[WikiEN-l] Another Media and Wikipedia blackout on NYT reporter in Afghanistan

[Bryan Derksen]

Fred Bauder wrote:
>> Fred Bauder wrote:
>>>> We are supposed to be community-driven.
>>>> Where is the community consensus on media blackouts?
>>>> Link please.
>>> Interesting, as there is a consensus. It just isn't written down. Do no
>>> harm; any problem with that?
>> At the very least consensus can't be said to be obvious on this, IMO.
>> The "we should conceal information that could potentially harm people"
>> argument didn't hold much weight in the recently-concluded Rorschach
>> Wars.
> 
> I didn't follow that, but I suspect they've been out there for a long
> time. And using the same blots for decades is absurd anyway.

And yet nevertheless there were editors who were arguing that exposing
people to the ink blots was likely to cause serious harm. I'm not
claiming the two cases are exactly equivalent, just enough so that I
wouldn't say that it's reasonable to assume the opposite consensus in a
related matter without looking for evidence first.

> I think there are universal principles that we follow. Failures in one
> instance or another is to be expected.

The problem is that I don't think your principles are necessarily
"universal". You're just assuming they are.

And even if "do no harm" really _was_ a universal principle that we all
followed, it's still open to debate whether reporting information like
this actually does cause harm.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 259 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20090910/e3f9c1f9/attachment.pgp