[WikiEN-l] Opinions of commentators

Sat Nov 11 05:24:14 UTC 2006

One of the common problems in articles related to current events
seems to slip between the cracks of the main policies like V, RS and
NPOV.  If I'm wrong and there are policy or guideline pages already,
please tell me where to look.

The problem is as follows.  Whenever a controversial event happens,
there are (literally) hundreds of journalists and commentators having
their say about it in hundreds of places.  What happens next is that
some editor, or group of like-minded editors, starts adding extracts
from these commentaries one after another until the article has pages
of quotations all saying more or less the same thing.  These extracts
may individually satisfy the requirements of V and RS, so they can't
be deleted on those grounds.  There is also a straightforward way to
fix the NPOV problem, namely to add a long list of similar extracts
from commentaries giving the other point of view.  But that just
makes the article look even more horrible.

So I think there should be a policy that can be used to keep
quoted commentaries within reasonable bounds.  It would say that
common threads of opinion should be succinctly summarised with
citation of some examples - say what the choir is singing but don't
try to quote each of the members of the choir.

Actually I don't have a precise idea in my head how such a policy
would be worded.  I only know that there is a problem that needs
addressing.

Zero.

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