If someone posts a libelous message on an AOL message board, or in a livejournal, or anywhere
WHAT other publicly-editable forums? I don't know of any at the level of group-authorship of quotes, sentences, paragraphs, and essays.
Wikipedia has developed and propagated an elaborate and nuanced style guide -- from the detailed external link policy down to the popularization of the term "disambiguation" -- one of its greatest accomplishments. This is what helps thousands of unrelated people to work together to maintain a high apparent standard of quality and consistency.
WP also implicitly has an apparent editorial standard, as there is no single name or person or author associated with an article -- not even a list of names, if you just read the main article page and don't know which magic buttons to press; other mediawiki instances (wikitravel) are better about this. No forum, newsgroup, etc I can think of has ever given off that same impression.
--SJ