http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/808

That was written in November 2004, coincidentally in the same month during which I made my first edits on Wikipedia. Since then the project has grown to several times the original size, the quality of the articles has improved greatly, and many more editors have participated.

No doubt you’re aware of the famous study published in Nature where subject specialists were asked to look at Wikipedia articles on science topics and compare them to the Britannica articles. The quality of the writing was always higher in Britannica, but the number of factual mistakes in the Wikipedia articles was in the same ball park as in the Britannica articles. Britannica issued a rebuttal, but could not change the facts.

Wikipedia has many editors who share your views. The deal is that they get to write facts, including the facts about opinions. They don’t get to make up their own facts and insert them into the article.

I have a very simple philosophy: everyone can contribute and as such everyone should have the opportunity to contribute. You appear to have entirely the opposite viewpoint … only those you agree with should contribute.

I have the view that where there is a disagreement, both sides (or the many sides as is usual) should be heard. Indeed, I think we should encourage debate, encourage those who would not normally speak up or who are repressed to express their views. You clearly have the view, that where there is a disagreement it is only your view that should be heard.

Of course I perfectly respect your right to express your own views even if that view is that I shouldn’t be heard.

5,4,3,2,1 …. this message will be deleted because you don’t ever accept views you don’t agree with.

This is quite a controversial subject. As a heterosexual male, I must admit that I do still feel a little uncomfortable seeing two men kissing in public and I really do not consider myself homophobic in the slightest, it’s just am instinctive reaction.

I guess it’s going to take some time before the ale-swilling, pub-frequenting demographic get used to public displays of gay affection, especially in “their” pub. I doubt there would have been as much fuss if the couple had been hetero?

Btw, a while back you posted a comment about wanting to make sweet love to my beer, Angry Yank (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/04/the-warm-beer-chart/comment-page-1/#comment-204996) so thanks for the, er, kind words!

I wonder, do they mean the programme 10 O’Clock Live, which is due to start on Channel4 on January 20?

“A weekly, live comedy and current affairs show hosted by David Mitchell, Jimmy Carr, Charlie Brooker and Lauren Laverne”

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/10-oclock-live

http://tinyurl.com/channel4complaint

An unsourced article is unverifiable. It must not exist because it contravenes almost every policy we have, not just verifiability. Without sources, we don’t know whether it’s original research, and we have no way of evaluating whether it’s reasonably neutral (film star X is the most popular of his generation–says who?)

So we can get rid of this problem quickly and easily, without prejudice to those who genuinely intend to create the well sourced, neutral and verifiable articles we should perhaps have had on the topic all along.

Further, doing this would leave us with more time to spend on the problems you have found in other biographical articles which are harder to assess because they do cite some source which must be examined and evaluated.

OK I won’t take you literally on “If Wikipedia is harming somebody, name the article and it will be zapped.” I think we both know that there are things that people would like airbrushed out of their past, but you and I are both concerned about people using Wikipedia to lie about other people or just as bad only cover the negative issues.

As for “encourage all admins to grab a whole bunch of these [unsourced BLP] articles, do a revision check, and delete the useless things before they bite somebody.” I’ve been involved in this unreferenced Biography saga all year, at the first RFC I was one of the first to suggest that the solution was to tighten the rules about the creation of new unreferenced BLPs. When we implemented that I was involved in the project to trawl through all 12,000 that didn’t have project tags other than to wikiproject biography, check there was nothing obviously harmful in them and tag them for relevant projects. As an admin I’ve done over 5,000 deletions on Wikipedia, many of them attack pages, but to be honest my deletions per wikihour fell when I was trawling the unreferenced BLPs because I find it much easier to find contentious material elsewhere.