On Sun, Apr 17, 2005 at 01:59:16PM -0400, Steve Lefevre wrote:
Chad Perrin wrote:
I disagree with that characterization of NPOV as a goal. Rather than say that it's some kind of myth to which we pretend to subscribe here, I'm of the opinion that it's more an asymptote rather than a point on a graph, and we are (in general) "approaching NPOV" incrementally with our efforts. The fact that we may never reach an absolute value of NPOV idoesn't make it any less real, though.
OK, I think I understand what you are saying. First off, a multiple competing article system does not prevent an article with an NPOV. If that article exists and it highly rated, great! Second, humor me and pitcure this. If we did have a multiple article system, isn't that approaching the asymptote, albeit in a different way? Say we have three highly rated and conflicting articles. Some well-reputed author comes along and creates another article that summarises all three of those viewpoints. Wouldn't this be a more efficient system? Proponents of each side are allowed to make their case as they wish. The author who summarizes has most of the writing work done for him. Nobody has to destroy the other side's article, and if they don't like the summary, they can fork it and make their own. However, if the summary is highly rated, isn't that the golden NPOV goal we are reaching for?
Can you spell out exactly the current process of getting a NPOV?
1. I wasn't saying anything one way or another about the validity of the multiple-article approach for approaching NPOV. I was just commenting on the validity of the concept of NPOV and its suitability as a goal for our encyclopedic project.
2. The easiest analogy for explaining the current process for me to produce right now involves the indirect-fire (such as mortars and artillery) concept of "walking fire" to a target. One aims where one thinks one should to get the trajectory of a round to land on the intended target. One sees how far off one is, then adjusts the expected amount to correct that. One sees how far off one is, then adjusts. Rinse, repeat. Often what happens with this is that two or three rounds move toward the target on one side, then one lands on the other side, and each time they hit closer to the mark. If done properly, you should never miss with more than four shots, and the first round that hits should be a known hit before it's even fired, so that you can "fire for effect" (which consists of basically emptying your armory in one volley), saturating the target area. You're highly unlikely to ever hit an enemy unit commander on the top of the head with the leading point of a single artillery round, but you'll easily cover him with overlapping blast radii. That's pretty much what we do with NPOV at Wikipedia, I think, except that the accuracy curve is infinite rather than just "we got close enough", because we're building instead of destroying.
Hmm. In retrospect, that analogy might be rather strange to most of you. I blame the late hour and my recent agonizing over what turned out to be a really stupid mistake of my own with some PHP code.
I blame PHP. That's it. It's always easier to blame the language.
-- Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]