"Anonymity is the basis of society." Ottava, 31 July 2008

Itsa TechDirty Article…

The Question Is Whether WP's Irresponsibility Is Good For Society

I'm tempted to say "'Nuff Said", but maybe a bit of e-laboration wouldn't be out of place.

The question that people ought to be asking is not whether anonymity is good for Wikipedia, but whether Wikipedia's anonymity is good for Society.

Wikipedia is a place for social, moral, and intellectual adolescents, for people who haven't yet taken the step to a level of maturity where they naturally choose to take responsibility — for what they write and for how they treat other people.

There are plenty of reasons for having low pressure environments where people can escape, temporarily, from the pressures of full-fledged adult responsibility, so long as they can do that in a way that harms neither themselves nor others. That is why we have chat-rooms and holodecks. But a general purpose, wannabe reliable encyclopedia and all-round news source is not one of those places. Sadly, all too sadly, far too many Wikipediots have yet to learn the difference. Whether they know it or not, Wikipedia space cadets harm both themselves and others by staying too long in the moral and intellectual vacuum known as Wikipedia.

Jon Awbrey