--- Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se 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?
Such articles are usually written by one person and edited by another. The editor is then roundly cursed by the author.
Wikipedia articles often have no individual author, but are worked on by people of (sometimes wildly) differing views and opinions. I think what Jimmy is getting at is that a project like this *can* work without breaking down into flame wars. Since everyone who has heard of the project has raised the flame war criticism, it certainly *seems* like a discovery.
-- Stephen Gilbert
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