On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 12:23:32 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
<jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote:
> Is every editorial disagreement a test of "moral rightness"? I really
> don't see it that way. Maybe the communication difficulty we are
> having surrounds your use of that phrase?
No, it's only a test of moral rightness if that is the basis behind an
editors decisions.. We can't always tell from the outside, but we can
ask. If there is no justification from the large set that we consider
valid reasons for changes to the article that can be discussed, then
we must assume that the reasoning is based on good/evil judgements.
>From below it seems we're pretty much in agreement on this stuff now.
> Yes, of course. That appears to be not at risk here at all. I
> haven't seen anyone say that it's ok to make these decisions based on
> "imposing" a "point of view", nor to say that such decisions need have
> no articulable basis.
When it was discussed at the begining of the thread why we must have
better bounds betwen languages the reasoning given was that what is
offensive in one culture can be offensive in another.
Am I missing something by assuming that "offensive" implies that
someone is imposing a point of view?
If there is another image that can be substuted which provides the
same information, then we can make the substutition based on keeping
the article focused. If the image is not topical, we can remove it
because it is non-topical. I don't believe "offensive" is ever useful
as a valid reason to exclude content.
Lets talk about that stupid autofellatio image... I'd been wanting to
avoid it, because I think the concepts here are more interesting than
the practice, but I think it might actually turn out to be a
reasonable example.
I had pointed out to Anthere elsewhere in the thread that the image
conveys knowledge that can not easily be brought out through other
means: An image shows you that such an act is actually possible. A
drawing doesn't carry the same value. She agreed that in principal,
I might have a good point... and perhaps we should replace the image
with a similar one which improves upon it in a number of ways (that I
never considered because I don't find it objectionable). It seems
that there may be a possible solution that improves the situation
without excluding a photograph of a man with his penis in his mouth
from the encyclopedia.
This would remove my concerns about censorship and imposing points of
view... but I strongly doubt it would satisfy even a small percentage
of those that have complained so strongly.
> Yes, I don't think anyone really disagrees with any of this.
>
> At the same time, I don't think anyone would support banning people
> who vote based on "nudity is bad". It's too big a risk of trouble on
> _other_ grounds if we start declaring that people may not vote or
> discuss unless they give right reasons. :-)
Well it should be a part of the dispute process... if you can't
support why your position doesn't create NPOV in a matter where it is
accused that your edit creates NPOV, then you should lose the dispute
and be asked not to make those edits.
If someone is unable to follow such a decision, what choice do we have
but to ban? At that point the editor has become a vandal.
> > work, a standard unlikely to be met for the matters we are
> > discussing... at least in the case where the contributor is honestly
> > trying to enhance the value of the encyclopedia, rather than a troll.
>
> Yes, of course.
>
> But the point is, the decision taken in the end might differ across
> different wikipedias for reasons of culture, or perhaps even for
> reasons very very local to that editing community's history. We need
> not impose uniformity everywhere.
Uniformity of outcome or uniformity of procedure and requirements?
There might be differing outcomes, but I think we should uniformly
reject actions based only on pushing a POV.
To get to this goal we must hold all languages to the same standard of
neutrality, and make sure that the idea of neutrality is well
explained in every language. For this we have be currently left
largely at the mercy of those who are interested in each of the
languages... but the basic rules are a project matter, not a language
matter. It would make sense to ask participants in every culture and
language to occasionally check on all the others to keep everyone
honest with respect to the basic rules.