On 3/31/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
This is in response to several recent posts. For the record, the concept of "do no harm" I was presenting to in WP was related to what information we, as editors, choose to include in biographies of persons. My point was that to consciously include gratuitous, tabloid-like junk in a biographical article is unnecessarily harmful to the person.
And, as far as "choosing a system of ethics" for WP: I don't believe it is something you shop around for. But, rather, it develops, and is agreed upon, by the Community of persons in WP itself.
Editors from English--speaking and European countries do operate under more or less the same ethical system, which promotes freedom and fairness, and all the arguments we have are only about where the balance should lie in any given case. The ethical system was famously described by John Rawls in his "original position" in A Theory of Justice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position I doubt there are many editors from Western countries who don't subscribe to it, whether they know it or not, and Rawls himself argued that it was in fact universal.
For anyone not familiar with it, imagine a bunch of people sitting round a campfire. They're there to make decisions about the type of society they want to live in (but it can be adapted for practically any kind of moral decision). They have only a small amount of information about themselves. I forget what this is, but basically they know they are human beings, and they have basic information about the kinds of things that hurt human beings. But they don't know whether they're male or female, black or white, rich or poor, healthy or ill, talented or not, beautiful or not. They're behind what Rawls called the "veil of ignorance."
Using this veil of ignorance, they have to decide what would be fair in any given situation, knowing that they may actually turn out to be the poor person in a wealthy society, or the woman in a misogynist one, or the budding entrepeneur in a socialist one, the black person in a racist one, and so on. This forces them to place themselves radically in the shoes of each set of characteristics they consider, and by carefully considering all positions -- as if considering their own -- they're able to arrive at a just decision.
Geni, John Rawls would have said that this is your system of ethics, and that it's buried deep within you as a set of instincts, even if you feel you've rejected it. :-)