[WikiEN-l] English Wikipedia Policy as sovereign law

[Peter Ansell]

On 23/04/2008, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 22/04/2008, David Goodman <dgoodmanny at gmail.com> wrote:
>  > In the long run, we avoid harming people in general by telling the
>  >  truth.
>
>
> I don't see how that works. If the truth is negative, telling the
>  truth does harm. The net result to society is positive (we generally
>  consider having a free, neutral encyclopaedia a good thing), but that
>  doesn't mean we haven't harmed the subject.
>

If the article is properly sourced then all of the opinions and facts
expressed in the article are derived from outside sources so they are
not being harmed by unique information in wikipedia, just their
perception of wikipedia being more influential than scattered news
articles and books. If wikipedia doesn't say anything new any harm due
to the compilation of facts is immaterial IMO. Unless a court rules
that random facts can't be combined in properly sourced
secondary/tertiary sources due to the effect of the combination alone
then they have no case.

Peter