On 27 June 2010 06:47, Elias Friedman <elipongo(a)gmail.com> wrote: I think there's a valid issue here, but there's a balance to be struck between: * X as it occurs in one specific context * X from the perspective of one viewpoint So it would be legitimate to have an article on [[Economic philosophies of the Something Party]] and one on [[Economic philosophies of the Other Party]]; it would not be legitimate to have an article on [[Economics (Somethingian)]] as a counter to [[Economics (Otherian)]]. Where you draw the line, though, is quite tricky... -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

On 27 June 2010 17:47, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: Economics was a bad example, perhaps :-) That said, this illustrates the point - we are quite capable of having an article on [[neoclassical economics]] and one on [[marxist economics]], but what we don't have is two co-equal articles on [[economics]], one from a Marxist perspective and one from a neoclassical perspective. As I say, fuzzy line, especially with more philosophical concepts - it shows up the problems with simply saying "we don't like forks". The original article being discussed here was, I believe, the biography of a particular historic-religious figure, and this is where we can hit problems, but also where a "X views on..." article can work out well if handled correctly. To take a prominent example, it's reasonable to have [[Jesus in Christianity]] and [[Jesus in Islam]], but they need to both be treated as subsets of the article on [[Jesus]], in the same way that [[Historicity of Jesus]] or [[Cultural depictions of Jesus]] are, and *not* as seperate forms of the main article. The trick is in getting that balance right. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

On 27 June 2010 18:10, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: And here's a secondary problem :-) I think it's key we don't call these forks - they're not. Forks are articles on fundamentally the same thing, but written differently - they may be forked for philosophical reasons, for administrative reasons, or even for stylistic ones,* but they're still two articles on Topic X which disagree on something. They're bad. The alternative is "daughter articles" - at least, that's the term I've always encountered, and I'm curious if we call them anything else - which exist to go into more detail than the main article, or to bring out aspects that wouldn't be appropriate there, or to pull material together from a number of disparate articles to avoid duplication (for example, three people involved in a single notable event whose lives otherwise don't cross). These are fine. We might say, rather than both being on Topic X, that they're on Topic X.i, X.ii, X.iii, etc. They *can* be written badly, and effectively amount to forks, but that's a specific content issue; we should avoid thinking of them as a kind of fork by default. The problem arises when the scope of a sub-article is such that it's almost forkish by nature - [[A's views on Topic X]], [[B's views on Topic X]], etc. It's a bit hazier here - but as long as we keep the emphasis on writing about the views, rather than presenting them as statements of sourced fact, we're probably on the right side of the line. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk * I can't remember if I laughed or cried when I saw that one.

Andrew Gray wrote: It's not so tricky to say that (a) NPOV is never negotiable in an article, and (b) a POV content fork is not a distinction between topics, but a way of spreading out content according to editorial view. We have never accepted that POV content forks have a place in WP. (They have a very large place elsewhere, which is a good reason to stick to our guns on this.) Charles

don't? doesn't.

And war to control the content of the "NPOV" article is not a disastrous idea? Fred Bauder

On 27 June 2010 17:34, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote: In practice, it's resulted in a site that seems to work. We've done the experiment, as you know. The POV fork site is your own site, Wikinfo. While it's ticking along fine, its notice in the world is negligible. A single article site seems to fulfill people's needs. - d.

On 27 June 2010 20:32, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote: I remain entirely unconvinced. POV forks reduces strife amongst the *writers*, but doesn't do much for the *readers*. Many people have tried competing with Wikipedia with a site that makes things nicer for the writers. So far the track record is dismal and the sites are all but moribund. Even the writers prefer to go where the readers are, which is here. It is understandable that experimenters want to go where the readers are too, but considering the problems for writers turned out to be way less important in practice than actually being read ... you'd need to come up with rules that really did succeed in skimming off Wikipedia's actual *contributors* to demonstrate it was at all a good idea. - d.

Who dictates the peace terms? Fred