Erik Möller: "We do not expect you to trust us."

Yesterday, Meeting with Lucifer is kind of tired but meaningful experience. In fact sometimes spreading the concepts and ideas from core members of Wikimedia Foundation is not an easy job, especially almost everyone has her own variation on the same thing. For those who attended meeting with Lucifer, I would like to mention this statement below:


We do not expect you to trust us. It is in the nature of an ever-changing work like Wikipedia that, while some articles are of the highest quality of scholarship, others are admittedly complete rubbish. We are fully aware of this. We work hard to keep the ratio of the greatest to the worst as high as possible, of course, and to find helpful ways to tell you in what state an article currently is. Even at its best, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, with all the limitations that entails. It is not a primary source. We ask you not to criticize Wikipedia indiscriminately for its content model but to use it with an informed understanding of what it is and what it isn't. Also, because some articles may contain errors, please do not use Wikipedia to make critical decisions.

｢我們並不期待你信任我們。 像維基百科這樣一部無時無刻不在改變的著作，它在本質上本來就會同時並存著兩種文章：有些文章具有極為崇高的學術價值，有些文章則可以說是完全無 用的垃圾。我們完全明白這一點。當然，我們盡量將壞文章的比例降到最低，並找出有助於讓你知道某篇文章之品質狀況的方式。即使維基百科處於最好的狀態，它 畢竟是一本百科全書，具有百科全書一切該有的限制。它並非原始文獻。我們請求你不要因為維基百科本身的條件限制而加以批評，而希望你在使用它時抱持著一種 認知態度，知道它是什麼而不是什麼。另外，由於某些文章可能存在著錯誤，所以請不要使用維基百科來做重要決定。｣



However, after something happened today, I think the text above by Erik Möller, the current Deputy Director of Wikimedia Foundation, is more useful to somebody around Wikimedia.


To some newcomers, I would like to point out that I'm a market liberal on Wikipedia editing. People like it, just keep it; don't like it, just throw it to vfd, or put the system to the rubbish bin, that's it. More important is do not speak those you're not confident with, that is my style. I'm not familiar with something, just shut up & stand aside. :p

Reference:
Ten things you may not know about Wikipedia
關於維基百科你或許不知道的十件事