Geoff mentions "cranks, kooks & partisans". Apart from being a nuisance, these also destabilise perfectly fine articles. Number five of Raul654's laws of Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Raul654/Raul%27s_laws) is that articles with a strong consensus base are crashed into by agenda-pushers. While the edit warring takes place, and the new contributors are taught the importance of NPOV, original research and verifiability, the articles look like a shambles and often remain pockmarked by the attempts to accomodate fringe views.
While I have no immediate solution for this problem, this is important issue that will need to be addressed. It is certainly a massive waste of time for long-term dedicated contributors to be warring with anons/newbies who think their pet theory should really be mentioned, or that a featured article is {{totallydisputed}}. This process does not bring quality to encyclopedia articles, it brings mayhem. And the dispute resolution process is not geared for dealing with it. For one thing, if I were to RFC every difficult POV-pusher (let alone RFM or RFA), there would be no more time left to actually work constructively on articles. Is this what we want?
User:Jfdwolff
PS I share Mav's observation that Wikipedia has grown in quantity and certainly in quality over a surprisingly short period of time.
Message: 5 Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 20:05:56 -0800 (PST) From: Geoff Burling geoff@agora.rdrop.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Google Alert - Wikipedia To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Message-ID: Pine.LNX.4.33.0511221943510.1413-100000@joan.burling.com Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
On Mon, 21 Nov 2005, Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
For those of you who were around when it kicked off... when it went live, was it intended to become a reference tool *on the web* like it has now, or was the web process intended to be somewhat less obvious than it became (a top-40 site, eek)? Open, yes, freely editable, yes, but a live "proper" encyclopedia from Year One?
My first edit was on 2 January 2002. Boy was the place a mess
(have you seen
UseMod ; ugly ; en.wikipedia had less than 20,000 articles and
Larry Sanger was
still around). But I loved it since there was so much to do. Almost every article I saw was obviously a work in progress. We were still
working out basic
rules and conventions. WikiProjects were just getting underway. Just about anybody could have a major influence on policy formation and the
direction of
WikiProjects.
At the time we thought it would take us 5 years to to reach our
initial goal of
100,000 articles. All the focus I saw was on development, not use
in the near
to mid term. I don't think anybody, except maybe Jimbo, could
have dreamed we
would get so popular so fast, or so useful.
Now when I look around, most articles that cover subjects
encyclopedias should
cover look fairly complete. Articles on technology, popular culture, and current events are even better on average.
Wikipedia becoming useful; well, that is something that kinda
snuck up on me
while I was helping make it useful. I'm sure it also surprised
many other old
timers as well. The idea seemed too far in the future to even think about.
I haven't been around as long as Mav (I still kinda consider him one of the "authentic original Wikipedians"), but much of what he says above could be my words.
But if I could build on what he wrote, one thing worth noting is the speed of change in this project. I've mentioned in the past the problem that some important policies are proposed & adopted before some of us who have been on Wikipedia for a while notice. Usually there is no problem: give me a little time to understand & adjust, & I will accept any new proposal that is based on common sense.
Another point is that I feel compelled to defend the quality of Wikipedia because, in part, it is my baby, but also because I know that the professional experts are guilty of more acts of botched analyses & bad writing than they want to admit to. Wikipedia is not only reinventing the idea of an encyclopedia but also the (excuse me) paradigm of academia: while our structure makes it easy for cranks, kooks & partisans to push their own agendas here, it also frees us from the abuse of authorities who expect us to accept their biasses as profound new discoveries or insights.
Perhaps most of these changes will have worked their way out in the ten years that Andrew mentions above. I can only hope that, unlike Moses, I will be permitted to enter that Promised Land when they have finished, & see what this experiment has led to.
Geoff
"J.F. de Wolff" wrote
And the dispute resolution process is not geared for dealing with it.
The fact that dispute resolution has no 'remedy' in the case of POV pushers who are well-behaved, or even just contrite and flexible, is a 'known problem' for WP. We have ducked, really, the idea of resolution of content disputes, rather than behavioural issues.
That, one can say, is one of the wiki aspects that gives Wikipedia its character. Edit wars have to find their own resolution.
I have thought for a while that the ArbCom ought to look into POV pushing. I don't know what the solution is, though. Some system of public cautions, without other sanctions, for example. Of course there are many thousands of POV-pushing editors, and it is not clear what impact can be made.
Charles
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charles matthews wrote:
"J.F. de Wolff" wrote
And the dispute resolution process is not geared for dealing with it.
The fact that dispute resolution has no 'remedy' in the case of POV pushers who are well-behaved, or even just contrite and flexible, is a 'known problem' for WP. We have ducked, really, the idea of resolution of content disputes, rather than behavioural issues.
The Committee has found people to be intransigent POV warriors without them behaving in specifically "bad" ways, IIRC.
That, one can say, is one of the wiki aspects that gives Wikipedia its character. Edit wars have to find their own resolution.
That's one way of looking at it, I suppose. :-)
I have thought for a while that the ArbCom ought to look into POV pushing. I don't know what the solution is, though. Some system of public cautions, without other sanctions, for example. Of course there are many thousands of POV-pushing editors, and it is not clear what impact can be made.
Hmm. I for one (and I'm sure that I'm not alone) am very wary of the Committee getting stuck in to content disputes. It would impinge on the editing process unduly, and would probably end up with us making Bad Decisions(tm).
A community-based system might be a better idea, yes, but runs the risk of being hijacked by one, both, or all n-teen parties as a bitch-fest against one another. C.f., erm, every other "community" process, in places at least.
Yours, - -- James D. Forrester Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] E-Mail : james@jdforrester.org IM (MSN) : jamesdforrester@hotmail.com