On Sep 19, 2006, at 7:40 PM, Ben McIlwain wrote:
Don't hold ArbCom as a threat over the heads of other editors; it doesn't work and it's not a good tactic.
Don't threaten to remove valid content. It's an even worse tactic.
And as for NPOV articles ... if someone is being paid to write articles on these businesses, it isn't going to be NPOV, but it's going to be POV in a way that you could only establish it as such if you were intimately familiar with the subject matter, or were prepared to do lots of research. That's why we have the general prohibition against publicity articles; they tend not to be NPOV, and even when they do appear to be, they likely aren't.
Actually, all we have is a vague admonition against autobiography. It's "considered proper." Nothing else. Consider the [[Cyrus Farivar]] case - the article was started by him. But he's a notable figure, and we kept it. Likewise, if the company is notable, and nobody can find anything wrong with the article, we assume good faith and keep it.
For instance, I could write one hell of a POV article about hypernovae that would totally discount one of the two major theories in the field as to how they occur, and yet simply by reading the article you would never know it, and it would only be after doing some in-depth study on the subject that you would realize that what I wrote was utterly not NPOV.
You're right! We should make sure that people who know anything about physics topics aren't allowed to, because they'll probably just advance their own pet theories.
-Phil