<rant>
There's been much talk about content, and sources, and whatnot. I think alot of this debate has been caused by confusion over some of WP's fundamental policies, particularly WP:NPOV, WP:V and WP:NOR.
Firstly, I'd like to point out that WP:NPOV has *always* had a threshold to it. People are getting all worked up about a content cabal over nothing. Exclusion of minority opinions has always been policy. Not every theory can get in just because someone published a paper on it. Scroll down to the second heading and read the quote from Jimbo:
"If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts; If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents; If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia (except perhaps in some ancillary article) regardless of whether it's true or not; and regardless of whether you can prove it or not."
If, out of a collection of say 100 scholarly articles, less than 5 of them represented a particular POV, that POV does not deserve inclusion. Of course people will quibble over what "minority" means, but we can always have a vote on the talk page to see whether people consider a source to be a minority source.
Many of the examples discussed here are trivial and not the kind of disputes which actually happen. Re trains: it's ok to cite some not particularly well known train-related archive, as long as train buffs know about it. WP:V says:
"In general, consider the sorts of people who are likely to edit the article in question: the article should be verifiable by these people. Therefore, an article on a sociology topic might include content that can only be verified by a sociologist."
The problem articles are generally not the ones with little information available about them. Generally, they aren't contentious, and if they are, they probably fall under WP:V or WP:NOR, in which case they can be dealt with quite easily.
No, the problem articles are the ones where one large body of people coming from one POV are confronting another large body coming from another POV. But of course it is not WP's role to solve these disputes, merely discuss them. Some people seem to forget this. If the process of WP:NPOV (weed out the minority sources) cannot arrive at a consensus set of facts, then that's fine. If we can't, then the real world probably can't either. We just present the opinions and move on.
All that is necessary for POV to prevail is for good Wikipedians not to read/enforce WP:NPOV properly.
Now it's late and I'm going to bed. Apologies for taking up so much inbox space.
</rant>
Stephen Bain wrote:
Exclusion of minority opinions has always been policy. Not every theory can get in just because someone published a paper on it.
That's a drastic POV on the matter
Scroll down to the second heading and read the quote from Jimbo:
"If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts; If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents; If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia (except perhaps in some ancillary article) regardless of whether it's true or not; and regardless of whether you can prove it or not."
If, out of a collection of say 100 scholarly articles, less than 5 of them represented a particular POV, that POV does not deserve inclusion. Of course people will quibble over what "minority" means, but we can always have a vote on the talk page to see whether people consider a source to be a minority source.
So you support the "tyranny of the majority". Of course 95 will always outvote 5. And 51 will always outvote 49. I would prefer not to be so arrogant in my use of the word "deserve".
The problem articles are generally not the ones with little information available about them.
That much is true.
No, the problem articles are the ones where one large body of people coming from one POV are confronting another large body coming from another POV.
Generally yes.
But of course it is not WP's role to solve these disputes, merely discuss them. Some people seem to forget this. If the process of WP:NPOV (weed out the minority sources) cannot arrive at a consensus set of facts, then that's fine. If we can't, then the real world probably can't either. We just present the opinions and move on.
It's fair enough to say that it's not our role to solve these problems, and that we should be prepared to move on if we can't. There are many valid third party minority opinions. The principal combatants are often so caught up in their own battles that they ignore any alternative options. That's a terrible excuse for suppressing them. The "King of Hearts" represented a very important minority when he stood naked at the doors of the asylum with a bird cage in his hand.
All that is necessary for POV to prevail is for good Wikipedians not to read/enforce WP:NPOV properly.
i.e. behave and do what your told! No thanks!
I prefer to put principles ahead of rules.
Ec
The concern that some feel about this is not, I believe, based on their misunderstanding of Wikipedia's fundamental policies. Rather, it is about how those policies should be interpreted, enforced, and utilised.
Personally, my concern is that policy interpretations based on highly contentious articles may lead to poor general rules: "Hard cases make bad law". I'm also concerned that turning policies into rigid rules, procedures, committees and the like may advantage those who like to rules-lawyer over those with less patience for minutae.
Every rule set down in stone is a rule behind which a troll can hide. Or turn into a club to beat those they want to antagonize.
Every time we are tempted by instruction-creep, we should think "How will this rule be abused by the ill-intentioned?"
-Matt (User:Morven)
Clearly the lack of rules are ''also'' being abused by the ill intentioned.
Jack (Sam Spade)
On 6/8/05, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
The concern that some feel about this is not, I believe, based on their misunderstanding of Wikipedia's fundamental policies. Rather, it is about how those policies should be interpreted, enforced, and utilised.
Personally, my concern is that policy interpretations based on highly contentious articles may lead to poor general rules: "Hard cases make bad law". I'm also concerned that turning policies into rigid rules, procedures, committees and the like may advantage those who like to rules-lawyer over those with less patience for minutae.
Every rule set down in stone is a rule behind which a troll can hide. Or turn into a club to beat those they want to antagonize.
Every time we are tempted by instruction-creep, we should think "How will this rule be abused by the ill-intentioned?"
-Matt (User:Morven) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Matt Brown (morven@gmail.com) [050609 07:42]:
I'm also concerned that turning policies into rigid rules, procedures, committees and the like may advantage those who like to rules-lawyer over those with less patience for minutae.
Yes. That's precisely my uneasy feeling about this discussion. POV pushers won't go away, they'll adapt to circumstances. If a hundred editors say Rush Limbaugh outdraws a peer-reviewed scientific paper as a reference on science, do they win the vote 100-1?
Also, I've seen no plans for when such content decisions are reviewable. Never? Once you win, is the question officially fixed?
Every rule set down in stone is a rule behind which a troll can hide. Or turn into a club to beat those they want to antagonize. Every time we are tempted by instruction-creep, we should think "How will this rule be abused by the ill-intentioned?"
"This proposal will create a stick for idiots." i.e. an idiot stick. Yep.
- d.
On 6/9/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
Matt Brown (morven@gmail.com) [050609 07:42]:
I'm also concerned that turning policies into rigid rules, procedures, committees and the like may advantage those who like to rules-lawyer over those with less patience for minutae.
Yes. That's precisely my uneasy feeling about this discussion. POV pushers won't go away, they'll adapt to circumstances. If a hundred editors say Rush Limbaugh outdraws a peer-reviewed scientific paper as a reference on science, do they win the vote 100-1?
Also, I've seen no plans for when such content decisions are reviewable. Never? Once you win, is the question officially fixed?
I purposely didn't want to say a number for this reason. What I was trying to illustrate was the point in WP:V that the article in general should be verifiable by people who are likely to edit that article. So for an article on science, if a source is questionable, we ask some scientists, either literally ask some, or think like a scientist would. In either case, your example would probably be resolved in favour of the peer-reviewed paper.
As for reviewable decisions, I don't think there's an answer to that, party because Wikipedia is a wiki, and is always flexible and changing. I don't believe that flexibility should be abused, or in any way twisted to be an unfair advantage. As it says at Wikipedia:Consensus, consensus should not trump NPOV (or any other policy). Sometimes it may happen, and that's a bad thing, but sometimes that's just the price of being a wiki. Too many rules (as opposed to policies for editors to follow) reduce the wikiness.
The other point was that WP is (or wants to be) an encyclopaedia, and that some POVs have to be excluded. The way we do that is by assessing how much (academic) support they have, in terms of the context and subject matter. There's no need for content committees, as long as consensus decisions on WP:NPOV can be acheieved (mediation) and enforced (arbitration).