[WikiEN-l] Opinions of commentators

Sat Nov 11 10:46:06 UTC 2006

zero 0000 wrote

> 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.

Policies are necessary, but not sufficient. NPOV in a sense is supposed to be a 'sufficient' master policy. Verifiability is nothing like sufficient.

> 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.

Unbalancing the article clearly goes against NPOV.

> 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.

Our 'house style' is to do that, surely. Repetitive material can be tightened up, paraphrased, and generally made into a lean, taut piece. There is a greater consensus for that than one might think. (Smart partisans understand that saying something once well, rather than twice badly, works here. Not talk radio, are we?)

Charles

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