On Fri, 03 Sep 2004 17:38:58 -0400, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote:
It's often not explicitly stated, but it's irritating when you can
obviously tell the political leanings of the person who wrote the
article just through a casual reading.
That's a pretty good indicator of when an article has POV problems.
FWIW, the use of that Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam
Hussein's hand is a
common culprit. It belongs some places, but it shows up a lot more
places than it belongs, as if someone is really trying to work it in
everywhere. Some of the circumcision stuff also reads like it was
written by anti-circumcision activists. The tone is just wrong, even if
the facts (and even the conclusions) are fine: you can tell when an
article was written by someone who has a strong personal opinion about
the matter.
Many (most, probably) Wikipedians have strong personal opinions
about things. It's best if they have self-knowledge about this and
can consciously restrain an POV-pushing that they might
subconsciously do.
Generally, it'd be nice if people avoided editing
articles
they had a very strong personal opinion about, or at least let someone
who didn't care much do a thorough re-editing afterwards.
Of course, people tend to edit articles about subjects they are
interested in. I'm not particularly interested in curcumcision, for
example, and have never read that article -- so obviously I'm not
going to have edited it.
--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)