[WikiEN-l] Can we think about trying the "show" solution?

[Andrew Gray]

On 22/02/2008, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:

>  > Conversely, it is deeply offensive to me that we are pandering to
>  >  people who feel "fuck 'em, free speech" is a valid standpoint to hold
>  >  in a project founded on *neutrality* and *editorial consensus* - we
>  >  are in danger of just placating the kneejerk political views of a
>  >  subset of our editors, I guess.
>
> As far as I'm aware, we've had an image of Muhammad's face in our
>  article for many years. A desire to maintain the status quo (which is
>  based upon our NPOV and no censorship policy) and to stand by our
>  policy is not "fuck 'em, free speech".

Yet we do have people arguing for the retention of the image on
exactly those grounds (well, not in those words) *as well* as the more
reasonable ones. Likewise, we have people arguing for the removal on
sane editorial grounds, *as well* as the ones yelling blasphemy.

On both sides, there are reasonable people and unreasonable people.

My point is that if we call one position pandering to the extremists
on that side, it's just as logical to call the other position
pandering to the opposite set of extremists...

...in other words, *neither* position is "pandering". There are
rational reasons to do either. The fact that there are also
unreasonable demands to do either doesn't make picking one of them
'giving in'.

[As to the status quo being NPOV... I think this is a fallacious
assumption to make on a binary issue, but that's another post. What
we're seeing here is quite possibly an anomalous case where our normal
approach to NPOV, which is basically to smooth things out, can't
apply...]

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk