[WikiEN-l] ArbCom Legislation

[Steve Summit]

Bryan Derksen wrote:
>Ian Woollard wrote:
>> I would argue that, under the circumstances it is the other sources
>> that give it undue weight, not the wikipedia.
>
> How do you propose to judge this without resorting to original research?

Via some evolving and difficult-to-define policy which we are
nevertheless attempting to define here.

There's a not-terribly-tasteful joke which I think is at least
a little bit apropos here:  "Why does a dog lick his balls?"
"Because he can."

Just because a fact is true and we can report it, does not mean
that we have to report it, that we must report it, that we are
compelled by some robot-like imperative to report it.  We can
choose, or not choose, to report facts as we wish.  Some of
the choices are made by objective or externally-sourced means,
but some of them are subjective.  Perhaps this is one of those
subjective decisions, and perhaps that makes it difficult or
even scary to think about, but the appropriate response is
not to resort to a robotlike all-or-nothing mentality.

Remember: Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of
information.  Publishing hurtful information about people can
hurt people.  And "sorry we helped fuck your life up, dude, but
we don't care; we're Wikipedia and we have to publish everything
that's true and well-sourced" is not a valid excuse.