[Wikipedia-l] Re: Educating newcomers

[bderksen]

>===== Original Message From "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> =====
>The problem with being a relativist, as I'm sure you've already found, is 
that you have no grounds for doing anything. The standard is always your own 
desires.

Only in some interpretations of relativism. :) A less naiive approach to 
relitavism recognizes that other people do exist, and that those other people 
do have the ability to influence you - in the case of Wikipedia, by editing 
the things that you do. So, although one might full well believe that one 
should have the "right" to do anything one wants to on Wikipedia, the fact 
remains that community standards _will_ be enforced because the rest of us 
have the ability to stop you. I see no fundamental problem with applying this 
through mechanisms other than mere editing and reversion, all the way up to 
full-blown banning in extreme cases.
So community standards do matter, whether they're "official" or not and 
whether they match your own desires or not.