[WikiEN-l] Articles about small religious sects, concern about accuracy and NPOV

[Ray Saintonge]

David Gerard wrote:

> On 02/07/04 12:38, Fred Bauder wrote:
>
>> Excellent, but don't overdo it. Any campaign to straighten things out is
>> hazardous and must proceed tactfully, giving reasonable credit to the
>> virtues of these groups as perceived by their followers.
>
> It's really not hard to go looking for these articles and do some
> sensible and NPOV edits oneself. Some of them read like press releases,
> but it's very easy to sprinkle the article with "it is claimed" and
> add a section of common criticisms and critical links as well as
> official ones. This gives a basic article it's quite hard to reasonably
> object to the existence to, which serves as a template for filling out
> the article.

Sprinkling "it is claimed" throughout the article makes for terrible 
writing and worse reading.  If a section is simply headed "Claims by the 
leadership" (or something of the sort) that should apply to everything 
in the section.  There is still plenty of space afterwords to discuss 
criticisms.

Taking writings out of context, and trying to direct the reader into an 
interpretation of those texts in a manner contrary to what the original 
author intended would be a reprehensible imposition of your own POV.

Ec