I have come across topics that are approached differently by different groups and thought that parallel articles might be appropriate in those cases. I'd like a wider view on the topic. Here is where I've discussed it on talk pages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Judaism#Jewish_Versi... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:David#King_David_in_Judaism
You're proposing to overturn the rules against POV forking? Seems like a bad idea to me - the encyclopedia would shatter into an unnavigable mess if every interest group were to split off their own versions of articles.
On 6/27/10, Shmuel Weidberg ezrawax@gmail.com wrote:
I have come across topics that are approached differently by different groups and thought that parallel articles might be appropriate in those cases. I'd like a wider view on the topic. Here is where I've discussed it on talk pages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Judaism#Jewish_Versi... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:David#King_David_in_Judaism
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It pretty simple to manage. You just need to link to all articles on a particular subject from the top of the page. Articles would need to be limited to notable points of view.
Fred Bauder
You're proposing to overturn the rules against POV forking? Seems like a bad idea to me - the encyclopedia would shatter into an unnavigable mess if every interest group were to split off their own versions of articles.
On 6/27/10, Shmuel Weidberg ezrawax@gmail.com wrote:
I have come across topics that are approached differently by different groups and thought that parallel articles might be appropriate in those cases. I'd like a wider view on the topic. Here is where I've discussed it on talk pages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Judaism#Jewish_Versi... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:David#King_David_in_Judaism
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-- Sent from my mobile device
Elias Friedman A.S., EMT-P â ××××× ×תת××× ×× ×¦×× elipongo@gmail.com http://elipongo.blogspot.com/
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On 27 June 2010 06:47, Elias Friedman elipongo@gmail.com wrote:
You're proposing to overturn the rules against POV forking? Seems like a bad idea to me - the encyclopedia would shatter into an unnavigable mess if every interest group were to split off their own versions of articles.
I think there's a valid issue here, but there's a balance to be struck between:
* X as it occurs in one specific context * X from the perspective of one viewpoint
So it would be legitimate to have an article on [[Economic philosophies of the Something Party]] and one on [[Economic philosophies of the Other Party]]; it would not be legitimate to have an article on [[Economics (Somethingian)]] as a counter to [[Economics (Otherian)]].
Where you draw the line, though, is quite tricky...
On 27 June 2010 17:43, Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk wrote:
I think there's a valid issue here, but there's a balance to be struck between:
- X as it occurs in one specific context
- X from the perspective of one viewpoint
So it would be legitimate to have an article on [[Economic philosophies of the Something Party]] and one on [[Economic philosophies of the Other Party]]; it would not be legitimate to have an article on [[Economics (Somethingian)]] as a counter to [[Economics (Otherian)]].
Where you draw the line, though, is quite tricky...
So should the various articles linked to from here be deleted?
On 27 June 2010 17:47, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Where you draw the line, though, is quite tricky...
So should the various articles linked to from here be deleted?
Economics was a bad example, perhaps :-)
That said, this illustrates the point - we are quite capable of having an article on [[neoclassical economics]] and one on [[marxist economics]], but what we don't have is two co-equal articles on [[economics]], one from a Marxist perspective and one from a neoclassical perspective.
As I say, fuzzy line, especially with more philosophical concepts - it shows up the problems with simply saying "we don't like forks".
The original article being discussed here was, I believe, the biography of a particular historic-religious figure, and this is where we can hit problems, but also where a "X views on..." article can work out well if handled correctly.
To take a prominent example, it's reasonable to have [[Jesus in Christianity]] and [[Jesus in Islam]], but they need to both be treated as subsets of the article on [[Jesus]], in the same way that [[Historicity of Jesus]] or [[Cultural depictions of Jesus]] are, and *not* as seperate forms of the main article. The trick is in getting that balance right.
On 27 June 2010 17:56, Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk wrote:
To take a prominent example, it's reasonable to have [[Jesus in Christianity]] and [[Jesus in Islam]], but they need to both be treated as subsets of the article on [[Jesus]], in the same way that [[Historicity of Jesus]] or [[Cultural depictions of Jesus]] are, and *not* as seperate forms of the main article. The trick is in getting that balance right.
Well said. Forks should exist to deal with articles that would be too long otherwise and for no other reason. You should be able to combine all the forks together (replacing the summary in the main article with the full article) and end up with a (very long) coherent article.
On 27 June 2010 18:10, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Well said. Forks should exist to deal with articles that would be too long otherwise and for no other reason. You should be able to combine all the forks together (replacing the summary in the main article with the full article) and end up with a (very long) coherent article.
And here's a secondary problem :-)
I think it's key we don't call these forks - they're not.
Forks are articles on fundamentally the same thing, but written differently - they may be forked for philosophical reasons, for administrative reasons, or even for stylistic ones,* but they're still two articles on Topic X which disagree on something.
They're bad.
The alternative is "daughter articles" - at least, that's the term I've always encountered, and I'm curious if we call them anything else - which exist to go into more detail than the main article, or to bring out aspects that wouldn't be appropriate there, or to pull material together from a number of disparate articles to avoid duplication (for example, three people involved in a single notable event whose lives otherwise don't cross).
These are fine.
We might say, rather than both being on Topic X, that they're on Topic X.i, X.ii, X.iii, etc. They *can* be written badly, and effectively amount to forks, but that's a specific content issue; we should avoid thinking of them as a kind of fork by default.
The problem arises when the scope of a sub-article is such that it's almost forkish by nature - [[A's views on Topic X]], [[B's views on Topic X]], etc. It's a bit hazier here - but as long as we keep the emphasis on writing about the views, rather than presenting them as statements of sourced fact, we're probably on the right side of the line.
On 27/06/2010, Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk wrote:
On 27 June 2010 17:47, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Where you draw the line, though, is quite tricky...
So should the various articles linked to from here be deleted?
Economics was a bad example, perhaps :-)
That said, this illustrates the point - we are quite capable of having an article on [[neoclassical economics]] and one on [[marxist economics]], but what we don't have is two co-equal articles on [[economics]], one from a Marxist perspective and one from a neoclassical perspective.
They're subarticles. The Wikipedia allows subarticles, and that's not considered a fork. And even that can be abused.
As I say, fuzzy line, especially with more philosophical concepts - it shows up the problems with simply saying "we don't like forks".
We don't like forks. That isn't the problem. The problem is the people that DO like forks.
--
- Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
Andrew Gray wrote:
On 27 June 2010 06:47, Elias Friedman elipongo@gmail.com wrote:
You're proposing to overturn the rules against POV forking? Seems like a bad idea to me - the encyclopedia would shatter into an unnavigable mess if every interest group were to split off their own versions of articles.
I think there's a valid issue here, but there's a balance to be struck between:
- X as it occurs in one specific context
- X from the perspective of one viewpoint
So it would be legitimate to have an article on [[Economic philosophies of the Something Party]] and one on [[Economic philosophies of the Other Party]]; it would not be legitimate to have an article on [[Economics (Somethingian)]] as a counter to [[Economics (Otherian)]].
Where you draw the line, though, is quite tricky...
It's not so tricky to say that (a) NPOV is never negotiable in an article, and (b) a POV content fork is not a distinction between topics, but a way of spreading out content according to editorial view. We have never accepted that POV content forks have a place in WP. (They have a very large place elsewhere, which is a good reason to stick to our guns on this.)
Charles
From a reader perspective, someone who looks up a named <topic> is entitled
to a balanced view on that named topic. Being told they can't read a balanced view on the topic, but they can read a choice of 3 articles of a non-balanced type don't really do the job.
If the reader can (or should be able to) "make up their own mind" then so should we, and if they can't then we have failed to educate them about <topic>, we've just said "here are 2 biased views and we can't agree how much weight each carries."
Either of these messages - even the one that says "we can't decide" - is better conveyed in one article.
FT2
On 27 June 2010 23:55, FT2 ft2.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
From a reader perspective, someone who looks up a named <topic> is entitled to a balanced view on that named topic. Being told they can't read a balanced view on the topic, but they can read a choice of 3 articles of a non-balanced type don't really do the job.
Indeed. If they wanted that, there's already Google.
- d.
Yes, articles from diverse points of view would be good.
Fred Bauder
I have come across topics that are approached differently by different groups and thought that parallel articles might be appropriate in those cases. I'd like a wider view on the topic. Here is where I've discussed it on talk pages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Judaism#Jewish_Versi... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:David#King_David_in_Judaism
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No, it's a disastrous idea; it's inherently antithetic to NPOV. What you'd be doing is creating articles that are deliberately non NPOV.
Content FORKS are never, ever desirable.
On 27/06/2010, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
Yes, articles from diverse points of view would be good.
Fred Bauder
I have come across topics that are approached differently by different groups and thought that parallel articles might be appropriate in those cases. I'd like a wider view on the topic. Here is where I've discussed it on talk pages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Judaism#Jewish_Versi... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:David#King_David_in_Judaism
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And war to control the content of the "NPOV" article is not a disastrous idea?
Fred Bauder
No, it's a disastrous idea; it's inherently antithetic to NPOV. What you'd be doing is creating articles that are deliberately non NPOV.
Content FORKS are never, ever desirable.
On 27/06/2010, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
Yes, articles from diverse points of view would be good.
Fred Bauder
I have come across topics that are approached differently by different groups and thought that parallel articles might be appropriate in those cases. I'd like a wider view on the topic. Here is where I've discussed it on talk pages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Judaism#Jewish_Versi... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:David#King_David_in_Judaism
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-- -Ian Woollard
On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 5:34 PM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
And war to control the content of the "NPOV" article is not a disastrous idea?
It is, by far, the lesser of two evils.
On 27 June 2010 17:34, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
And war to control the content of the "NPOV" article is not a disastrous idea?
In practice, it's resulted in a site that seems to work.
We've done the experiment, as you know. The POV fork site is your own site, Wikinfo. While it's ticking along fine, its notice in the world is negligible.
A single article site seems to fulfill people's needs.
- d.
On 27 June 2010 17:34, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
And war to control the content of the "NPOV" article is not a disastrous idea?
In practice, it's resulted in a site that seems to work.
We've done the experiment, as you know. The POV fork site is your own site, Wikinfo. While it's ticking along fine, its notice in the world is negligible.
A single article site seems to fulfill people's needs.
- d.
It's never too late to do better. The experiment is Wikipedia doing it.
Fred Bauder
On 27 June 2010 20:32, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
It's never too late to do better. The experiment is Wikipedia doing it.
I remain entirely unconvinced. POV forks reduces strife amongst the *writers*, but doesn't do much for the *readers*.
Many people have tried competing with Wikipedia with a site that makes things nicer for the writers. So far the track record is dismal and the sites are all but moribund. Even the writers prefer to go where the readers are, which is here.
It is understandable that experimenters want to go where the readers are too, but considering the problems for writers turned out to be way less important in practice than actually being read ... you'd need to come up with rules that really did succeed in skimming off Wikipedia's actual *contributors* to demonstrate it was at all a good idea.
- d.
On 06/27/2010 09:34 AM, Fred Bauder wrote:
[Ian Woolard wrote:]
No, it's a disastrous idea; it's inherently antithetic to NPOV. What you'd be doing is creating articles that are deliberately non NPOV.
And war to control the content of the "NPOV" article is not a disastrous idea?
Just the opposite. Precisely because it isn't war, it's discussion leading to compromise.
As David points out, what we have basically works. Ten years ago, it was an open question, but now it's pretty much proved: people of all stripes can come together and create a consensus understanding about anything, including the world's most contentious topics. It's not always easy, and it's not argument-free, but it's not war. There are no anonymous dead, no razed villages, no smoking rubble where children once played.
An important tool of warmongers is, in effect, the POV fork. Propaganda leading up to war often constructs a version of reality that is irreconcilable with the view of the proposed enemy. If understandings are different enough, there is no room for compromise -- no attempt at compromise -- which means matters must be settled by force. Diplomats, on the other hand, labor to find common ground, the shared understandings from which agreements can be made.
As long as we have humans, we'll have different viewpoints, and arguments about which is right. But as long as those arguments are the pursuit of common understanding, then that's not war, but the stuff of peace.
William
On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 7:59 AM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
Yes, articles from diverse points of view would be good.
Fred Bauder
An open question, I think; the failure of your own Wikinfo* would seem to suggest it's not particularly valuable.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AWikinfo
-- gwern
Wikipedia is synonymous with NPOV and changing that would be confusing.
But-- surely there should be somewhere in the Wikimedia family for people to collaborate on works, even if they aren't working to make NPOV, notable encyclopedia articles. Editorials and opinions and reviews and fancruft and who knows what else.
Why not let people work on a Scientific POV project? Or a Judaism-POV project? Or a project without any consistent POV across articles? a 'high-quality-articles only' project? A 'child-friendly' project? Or even a project where editors could experiment with content types and writing styles we haven't yet considered.
None of these could ever be a substitute for the NPOV & Wikipedia. But who knows how many amazing projects could grow if we had a simple process for building new ones.
On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 1:00 AM, Shmuel Weidberg ezrawax@gmail.com wrote:
I have come across topics that are approached differently by different groups and thought that parallel articles might be appropriate in those cases. I'd like a wider view on the topic. Here is where I've discussed it on talk pages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Judaism#Jewish_Versi... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:David#King_David_in_Judaism
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Alec Conroy wrote:
Wikipedia is synonymous with NPOV and changing that would be confusing.
But-- surely there should be somewhere in the Wikimedia family for people to collaborate on works, even if they aren't working to make NPOV, notable encyclopedia articles. Editorials and opinions and reviews and fancruft and who knows what else.
Why not let people work on a Scientific POV project? Or a Judaism-POV project? Or a project without any consistent POV across articles? a 'high-quality-articles only' project? A 'child-friendly' project? Or even a project where editors could experiment with content types and writing styles we haven't yet considered.
None of these could ever be a substitute for the NPOV & Wikipedia. But who knows how many amazing projects could grow if we had a simple process for building new ones.
There is a process for starting new WMF sites (i.e. new sister projects). It is apparently dormant, presumably because the best ideas for new reference sites are already implemented. There is a point in there: not all sister projects are directly reference-oriented since Wikinews is for journalism. In fact what you are suggesting looks related to expanding the scope of Wikinews (to such things as are normally found in newspapers and magazines). There are good reasons to doubt the potential support, though, for people being able to write "just what they want". When it comes down to defining the actual scope and policies of a colloborative site, it is harder than it may look to transform "nice idea" into an operational community.
Charles