On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 9:48 PM, Mike Godwin mnemonic@gmail.com wrote:
Apart from the question of whether this particular article -- on the Haymarket bombing -- has been hurt by editors' ill-considered application of UNDUE, there's the larger question of what it means for our credibility when a very respected journal, The Chronicle of Higher Education, features an op-ed that outlines, in very convincing detail, what happens when a subject-matter expert attempts to play the rules and is still slapped down. If I thought this author's experience is rare, I wouldn't be troubled by it. But as someone who frequently fielded complaints from folks who were not tendentious kooks, my impression is that it is not rare, and that the language of UNDUE -- as it exists today -- ends up being leveraged in a way that hurts Wikipedia both informationally and reputationally.
Do you have specific ideas either as to what is wrong with the current language, or what it should be changed to say?
Mike
Would any of you consider joining the discussion at
Wikipedia_talk:Neutral_point_of_view#The_.27Undue_Weight.27_of_Truth_on_Wikipedia
I've probably gotten it off to a bad start, and perhaps that is not the place to discuss the policy, but I suspect it is.
Fred