David Gerard wrote:
Chad Perrin (perrin@apotheon.com) [050208 04:33]:
I'm not sure that anything at all "needs to be done" to deal with the matter. In fact, there's not really anything necessarily wrong with POV getting into an article, as long as no POV is pushed as the only valid POV. Rather, multiple POVs* might be a more desirable status of an article than no POV at all, where each is clearly identified as being a particular perspective with identified adherents. Thus, if Stormfront troopers swarm in and add some biased information as though it were gospel, rather than actively oppose it, editors should simply . . . edit it. Tidy up the language, make it non-repetitive, collect it in one section, and label it as a particular perspective.
I'm sure S*ll*g was very pleased with the results ;-)
I think I missed a reference, there.
Where a Stormfront (darn, the militant racists get all the cool names)
They've given up on the cool uniforms, though. Foolish move.
Agreed.
activist enters some figures identifying the amount of money supposedly cost the country by Zionists, stick it into an appropriate POV corral and provide some academic analysis of where those figures might originate. If treated properly, such attempts to monkeywrench the bias-mitigating machinery of Wikipedia can actually become a rich source of information.
You'll explode their heads and risk your own trying to get a decent checkable reference out of them, thoguh.
Search for it independently, then. If you don't find a reference, edit it out if need be WITH A NOTE to the effect that it is unsubstantiated at this time, and will be re-entered at such time as it can be substantiated (note probably delivered both on the talk page and in a note for the history page). Editing other people's contributions out should include justifications, anyway, and should not be done as a first resort, in my considered opinion. Don't edit what someone else has said without being positive you know the reasons for what came before your edit, even if your own edit requires attempts at independent verification.
Besides, if their heads explode you'll have reduced the population of people introducing problematic edits into controversial articles.
I guess, in short, my point is that a lack of bias and a lack of point-of-view are two different and separate things. Points of view are good. Bias is favoritism to a particular point of view, and that's bad. Tell me if I'm wrong.
Mmm. Report and attribute them, don't just say them.
Really, I've found they're really bad at checkable references on even the simple stuff - e.g. "This organization believes ..." It's actually really annoying.
I certainly don't disagree with that. Activists do tend to have that problem, and it definitely does tend to be annoying.
-- Chad