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

[Ian Woollard]

On 28/05/2009, Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 27 May 2009, Ian Woollard wrote:
>> Please explain how removing publicly available, legal, verifiable,
>> information from the wikipedia is common sense again?
>
> Because whether it's common sense to remove the material doesn't depend
> on whether it's publically available, legal, or verifiable.

You didn't answer the question. I want to know why legal information
that can be googled up in a minute or so shouldn't be in the
wikipedia.

> (And anyway, it's only verifiable under ideal circumstances.

Straw man.

> If we have it, it will get vandalized.

Unlike... the rest of the wikipedia? And nobody ever checks for and
removes vandalism of course.

> The vandalized version, of course, won't be verifiable, but it's still going to stick around for a while.)

So on that 'logic' we should remove all information that even
theoretically could be harmful from the wikipedia immediately, because
ummm... it might get vandalised!

So I think we should start with the hydrogen article. Knowledge of
hydrogen could get people killed! It's an EXPLOSIVE GAS!!!! We should
definitely remove the flammability limits- it's heinous that people
should know how much hydrogen you need to burn it!!! People could die.

Then there's all the metals. A lot of those are poisonous! Copper,
lead, cadmium; somebody could poison somebody! People could die.

And the articles on flight, somebody might try to build an aircraft,
and die!!! Aircraft pages need to go! People could die.

Do you want to do the AFDs or should I? I reckon we should have maybe
10-20% of the wikipedia left before we've finished, flower arranging
(without using any of those dangerous pins though, you could prick
your finger and get an infection and die) and so forth. I think we
need to do away with all the geology articles, people might throw
rocks at each other. Maybe drawing and stuff about crayons can stay,
provided we can prove that people usually don't eat too many.

In fact, perhaps we need to just shut the whole wikipedia down-
somebody could choke on the crayons. People could die.

>> I think this is madness. And further, I don't have to follow it
>> anyway. You're espousing censorship, but it's a *core value* that the
>> wikipedia is *not* censored.
>
> IAR is a core value, and supersedes all other core values.  It's never
> legitimate to say "we should ignore common sense because our core values
> don't allow for it".

Common sense is the *lowest* level of intelligence. Has anyone you
know, actually died or got injured from the wikipedia, ever?

The wikipedia itself is not common sense.

-- 
-Ian Woollard

"All the world's a stage... but you'll grow out of it eventually."