Lars Aronsson wrote:
On Fri, 28 Jun 2002, Jimmy Wales wrote:
One of our "discoveries" is that people of very diverse opinions can write encyclopedia articles together, using NPOV as a guideline to mediate conflict. It works remarkably well. It would not work for poetry, for political commentary, for fiction, etc.
Is this a discovery that is unique to Wikipedia?
Couldn't the same discovery be expressed: "it is possible (no matter who does it) to write articles (in an encyclopedia or newspaper), using NPOV as a guideline, so that no reader would care to protest against the wording of the text".
I think that this is the same approach that has been used by every encyclopedia and newspaper editor, ever. Only they might have called it "factualism and objectivity" rather than NPOV.
Or is this wrong?
The difference is "every encyclopedia and newspaper *editor*". We're giving every crank off the street his own shot at the presses and politely asking him to clean up after the mess the last crank left.
It works surprisingly well. :)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)