[WikiEN-l] The Times They are a'Changin'

Fri Oct 3 18:16:55 UTC 2003

"Abe Sokolov" <abesokolov at hotmail.com> writes:

> Both users function best on the Israeli-Palestinian articles when they have
> each other by the throat.

Thats an inherently dysfunctional way of functioning.  

If the way we want to create articles is to allow a pair of intransigent,
biased contributors to butt heads repeatedly and then let a mediator piece an
article together out of the fallout, then we're letting ourselves in for the
tyranny of the obstreperous, in which meeker contributors (or those with less
copious free time) will lose out in the endless edit wars.   

And they'll leave, too.  Its not as if this hasn't happened already.

What we need is not to ban these people, but say 
"Look, RK/Stevertigo" (or whoever, I don't mean to single people out in this),
"you're a worthwhile, active contributor, but you're too close and/or feel too
 strongly about issues of Israel/Palestine/Iraq/US politics to be NPOV, even
 when you try to be.  Your opinions and biases are just too entrenched.

 Now, you must have other interests, about which you are able to talk, write
 and generally behave in a more calm and rational manner. How about directing
 your commendable efforts writing about them?" 

Everyone has things with which they are deeply involved, about which they feel
passionately, and its reasonable that people will want to write about them

Its just a shame that those are too often the things that they *shouldn't*
write nominally NPOV articles about, for precisely those reasons.
-- 
Gareth Owen
"I love the wikipedia, but sometimes I get the impression that certain people
 on this list are very bored, and so argue about something when there's really
 bugger all to argue about. Edit some articles, for god's sake." -- LP