Re: Please help with wikipedia's article on Arabic Numerals that's falling victim to vandalism

On 18 Dec 2005 16:21:30 -0800, "david petry"
<david_lawrence_petry@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>
>Ben Rudiak-Gould wrote:
>> david petry wrote:
>> > You bring up some really good points. I guess the Wikipedia eventually
>> > will be seen as a really interesting experiment that was,
>> > unfortunately, doomed to failure without changes in the rules.
>
>> Seriously, I don't understand what people expect from Wikipedia. Of course
>> it's a disaster. So is every other source of information, in its own way.
>> People compare it to a democracy, and indeed you can (and should!) raise a
>> lot of the same objections to democratic government.
>
>That's an interesting point. In other words, there is at least one very
>good reason for trying to find rules which would improve the quality of
>the Wikipedia: those same rules might be applied to increase the
>quality of democratic government. And some of us feel that such
>improvement is sorely needed.

If the process of building the base of knowledge was allowed to be
truly democratic, then proven theories could be labeled as false by a
majority, and commonly held misconceptions could reign as facts.

As an example, if the majority could purge knowledge at will, you can
be sure that a great deal of mathematical knowledge would be quickly
and gleefully deleted.

On the other hand, if control is vested in an elite group, who picks
the elite and how?

It's really quite a dilemma.

quasi
.

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