Jimmy Wales wrote:
I can't vouch for what Fred was saying, because I think I disagree
with him and actually agree more with what you're saying. But I would
say that there *is* an accepted canon of knowledge, and that Wikipedia
ought to (and mostly does) reflect it.
To me, the notion of "accepted canon" immediately raises the question
"accepted by whom?" The wikipedia process/policy of NPOV answers that
question by saying that articles ought to be such that they are
acceptable to the widest possible range of _reasonable_ contributors
working in a spirit of mutual inquiry. This means that we frequently
have to make "softer" claims than we might like, due to the existence
of some annoying minor (but reasonable) viewpoint. We have to
"contextualize" a lot of claims, but this makes us stronger overall.
...
So we could (if we were interested) work together in a
spirit
of love to present the basic information in a way that no reasonable
partisan could find unfair.
That, to me, is the only possible sensible meaning for 'accepted
canon'.
--Jimbo
I would only agree that there is a canon of knowledge, perhaps, in the
same sense that Plato's Forms have some kind of existence. It's an
ideal, and not easily attainable. And you rightly point out that the
question of getting any canon accepted is the real problem. Wikipedia is
a good try at reaching acceptance for a canon of knowledge, and I don't
mind your "definition" of it.
Part of my objection to the idea of a canon is that the term *canon* is
loaded, if you'll pardon all my puns here. In academia, it's strongly
associated with a canon of Western civilization, particularly in the
arts, that has ignored knowledge from many other cultures. Part of this
draws on the religious usage of canon, which tends to treat knowledge as
a closed book, an idea which has dangerous implications for the
Wikipedia project.
Which is why I believe that allowing anybody to edit a page has to
remain one of the basic rules of Wikipedia. I think it's always possible
that new knowledge will come along, and we have to be able to include
it. As a logical conclusion, I doubt very much that any article will
ever reach a point of sufficient perfection for us to protect it from
editing on the grounds that future edits would only be harmful.
--Michael Snow