Re: [Bug-gnupedia]Changes to articles

[Mike Warren]

Soam Vasani <address@hidden> writes:
>    Jimmy Wales wrote:

>    > Additionally, one unintended side effect is that the GNE
>    > may become a repository for completely unusably biased
>    > texts.

> Their presence doesn't make other texts unusable.  They do add
> clutter, though.  I don't have any solution for this.

Classifications which don't find the ``clutter'' valuable would not
include them in their work. 

>    > What of holocaust deniers, or even holocaust *supporters*?  Is
>    > their view to be given equal weight with that of serious
>    > historians?

> Since it's the users who read it, the "weight" given to a view
> should not determined by repository maintainers, but rather by
> individual users.  They will decide which articles they want to
> read.

Exactly. If someone doesn't like a particular classification, then
they take the software used by that classification (under GPL) and
make their (slightly or radically) different classifier.

>    > I'm not saying that these are insurmountable problems -- I am
>    > just saying that they are real problems that an "only remove
>    > blatant spam" doesn't address.

> I share your opinion that they add noise to the repository, but we
> shouldn't remove them.  It would be censorship.

Furthermore, I think having more freely-available texts is a Good
Thing, no matter if they are talking about the nice time someone had
walking their cat or the ethical issues of genetic research or the
mating patterns of Aardvarks; all are freely-available texts which
surely *someone* else will find valuable, if only from a curiosity
perspective.

-- 
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