Poor, Edmund W a écrit:
To make it worse, 10 minutes after I corrected the liberal bias in the Missing Explosives story some anonymous IP user deleted the entire day -- wiping out 1/2 hour of my work.
How can we be accurate or neutral, with this sort of thing going on? When I've brought this up previously, people ask me to provide examples. I have. Today I've done so again.
These are not isolated examples. And now on MediaWiki I find that someone wants to create news articles which CANNOT EVER BE EDITED AGAIN. Well, that would be nice if they are vetted for accuracy and neutrality first.
You raise an important point Ed. Indeed, as the cunctator would say, npov does not really exist. It is an ideal. We just try to reach it, and for this to happen, we need two things
* many editors Because as much as we try, we have a natural bias due to our culture, gender etc...; and likely this will not even be enough to compensate a natural bias we collectively have
* time Because time is the only way for NPOV. Nearly all articles start biased and it is only over time that they tend to neutralize. Tending the article is the way. Allowing multiple edits over time is the way.
News, on the contrary of encyclopedic articles, thrive on speed. A "news" one week old is of little interest (if not none at all). For it to raise interest, it must be published as soon as possible. When the event is occuring. Perhaps 1 hour later. Less than 24 hours is a requirement.
Which mean wikinews articles will be published likely too soon before being fully neutral.
Additional point is that many news are making us react. Most interesting news are making us HOT, rarely neutral in our minds. Because, when we report an event, this event is INTERESTING us, is INVOLVING us, is making our HEART beat.
It is only after some weeks, or years, that we are able to approach truth with a clearer mind.
If someone is not convinced, I will just say that in spring 2003, most of my edits to the english wikipedia hot topic of the time (hmmmm, something related to a UN vote, or a french president, or some huge meetups in streets), were ANONYMOUS. Because there was so much heat around. Because of the hate I perceived toward french people in talk pages. Because of the hainous mails I got. Because of the wild reversions of my feeble attempts to restore what we european perceived as the truth.
Of course, some people were here to stick to npov. But that was tough. That was a several weeks struggle.
Most of these articles are correct now. Even the anti-french sentiment article is more acceptable.
But 18 months ago, it was bullshit of the best type. And these were NEWS. And these were not sometimes no better than Fox.
Only time, and thinking, and digesting some tough events allowed these news articles to reach balance.
I do not expect to believe in the NPOV of wikinews striking news. It will perhaps be better than Fox. But neutral ? Ah !