[WikiEN-l] History of "Verifiability, not truth"

[Philip Sandifer]

I've been working on figuring out the history of this bit of wording,  
since it's, on the surface, transparently untrue (we, in fact, do want  
to provide truth as well - not necessarily big-T absolute truth, but  
certainly the little-t truth that is a synonym for "accuracy" - i.e.  
the word as normal people use it).

Originally, WP: V explicitly called for accuracy: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Verifiability&oldid=1230684 
. The term was removed in a language tweak in 2005. The phrase  
"verifiability, not truth" came from a draft revision of WP:NOR in  
December of 2004.

As far as I can tell, there has *never* been a consensus discussion of  
the phrasing "verifiability, not truth," nor was there a discussion  
about removing the statement that Wikipedia strives to be accurate  
from WP:V. These changes were inserted, albeit years ago, without  
discussion, and long-standing principles were pushed to the side and  
minimized in favor of increasingly context-free restatements of the  
changes. But I cannot find *any* evidence that the position "accuracy  
is not a primary goal of Wikipedia" has ever garnered consensus.

Is anyone aware of a discussion to this end that I am not? Is there  
actually a point where we clearly and deliberately decided that the  
goal of Wikipedia is not accuracy?

-Phil