From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Garion1000 Sent: Thursday, 5 January 2006 21:25 To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Userbox fads
On 1/5/06, Peter Mackay peter.mackay@bigpond.com wrote:
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Garion1000
But userboxes makes it a lot easier to do so. Look it two
AFD's. The
one for some catholic encyclopedians and the gay rights in iraq article.
So what are you saying? It should be *hard* for Wikipedians to find others with similar interests?
No, but to find others with a simular POV is different. A userbox stating one person is an expert or has much knowledge on gay rights I don't mind. (Whether that user is pro or against them). A userbox stating that person is against gay rights is different. The same counts for userboxes for "I am a republican" vs "I am a republican party expert", creationism/evolution vs ...., I hate Bush etc etc.
I appreciate the distinction, but this just moves my question up a notch. Should it be hard for Wikipedians to find others of similar opinions?
Nobody expects us to be NPOV as private individuals. So long as the articles are NPOV, that's the big thing.
And there are POV groups within Wikipedia already. Homosexual folk seem to stick together and back each other up here. Presumably they all hold similar positive opinions on homosexuality, but I cannot say that I have seen any evidence that the articles they work on are POV as a result.
If there is any evidence that Wikipedia is suffering as a result of userboxes, then I'd be keen to see it. But so far it all seems to be a matter of potential rather than actuality, and may I suggest that if the fear is that people are going to misuse AfD to skew consensus, then the problem may very well be with the AfD process rather than with userboxes.
Peter (Skyring)