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