David Gerard wrote:
Chad Perrin (perrin(a)apotheon.com) [050208 04:33]:
I'm not sure that anything at all "needs
to be done" to deal with the
matter. In fact, there's not really anything necessarily wrong with POV
getting into an article, as long as no POV is pushed as the only valid
POV. Rather, multiple POVs* might be a more desirable status of an
article than no POV at all, where each is clearly identified as being a
particular perspective with identified adherents. Thus, if Stormfront
troopers swarm in and add some biased information as though it were
gospel, rather than actively oppose it, editors should simply . . . edit
it. Tidy up the language, make it non-repetitive, collect it in one
section, and label it as a particular perspective.
I'm sure S*ll*g was very pleased with the results ;-)
I think I missed a reference, there.
Where a
Stormfront (darn, the militant racists get all the cool names)
They've given up on the cool uniforms, though. Foolish move.
Agreed.
activist enters some figures identifying the
amount of money supposedly
cost the country by Zionists, stick it into an appropriate POV corral
and provide some academic analysis of where those figures might
originate. If treated properly, such attempts to monkeywrench the
bias-mitigating machinery of Wikipedia can actually become a rich source
of information.
You'll explode their heads and risk your own trying to get a decent
checkable reference out of them, thoguh.
Search for it independently, then. If you don't find a reference, edit
it out if need be WITH A NOTE to the effect that it is unsubstantiated
at this time, and will be re-entered at such time as it can be
substantiated (note probably delivered both on the talk page and in a
note for the history page). Editing other people's contributions out
should include justifications, anyway, and should not be done as a first
resort, in my considered opinion. Don't edit what someone else has said
without being positive you know the reasons for what came before your
edit, even if your own edit requires attempts at independent verification.
Besides, if their heads explode you'll have reduced the population of
people introducing problematic edits into controversial articles.
I guess, in short, my point is that a lack of bias
and a lack of
point-of-view are two different and separate things. Points of view are
good. Bias is favoritism to a particular point of view, and that's bad.
Tell me if I'm wrong.
Mmm. Report and attribute them, don't just say them.
Really, I've found they're really bad at checkable references on even the
simple stuff - e.g. "This organization believes ..." It's actually really
annoying.
I certainly don't disagree with that. Activists do tend to have that
problem, and it definitely does tend to be annoying.
--
Chad