--- On Wed, 25/5/11, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
As mentioned before, what is at the root of this is a
wider problem
though: to what extent we as a project are happy to act as
participants, rather
than neutral observers and reporters, in the political
process.
I'd say that neutrality is our best bet here, as
anything else is likely
to come back to us eventually. We should not make *undue*
efforts to promote
political or social campaigns.
There is little in present policy to address this.
WP:Activist is an
essay.
Andreas
It is addressed at:
Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_soapbox_or_means_of_promotion
One of our key policies.
"Advocacy, propaganda, or recruitment of any kind: commercial, political, religious, sports-related, or otherwise. Of course, an article can report objectively about such things, as long as an attempt is made to describe the topic from a neutral point of view. You might wish to start a blog or visit a forum if you want to convince people of the merits of your favorite views.[1] See Wikipedia:Advocacy."
Again, this is NOT rocket surgery.
Fred
Maybe I should have said there is little to "effectively" address this.
In my experience activists of either bent violate WP:Advocacy (and WP:BLP) for years with impunity (cf. global warming). Each side having POV supporters, there is never any consensus at ANI etc. that a violation has actually occurred.
It usually goes on for years, until the matter goes to arbcom and swathes of editors from both sides end up topic-banned.
Our consensus-forming process, which is effectively modeled on a chat-show phone-in, rather than thoughtful and team-based analysis, does not help here.
This is why the outcome of arbitration is frequently so different from what the community does on its own. Ideally, it shouldn't be that way, but the only people I've ever seen implement WP:Advocacy are arbcom.
Andreas