It might be a good thread were it based on a better line of argument.
You are making too much of an artifact of the drafting of a Wikipedia policy. The intent was clearly to prevent 1., bootstrapping, ie, writing an article and using it as a 'reliable source' for another article, and 2., reliance on content of a wiki article which is subject to change. There might also have been other ways to manipulate the software and policies to the detriment of the project.
The main thrust of the policy was to compel the use of reliable sources. Rather than make a policy specific to WP or other project wikis, it was much simpler to simply declare that WP was not a reliable source.
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 1:55 PM Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Dennis,
I started this thread to discuss both conduct and content policies on Wikipedia, and indeed how the two interact. Wikipedia is a project to build an encyclopaedia. By its own criteria, encyclopaedias are reliable sources and Wikipedia is not a reliable source; hence by its own criteria, Wikipedia is not an encyclopaedia. That is, it is currently in a state of failure with respect to its own mission.
One of the reasons for that state of failure is indeed the failure to provide a collegial working atmosphere.
Thrapostibongles
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 2:19 PM Dennis During dcduring@gmail.com wrote:
"One (and not the most important) pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being
in
a failed state is precisely that it does not, by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable
source
"
You have made this argument more than once. That might be a piece of evidence seems both wrong and not relevant to the sense in which people here as saying WP has failed, which is as a welcoming, "safe" environment for contributors and would-be contributors.
It is good policy to make sure that contributors reach out to other sources, even when one believes that Wikipedia is as reliable as the average tertiary source we allow as a reference. It prevents us from relying exclusively on what can easily turn out to be a very narrow set
of
points of view. Does/did the Encyclopedia Britanica cite other EB
articles
as references rather than include them as "see alsos"?
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 8:27 AM Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Vito
This rather tends to support my point. One (and not the most
important)
pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being in a failed state is precisely
that
it does not , by the community's own admission, constitute a reliable source:whereas "Reputable tertiary sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TERTIARY, such as introductory-level university textbooks, almanacs, and encyclopedias,
may
be cited". So Wikipedia fails in its aim of being an encyclopaedia on
one
of the most important tests one could imagine, namely reliability.
And a
reason for that is its lack of effective content management policies
and
mechanisms to put them into effect (in the old days we called that
being
an
editor, but that word on Wikipedia now is more or less a redundant
synonym
for contributor).
Now suppose that Wikipedia had effective editorial policies and
processes
that allowed it to assume the status of a reliable source, just like
the
encyclopaedia it aims to be. You say that even in that situation, it
would
be easy to manipulate. On that assumption, how much easier it must be
to
"trick" it today when it has no such effective policies and processes
in
place!
Thrapostibongles
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