[WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

[Ron Ritzman]

On 3/31/07, doc <doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> So wikipedia is doomed to keep having its sordid downside? We're doomed
> to always be fighting a losing battle against libels and lies?

I wonder just how much of these "libels and lies" are real malice? I
suspect that much of it consists of things that "they just know",
"everybody knows" or "I read it in a blog/Usenet post". It's
reinforced by reading them in a lot of such posts. Who made that quote
about repeating a lie so many times that it becomes the truth? On top
of that, people can be very obstinate about things that "they just
know".

I good essay idea would be "Wikipedia is not for stuff read on the net
one day" followed by examples of places where you have to "read about
something" before you can put it into Wikipedia.