[WikiEN-l] Rules, expertise, and encyclopedic standards

Sun Mar 6 19:29:03 UTC 2005

Fred Bauder wrote:

>I remember a number of claims you made in that regard. According to you,
>your advocacy of your point of view represented an objective academic point
>of view in sharp contrast to other editors who had only published reports of
>eye-witness accounts to go on. You claimed to be a political scientist and
>that trumped the experience of the people who actually lived under the
>systems you advocated

I am sorry that Fred Bauder finds it necessary to personalize 172's 
comments about the quality of our articles.  For one thing, I am not 
entirely sure Fred is being fair to 172 -- my sense from having had to deal 
with him in the past (and he and I have gotten into some pretty heated 
arguments) is not that he claims to have authority because of some 
credential or because of his job, but rather that his academic training and 
work have put him in a position where he has done a tremendous amount of 
research on both particular topics and the different arguments scholars 
have over those topics.

Be that as it may, if Fred has a problem with how 172 has behaved in the 
past, he should address that behavior through the appropriate channels in 
Wikipedia.  The members of the list-serve have no authority to sanction an 
editor, so the list-serve is not the appropriate place to try and judge an 
editor's behavior.  My concern is that by personalizing 172's comments and 
calling into question his motives, sincerity, or legitimacy, will only 
distract and divert us from addressing a serious issue -- an issue that 
needs to be addressed no matter who happens to have brought it up.

Fred raises the issue of NPOV, and I do agree with him that our NPOV policy 
is one of the most important policies we have to facilitate the writing of 
quality articles.  But nothing 172 wrote suggests that we should abandon 
the NPOV policy.  172 was simply making the point that we do not have 
adequate mechanisms for ensuring the quality of articles, and he is 
right.  We do have policies, but however crucial NPOV is, other policies -- 
No original research, Cite sources, and Verifiability -- are just as 
important for achieving quality articles.  I think there is a pretty strong 
consensus among veteran editors about what NPOV means and how to police it 
(although of course there are exceptions).  I do not think the community 
has such shared clarity about these other policies, though.

Finally, although we have a vigorous mechanism for dealing with behavioral 
conflicts (from mediation to arbitration), we have no such mechanisms for 
dealing with unresolvable problems over content.  It is not the place of 
the ArbCom to address the quality of content -- which I think is 
reasonable.  But because ArbCom is really the only strong mechanism we have 
for dealing with problems, I think that sometimes conflicts that are really 
about content end up going to mediation or ArbCom, which are ill-equipped 
to deal with them.

As a number of people have recently made clear, Wikipedia is a project to 
develop a quality encyclopedia first, and a wiki-community second.  It is 
therefore impossible for behavioral guidelines alone, or a 
dispute-resolution process that is blind to matters of content, to suffice.

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701