[WikiEN-l] Jayjg: Abusing CheckUser for political ends?

[Gracenotes]

On 6/17/07, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
>
> G'day Gracenotes,
>
> <snip/>
>
> > general, and of the policy (could you believe that people disagreed with
> > NPOV when Wikipedia started? with the GFDL now? with notability?).
>
> What of it?  NPOV is not the Holy Grail, just a reasonable compromise
> (more on that later).  The GFDL is a terrible licence, adopted only
> because it was the best we could think of at the time.  Notability is
> still being debated --- there's an ongoing argument about it on this
> list on this day.
>
> We're still quite fond of NPOV, for good reason.  We're not so fond of
> the GFDL, but we're stuck with it.  We were never fond of notability (I
> was and to a degree am, but I am in the minority).
>
> Now, on NPOV.  When we purport to be a source of facts, we need to be
> careful of our own biases.  There are different approaches.  The first,
> and most popular, is what we might call the FOX News Approach: lie about
> them.  Another approach is to clearly explain our biases, and say, "We
> are telling the truth, but we are biased."  Call this the Guardian
> Approach.  Finally we have NPOV: "We are doing our damnedest to be as
> unbiased as possible."
>
> The FOX News Approach is clearly inappropriate.  The second approach
> works quite well.  It is obvious to me that the best point of view to
> write from is Mark Gallagher's Point Of View (MGAPOV), and I see nothing
> wrong with writing like that.  If, however, I intend to collaborate with
> Gracenotes, I may run into trouble, because he clearly supports MGRPOV
> instead.  He's wrong, but I will find it difficult to convince him.
> Gracenotes doesn't want all of Wikipedia written in MGAPOV (because he's
> biased), and I certainly don't want MGRPOV to dominate (because MGAPOV
> is superior).  Whatever shall we do?
>
> Maybe we could have a compromise.  Maybe we could decide to write from
> ... a neutral point of view (NPOV), and have articles that do not
> conform to MGRPOV or MGAPOV, but which we can both agree is a fair
> summary?  Maybe ... just maybe ... that could work.
>
> --
> Mark Gallagher


I agree with you that the GFDL... sucks. It's a good license for writing a
user
guide. Not so much an encyclopedia.

As for alternatives to NPOV, I was not thinking so much about (obviously
superior)
personal POVs ;) but about this:

http://www.internet-encyclopedia.org/index.php/Sympathetic_point_of_view

While SPOV is not a bad idea, I personally think that NPOV is our best
bet (for many of the reasons you eloquently describe). If I recall
correctly,
SPOV was one of the main concerns that lead to the fork, but it is much
harder to use in fighting POV pushers.

Incidentally, the fact that we don't use the Guardian approach is what
brings Wikipedia its more "newsy" aspects. People often go to
Wikipedia for information about current events: not biased information
(as is commonly presented in blogs), but neutral information. This task
should be delegated to Wikinews, but the trend is hard to reverse.