[WikiEN-l] Re: Crappy prose isn't the main "quality" problem.

[Geoff Burling]

On Tue, 25 Oct 2005, Ilya N. wrote:

> Does NPOV or NOR allow analysis at all? Not in the slightest.
>
> While it is meant to discourage pushing a viewpoint and putting uncited
> research up on Wikipedia, what would happen if someone were to analyze a
> point in an article?
>
> In some cases it would seem to be pushing a point of view (even if the
> opposite POV is expressed) and sometimes would cause an edit war
>
> In other cases it would be seen as original research (oh no! You can't say
> that without citing it!)
>
There was an incident a few years back where Lir challenged the commonplace
assertion that "Nightfall" was considered Isaac Asimov's best short story.
Arguments flew back & forth until someone dug up a suitable quotation
with a proper attribution, & ended that minor crisis. However, that event
illustrated a problem with Wikipedia, in that expressing a judgement or
making an analysis often leads (or has the likelihood of leading) to a
revert war.

Most editors aren't interested in getting bogged down in one of those, &
will write defensively & only set forth facts (e.g., "Hamlet is a
drama in five acts believed by most critics to have been written by
William Shakespeare"). Our articles suffer because of this.

Now the obvious solution is to do the necessary research & report what
important critics have said about the work of literature; to use Hamlet
as an example, I happen to have at hand _The Reader's Encyclopedia of
Shakespeare_, which happens to have an article that consists of lengthy
quotations about this play by Sam Johnson, Goethe, Coleridge, Turgenev,
T.S. Eliot & others -- which even if this wasn't a problem would still
make for a better article. (In the cases where an encyclopedia article
is quoted, it because the article was signed by a recognized expert.)

However, for some authors no body of secondary literature exists. For
example, Mary Gaitskill is an author worthy of an article in Wikipedia;
but were I to attempt to write an analysis of her works using quotations,
I'd be forced to use only book reviews many of which are written by
people lacking authority. (Frankly, whatever the NYT Book Review might
write about her would be about as insightful as whatever Lyndon LaRouche
could have written -- & none of us would be permitted to quote him on
her works.)

Another problem is that analysis of some writers is daunting to anyone
who isn't an expert. For a long time [[Paul of Tarsus]] had the comment
that he is considered one of the important figures of Christianity --
but failed to explain why. I did the necessary research to fill in this
hole, & wrote something that was close enough to answering the question
that other people could improve on what I wrote -- or argue with each
other other how to improve on what I wrote. (Some of my comments were
deleted for being POV -- even though having read his writings, it's
obvious that Paul's influential views on sexuality was because he was
a prude, not because he had any special insight from God.)

Geoff