[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's role in the Palin selection

[Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia)]

When I posted a draft decision in the "Sarah Palin protection wheel war"
case, I proposed a principle reading:

"Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and is [[WP:NOT|not to be used]] for
ideological warfare or to score political points for or against a candidate
for electoral office or political party. Slanted edits motivated by
political or ideological factors or by personal respect or distaste for a
candidate violate the core policy of [[WP:NPOV|NPOV]], our guidelines
against [[WP:COI|conflicts of interest]], and in many cases the BLP policy
as well. Nonetheless, especially as elections approach, many articles
relating to candidates for office are subjected to these types of
inappropriate editing. Just as readers are cautioned not to rely on the
content of Wikipedia articles for medical, legal, meteorological, or other
advice, so too, voters should not rely upon the content of Wikipedia
articles as the basis for their voting decisions."

The comments on the workshop were to the effect that this didn't belong in
an ArbCom decision, so I didn't include it in the final decision, but it's
still true.

Newyorkbrad
On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 11:24 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>wrote:

> I quite like the last sentence:
>
> "In a post-Wikiepdia [sic] universe, in which the quantity of
> information may too easily be conflated for its quality, such mistakes
> may be all the easier to succumb to."
>
> I think that's an excellent point. People using Wikipedia need to know
> what they are using - a fantastic source for wide ranging information,
> but not a specialist resource that can be trusted to have everything
> you need to know about a given subject (and have it it correct). There
> must be better ways to research politicians (political who's whos,
> looking at actual polls, reading transcripts of their actual speeches,
> reading manifestos, etc.) than looking them up in a general
> encyclopaedia.
>
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