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]].
I think this type of thing was one of the reasons for the I-E fork. They use the sympathetic point of view, unless they're wrong, in which case they say the right point of view.
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.
No, people leave the project because of people like RK, who claim they're doing something equivalent to inclucivity bias, saying that the other people are wrong and they're using the only reasonable point of view; the other people are neo-nazis/environmentalists.
''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.
So what's wrong with that? Don't you have some kind of reason to delete content? If you don't think (and prove, if someone asks) that the content is inaccurate, why should you delete it?
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 Israel/Palestine issues, articles on different religions, articles on cults, politics, and world trade all have the same problem.
You're just going against NPOV. You just think that everything should be "right". Well, who's to say who's right? You? Someone from the other side? The concept of NPOV is to show all sides and let the reader decide.
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's your definition of neutrality? Is including other points of view that are "wrong" not neutral?
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.
Is the POV writer deleting other people's points of view or in any way making his POV the only one there? Is he asserting that he's right while leaving other POVs there (although asserting that they're wrong)? If it's one of the first two, then you have a case, but since Wikipedia is a wiki, it's easy to change (but if you get into an edit war, you can report it to the list). If it's the third one, then it's very easy to fix; just make minor changes in the language (eg. some say that..., proponents claim..., etc.).
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
The article on GM food should reflect both points of view. If the Greenpeace and Monsanto people read the Wikipedia policies, they can have their opinions and not be trolls. If they are trolls, and reason is found that they are trolls (instead of assuming that all edits should be reverted until proven otherwise), and an edit war starts, then the involved parties can write to the list for discussion of banning, or they can use the planned arbitration pannel. But banning when you're in an edit war with someone for including their POVs is going too far. LDan
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