On 25 July 2010 01:07, David Gerard <dger...@gmail.com> wrote: > This didn't save Encarta. They did this as a marketing move. They > threw neutrality out the window as a marketing move [1]. That this is > a blatant distortion was problematic enough that Britannica took them > up on it [2]. I recall a discussion (I think it was on wikien-l) where > Microsoft's blatant warping of knowledge for marketing reasons was > discussed and laughed at, as aspiring to neutrality was obviously a > better way to sum up the world's knowledge, without favour. Microsoft > wanted to sell CDs, so had a strong motivation to slant away from > uncomfortable facts; we aren't in that business.
Found it! It was wikipedia-l, March 2005: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-March/020575.html Gates' argument was that "readers will get upset about content that may fly in the face of their reality." Note that the word "reality" here seems to mean "personal POV." http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-March/020576.html - Delirium points out the practical upshot of the horrific damage done to NPOV by merely having multiple Wikipedias in the same language with national bias. "I'd think we'd want people to be able to get globally neutral information in their local language, not just the locally-biased version." (And I see I note in a followup a concurrent [2005] discussion on wikien-l - where people are insisting Wikipedia cannot possibly succeed unless it censors itself, for marketing reasons. The reasons to censor seem to change with the seasons; the reasons not to censor keep pointing to NPOV, which was there before Wikipedia existed, and the mission.) - d. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
