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?
Sounds about right to me.
I make no claim that we've discovered anything very original. I do think it is astounding that the wikipedia community works at all, much less as well as it does. I mean, traditionally, with encyclopedias and newspaper editors, there is "control from above". Here, there really isn't. This doesn't mean that there is *no* control, in the sense of wild chaos. And that's a surprise.
Even Ward Cunningham, inventor of the wiki concept, once said something to the effect that wikipedia wouldn't really be an encyclopedia, but that it would be a wiki. I am not 100% sure that I know what he meant, so I'm not 100% sure if he's been proven wrong. But, I think so, if I understand him.
--Jimbo