--- On Fri, 4/2/11, Carcharoth <carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
<snip>
one of the problems I have with WP:WEIGHT is the way
some
people take
a "percentage" approach to it. My view is that the amount
of weight
something has in an article is a function not just of the
*amount* of
text, but also how it is written (and also the sources it
uses).
It may not be clear from the wording of policy, but if
something is
sourced to a lightweight source, then it should carry less
"weight"
(in the sense of being taken seriously) than something
sourced to a
really authoritative source. It might seem that this is not
what
WP:WEIGHT is talking about, but in some sense it is. Also,
the wording
used: if something is said in a weaselly, vague and
wishy-washy way
(*regardless* of the volume of text used), then that
carries less
weight than a strongly-worded and forceful sentence.
Similarly, a
rambling set of paragraphs actually weights an article less
than a
single sentence that due to the way it is written jumps up
and down on
the page and says "this is the real point of the article".
In other words, the *way* an article is written affects the
weighting
of elements within in, not just the volume. Which all come
back to the
tone used in writing, which often affects the reader more
than the
volume of text used. Ideally, a succinct, dispassionate,
non-rhetorical tone will be used, and articles looked at as
a whole.
It is extremely depressing when arguments devolve into the
minutiae of
sentence structure in an effort to find a compromise
wording. It often
chokes the life out of the prose of an article.
That's a valid and subtle point. It's compounded by the fact that the more
heavyweight sources tend to be more restrained in their tone, and the more
lightweight sources, more shrill and emotive.
NPOV as presently defined does not help us there: we are duty-bound to
reflect the shrill voices in their shrillness, and the authoritative sources
in their restraint.
I don't see this changing unless we can see our way clear to assigning more
weight to authoritative sources, instead of the simple dichotomy of "not
reliable"/"reliable", where everything on the "reliable" side is
given
equal weight, regardless of whether it is a gossip site or an authoritative
scholarly biography.
Andreas