[WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of l...

[wjhonson at aol.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org>
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>; wjhonson at aol.com
Sent: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 6:04 pm
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding  
biographies of l...

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 5:05 PM,  &lt;WJhonson at aol.com&gt; wrote:


Right, Wrong, True, False, White, Black, and so on do not exist.  They

don't.  No existence.  They aren't there.  Nowhere.  Ok ...
Is that why the standard for Wikipedia is verifiability, and not 
truth?>>
-----------------

If I can cite to the New York Post stating that "Britney Spears likes 
to walk her poodles every morning at 8 AM" then I've done my job.  I do 
not have to interview Ms Spears myself to confirm that.  I do not need 
three separate sources to confirm it.  And if she were to show up, or 
some imposter and claim face-to-face that it's wrong and it should say 
"Dobermans" not poodles, not *only* should I do nothing to remove the 
sourced claim, but rather if I were to, that itself would be original 
research.  There is no way I can know if the imposter is truly Britney 
Spears and there is no way I can know if she has poodles or dobermans 
directly.

It is impossible to "take the word" of some random passerby and use 
that to modify content.  Any viewer can *contest* any article without 
sources.  We add a {{fact}} tag.  They can as well spout off20on the 
Talk page.  We however cannot be in the position of second guessing who 
anyone is or isn't.  If they feel strongly about it, they can post a 
rebuttal.  If they are not willing to type two sentences on an official 
site, but ARE willing to type a hundred in-project, than I submit it's 
*highly* unlikely to be the person in question in the first place.

IF they write a blog where they complain about process, that is simply 
more free publicity for us.  There is no such thing as bad publicity.

Will Johnson