[WikiEN-l] Partisanship and Neutrality (was: Effective bullying

Sat Jan 10 07:53:25 UTC 2004

strategy)
Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 11:52:54 -0800
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Poor Edmund wrote:
>...
>Some other respected contributors, recognizing the difficulty 
>they have writing neutrally on subjects they feel passionately 
>about, avoid those topics altogether. Daniel Mayer (Maveric) 
>sets the best example I'm aware of, in this respect.

NOTE: I'm speaking in generalities here (meaning I'm not alluding to the 
current conflict between RK and Danny et al.)

Thanks for the compliment. :-) However, I happen to be interested in many 
different things, so changing direction away from my own POV landmine fields 
is easier for me than I suspect it is for many people (who may be primarily 
interested in contributing to areas they may not be able to easily write 
neutrally on). I also edit and add content to relax, believe it or not. Edit 
wars in which the content I add is reverted into a page's history is not what 
I would call relaxing. 

>The two best things I've found to help me avoid partisan 
>fighting at Wikipedia are:
>
>1. Summarize the POV of my "opponent" /TO HIS SATISFACTION/ !!!

This is often difficult, but can also be fun so long you are not too close the 
subject. I like your advice of editing slowly and reacting deliberatively 
when editing articles whose topics are close to you. 

Big changes to articles on hot topics often result in some sort of conflict. 

>2. If one of my contributions is reverted (even once), take 
>  this as a signal that I'm NOT DOING AN ADEQUATE JOB of 
>  reflecting POVs other than my own.

This is true, to an extent. Sometimes the other person is not reasonable and 
in fact doesn't want an NPOV article, but one that pushes a certain POV (and 
this can even be on a subconscience level where the other person can't even 
see their own POV as POV but instead view their POV as fact). 

So sometimes forcing edit warriors to slow down is what is needed. It is near  
impossible to write toward NPOV during an edit war because emotions get in 
the way and cloud people's judgment. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) 