[Wikipedia-l] Articles that might draw fire.

Thu Oct 14 03:06:07 UTC 2004

Hi Omri,

NPOV (the Neutral Point Of View) is sacrosanct here.

As was just discussed a few emails back, it's not even enough to allow 
for one's point of view to get balanced by other people's point of 
view. At the Wikipedia it's actually expected to make an express effort 
to write in an NPOV fashion yourself.

Thus, if you're interested in making any sort of concerted effort to 
''specifically emphasize and focus on'' corporate wrongdoing, you will 
probably find your own efforts more criticized than welcomed here. 
While I haven't properly read but a single of their articles (not to 
mention contributing), I am--based on hearsay--under the impression 
that disinfopedia.org may be a better place to go ''if'' I understood 
you correctly and the above is what you have in mind.

(And yes, granted, in theory it's probably possible to write about 
corporate wrongdoing in an NPOV way -- I just think that it's very, 
very hard and unlikely to accomplish, especially given a stated 
ambition to specifically write about such issues.)

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com

On 14 Oct 2004, at 03:07, Omri Schwarz wrote:

> Hi, folks.
>
> I and some friends have been discussing the issue of whether 10 years
> from now it will become important for your average corporate manager
> not to do anything that might wind up being documented in his company's
> Wikipedia entry. A brief look through Wikipedia does show articles
> detailing the controversial actions of some corporations, but not 
> enough
> to indicate a concerted effort by any corporate history geeks or labor
> history geeks.
>
> Said friends reached the conclusion that the addition of many articles
> on corporate history and ongoing activities would be a good thing 
> indeed,
> but a concerted effort to do so would be obnoxious, since it increases 
> the
> chance of Wikipedia facing disruptive efforts (in the form of legal 
> threats
> or revert-wars conducted by paid minions). It would be a good thing 
> since
> a wiki is not time indexed, like any press article, and cannot just be
> "ridden out." But before any effort is made to write articles on
> corporate activities, it would be good to come here and ask whether
> possibly controversial articles are wellcome in Wikipedia, or whether a
> fork of the project would be a better thing to do.
>
> So, what do y'all think?
>
> Thanks for your attention,
>
> Omri Schwarz
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>