[WikiEN-l] "Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement"

[Ken Arromdee]

On Wed, 4 Apr 2012, Charles Matthews wrote:
>> "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia" constantly gets misinterpreted to mean "we
>> may never allow other concerns to take precedence over being
>> encyclopediac".  This is wrong.
> Mmm. There is a certain rather blinkered singlemindedness that can set in
> with some people, so perhaps I know what you are driving at. But why do you
> think such people would be better at interpreting other attempts to define
> the scope of the mission? The problem is surely not so much in the wording,
> as in the approach.
>
> In fact I'm in favour of the rearguard action that regards the pressure to
> define key concepts ever more precisely as the expulsion of common sense.

Common sense is long gone.  All we can do is try to make sure its
replacement doesn't have too many holes in it.

I didn't pull this out of thin air, after all--I was replying to someone
who, with complete seriousness, said that we shouldn't delete a BLP because
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.

I think this is a specific case of the fact that we want the rules to be
strict and not subject to dispute when going after troublemakers or settling
arguments--but if you can tell a troublemaker "we don't want to hear your
excuses, a rule violation is a rule violation", someone else can tell us
the same thing.