[Wikipedia-l] Autofellatio

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 11:45:45 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
<jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I totally agree with Andre here.
> 
> I think it's important for us to take a middle path here.  (Big
> surprise coming from me, huh?)  We can't be complete cultural
> relativists and say "anything goes in any wikipedia as long as the
> participants agree" -- this would be the end of neutrality.  At the
> same time, we must not be complete cultural *imperialists* and assume
> that exactly identical decisions have to be made everywhere,
> particularly on sensitive matters that have a strong cultural
> component.

But is it imperialistic to say that one side of the issue does not
have the right to completely exclude the other side with the only
justification being that the one side believes they have a commandment
from god to rid the world of such ideas?

Is it imperialism to ask that others not use the project to suppress
the works of others to further their personal/cultural agenda?
 
> Andre wrote:
> > A policy that says that we will exclude the same on all languages,
> > says that we don't trust the Wikipedias to make their own choices.
> 
> I think that's very well said.

As I said in my reply to Andre, then why do we have rules at all?
It is acceptable to set the ground rules, and ask those who do not
wish to play by the rules to go start their own game... and I think
that a tremendous rule that is baked into wikipedia is the idea of
neutrality, a rule that is violated when we allow some editors to deny
the ability of other editors to contribute useful information due to
personally held ideas on goodness/evilness of the information rather
than reasons not forbidden by our basic rules.

If we accept a group of authors in France erasing the works of other
french wikipedia authors because the majority find the idea
acceptable, then will we allow for the exclusion of evolution when the
larger part of the US biblical literalists movement finally find
wikipedia?