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

[Ryan Wetherell]

On 3/30/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> on 3/30/07 10:04 PM, geni at geniice at gmail.com wrote:
>
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide as it stands harms
> > turkey. If we were to change it to reduce this harm we could
> > potentially harm the Armenians as well as producing an article that
> > would be against the law in France.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology)
> >
> > Harms Scientology but not publishing it could harm people if
> > Scientology were ever to reactivate that policy.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Browne
> >
> > Harms the subject of the article. But if we change it so it did not
> > the article would be in error
> >
> >> And, thereforeS?
> >
> > Do no harm is not useful as an ethical foundation for wikipedia.
> >
> >> Did you not have your own? And if you did, what was it? And, if not, why
> >> not?
> >
> >
> > I'm not going to explain my entire system of ethics here. It isn't
> > really relevant in any case.
>
> From a human point of view, which is my point of view, this response is
> chilling.
>
> Marc Riddell

I don't know about that.  Geni has pointed out something very obvious,
that we can't please everybody.  And Geni's assertion that to a
certain extent it is unwise to graft ethics into the encyclopedia is,
unfortunately, true when you consider that acting on beliefs such as
"do no harm" runs into real trouble when you have facts that, if you
wish to preserve truth, may be harmful to some people.

I would re-phrase this all as "Why censor ourselves?".  All fact is
not positive, and trying to do away with those that are negative is
inherently un-wiki-like to me (those last two words added because
interpretations of Wikipedia's ideals will, of course, vary).

--Ryan

-- 
[[en:User:Merovingian]]