Da Capo Al Segno —

Let's try this again from the top …

That's the trouble with self-moderation —
You always have to do it yourself —

Here's the record of a few exchanges that were accidentally on topic somehow …

The ethical thing to do is to stop the unethical thing.

I mean, that sounds too simple (and it probably is), but I can't think of anything else. Perhaps even more elaboration is needed?

Let's call it a start.

Of course we could have a full-blowin'-in-the-wind philosophical discussion about «What Is Ethics, Anywho?» and «What Is Ethical, Anyway?», but I had been thinking that we could at least start out from the common sense notions of ethics that everyone came in with, however diverse those ideas might be when push comes to shove, as it always does, eventually.

I'm not sure what has thrown so many Reviewers into such a sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought brand of Introspection lately, but I really thought that the first questions that came up would be more to the point of what it means to say a thing like, «The WikiMedia Foundation Provides An Unethical Service», in the first place.

Jon Awbrey

The ethical problem with WMF is that it's pretending to do one thing, which is "provide all of human knowledge to those poor people in Africa"....which never fails to remind me of my Mother telling me to finish my liver because of all of the poor starving children in Africa....Now, if any of the so-called poor starving children in Africa had actually been there, I would have been more than happy to give them my liver and any additional ketchup that they would need to get the awful stuff down.

These days, I like liver a lot (I can't understand why I could not eat it then), but anybody who uses the same tactics that my mother used to try to get me to eat liver is not someone that I would trust with my wallet.

The point is this; Wikipedia looks just fine until Jimbo goes out of the room and you can finally look under the carpet to see that the floor boards are rotting. The reason for this is that the central idea is a lie. To solve the problem, we have to expose the lie.

It's really quite simple.

(and we have to stop plotting in secret forums which everybody is going to find out about anyway, since that's just more of same for the WP folks...)

I've tried to remember things about Kant, John Stuart Mill, and even Ayn Rand, from college, but I've never understood why one has to have a specific ethical construct or standard. I tend to combine the ethics of Christianity and Mill and the more I read about Rand, I agree with some of her assertions about individualism. I honestly don't sit down and say that I have a Kantian ethic, or a Utilitarian ethic, or even a Randist ethic. Utilitarianism is though what I've tended to lean towards i.e "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." The best action is the one that will result in the most happiness for all concerned. The ends justifies the means.

I can't honestly say that I agree 100% with any particular ethic. I find that the moment I make up my mind about a certain path, something happens that forces me to reevaluate my position on things.

I heard one college professor who posited a situation where a boy was drowning in a pool. The assignment was what should you do and why should you do?
Well, my friend's obvious answer was that you save the child because it is the right thing to do.
The professor's response was "But why did you save the child? You can't say because its right because no one just does anything because it is right. There is a reason for everything. You must have a ethical standard or position that explains why the child should be saved."
I suppose that means no one's truly altruistic.

From a utilitarian ethic, WP's lies result in unhappiness because lies lead to deception and deception leads to anger and anger leads to hate and hate... leads to suffering! Some will be unhappy with WP's removal but the ends justify the means as it will liberate people from WP's false promises of a reliable reference work. The majority will enjoy this and be able to look for actual reliable sources.

Hence, from a utilitarian standpoint, getting rid of WP or reforming it would be the best option.

I hope this is what you were going for, Jonny?

Yes, the element of "Acquiring Goods Or Services Under False Pretenses" is one of the big bugs in the soup.

The similarity of Wikipedia to your run of the mill confidence game was a big e-piphany that hit me between the eyes way back last year.

Many people of good will contribute a lot of time and a lot of work to Wikipedia, but they don't do it for nothing, that is, for no reason — they do it on account of a multitude of promises that are made or implied by the collective management of the site.

No matter how hard the rank and file contributors in the trenches try to keep up their end of the bargain, Management "welches out" and lets them down time and time again.

Jon Awbrey

I don't think either alternative is a realistic goal.

As long as WP continues as it has, it will continue to slough off alienated participants of one stripe or another.

A more realistic goal would be to provide a beneficial service to those alienated Wikipedians who come to WR in search of redress.

Some will arrive carrying unhealthy levels of anger or bitterness. Some will arrive in pursuit of responsive agendas that have little chance of success.

What beneficial service can WR provide to alienated Wikipedians of varying stripes and grievances?

Now you know that I tend to abstraction, and it's very tempting to Fly↑↑And Away In A Beautiful Balloon, but I'm going to make a concerted effort to keep my feet on the ground far a while.

There are some things that I really don't like in this world — Falsehood, Mystification, People Who Mis-Educate Others.

As a person who cares deeply about education, information, inquiry, and intelligence, a good portion of my life has been dedicated to furthering and improving all of the ways that we have to make ourselves wiser in every way that human beings can be wise.

Projects that further those goals are good for us. Projects that obstruct those goals are not good for us.

Wikipedia promised to be a part of making people wiser — that's what the sum of human knowledge is all about, as anyone knows who truly cares about it — but Wikipedia has failed to live up to its promises.

If Wikipedian Powermongers would listen to the critical feedback that people of good will constantly try give them — people with considerable content knowledge and people with lifelong practical expertise as well — then the Wikipedia Project might just be able to get back on course to its espoused goal.

But they show less and less signs of doing that with every day that goes by.

The truth hurts sometimes. Ordinary people learn to live with that, because the alternative to facing the facts is to become stupider and stupider as time goes on. And all that brings is greater pain in the long run. But Wikipedian Leadership has become hopelessly addicted to ban buttons as their pain-killer of convenience.

Worse than that, they are getting developing minds hooked on the same cop-outs, the same dope.

That is not a service that we should be supporting.

That is a service that we should be opposing.

Jon Awbrey

I'm studying library science and I suppose that my "wikis = wicked" panic attack was that projects like WP (not all wikis in general) are leading people astray. Information skills are suffering as the Internet and Google and WP offer to have what people desire (and we all know that isn't so). There's a lot of information out there in cyberspace. Some of it is very good, but how do people separate the chaff from the wheat? WP claims to do so. And that is a lie.

I tried long ago to "fix" an article only to revert it back, because I realized I was no expert and I did not know what I was doing. I went to Google to find a fact about the subject in the article and the first page was the very page I just edited. It scared me that someone like a student may have come across that article and took what I had written as fact when I myself was not sure at all.

I thought when I edited WP that people who actually knew about the subject would come along eventually and help. No one came despite my concerns on the talkpage. Instead, those more interested in prose came and did little to help with the facts I was struggling with. Then, one of the first articles I saw behind the curtain was our friend Alienus wrestling with a LazloWalrus. I thought "This place is crazy. POV pushers, no fact checkers, lordly administrators..." I found this place just by chance while lurking amidst Alienus's arbitration case and finding some link here (back when no one was thinking of "bad sites").

I hope this place can be a source to help information skill proponents like me show people why WP is not the sum of all knowledge. When people have good research and information skills, they'll see WP for what it is: an unreliable source. I hope this forum can be a place to direct people when they say "Don't worry. I'll just look it up on the WP."

Perhaps we could collaborate to co-author a definitive article on these issues and submit it for peer-review and publication in a respected magazine, journal, or professional society conference.