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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