[WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia

Wed Mar 9 11:37:25 UTC 2005

I am not familiar with your editing nor do I know which articles you edit. I
can only encourage you to bring the issues you are speaking of here to the
attention of the community through the dispute resolution process. Of which
the first step is negotiation on the talk pages and on user talk pages. You
do not have to make a bit fuss, just keep a log of your edits, their
removal, your talk page comments regarding your edits and their removal,
etc. You need to keep this log in terms of dates and diffs, (please get back
to me if you don't understand what I mean by diffs).

You say you are being reversed by "majority bias". That can mean you are
trying to follow the NPOV policy or that you are violating it depending on
exactly what is involved. If the majority thinks London is the capital of
Japan that's one thing, if they think the United States of America can do no
wrong that is another. We need to see it.

Now, on your way, don't call other editors assholes (or the equivalent),
don't characterize their edits as stupid (or the equivalent) and don't
revert over and over (an occasional revert accompanied by changes others
might suggest is acceptable). That way you can come to the final steps
without fear of the arbitrators turning on you and saying you are the
problem yourself, "Get out of here."

Following these steps will take some time, perhaps a few months, by the time
you get to arbitration you will have built a track record which will reduce
that risk.

In the meantime you can improve your negotiation and research skills, try
out mediation and learn how to marshal evidence.

I make these suggestions because the problem you speak of is important and
needs to be addressed. I hope you have the patience and courage to pursue
the matter.

I will conceed that in certain areas the problem you speak of actually
exists. However you need to name names and point to specific edits for
anyone to do anything about it. We may fail to adequately address the
problem, but we are willing to try.

Fred 

> From: "Jim Cecropia" <jcecropia at mail.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 00:34:49 -0400
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia
> 
> Do not tell me these rules are applied equally. I don't edit certain articles
> anymore because I'll research an edit, back it up with sources, and bring the
> information down to an NPOV minimum. But how many like me realize that hours
> of work will be relentlessly reversed by the majority bias on the subject?
> That's the weakness of Wikipedia.