Gregory Maxwell (gmaxwell(a)gmail.com) [050620 00:58]: You mean, like papers using it? I said it needed tweaking. Call it substantial minority. And noisy. Well, yeah. That's why I was ignoring this - as a storm in a teacup - and why I'm appalled its advocates have tried to push it this far. Those seeking to push a POV will not be put off by content arbitration - they'll just try to use it as a further bludgeon for their views, as we see in the present case. - d.

Doesn't this just get at the first and most primary difficulty in content arbitration: Whose authority to go by? If it was me, I'd ask the people who run Chicago Manual of Style. But I know what they'd answer: In academia, this actually isn't that contentious a battle, you go with what you feel most, and those who use BCE/CE consider it less offensive, those who don't, don't. Which doesn't give policy. Would they call up some professor and ask them what they thought we should do? Would anybody abide by that? Would it be a quantitative thing? Would we add up all the citations on one online search engine versus another? (Would we be careful enough to realize that a search for "BC" is likely to also pick up any usages of "BCE" on most of them?) Do these search engines necessarily reveal academic consensus? (Academia is a culture in which quality matters a lot more than quantity, in my opinion; a few major players insisting on something often matters a lot more than a lot of minor players doing things their own way). Do we even think "Academia" is the gold standard? Aren't the editors of the Catholic Encyclopedia just as erudite and scholarly? I go both ways on content arbitration. Part of me says, "Yes, call up a well-respected academic, they'll tell you what the 'mainstream' consensus is; most of us know that pretty well, our full time jobs involve doing nothing but reading things other academics have written!" The other part of me realizes that this is a not entirely defensible position, and that wars of experts won't work unless somebody "from above" (i.e. Jimbo) gives a hard and fast rule determining how these things will work, and doesn't worry about whether it is logically or ethically defensible. The other problem I have is that I know that other institutions that rely on "expert advice" from outside often take care to pick the experts that reflect their version of "consensus." This happens again and again in politics, in the courts, in journalism, in academia itself. I don't see any reason that this wouldn't happen on Wikipedia. There is, by the way, a large literature on the use of "experts" out there, in sociology, science studies, legal studies, etc., so we don't necessarily have to re-invent the wheel as we hash this over. FF On 6/20/05, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

From votes on the subject I would say Wikipedia opinion is about evenly divided, thus the style guide which permits both usages. Fred On Jun 20, 2005, at 10:53 AM, Fastfission wrote:

On Mon, 20 Jun 2005, Sean Barrett wrote: The very thought that the subject covered by section 6 should be considered for a vote. And when I looked at the Findings Sunday, the voting was not complete. My sense is that Wikipedia is fairly evenly divided over this matter. The ArbCom has shown a commendable amount of restraint so far with its powers, which have only helped to make its authority that much more powerful. I feel that if the ArbCom gets involved in this matter, it can only result with one side -- or both -- losing respect for the ArbCom. And I haven't spoken up more about this issue because I find it hard to stately unemotionally -- & succinctly -- my opinions about this matter. Geoff