--- "Poor, Edmund W" Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com wrote:
I have never agreed with the practice of "reverting all edits" by a particular user. Either ban them outright, or take each edit on its merits.
Hear hear.
...things are different. And we need to relate this
to our NPOV policy... This kind of policy lag is of course widespread. Its almost too big to look at now, and major overhauls (revolution) can be more harmful than the status quo.
We say we want neutrality in the articles, but in the special cases where NPOV *most* needs
application, we tend to surrender to POV-pushing. This is an egregious lapse, and is retarding Wikipedia's
acceptance as a reliable and authoritative source.
This is a fact which eventualism explains and considers -- and a kind of de-facto NPOV enforcement, where anyone can (If theres POV in the woods, and theres noone around to read it, does it make a grinding sound?)
It's not the fact that "anyone can edit any time" which makes librarians and college professors shun our work. It's that there is insufficient dedication to policy enforcement. No one is really worried about "stray marks" on the page. There are enough eyes to deal with simple vandalism. It's the long-term errors of bias which hurt us.
I think "insufficient dedication to policy" could be translated to insufficient editorial guidance. The answer to which would be to craft an editorial or NPOV board for oversight specific to bias handling.
For example, the Jerusalem article...[lots of weasel
terms]...all meant to make some person's
case or another, over historical right to the land, specific religious sites and so forth.
Yes, but academic specifics can be just as meaningless. "Historical right" is so utterly subjective a term that it can be explained and debated ad infinitum, and doesnt really require any comment here. "Specific religious sites" are likewise subjective, and overlapping in that area. Does tradition dating ~2500 years ago naturally supercede traditions that date ~500 years? If yes, then by that logic, traditions of ~3500 years supercede those, dont they? So, just going by what you just wrote, I'm skeptical of that criticism. The tendency toward detail often glosses over the need to be removed and generalistic, and vice versa. Its a balance.
It's the same with countless other articles. I stopped even trying to list them, long ago. It's like indexing a book... ...So many times I get frustrated with the bias...
- Any addition to an article, which 1 or more users
label as an "NPOV violation", may be moved from the article into the text page.
- It must not be replaced, until there is sufficient
agreement that an accurate description of the dispute has been crafted.
Basically, what I think youre saying is there needs to be another layer, besides the visible article, and the talk page. Ive been using <!-- comments --> more and more these days in cases where I think something needs to be cut, but I know there could be an argument against it. I recommend using these. In the future, perhaps an annotation system which shows/hides these comments will be implemented.
Ed frustration: WP is too big for any person to regulate in terms of its nuance and detail. Whats important now is growing the core of NPOV oriented people, and distinguishing NPOV from other institutions like adminship, mailing lists, etc. Is WP a glass half full or half empty. I dont know. A "random page check" can be dissapointing though, if youve a tendency to niggle.
Forget 3RR. It's mechanical and therefore (nearly) senseless. Let's start using our judgment. We are all smart enough to do that.
Forget 3RR? In favor of what? Subjective judgement? Eriks idea was simply to institute a simple and straightforward guideline -- netural in its application to all parties, and where any case by case details can be sorted by the Arbcom. It was a great idea then, and remains a great idea now. The move toward subjective judgement policy only works when those sujective powers are given to a small set of people -- which has its own problems.
~S
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com