[WikiEN-l] Criticism sections on bios of living people
Michael Snow
wikipedia at earthlink.net
Mon May 8 00:06:28 UTC 2006
Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 5/7/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> I'm not at all saying that criticisms should be omitted, or a neutral
>> point of view abandoned. But their consolidation into separate
>> "Criticisms" sections is generally undesirable, I would say.
>
> That's more of a question of style than substance, and I agree with
> most of your points. However, "Criticism" sections are definitely
> easier to write than a well-consolidated article. It takes a lot of
> skill to avoid an article that reads like a constant back and forth.
It may be a question of style, but stylistic choices can have
significant and sometimes seriously damaging effects on substance. That
particular path may be easier, which is in fact part of the problem.
When an article starts down a long road that leads to an undesirable
product, it is difficult to back things out and frequently makes more
sense to start from scratch. That's the approach I've had to take on
several occasions. Taking easy shortcuts will never get us good
encyclopedia articles.
It does take some skill to rebuild an article so that things go in the
right direction afterwards. Unfortunately, there seems to be a
considerable shortage of that skill in the community.
--Michael Snow
More information about the WikiEN-l
mailing list