[WikiEN-l] Verifiability - Case Study I

[charles matthews]

"jayjg" wrote

> How do we know it is a good school?

Well, reading the page, it's a good school, even 'exclusive'.

How do we verify that?  Whoa, infinite regress ahead.  Let's say that having 
a school page that is misleading would call for more immediate editing?

>Maybe he went to a school that was
> actually a traditional rival of this school, and someone is having a bit 
> of
> fun at his expense?  And how damaging is it really not to list the school
> they went to?

As I pointed out, he got to Cambridge.  This is not easy: one in 200 of his 
cohort manage it, at most.

I wouldn't go to the trouble of having an edit war over this, myself. 
Better ways to spend my time.

But shifting the issue onto the result, which is microscopic at the margin, 
is a way of not addressing what is going on.  (This was the warm-up example, 
too.)

Charles