[Wikipedia-l] NPOV and the israeli-palestinian conflict

[elian]

Adam Williamson <aw280 at cam.ac.uk> writes:

> To add to what Ed said - I don't think you should necessarily
> 'disqualify' yourself from editing articles because you consider
> yourself biased. One perfectly good way of arriving at NPOV is for
> people with opposite biases to edit the same article. Just go ahead and
> edit it, and if you get it wrong, i'm sure someone will be happy to fix
> it :)

First, it's not only a problem of bias but also a problem of language
difficulties - it takes me more than three times longer to write in
English than in German. Plus, often it's a question of subtle nouances of
formulations which make the difference in the neutrality of an article,
as I tried to point out. As a non-native speaker I can feel that something
is "smelling" but my corrections would eventually make things only
worse. (I already had such a problem in a discussion with maverick where I
still don't know what exactly I got wrong in grammar - anyway, sorry mav)

Third, I have serious doubts that the normal wikipedian strategy you
described would work in this special area. My impression was that articles
tend to grow longer and longer, each writer adding deeds, arguments,
objections, denials, accusations of each side, leaving it totally to the
reader to sort out the relevant material. This is not my vision of a
NPOV-encyclopedia and nothing I want to participate in. 

Finally, I could do, but you would agree that 15 simultaneous edit wars
are not a very pleasant situation to be in?

So I'd prefer a consensual attempt to make the articles NPOV, which seems
to be made possible by Ed's generous offer. Maybe I should also talk to
Uriyan. 

greetings,
elian