[WikiEN-l] Slashdot article

[Delirium]

Philip Sandifer wrote:
> We use  
> attribution and verifiability because, in empirical fact, they are  
> reasonably similar to truth. But in terms of actual use of Wikipedia  
> as a resource, people depend on that isomorphism between accuracy and  
> attribution. When that isomorphism breaks down, it poses a genuine  
> problem.
>   
A bit stronger than that, really. We use attribution and verifiability 
because the point of a Wikipedia article is to summarize external 
consensus on an issue, and attribution and verifiability are really the 
only ways of determining external consensus. They are often actually 
quite dissimilar to "truth", in that often we accurately summarize 
mutually contradictory information, such as two different academic 
fields' dissimilar takes on a subject, or religious and secular views of 
an issue.

More pragmatically, the reader has no particular reason to believe that 
a random Wikipedia editor (who could be anyone) has any particular 
personal insight into "the truth", so would prefer some sort of pointer 
to a more reliable source for potentially contentious statements, rather 
than "some guy on Wikipedia has investigated, and determined that all 
the sources are in fact wrong".

-Mark