User:Sexyactionnick/Wikiphilosophy

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[edit] First Philosophy

Wikipedia is about lack of ownership, about perfect sharing and a dedication to ideology. In this light, it's impolite and perhaps even wrong to edit another's work when it is not necessary (changing phrasing, deletion, et cetera), but then it's also one's right and obligation. This seems obvious, but consider having your own work changed or deleted, of knowing that you're right and having somebody change it anyway.

Of course there are reasons to be indignant. Not only was something of yours messed with, it wasn't just something of yours. It was something you created, your invention, your Galatea. Who are they to mess with it? Especially if you know that you are right; you have the sources, you have the personal experience; you are basically the Oracle at Wikipedia and they contradict you? And then it's an issue of public respect, that they would dare provide false or subpar information to the people. Every moment the page is online could be the moment that one person reads the page for the first and only time, and forever carries a lie while you could have saved them.

This is the dedication to ideology, which both enhances and conflicts with the philosophy of perfect sharing. Anger and indignation are human vices, the speed, the drug that can never be taken away from you. Even if a real drug trips you backwards into the sort of stupor which is safe for society, it's still under there. The ideology is the restraint which gives the freedom for perfect sharing. The belief in the calm, in a community of free information, is the only way to inspire the same kind of information that you originally wrote. Force makes immediate results and eventual backlash. My First Philosophy takes significantly more time.