From: suzanne mccarthy (suzmccarth@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Oct 25 2005 - 01:14:51 CST
Philippe Verdy wrote:
There DOES NOT exist any definitive knowledge that is considered as THE
truth for everyone. Read the Wikipedia policy, and you'll see that what it
considers important is "neutrality of point of view" which means that it
tries to collect as many point of views to offer a large panorama of
perspectives, not trying to dictate which one is THE truth, and let the
reader judge himself which point of view is valid or best fits his own
opinion.
Sorry if I gave the impression that I was hankering after "THE TRUTH" vs neutrality. I was actually referring to quite a different level of problem. Here are two other examples from my own experience. These were the two previous times that I consulted wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_script
"However, the signs for the syllables are derived from that of the inherent consonant; thus it is of the abugida type. Some syllables are written by modifying the shape of the consonant in a way that is inherent to the vowel, others are written by adding vowel-inherent suffix to the consonant..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Aboriginal_Syllabics
Canadian syllabic writing schemes are for the most part abugidas" with a "resemblance to Pitman shorthand".
The latter sounds a little like "A whale is a fish which resembles an octopus..." which is great if you want an exhaustive entry with as many opnions as possible represented, but not so great if you don't already know what a whale is." :-)
Maybe 'wikifile' would be a better term, a public place to store and share files, but not necessarily 'authoritative' files.
Suzanne McCarthy
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