Jussi-ville writes:
The policy,
misused in the course of POV struggle, is a way of excluding
information with interferes with presentation of a desired point of view.
I think you are being way too generous. ... Let me repeat in more concise form.
The policy was written to enable serious work on hard topics, it as it
stands, hinders work, making it hard to edit simple facts.
I think the article in The Chronicle of Higher Education is a
must-read. Here you have a researcher who actually took pains to learn
what the rules to editing Wikipedia are (including No Original
Research), and who, instead of trying to end-run WP:NOR, waited years
until the article was actually published before trying to modify the
Haymarket article. To me, this is a particularly fascinating case
because the author's article, unlike the great majority of sources for
Wikipedia articles, was peer-reviewed -- this means it underwent
academic scrutiny that the newspapers, magazines, and other popular
sources we rely on never undergo.
I think the problem really is grounded in the UNDUE WEIGHT policy
itself, as written, and not in mere misuse of the policy.
--Mike