Ed Poor wrote-
I can't stop three dozen other contributors from injecting bias into the scientific articles relating to the environment. Not by myself -- not by slowly and patiently undoing each mistake and explaining it. I'm outnumbered and outgunned.
Welcome to the club, Ed. Let's call it the club of people frustrated with ''inclusivity bias''. You're in good company here, so put up your feet and have the barmaid bring you a glass of good [[Scotch]].
You have hit upon the number one reason why good, evenhanded contributors leave the Wiki, and why many of those who stay become frustrated and limit their edits to mechanical changes and work on a few pet subject areas. It is also the reason why most credentialled people have left the project.
''Inclusivity bias'' is my term for the pattern of putting the [[burden of proof]] on editors making content changes in broad areas. The trouble is that the Wikipedia culture is deletion-adverse and reversion-adverse. Wikipedia culture is to include things until they are proven unmeritous. If you cut paragraphs, revert bad edits to an article, or try to have an article deleted--unless you have proof, you get NO support from the community.
And you need that community support, because you are up against people with strong feelings, who want to paint subjects a certain way. You mention environmentalism, but that's just one of the many areas where this is a problem. The Isreal/Palestine issues, articles on different religions, articles on cults, politics, and world trade all have the same problem.
I think the culture has to change. I don't know how to do it. I've tried, and it is *excruciatingly* hard to walk into an article that has bias, that clearly has a problem with facts and with neutrality, and accomplish anything good. The usual outcome is outpouring of anger, edit wars, and hard feelings all around, and the well-meaning editor just ends up making enemies. What *should* happen, is that the community should rise up and *support* people who are trying to help out in these situations.
What kind of support? Well, people should be rushing to your side to reinstate your edits when some POV writer keeps reverting you. Other people should be coming to the discussion, and not just adding and refactoring ad nauseum, but actually trying to push the process towards a decision. What we need more of are editors who are willing to approach a controversial topic that they don't feel strongly about, and staying there with tenacity, requiring sources for questionable edits, flat-out reverting inappropriate garbage, and doing their own cross-checking.
This is all going to get worse as Wikipedia becomes more important in the real world. When its #90 at alexa.com, you can bet that somebody from Monsanto and somebody from Greenpeace will both be here trying to steer the articles around on GM food.
Louis