I'm afraid the proposal will work to the advantage of one side of the dispute, to the detriment of the other. One side is generally well educated and familiar with looking at both sides of an issue; the other is not, with no meaningful access to either education or sophisticated cultural memes.
Fred
*Sam Korn* smoddy at gmail.com <wikien-l%40lists.wikimedia.org?Subject=%5BWikiEN-l%5D%20Neutrality%20enforcement%3A%20a%20proposal&In-Reply-To=7c402e010905081322n210b417p376e7dc413f750bf%40mail.gmail.com> *Fri May 8 20:37:10 UTC 2009*
This is the key point, I think. We don't have an absolute definition of neutrality. We don't even have a "I know it when I see it" kind of system. Neutrality -- everywhere -- is a work in progress. Now,
SlimVirgin recognises this, which is why the proposal reads
"However, looking at an editor's contributions as a whole, it should be clear to any reasonable, and reasonably well-informed, onlooker that the editor is regularly and substantively trying to be fair to
both sides."
That is obviously an attempt to move away from requiring neutrality and towards requiring a good-faith effort towards neutrality, which is the only way the proposal could work.
That's exactly right. All this group would be looking for are good-faith efforts to edit in accordance with the NPOV policy. It's not an attempt to control content, but behaviour. Perhaps we should change the title to reflect that.
Yes, it could be gamed, but it would be such a hassle for the gamers that only the most determined would do it, and the most determined won't be stopped by any process we put in place.
If people think the mailing list is too cabalistic, we can get rid of that. The question is whether the spirit of the proposal might work. The details can always be changed.
Also, bear in mind that the proposal is that this would be an *experiment* regarding the I/P articles, because nothing else has worked. It could be time-limited to ensure it doesn't turn into a permanent fixture, or get expanded, without further community input.
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