Bryan Derksen wrote:
but the basic summary of my position is that we shouldn't be attributing world-editable text to other people. For an ordinary Wikipedia article, there's an implicit "The various random yahoos who edit Wikipedia say" at the beginning, whereas at the beginning of (for example) A Modest Proposal there's an explicit "Jonathan Swift himself, and Jonathan Swift alone, said."
I think this is a valid concern. Perhaps it could be alleviated by agreeing that it's o.k. for sysops to protect pages that aren't 'community' pages.
I smiled at your characterization of the implicit disclaimer. Following my own personal interests, I often end up corresponding with professors. Sometimes they assume incorrectly that I'm also a scholar and suggest that I might be interested in submitting something to this or that journal. I have to say "Oh, I'm sorry I wasn't clear. I'm just some random idjit from the Internet with lots of questions."
--Jimbo