[WikiEN-l] Getting hammered in a tv interview is not fun

[doc]

Michael Bimmler wrote:
> On 3/30/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 3/30/07, doc <doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>>> I'm sorry, with due respect to Geni, this is the type of myopic response
>>> that drives me crazy. Let's worry about our policies, in house-rules,
>>> and that the rights of Wikipedians are respected - because that's
>>> obviously more important than doing the Right Thing, unharming real
>>> people, or otherwise focusing on article quality? (That was sarcasm).
>>>
>>
>> Wikipedians are real people. You are not an infallible judge of what
>> would improve an article. The community at the present time has not
>> indicated a willingness to trust you in that sense and you should
>> respect this.
> 
> Maybe it's time to clarify briefly what the ultimate goal of the
> project "Wikipedia" is:
> 
> A. To write a encyclopedia (with the labels associates such as
> "quality", "accuracy" and "neutrality"
> B. To have a nice little community thing, where we have endless votes
> and discussions about the (inclusion of the) messed-up divorce of John
> Doe, biologist.
> 
> Of course, certain internal policies (or house-rules) are necessary
> and should also be applied, but there are certain things on the world
> which overrule house rules. These "certain things" are not limited to
> legal aspects but also our aim to have an **encyclopedia** which is as
> accurate as possible, as neutral as possible and which does not seek
> to destroy somebody's life by bringing up every dirty little fact
> about their life that can be found. Remember, our guides (and
> competitors) should be encyclopediae as the EB and neither tabloid
> papers as The Sun nor investigative bloggers which dig through court
> records et al. to find out interesting things about George W. Bush's
> former life. Both of these have their merits (the latter maybe more
> than the former) but this is not what an encyclopedia should do. And
> if somebody tries to insert not properly sourced harmful material into
> a biography of a living person, this should just be deleted on sight.
> If a policy cannot cope with a) reality amd b) the absolute goal of
> the project, you should change neither reality nor the goal of the
> project but the policy.
> 
> Michael
> 
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Which is precisely why we have IAR.
Doc