List:       wikitech-l
Subject:    Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: LiquidThreads
From:       David Reynolds <naeblis () kc ! rr ! com>
Date:       2005-11-04 0:21:06
Message-ID: 436AA972.6080100 () kc ! rr ! com
[Download RAW message or body]

Ivan Krstic wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
> 
>>Secondarily I want to be able to fix spellings, in the faint hope that
>>it will help some people learn better spelling. Again, the only people
>>who would object to this would be people who can't spell and are
>>therefore unsuitable for writing an encyclopedia anyway.
> 
> 
> Totally broken reasoning.
> 
> 
>>I've heard many reasons for maliciously changing an article. Yet
>>articles on Wikipedia tend to get better. Interesting, innit?
> 
> 
> That's an irrelevant non-answer to Ryan's question.
> 
> 
>>No, the purpose of this was to test your reaction. You fell right for it
>>exactly the way I expected: you picked up only on the emotional side of
>>the paragraph (taking it as an insult)
> 
> 
> Do you understand how conceited this makes you sound?
> 
> 
>>And this highlights what I mean: you (and many other people) only object
>>to being able to edit comments because it somehow "feels" wrong. You
>>can't really say why it *is* wrong. 
> 
> 
> You need to relax, and start spending less time writing
> borderline-offensive e-mail to people who are trying to reason
> constructively, and more time thinking about what they're saying. I can
> tell you exactly why it *is* wrong: comments are not Wikipedia articles,
> even if you seem to be constantly confounding the two.
> 
> A Wikipedia article isn't signed by a single person's name. It doesn't
> represent the views of an individual, but tries to become an objective
> reflection of its topic. As Brion puts it, a wiki is a place where you
> let wackos edit your site, and with luck, the good wackos outnumber the
> bad. The iterative editing process is a good way to ensure eventual NPOV
> conformance.
> 
> Comments are absolutely different. They are written and signed by a
> single person, represent only that person's views, have no requirement
> of adherence to a NPOV, and that means that essentially none of the
> reasons that Wikipedia articles are editable by everyone apply to them.
> If allowing comment cross-editing was in any way beneficial, the popular
> web-based discussion forums with tens of millions of posts would have,
> without a doubt, adopted such a model quite a while ago. There's a
> reason they haven't done it.
> 
> I am not interested in continuing this discussion further, so please
> refrain from writing a snide reply that questions my intelligence so as
> to "test my reaction".
> 

Agreed. This discussion has degenerated, on Timwi's side at least, to ad 
hominem attacks and straw man arguments. Why do you persist in saying 
that opinions on talk pages have the same ownership/POV claims as 
articles in mainspace?

David, new but dismayed

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