[WikiEN-l] Reputation: false or true god?

[Ray Saintonge]

The Mangoe wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 3:28 AM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>   
>>  Reputation is a false God that I have no intention of worshipping.  Most
>>  of it is an excuse for POV pushing.
>>     
> BIG objection here. Reputation is our reliability; if we aren't in
> some sense reliable, our work has no reason for existence. Listening
> to external criticism is essential.
No, accurate information is the foundation of reliability.  Reputation 
is about what the neighbours think.  If an article about a Pokémon 
character is accurate within its own context, that's as much as we can 
expect of it.  Sure we listen to external criticism, and I do take their 
criticism of deletionist shenanigans seriously, but that has nothing to 
do with reliability.  Whether an article might be considered by some as 
trivial or lacking in notability says nothing about its reliability.

More than anything criticisms of Wikipedia's reliability have relied on 
the prejudicial premise that something put together by a gang of 
amateurs can't possibly be reliable.  The reaction of many Wikipedians 
to that has led to a massive campaign of overcompensation.  A public 
reputation of reliability can only be built eventually over time.  If 
some elements of the public are so tied to their preconceptions of 
unreliability they are not about to waste a lot of time on anything 
where they would prove themselves wrong.  I suppose the overcompensators 
are cut from the same cloth.

Ec