At 11:16 PM 5/23/2008, Sage Ross wrote:
Bauerlein says: "The concern for bias probably underlies the neutrality style, but I wish I received a lot more biased, opinionated, argumentative, judgmental, stylish, and colorful papers." But there are many situations where the cut-and-dry approach of Wikipedia will serve students well.
Depends on what they are studying. NPOV is an excellent concept, but I think that most editors on Wikipedia don't understand it, or they have an impoverished view of what it is. NPOV does not exclude "opinion, argument, judgement, style, and color." Rather, it includes them in balance and with accurate framing. The way I've been putting it lately is, if you can see something from two points of view simultaneously, you've got depth perception.
The world has quite enough people who take a biased, opinionated, argumentative, judgmental, stylish, and colorful approach (to writing, to politics, to their jobs, etc.).
Uff! Where are they? Biased and opinionated, argumentative, and judgmental, fine. We've got plenty of these, particularly on Wikipedia. I've been doing computer conferencing since the 1980s, and I noticed something peculiar then, and it's still happening here. There would be a debate, and a flame war would start. And someone who was insulted would complain, and then debate would start over what had actually happened. And, quite clearly, there were plenty of participants and commentors who did not care to carefully read the record. What actually happened? It's almost as if nobody cared, except a person with wounded feelings, who usually ended up being some kind of outcast. I just saw a case where an admin made an incorrect decision, apparently misread the record, because what he said, that was the cause of his action, was simply incorrect. Later, trying to undo some of the damage, he reverts me, so I write him and ask him to reconsider. He rejects it with a repetition of his original error. I point out the error. He responds, "Take it to AN/I." Which I'm not going to do. One of the biggest biases is "Whatever I did was right." Physchim62 went down that road, it's got some ugly turns in it.
Even if English professors aren't pleased with the trend, I think we'll be better off if the next generation has a higher proportion of educated people who take the Wikipedia path to writing and argument.
Actually, there are plenty of people who have worked for years with consensus process who know how to do it much better than the norm on Wikipedia. If Wikipedia is typical of the next generation, well, time to find a hiding place. Wikipedia was great, but certain structural problems became locked in. There are great masses of the project which are still functioning well, and there is a lot of inertia, but, from what I see talking with librarians, teachers, students, there is also a building reservoir of disgust with the process. Wikipedia is colossally inefficient, it does not respect and value editor time. Or, back to this thread, writer time.
Surely there will still be plenty of clever and opinionated writers to write novels and waste ink on the New York Times op-ed pages.
-Sage (User:Ragesoss)
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