Today's featured article is a delightful read, but strikes me as terribly one-sided. The adjectives applied to Yeltsin in this conflict are consistently negative, and the advjectives applied to his opponents are consistently positive. The reality is much more complex.
It is unusual for a featured article to be so problematic.
--Jimbo
Today's featured article is a delightful read, but strikes me as terribly one-sided. The adjectives applied to Yeltsin in this conflict are consistently negative, and the advjectives applied to his opponents are consistently positive. The reality is much more complex.
I noticed that too, Jimbo. I was copyediting it yesterday and noticed that it's pretty much demonising Yeltsin the whole way through. I would have tried to NPOV it, but I really don't know too much about the subject. Maybe in the future we should put together an NPOV crew to check featured articles...
On Friday 23 July 2004 15:52, blankfaze wrote:
Today's featured article is a delightful read, but strikes me as terribly one-sided. The adjectives applied to Yeltsin in this conflict are consistently negative, and the advjectives applied to his opponents are consistently positive. The reality is much more complex.
I noticed that too, Jimbo. I was copyediting it yesterday and noticed that it's pretty much demonising Yeltsin the whole way through. I would have tried to NPOV it, but I really don't know too much about the subject. Maybe in the future we should put together an NPOV crew to check featured articles...
I've read the article and I don't see how does it demonise Yeltsin. The only (possible) problem I see is that some statements are definitive (...this was unconstitutional...) but, if they are widely accepted, possibly even admitted by Yeltsin, even that is OK.
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
Today's featured article is a delightful read, but strikes me as terribly one-sided. The adjectives applied to Yeltsin in this conflict are consistently negative, and the advjectives applied to his opponents are consistently positive. The reality is much more complex.
It is unusual for a featured article to be so problematic.
And the bulk of the content is from - you guessed it - 172! This is the hallmark of his style; while there are usually no gross misrepresentations of fact, the wording is so relentlessly slanted it would take a week to clean up, at the end of which he would just revert it all in one fell swoop. It's completely exasperating; I finally stopped looking at anything he touches, scrubbed it all out of my watchlist, and regained Wikipedia-nirvana.
Even so, I still worry that the unabashed socialist viewpoint will hurt WP's credibility as an impartial recorder.
Stan
Any unbashed viewpoint hurts our credibility.
On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 10:12:04 -0700, Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
Today's featured article is a delightful read, but strikes me as terribly one-sided. The adjectives applied to Yeltsin in this conflict are consistently negative, and the advjectives applied to his opponents are consistently positive. The reality is much more complex.
It is unusual for a featured article to be so problematic.
And the bulk of the content is from - you guessed it - 172! This is the hallmark of his style; while there are usually no gross misrepresentations of fact, the wording is so relentlessly slanted it would take a week to clean up, at the end of which he would just revert it all in one fell swoop. It's completely exasperating; I finally stopped looking at anything he touches, scrubbed it all out of my watchlist, and regained Wikipedia-nirvana.
Even so, I still worry that the unabashed socialist viewpoint will hurt WP's credibility as an impartial recorder.
Stan
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Fri, 23 Jul 2004, [ISO-8859-1] �var Arnfj�r� Bjarmason wrote:
Any unbashed viewpoint hurts our credibility.
On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 10:12:04 -0700, Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
Today's featured article is a delightful read, but strikes me as terribly one-sided. The adjectives applied to Yeltsin in this conflict are consistently negative, and the advjectives applied to his opponents are consistently positive. The reality is much more complex.
It is unusual for a featured article to be so problematic.
And the bulk of the content is from - you guessed it - 172! This is the hallmark of his style; while there are usually no gross misrepresentations of fact, the wording is so relentlessly slanted it would take a week to clean up, at the end of which he would just revert it all in one fell swoop. It's completely exasperating; I finally stopped looking at anything he touches, scrubbed it all out of my watchlist, and regained Wikipedia-nirvana.
Even so, I still worry that the unabashed socialist viewpoint will hurt WP's credibility as an impartial recorder.
What is odd about this article in my eyes is that it appears not to have passed thru the normal process of being nominated, debated, then approved as a "Featured Article". I admit I made a rather quick search on the history pages of both the [[Wikipedia: Candidates for Featured Articles]] & the page in question, but one would think it would be that hard to find some trace of a discussion & approval.
Can someone supply a link to the nomination for this page, or otherwise explain how it gained featured status?
Geoff
Geoffrey Burling wrote:
On Fri, 23 Jul 2004, [ISO-8859-1] ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
Any unbashed viewpoint hurts our credibility.
On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 10:12:04 -0700, Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
Today's featured article is a delightful read, but strikes me as terribly one-sided. The adjectives applied to Yeltsin in this conflict are consistently negative, and the advjectives applied to his opponents are consistently positive. The reality is much more complex.
It is unusual for a featured article to be so problematic.
And the bulk of the content is from - you guessed it - 172! This is the hallmark of his style; while there are usually no gross misrepresentations of fact, the wording is so relentlessly slanted it would take a week to clean up, at the end of which he would just revert it all in one fell swoop. It's completely exasperating; I finally stopped looking at anything he touches, scrubbed it all out of my watchlist, and regained Wikipedia-nirvana.
Even so, I still worry that the unabashed socialist viewpoint will hurt WP's credibility as an impartial recorder.
What is odd about this article in my eyes is that it appears not to have passed thru the normal process of being nominated, debated, then approved as a "Featured Article". I admit I made a rather quick search on the history pages of both the [[Wikipedia: Candidates for Featured Articles]] & the page in question, but one would think it would be that hard to find some trace of a discussion & approval.
Can someone supply a link to the nomination for this page, or otherwise explain how it gained featured status?
Geoff
Ahah ! a cabal to destabilize Wikipedia ? :-)
On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 14:35:17 -0700 (PDT), Geoffrey Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
On Fri, 23 Jul 2004, [ISO-8859-1] Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
Any unbashed viewpoint hurts our credibility.
True. See what you think of the current revision.
What is odd about this article in my eyes is that it appears not to have passed thru the normal process of being nominated, debated, then approved as a "Featured Article". I admit I made a rather quick search on the history
What's that? Checking the featured log quickly brought up the history; search for "Russian".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Featured_...
It's worth noting that most commenters recognized its NPOV problems at the time, but were content to feature it anyway. Another reason to encourage further serious editing and improvements to FA articles before showcasing them on the main page... perhaps 24 hours' notice is not enough. I like the way Featured Pictures are decided on a week in advance.
On Sat, 24 Jul 2004, Sj wrote:
On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 14:35:17 -0700 (PDT), Geoffrey Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
On Fri, 23 Jul 2004, [ISO-8859-1] �var Arnfj�r� Bjarmason wrote:
Any unbashed viewpoint hurts our credibility.
True. See what you think of the current revision.
What is odd about this article in my eyes is that it appears not to have passed thru the normal process of being nominated, debated, then approved as a "Featured Article". I admit I made a rather quick search on the history
What's that? Checking the featured log quickly brought up the history; search for "Russian".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Featured_...
Okay, once I found _page_, I was able to backtrack & figure out just how to find information like this in the future.
I may have been on Wikipedia for quite a while, but I find its structure -- specifically its interface & how meta-discussions are laid out -- keep changing. I tend to keep to my own parts due to lack of time, & whenever I take a moment to look around at the wider picture, I feel as if I've just started scratching the surface of Wikipedia.
There's enough going on not only in terms of conversations, but in developing new tools, user & contributor helps, & other such activities that for every hour I spend contributing to the actual text, I should spend another hour combing thru all of the other anicilliary pages to stay informed.
And then there's abundance of contributors: not only have I found people writing articles I have been struggling to get to myself (& sometimes better than I could do), but sometimes finishing projects that I've only just begun. (It can be frustrating working from a dialup connection.)
But back to my experience attempting to research what happened with this article. Since I didn't see the link to [[Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Featured_log]], I went back the original article, looking for some sign that someone had added or removed the tag {{fac}}, which showed it was a Featured article candidate. had I seen that tag, I would have gone back & looked harder for that link, or some sign that there had been a discussion.
My point is that, for me at least, the interface failed to help me find what I was looking for in 10 to 15 minutes of searching. While I admit that my technique for doing my research could have been better, it would be a great help if there was more documentation on how to find these things. (And hopefully the system didn't change too greatly to frustrate attempts to keep it up to date.)
It's worth noting that most commenters recognized its NPOV problems at the time, but were content to feature it anyway. Another reason to encourage further serious editing and improvements to FA articles before showcasing them on the main page... perhaps 24 hours' notice is not enough. I like the way Featured Pictures are decided on a week in advance.
Once I found the discussion, I could then compare the article history, & I could see that there were some attempts to adjust the POV language in the article. (And I also noticed one particularly uninformative comment to one minor change.)
Geoff
Big surprise!
Fred
From: Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2004 10:12:04 -0700 To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Russian constitutional crisis of 1993
172!
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
Today's featured article is a delightful read, but strikes me as terribly one-sided. The adjectives applied to Yeltsin in this conflict are consistently negative, and the advjectives applied to his opponents are consistently positive. The reality is much more complex.
It is unusual for a featured article to be so problematic.
As commented elsewhere, much of this article was written by 172, and the bulk of it quite recent. I also enjoyed the read.
However NPOV a writer might consider themselves, I do not think one can shoot the messenger.
My guess is the problem is the approval phase of a featured article, something I know nothing about, but I would suggest that any proposed featured article be checked to see if there has been cosmopolitan input.
I am aware of 172's writing style, having come across his contributions to Zimbabwe-related pages.
I personally value his style as keeping pages that are easy candidates for POV editing clear of mud-slinging, and suitably encyclopedic.
Cheers, Andy - aka [[User:Wikiwizzy]]