From: "Charles Matthews" charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Loosing more of our best contributors Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 16:00:51 +0100 Jay jg wrote
In the end, we're either left with wikijunk, or a mass of overlapping articles, or (in the best
case)
the POV warriors eventually abandon their quest, having wasted many person-days of individual editors times which could have been far more profitably spent creating new content.
Well, these outcomes are different in nature.
I think it is common ground that edit wars create poor articles; so, yes, edit warriors do leave wikijunk. Experienced editors are capable of dealing with this.
I think a number of experienced editors here are telling you the exact opposite; that they "deal with it" by giving up.
'A mass of overlapping articles' is indeed a probable consequence of two or more sides to an argument backing up their cases: this is intrisically a Good Thing, in that one can get behind strongly-held beliefs to some of the grounds. A case I was looking at today is [[loop quantum gravity]]; where WP is getting the benefit of some expert contributions, though not in the most finished or useable form. The merge options are a little tricky here (and are surely more so in other cases); but typicallly are mostly about skill as an editor.
It is intrinsically a Bad Thing if it persists; we get to the state where Wikipedia cannot be trusted because it simultaneously (and often vociferously) asserts all sorts of contradictory things, and no-one actually knows where to look for information, because the articles (as stated) all overlap. It also makes the maintenance effort grow exponentially.
Finally, time consumption. Undeniable that responsible Wikipedians watching contentious areas do have to put in the hours. Perhaps creating new content would get more recognition. It is, though, rapid to revert; the bias is in favour of sustaining the status quo if that's the object.
Hmm. I've personally been criticized quite strongly and regularly for reverting to the status quo; maybe the bias in your mind is not that of others.
By the way, it seems a fairly good rule of thumb that when Robert complains to this list, he has some other quarrel on his agenda; and no change with this one.
True enough, but regardless of the source, it does touch on a broader problem.
Jay.
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