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

[Carl Beckhorn]

On Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 02:57:01AM -0600, Todd Allen wrote:
> I think you have an excellent point here, and this brings us back to
> the previous point: Which one of us decides what is accurate? Why
> should any of us be doing that? 

Ans: we jointly determine article content by discussion on the talk 
page. Evaluating sources and deciding what to include is a crucial part 
of the writing process, which is why we all do it whenever we write 
something.

> In the absence of a different source
> offering a counterargument, what you are left with is "This is wrong
> because I say so," and allowing that is simply not sustainable,
> especially for contentious areas. 

I'm sure everyone in this discussion is already familiar with that 
argument. It is true that, for contentious articles, we may fall back to 
that position as a practical means of compromise.  It also aids with 
neutral point of view for article topics which have several differing 
viewpoints.

But we shouldn't forget that this is only a practical means of 
compromise for particularly contentious articles, not a goal in itself.  
For most articles, editors are able to come to agreement on the talk 
page about whether a particular claim is accurate and about whether it 
should be included.  In some sense, articles where the editors won't or 
can't come to such agreement represent a breakdown or failure of the 
wiki process. We shouldn't write our policies in a way that encourages 
this dysfunctional situation.

 - Carl