charles matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote: "Tom Cadden" wrote
As has been pointed out repeatedly, the MoS does not say 'do what Brittanica does' Brittanica is a business-orientated hardcopy encyclopædia which follows governmental usage to avoid offending native populations because it needs them to buy their product. It is called sometimes 'Strategic Naming'.
They follow their own MoS. We follow ours. Ours is not business based but based exclusively on the most common name principle.
[[Wikipedia:Wikilawyering]]: "Wikilawyering is attempting to inappropriately rely on legal technicalities with respect to Wikipedia:Policies or Wikipedia:Arbitration."
'Wikilawyer' is pejorative; 'policy wonk' is not.
If blindly insisting on 'following policy' makes the English Wikipedia factually worse, and offends our community members, and offends 'native populations' (my God, do people still express themselves like this?) why the hell should we do it? Making 'exclusively' a universal override is wikilwayering.
Charles It comes down to the simple option: amateurishness or professionalism. You may think an amateurish make-it-up-as-you-go-along approach is OK. Many on Wikipedia find it Wikipedia's biggest flaw. Accuracy is not "making the English Community" it is knowing what you are doing. Frankly what you seem to hold up as a model is 'WikiIncompetence', You don't seem to have noticed that Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopædia, not a tabloid. Encyclopædias have standards and if Wikipedia wants to be respected as a source book and not become an internet joke it has to have standards. Just because you have problem with definitions, professional organisation and encyclopædic standards does not mean that everyone has.
Thom
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