[WikiEN-l] Docs look to Wikipedia for condition info: Manhattan Research

[Ken Arromdee]

On Mon, 25 May 2009, David Goodman wrote:
> Basic information that anyone can understand is what is known to be
> safe, and what is known to be dangerous. The more directly we present
> it, the more we fulfill our mandate. NOT CENSORED, frankly, and that
> should settle it. Some people think it applies only to sexual images,
> but that's just a function of our culture preoccupation with them.
> There are more important things to avoid censoring. If the information
> is known reliably, we have no justification for not publishing it. The
> very meaning of NOT CENSORED is that information is always preferred
> to ignorance.  The key word is "always".

This is a prime example of how rules are taken to be everything on Wikipedia,
and how common sense is ignored.

Wikipedia should not provide information that is likely to lead to harm.
If there's a rule which says that we must provide it, then that rule is wrong.
This is so even if the rule is called a "mandate".  Mandates, rules, or
whatever are never supposed to be applied without common sense.

This is actually similar to some BLP issues.  We don't have an article on
Brian Peppers because "not censored" doesn't mean that we shouldn't remove
things that have impact on the real world.