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