Today I posted a very long article about the controversy (ca. Aug. 2006- Aug. 2011) about the article currently named "Campaign about 'santorum' neologismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_for_%22santorum%22_neologism". I expect at least a couple followers of this list will find their username mentioned in the blog post linked here http://bit.ly/santorum-wiki-problem .
Overall, my goal was to show how Wikipedia dealt with an extraordinarily challenging dispute about subject—what to call it, and what it should say—while balancing BLP and COATRACK, as well as (early on) NOTE and other policy-based differences.
My take is that Wikipedia, for all its faults, dealt with it very well. The debate turned on several questions about what the very nature of what Wikipedia is all about, and how the community worked to resolve a very difficult case.
I'm sure I've made some mistakes, as one may in trying to summarize 5 years and 200,000+ words of debate about a highly contentious subject, but I'd love to get any feedback from contributors here about both the long-term prospects for this article / topic as well as anything I've described in the 3,700-word post linked above.
I hope this is the right forum for this message, and I'd certainly be interested in writing a follow-up if there's anything worthwhile to add. Otherwise, comments on the post itself are more than welcome.
Cheers, Bill
On 11/08/2011 00:34, William Beutler wrote:
My take is that Wikipedia, for all its faults, dealt with it very well. The debate turned on several questions about what the very nature of what Wikipedia is all about, and how the community worked to resolve a very difficult case.
Not for us to say, here. But it should certainly be seen as a case study, one for the policy wonks. My take has been that analysis _in Wikipedia terms_ is the key to resolving the issue (i.e. to create such reference material as should exist on enWP about the topic).
I'm sure I've made some mistakes, as one may in trying to summarize 5 years and 200,000+ words of debate about a highly contentious subject, but I'd love to get any feedback from contributors here about both the long-term prospects for this article / topic as well as anything I've described in the 3,700-word post linked above.
NB you have written RfA where you mean RfAr.
I hope this is the right forum for this message, and I'd certainly be interested in writing a follow-up if there's anything worthwhile to add. Otherwise, comments on the post itself are more than welcome.
The forum is fine for general discussions of this nature.
Charles