2006/4/10, Berto <albertoserra(a)ukr.net>et>:
Leaving
readers to form their own opinions is often done better by
being *exclusive* than by being *inclusive* in many cases. Wikipedia
should not be talking from both sides of the matter, but from neither
side.
Easy to say so, when you talk chemistry... how are we supposed to present an
history of political thought? Many of these ideas are still alive and
present in the heads of the writers...
You can tell that feminists from such-and-such period opposed
something as being oppressive to women without giving a list of
arguments why it is and why it isn't oppressive, no?
And people having minority ideas
often are more active on the net (and therefore in WPs), than people having
a mainstream attitude. It's going to be them to make a vote about
inclusion/exclusion.
That calls for improved procedures for independent arbitration, not
for blind inclusion, in my opinion.
Besides, there is NO objective criteria for undued
weight. Personally, I'd rather include more, then risk to find myself in the
position of those 19th century scientists who avoided speaking about
meteorites, because "obviously stones do not fly".
If we're still talking about my argument above, my opinion here, when
going back to the 18th century (I thought this one was resolved in the
early 19th century, but I might be wrong), that I do want meteorites
to be mentioned, and one or two lines saying that scientists believe
that stones don't fly. What I meant by being exclusive, is that we are
not going to give arguments why stones don't fly, counterarguments why
in some cases stones do fly and counter-counterarguments why even in
those cases stones don't fly.
A wiki is a collection of knowledge, as far as ideas,
techniques and
theories are concerned, space should be found for all of them. Then maybe
you get to build a category out of what was meant to be a single article.
But then, was it YOUR classification poor, or the article big?
A wiki is a collection of knowledge, not a collection of arguments and
opinions. I am in favor of including many ideas and theories. But not
in arguing for or against them, not even if we do both at the same
time. And also, to get back to undue weight: There is the issue of
where to put it. Should we say that Von Däniken claims that aliens
helped build the pyramid of Gizeh? Yes. But do it on [[Erich von
Däniken]], and not on [[Egyptian pyramids]]. And any evidence given by
Von Däniken in favor of his claims, or by Sagan and archaeologists
against it, needs only be mentioned fleetingly if at all, to come back
to my previous point.
--
Andre Engels, andreengels(a)gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels