----- Original Message ----- From: Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com Date: Tuesday, January 13, 2004 7:15 am Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] On the Middle East, on the Jimbo-RK-Danny dispute, etc.

Also being someone who reads this list without posting much, I was tryingfor some perspective rather than intending to get involved.

In the abstract, I assumed that WP will always encounter problems in trying to include everything; because writing contemporary history in the making is not only contentious but probably based on sources that are incomplete.

No kidding. My personal rule is to keep quiet for at least 30 years in terms of "history". Why so long?

After 25 to 30 years, virtually all of the democracies open up most of their classified records (with some exceptions, of course). Before then, all you have is journalism, and we all know how accurate THAT is.

The 'least bad' solution would seem to me to be a 'pendulum arbitration'plus 'cooling-off' period mechanism for edit wars: someone decides which of two versions is less unreasonable, and locks the page for a period of ten days. Here pendulum arbitration comes from labour disputes, where you don't try to find the middle point (which encourages extreme positions) but choose one or other side.

Not sure that's a good idea; It just encourages people to go nuts. Also, people may well forget an article after a week.