[WikiEN-l] Otto Middleton (a morality tale)

[Ian Woollard]

On 12/05/2011, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Mark,
>
> I agree that "verifiability, not truth" has done a good job in keeping out
> original research of the kind you describe. I just think that the situation
> with regard to OR is no longer what it was five years ago -- there has long
> been a critical mass of editors who know that Wikipedia is not the right
> place to add interesting bits of personal, but unpublished, knowledge.
>
> When I started editing Wikipedia, I had to think long and hard about that
> sentence, "verifiability not truth", and I appreciated the insight. I just
> think its time has come and gone, and that it does more harm than good now.

You see I would argue precisely the opposite; I think we *should* have
an Otto Middleton article where we explain that there was once a
belief that this dog existed, but it has since been disproven, and
link to the various sources.

That way if somebody believed in the dog, and searches for it later,
the Wikipedia article would pop up and set the record straight; even
if the various newspapers had deleted it from their sites out of
embarassment or whatever.

And I think this is part and parcel of verifiability, not truth thing.
It's a *good* idea to include things that are actually *wrong* like
Otto Middleton as it gives us a place to point this out.

> A.

-- 
-Ian Woollard