Sean Barret wrote,
Tony Sidaway stated for the record:
steven l. rubenstein said:
David, this is an issue I and others have raised
repeatedly over the
past years: many irresolvable disputes center on content, and
Wikipedia needs a mechanism for dealing with these content-based
disputes.
Why? If the disputes are irresolvable, why is it necessary to bring in a
deus ex machina to declare a resolution? Isn't it just more honest to
leave the irresolvable unresolved? I find this, the current way, quite
satisfactory and if the arbcom really is accepting cases that are in the
realm of content disputes then they should simply be more parsimonious in
the kind of dispute they accept.
No dispute is irresolvable once you get past that archaic idea of NPOV
and accept OTPOV -- the One True Point of View.
Sean misinterprets my position, and Tony either misunderstands it, or just
doesn't agree with me. I do not believe that disputes over content are
irresolvable, but I do think that there are POV warriors who insist on
including content even if it comes from narrow and perhaps even
disreputable sources, and deleting content that is the product of good
research. In many of these cases (which, I still remind you, is only a
small percentage of all content-related disputes), debates on talk pages
can go on for weeks and weeks. Are these "irresolvable?" No. But a
committee could review what the different sources are and how they are
being presented (e.g. as mainstream authorities, as authorities taking a
minority position, as popular opinion, as representing a fringe
organization) and resolve the dispute by ruling on which sources are
inappropriate, and by giving clear guidance on how the remaining diverse
views can be represented in an NPOV way. Is this effort an unnecessary
waste of time? No. Debates such as the ones I am talking about that go on
for weeks, even months, waste good editors' time, during which we have a
second-rate article.
I just do not understand this mental block so many people have. They have
no problem with a mechanism that promotes more respectful relations within
a more harmonious community, yet have a problem with a mechanism that would
promote a better encyclopedia. This is odd because the "better
encyclopedia" is what this project is all about.
Sean seems to think that all content disputes can me handled through our
NPOV position, and insinuates that my (and Jguk's and Mav's) desire to have
a mechanism to resolve content disputes will impose one point of
view. This is nonsense for two reasons. First, I have stated explicitly
that NPOV is one of the content-related policies such a committee should
enforce. Second, read the NPOV policy carefully. Id does not state that
"anything goes." NPOV does not require that our article on the moon state,
"According to some, the moon is made of green cheese, although virtually
all astronomers disagree." Don't laugh -- silly statements like this are
easy to spot when we are talking about physical phenomena. But they are
much harder to spot when talking about historical and cultural phenomena,
which is one reason why some content disputes are protracted and cannot be
resolved by mediation alone.
Steve
PS what is with this "states for the record" crap? Do conversations on the
list-serve have any authority over policy (that is, are these formal or
informal conversations)? Certainly, we keep a record of list-serve
messages, but we are not writing for that record, we are writing for one
another. And why are some quotes introduced by "X wrote" and others, "Y
stated for the record?" Are Y's comments more official than X's? What is
the point?
Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701