Le Fri, 31 Jan 2003 09:36:29 -0800, inspiré Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com écrivait la plume alerte :
But, it is the *article* that lacks objectivity. The original author is not very important. It is almost always better to fix the article, than to delete. Moving really bad parts to a talk page as a temporary measure is fine, of course.
Argument ad hominem I know, I am ashamed to write such things. http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/logic.html
But still, words are not the chidren of pens and papers, they come from the mind of men, yes you can be neutral, but we are facing someone deliberatly violating the NPOV as a writer and as an editor. He just cannot face his bias, and we face a fallacious behaviour.
There are certain topics on which I do not try to write, because I know that NPOV would be too difficult for me on those topics. My own biases, held in check by good judgment, do not prevent me from writing on wikipedia.
What do we do in a project based on the assumption that every body will respect the rules by himself when one does not. Not once, but many times ?
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Whether it is illegal or not in France to voice unpopular political opinions does not matter to wikipedia simply because the wikipedia should not voice *any* political opinions, popular or otherwise. And not for reasons of law, but for reasons of NPOV.
Internet is not virtual. We can face trial. On the other hand, it is nice to have a law, but how do we make arbitration ? There may be some infringement of the NPOV how do we decide when people claim there are following the NPOV and that we observe strong conflicts?
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I say the same thing of China, of Iraq, of North Korea, of every state that would seek to impose by force their views on what an encyclopedia should contain: I am an American, so I will publish what I wish, and you can't stop me without blocking the Internet completely.
Don't worry, it is not the country wich will do it but the companies. The DRM and TCPA project may result in reducing the access to information for everybody in the world.
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An article on racialism should not implicitly legitimate the concept. An article on holocaust denial should not implicitly legitimate the concept. Avoiding these topics is not right. Treating them with NPOV is right.
Yes but shoud we present the fact that it is legitimate to think Shoah never existed, or shoud we state (arbitrary) that revisionism is a far rightist theory that Shoah never existed. Can you tell me which can be written in wikipedia, and why ?
But isn't this a fairly remote possibility anyway? Does the French government really look for people who are writing biased encyclopedia articles as part of an international humanitarian project?
Not it is a gamble, just bet that no association like the Jewish Student Association or SOS racism will never fall on this site, and will to make a trial. Just hope you'll never have any succes, and it won't happen.
I am not sure I understand you here. How was French Indymedia shut down? By legal action? Or because the maintainers chose to close it rather than permit articles that disagreed with the general Indymedia politics?
They decided to shutdown by themselves after one article on Israel crossed the line between contra-zionism and anti-semitism.
--Jimbo
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