[WikiEN-l] Can sweet reason still work on en:wp? Occasionally.

[stevertigo]

Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> Obviously, pursuing this further isn't a good use of either of our time.

Well I appreciate the concession - it takes a serious amount of
integrity to acknowledge that previous arguments were "not a good use
of our time," and I commend you for it.

Boldly moving on to deal with the issue at hand about IAR now means
just agreeing on some simple and basic facts: Sanger wrote BOLD in
10-01, and Crocker wrote IAR five months later in 03-02. Due to the
former's issues of stature here, and the latter's status as a
techno-savior of the project, I understand that there may be some
lingering geek preference for the latter. But of the two BOLD is far
more fitting of the title of "pillar."

The problem seems to be that Crocker wrote IAR at a time when we only
had "rules." I did not rip off Anthere's "Uncivility" essay from meta
to create "Civility" just to be a "rule" - I created it to be a
'statement of principle,' and a good one - one that stands as our
re-conceptualization of the Golden Rule. It became obvious somewhere
around 10-03 that, in spite of our geek-utopian conceptions of "wiki"
and openness, we needed an actual moral and social principle. (In
addition to the editorial principle of Objectivity/NPOV).

So just as no amount of nihilism or atheism can negate the Golden
Rule, no abundance of IAR-droids can ever negate Civility. If Civility
is to continue to be regarded as a "pillar," second only to
Objectivity/Neutrality, then IAR, clever though it claims to be
(apparently hard to understand too), is simply not on the same level
as Civility or any other "pillar."

Regards,
-Stevertigo