[WikiEN-l] The wiki Paradoxes from my perspective (was Re: Uploading images should be a privilige, not a right)

[Oldak Quill]

On 21/07/06, Michael Hopcroft <michael at mphpress.com> wrote:
> My point remains -- what precisely is the point of research and writing
> an article that can be completely dismantled or deleted at whim by
> anyone with a dial-up connection and an ax to grind? And what is the
> point of reading a "factual"  article whose contents change constantly
> even when the subject of the article does not? Novels and plays may be
> constantly re-interpreted, but only in an Orwellian world can they be
> un-written. Destroying every copy of a film that could conceivably exist
> does not mean the film was never made. An event that took place at a
> specific time in the past does not suddenly revert to not having taken
> place because people no longer want to think about it. You cannot unkill
> John Lennon., any more than you can entirely erase him from the past
> even if you somehow manage to destroy all traces of every note and word
> he ever sang, played or wrote. Yet someone could go to Wikipedia and, if
> he is especially unlucky and a vandal has been especially resourceful,
> he might find that the biographical article on John Lennon is an
> argument that there never was such a person and that the Beatles and
> their recordings never existed in the first place. Although hopefully
> the community would jump all over such blatant and irrational
> revisionism, the fact that such a thing is even conceivable is
> compelling argument against the concept of Wikipedia.

Perhaps the problem is that you need order. Wikipedia isn't fixed and
predictable - it exists in an equilibrium. Luckily, it is such that
enough good faith edits exist to keep the equilibrium in line with our
aims.

If you aren't happy to contribute to something that is so
unpredictable and changeable, then nothing can be done. This is
Wikipedia.

-- 
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)