[Wikipedia-l] Re: Educating newcomers

[Mark Christensen]

> >Unfortunately that is not the case if Wikipedia still clings to the 
> >notion that it would cover human knowledge. The only requirement for 
> >that is to be humans. Tigers and whales can set up their "Tigers and 
> >Whales" encyclopedia.
> 
> No, what you should say is: That is not the case if Wikipedia 
> clings *only* to the notion that it will cover human 
> knowledge. But it *also* clings to certain other notions, 
> such as NPOV. POV writers can set up theire POV encyclopaedia.

Not to mention that there are some important assumptions about what we
are doing inherent in calling it "a compendium of human knowledge" --
not a compendium of "information about what humans think."  

Knowledge is more than just information, it's information we are
warranted in believing to be true.  Alternatively some philosophers
would say that knowledge is information we are justified in believing to
be true.   But no matter what you call it, there's something which must
be added to mere belief which makes it knowledge, and unless we are
willing to give up on knowledge all together we'll have to require
something more than mere humanity, we require accurate reporting of
known true information.  

One of the ways we know things to be true, is that the "experts"
investigate and tell us what they have discovered.  Everything I know
about subatomic partials I learned this way.  And since "western
education" has produced a large number of experts in a large number of
fields, we ought never discount the value they bring to our project.  At
the same time, there are experts on agricultural techniques who live in
Zambia and have never seen the inside of a "western school."  They have
a different knowledge set than the average agriculture student in the
U.S., but it they have real and valuable knowledge to bring to the
project.   Either way, being human is not what makes you able to
contribute to Wikipedia, it is the ablility to communicate knowledge
about some subject.