QUOTE(dtobias @ Mon 29th June 2009, 12:19pm)
While in this particular case it might have been objectively the better thing for everybody that the information did manage to be kept contained, the more general case is that censorship is a bad thing and openness a good thing, and the presence of ways of getting out information that can't be controlled by the censors of the world (look at China and Iran for examples) is a net positive.
In a general sense, perhaps. However, I'd still like to ask you, as I asked Hipocrite in
that other thread: are you willing to let people die as a result of Wikipedia information?
And are you willing to speak to the family when it does happen?
This clash comes about because of that whole demented "information wants to be free"
concept that Web 2.0 and "digerati" types are always pushing, as if it were a law of
physics or something.
Information doesn't want anything, PEOPLE want something.
The only reason websites are killing newspapers and magazines, and Wikipedia is killing
encyclopedias, is because PEOPLE WANT FREE INFORMATION. And if you have total
la-la freedom on your information site, the result is very often defamation, personal
attacks, misinformation and propaganda, etc.
(In fact, allowing free editing of an information source would seem to INVITE
misinformation and propaganda.) And if someone dies as a result of said "free"
information, who is responsible? A teenager in his Florida bedroom, editing
Wikipedia while watching net-porn he scored at no cost, with his free hand shoved
down his boxer shorts? Is HE willing to apologize to the family of the deceased?
Those are damn difficult questions. What gets me, is that Jimbo did something
responsible in the case of Rohde. But his "encyclopedia" is being assembled by
random people, who may or may not be "responsible".
I still think that Times article is an embarrassment--because it shows Jimbo, being
a hypocrite and ignoring the "info wants to be free" cant that he pushed, and that
so many of his Wiki-gnomes take very seriously.
Jimbo helped create that atmosphere, and now he's making exceptions to the exception-less "rule".
And of course, his oft-deranged editor pool is playing Super Mario with people's lives.
This post has been edited by EricBarbour: