[WikiEN-l] Human dignity (warning: verbosity follows...)

[Jimmy Wales]

Joseph Hiegel wrote:
> Were there to be a consensus for the idea that we ought to act to
> limit harm in view of the nebulous "human dignity", I'd suspect that
> there'd nevertheless be no abiding consensus toward the proposition
> that the "human dignity" argument ought always to be dispositive;
> there are, after all, other encyclopedic concerns to which "human
> dignity" ought not to be superior.

Indeed.  I doubt very much whether anyone would say that such concerns
ought always be dispositive.  Rather, what I wanted to lay on the table
more explicitly is my own view, as an editor, and not something that I
expect to be universally shared, that it is indeed a perfectly valid
factor to consider, among many others.

> As [[WP:POLICY]] makes well clear, the nature of the wiki is such
> that nothing is immutable; were most frequent contributors, for
> example, to determine that we should no longer require
> [[WP:V|verifiability]], it's likely that Wikipedia would (d)evolve in
> a fashion consistent with community consensus (surely Jimbo would
> consider whether to jump in at this point, but I think even he would
> concede that his capabilities to act unilaterally contrary to an
> evident consensus are somewhat limited and that, in any case, the
> community would look with strong disfavor on such unilateral action),

Actually, I consider WP:V to be so central to Wikipedia that if there
were ever a significant majority of contributors who wanted to do away
with it, we would have an internal war on our hands that would make the
userbox wars look simple by comparison.  The important thing to remember
here is that merely existing and typing in a web form does not make one
a Wikipedian.  The community is defined by the goal of the community,
and people... no matter how numerous or vocal... who do not accept that
goal are not a part of the Wikipedia community.

But on finer grained issues of editorial judgments, another core
principle of Wikipedia is a strong embrace of a diversity of opinion.
Some editors may consider human dignity to be an entirely pointless
factor, while other may give it a fairly high weight.  We can live in
harmony with such differences of opinion, and we can have a healthy give
and take and rational discussion about specific cases.

--Jimbo