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

[Thomas Dalton]

On 07/04/2008, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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).

How can we know if something is true or not? (With or without a
capital 't') You're into the realms of philosophy there. The best we
can do is show that something is verifiable. It's impossible to show
that it is true.

>  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?

The fact that it hasn't been changed is implicit evidence of a
consensus. That's how consensus decision making works in the majority
of cases on Wikipedia - someone does something and if no-one objects,
it sticks.