[WikiEN-l] New York Times article

Thu Jun 22 02:43:52 UTC 2006

geni wrote:

> On 6/21/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>
>> Empirically I find it to be true. It's amazing how many people
>> will fight tooth and nail to get their POV into [[X]], while
>> being oblivious to [[History of X]], [[X and Y]], [[X-Z effect]],
>> [[list of Xes]], etc, all of which will have extensive material
>> inconsistent with the wanted POV. (My unkind belief is that POV
>> pushers are simply not smart enough to figure out that the
>> encyclopedia has more than one article.)
>
> Or they are smart enough to get as far as figureing out that most
> people only look at the high profile articles.

A combination of both, I suspect. Some simply do not bother to figure 
out how much contradictory information is out there. Some rely on the 
obvious choice being both the first and last port of call for most 
readers. Those who are working more or less in isolation will also often 
conserve their energy by fighting the battle where it will have the most 
effect. Also, people who are linking to a specific article from outside 
Wikipedia, perhaps even quoting it, may vigorously defend their version 
of that article but care very little about other articles.

--Michael Snow