It is possible to provide arguments against the reliability of any source whatever. (And in the other direction, it is possible to take most sources and selectively quote them to provide evidence for support for any position whatever.) It is possible to destroy the integrity of any article by concentrating on finding weaknesses in the sourcing combined with careful use of sources that appear reliable, but are not really to the point. Even a single person doing this can work havoc, and if this is done in a concerted way, it provides ample scope for the expression of bias. The cruder forms of this technique are of course widespread in politics--they tend not to work well in Wikipedia, but slightly more sophisticated use of the method can be quite successful unless the opposition is equally determined.
Conventional advice that we can can deal with this by applying NPOV do not solve practical problems, for the question of what is neutral and what is balanced and what is fringe are always to a considerable extent matters of opinion. Neither do comments that we can deal with everything by applying BLP strictly, for not only do most articles on contemporary topics to some measure involve BLP, but in any case this simply shifts the argument to what falls within the BLP rules. If you move the goalposts, the arguments will follow. Wikipedia is written by humans, & the assumption that the individual prejudices will always cancel each other is easily falsifiable.
This has been seen outside of politics. The two currently pending requests for arbitration both deal with this type of sourcing problem as the underlying issue. In my own view, they are both tending towards inequitable resolutions.
On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 7:44 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
On 10/03/2011 18:16, Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 10 March 2011 13:11, Fred Bauderfredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
What is an "airbush"? I think we should be told.
Our article "Airbrush" does not include information on the use of "airbrush" as a metaphor
Charles' point was that the article says "airbush" not "airbrush" in the headline.
There's a more serious kind of point that goes like this: the article in question being a BLP, we should very much judge the content in the light of BLP policy rather than who inserted it or edited it. What to an activist intensely interested in the subject of a BLP may seem like a whitewash may, in the light of the way we handle BLPs, be simply a scrupulous application of our criteria on referencing, due weight, salience and so on. In fact if that doesn't happen in such a contested area as US politics, something is probably wrong: we're writing an encyclopedia, after all, not operating a political seismograph tracking every little uptick of comment. That is not to excuse the activities of those who'd wish to put spin-doctor content onto the site.
In short, the way COI applies to BLPs ought to be even-handed, because the coverage we want is neutral.
Charles
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