Hello, Stevertigo:
I offer some reasons to think twice before you act on. But I do not mean to be highly critical of your idea.
And the article was interesting anyway. Thanks for that.
Assuming that you are talking about English Wikipedia, I guess you could be right about the bias. But it doesn't mean everyone is biased like those extremests described in the aritcle. At least I know some American-born Americans highly critical of the said bias in mainstream mass media.
And the opponents of the extremests may be unbiased as well.
Those who are highly interested in the matter may be more likely to have a strong POV.
Some would say "Wikipedia is not" a place to discuss politics.
And with different biases, we can perhaps still work together. At least some of us can. (http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/001005.html)
And some would want to avoid exhausting flaming war - though those people can just stay away from it and work on something else.
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On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 11:25:20PM +0000, Tomos at Wikipedia wrote:
Assuming that you are talking about English Wikipedia, I guess you could be right about the bias. But it doesn't mean everyone is biased like those extremests described in the aritcle. At least I know some American-born Americans highly critical of the said bias in mainstream mass media.
And the opponents of the extremests may be unbiased as well.
Those who are highly interested in the matter may be more likely to have a strong POV.
Some would say "Wikipedia is not" a place to discuss politics.
And with different biases, we can perhaps still work together. At least some of us can.
The issue is that people with certain biases do whatever they want, and when someone tries to deal with them, the person trying to correct the bias is the one that either gets shouted down, and leaves the Wikipedia voluntarily, or finally gets banned by Jimmy. So the bias stays in and gets worse and worse.
The Judeocentrism article, for instance, is worded to give the impression that if you believe there is such a thing, you are a frothing at the mouth Jew hater. This is the state of the article after a flood of protest saying the article shouldn't even exist, even though similar articles existed on Christianity and Islam.
I was banned for trying to keep the article in existance through peaceful and polite persistence. Something is very wrong with the Wikipedia when a clear cut case of NPOV violation is encouraged in this manner.
Whether SOME people are biased isn't the issue; the issue is whether these people have the power to prevent others from correcting their bias through means most foul and lacking in fairness.
Jonathan
Jonathan Walther wrote:
The issue is that people with certain biases do whatever they want, and when someone tries to deal with them, the person trying to correct the bias is the one that either gets shouted down, and leaves the Wikipedia voluntarily, or finally gets banned by Jimmy. So the bias stays in and gets worse and worse.
I understand that this is what you think happened in your case, so we don't need to discuss that right now. But perhaps you can point to other cases to illustrate your point more generally?
The Judeocentrism article, for instance, is worded to give the impression that if you believe there is such a thing, you are a frothing at the mouth Jew hater.
This is just simply not true. There is absolutely nothing in the article that even hints at such an impression.
I was banned for trying to keep the article in existance through peaceful and polite persistence.
And this is *particularly* untrue.
--Jimbo
Tomos: I offer some reasons to think twice before you act on. But I do not mean to be highly critical of your idea.
SV- How about one very long thought? And I never made any generalizations about extremist behaviour on the WP. Just a bias... like a car with bad alignment, that you have to compensate for a pull in a lateral direction.
Some would say "Wikipedia is not" a place to discuss politics.
Let them speak all the baseless nonsense they want; politics is inherent to nearly every endeavor involving 2 or more people. Where do you stand Tomos? Avoid flame wars? I wonder how this is possibly done, and by what species on Earth this is done by? Its nobodys job to not offend nyone.... -(read that again.) Its our job to engage in building articles up which represent the truth, and not just a part of it.. I think this also carries over into how these articles are organized... and how balanced overall their representation of material there is.
Im curious - you included a link to a Lir issue... *perhaps* suggesting an outcome for those who "cant get along". This smells either like a threat, or a misconception about where these issues are bound to lead, and how they are bound to be resolved. Thats a lot of *prophesy for a seemingly benign link on a mailing list. -SV
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