[Wikipedia-l] Re: A Solution to Larry Sanger's Criticisms - Project Has Been Around For A While

Fri Jan 7 10:45:57 UTC 2005

Tim Starling (t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au) [050107 17:56]:

>  Academics, as well as other non-insane people, must 
> fight with various kinds of looneys if they want the Wikipedia article 
> in question to be accurate and neutral. Dispute resolution only works 
> where the POV-pushers also break rules of behaviour, otherwise the only 
> solution is to fight forever. Put the article on your watchlist, revert 
> and argue for as long as you both shall live. In the case of popular 
> articles, there's a constant stream of new POV-pushers, so you have to 
> keep arguing and fighting even after the original warriors have gotten 
> bored and left.

*shudder* Yes, that's appallingly accurate. The only solutions I've found
that work (when they work) are requesting decent-quality checkable references
and (when necessary) trying to explain NPOV.

Having to explain NPOV to people is ridiculous, or should be. I'd never
say we should do it, but the idea of requiring people to pass a short test
on NPOV before editing is appallingly tempting. (Particularly on anything
relating to Israel, open source software or pop divas.)

But then, as Stirling Newberry points out, NPOV as it's applied in
Wikipedia is actually quite a radical concept. It'll take time to percolate
out into the wider world.

> Larry Sanger wants a shortcut out of this process for experts. I would 
> prefer having a shortcut even for non-experts. Various models have been 
> proposed in the past, "content arbitration" is a particularly neat term 
> for it.

I don't have a detailed answer as to why off the top of my head, but this
smells like a really bad idea. Requiring references as to the prominence of
a given POV, to justify its inclusion, should be enough in all cases that
spring to mind.

- d.