[WikiEN-l] User:Hillman's arguments

[Steve Bennett]

On 7/27/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> The flaw of this argument is that it projects the ails of a small
> number of articles -- primarily topics of current political and social
> interest -- onto an overwhelming majority of articles that don't
> suffer from them.  Our coverage of the Cassowary is not given
> (purposeful) misinformation, our article on the Siege of Florence
> doesn't really resemble a blog, and so forth.
>
> In other words: alarm is not called for at this point.  Despite the
> failings of a (relatively) miniscule number of articles, the vast
> underbelly of historical, scientific, and literary topics that
> includes most of our coverage is steadily moving forward with "proper"
> encyclopedic work.

Now, what's interesting is to think about where most of the
"deliberate POV" problems in our encyclopaedia reside:

- Currently trading companies
- Political parties, governments etc
- Other living people
- Religions
- Certain highly emotive debates (abortion, circumcision,
neurolinguistic programming - for reasons beyond my comprehension)

It's interesting to note that most traditional encyclopaedias have
steered clear of these areas to a certain extent.

Seems like the POVs fall into three categories:
1) I think X is a god, and I need to fix this bias against him/her/it
2) I think X is evil, and I want everyone to know it
3) I work for/represent X, and it is in my interests to improve
his/her/it's image on Wikipedia

1) isn't too scary, it just takes a fair bit of work to control
2) is what's going to get us sued
3) is the scariest, and the hardest to detect (hamfisted Congress
staffers aside)

Does this analysis help anything?

Steve