On Sat, 27 Jul 2002, Fred Bauder wrote:
Some issues are simply not addressable from a NPOV. If billions of dollars are being extracted from an activity which kills millions of people there is no way the perpetrators and the victims are going to agree. One thing that saves us now is that except for a few areas e.g. Israel, Palestine, both sides of many controvesies don't have a strong contingent here. But as Wikipedia succeeds that will change.
(Replying to Fred, but including points from other replies too.)
These are not the issues I'm talking about. I'm talking about the issues that most likely are adressable from a NPOV, but aren't adressed that way today. To remedy such articles is a lot of work, and the controversy flag wouldn't be a replacement for such work. Instead, it would be a civilized way of registering ones position that the article is NPOV - not primarily to the author, but to the audience (the audience doesn't read talk pages).
An earlier poster convinced me that a separate database flag would just be silly, but a standard "controversial flag" page, that certain such articles linked to from one of the first lines - I seriously think that would help.
Also, the existence of such a page, and some links to it, doesn't mean all possible non-NPOV pages at Wikipedia would have to ble tagged, in some giant operation...
So:
* A controversy flag doesn't really impede an article. * It doesn't add work for anyone. * It saves work and time for both sides in a dispute. * It "lightning rods" away undue emotional, immediate rewrites of articles. * It signals to the audience that not everyone on Wikipedia is satisified with the way the particular article is presented. (IMO, very valuable information.) * It would affect a very limited number of articles.
Is it still such a bad idea?
-- Daniel