On 20 August 2010 18:00, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Despite the media attention, I don't think the
integrity of the
encyclopedias' content is in any danger at all, and I don't think this
is any sort of special case of activist attention.
Wikipedia gets waves of activists and is used to dealing with them.
The ones who don't take the time to understand Neutral Point Of View,
their stuff gets removed. The ones who do, their stuff stays and their
cause gets accurately described and represented. Best case, we get
more good new Wikipedians.
Not really. Most groups find it incredibly hard to recruit activists
to edit Wikipedia. Something on this scale is exceptional and
worrying.
This applies to any activist for any cause whatsoever
and has applied
at least since I started on en:wp in 2004.
False. The LGBT mob would be the most obvious counter example.
We've also never entirely managed to deal with the supporters of various gurus.
The advice I have for activists is: strict neutrality
with excellent
citations will do your cause justice. Everything else will be removed.
The broader advice is: there is no plausible attack on the integrity
of the encyclopedias themselves that is not already something we are
quite used to dealing with on a daily basis for many years :-)
A large group of trained people who can use not-english sources. Thats novel.
--
geni