On 1/4/06, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/4/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Yes, information is bad. We should definitely blame the spread of information for the fact that idiots act like idiots. This fits in perfectly with a foundation whose mission is giving people free access to the sum of all human knowledge.
I think you're failing to draw an adequate distinction between "encyclopedia" and "webhosting/blogging/forum service". On the former we seek to provide information of encyclopedic value, on the latter we let people chatter away, troll. argue about politics, anathematize or proselytize various religions by turn, insult one another and all the other delights of online interaction. In general the kind of behavior that is commonly observed on the latter is frowned upon on this encyclopedia.
Not at all, if you look above at my first post in this thread, I stated that "it seems blatantly obvious to me that knowing more about a person facilitates consensus building. In case you don't understand where I was going with that, building consensus is the way Wikipedia builds an encyclopedia. "This was in response to the statement by Tony who "feel[s] it's beneficial for editors to share their background and personal views, so as to make it easier for someone else to judge bias that may creep into their edits."
My comments about information were in response to your statement that "the harder it is for people like that to play hunt-the-thimble when searching for people who might agree with their nonsense, the better." Just because information can be used for bad doesn't mean it should be eliminated. Your argument that it should is directly in contradiction with the very principles on which the WMF was built.
It's a lot easier to get along with somebody if you know who they are, what they believe in, etc. Do you disagree, or do you just think it isn't important for Wikipedia editors to get along with one another?
Anthony