[Wikipedia-l] Re: Sanger's memoirs

[Chad Perrin]

On Wed, Apr 20, 2005 at 07:35:23AM -0400, lmsanger at sbcglobal.net wrote:

[snip]

After everything that both you and Jimbo have said in this discussion so
far, Larry, it looks to me like he has a not invalid perspective on the
matter that perhaps grants you slightly less credit than other not
invalid perspectives might, but that you in turn are presenting your own
perspective that gathers more credit to you than most of these
perspectives would grant.  If you want to have a less stressful and more
productive discussion than you've been having, I'd recommend aiming for
a middle ground somewhere.

Every single point of dispute you've brought up so far looks like
nothing more than a difference in perspective, and thus a difference in
terminology used comes into being.  I don't think anyone has to be a
liar for the other to be right from his given perspective in this
matter.  I think it's much more likely that, in your excitement over the
idea of a wiki-based encyclopedia, you missed Jimbo's offhand comment
about someone else that you apparently didn't know well enough to even
remember having mentioned wikis as a model for encyclopedia development.

I prefer to think that neither of you are lying, and there's a simple,
easy, reasonable explanation for how all this disagreement might have
arisen from nothing but a difference of perspective.  In fact, the very
existence of this disagreement as it is occurring seems further evidence
that it's nothing but a difference in perspective, from where I'm
sitting, because Jimbo is trying to point out where the two of you have
a difference of perspective and you're arguing that only one of you can
be right.  This seems to be a fairly good indicator that, from Jimbo's
perspective, what you called amicable discussion he might have seen as
arguments that he let you win back in the days of Nupedia.  You seem
argumentative to me, on this, and if your social proclivities run this
way I'm not surprised that Jimbo would have called policy discussions
"argument", even if you did not -- and if he "let [you] win" these
arguments, whether for the peace or for reason of coming to agree with
you, I'm not surprised that you might have seen the exercise as being
more agreeable and less argumentative.

So, again, perhaps you should aim to balance biases, perspectives --
points of view -- in this matter.  Try to see the other guy's side of
things.  From what I've seen here, it looks like Jimbo is doing so
already, though he clearly doesn't feel constrained to adopt your view
as his own, which is fine: he does seem quite willing to acknowledge
that you have a valid perspective, though, while you insist on
failing to acknowledge the same about his perspective.  That, I think,
is what sustains this unnecessary debate, and it suggests immediately to
me how to smooth the troubled waters: see, acknowledge, and respect the
differing perspective.

You know -- like an NPOV solution, despise the term though you might.

Then again, that could just be me.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]