zero 0000 wrote:
If viewed as a whole, Wikipedia is one of the truly great web projects and its success cannot be questioned. However, the model by which Wikipedia operates has its limits and for some things it doesn't work. One of the things it cannot do is to make high quality articles on controversial topics.
[snip]
The dynamic process is like a cup of water with some sand in it. You can get the sand closer on average to the top by energetic stirring, but any success in getting it closer to the top than that average is fleeting. Stop stirring and all your prior work is gone in an instant.
I frankly don't think this problem can be solved by making small changes. Tweaking the rules won't help very much. Yes, people should have to write NPOV rather than merely accept it in principle, but who is going to enforce that rule and who is going to stop the enforcers from becoming a sort of star chamber which in practice is a source of POV? Having a "latest stable edition" won't work either, because any sort of mechanism for changing the stable edition based on consensus will never gain that consensus. (If you doubt this, review the history of attempts to delete truly awful MidEast articles via VfD; it is nearly impossible.)
Of course I wish the best of luck to those willing to devote more of their time to trying to fix the unfixable, but I have personally had enough. I hope to return later on to edit in an area (mathematics) where Wikipedia works pretty well.
Zero.
It occurs to me that the problem is not with NPOV. The problem is that there are some subjects which people feel very strongly about and have been warring over for centuries. 2-3 years of Wikipedia editting will not fix these issues. Only diligence will and perhaps diplomacy.
TBSDY