Timwi wrote:
Secondarily I want to be able to fix spellings, in
the faint hope that
it will help some people learn better spelling. Again, the only people
who would object to this would be people who can't spell and are
therefore unsuitable for writing an encyclopedia anyway.
Totally broken reasoning.
I've heard many reasons for maliciously
changing an article. Yet
articles on Wikipedia tend to get better. Interesting, innit?
That's an irrelevant non-answer to Ryan's question.
No, the purpose of this was to test your reaction.
You fell right for it
exactly the way I expected: you picked up only on the emotional side of
the paragraph (taking it as an insult)
Do you understand how conceited this makes you sound?
And this highlights what I mean: you (and many
other people) only object
to being able to edit comments because it somehow "feels" wrong. You
can't really say why it *is* wrong.
You need to relax, and start spending less time writing
borderline-offensive e-mail to people who are trying to reason
constructively, and more time thinking about what they're saying. I can
tell you exactly why it *is* wrong: comments are not Wikipedia articles,
even if you seem to be constantly confounding the two.
A Wikipedia article isn't signed by a single person's name. It doesn't
represent the views of an individual, but tries to become an objective
reflection of its topic. As Brion puts it, a wiki is a place where you
let wackos edit your site, and with luck, the good wackos outnumber the
bad. The iterative editing process is a good way to ensure eventual NPOV
conformance.
Comments are absolutely different. They are written and signed by a
single person, represent only that person's views, have no requirement
of adherence to a NPOV, and that means that essentially none of the
reasons that Wikipedia articles are editable by everyone apply to them.
If allowing comment cross-editing was in any way beneficial, the popular
web-based discussion forums with tens of millions of posts would have,
without a doubt, adopted such a model quite a while ago. There's a
reason they haven't done it.
I am not interested in continuing this discussion further, so please
refrain from writing a snide reply that questions my intelligence so as
to "test my reaction".
Agreed. This discussion has degenerated, on Timwi's side at least, to ad
hominem attacks and straw man arguments. Why do you persist in saying
that opinions on talk pages have the same ownership/POV claims as
articles in mainspace?
David, new but dismayed