From: "Charles Matthews"
<charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com>
Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)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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