[WikiEN-l] change RS/BLP etc to not say 'blogs' (was Blog Entries (Bauer fork))

[William Pietri]

jayjg wrote:
> In contrast,
> websites in general are often maintained by news organizations, other
> publications, corporations, universities, non-profit organizations,
> etc. The number of general websites having some sort of editorial
> oversight is vastly higher than the number of blogs having some sort
> of editorial oversight.
>   

Editorial oversight strikes me as a red herring for 99% of the web. News 
organizations may be reliable sources for facts. Ditto for academics 
publishing in their spheres of expertise. And I say "may" because there 
are plenty of shaky news organizations and academics out there. But 
there, editorial oversight does usually improve things from our perspective.

But for everybody else, editorial oversight does not guarantee you 
factual accuracy. The purpose of editorial oversight there is more often 
to ensure textual quality and conformance with institutional POV. For 
many organizations, text isn't so much a means of honest communication 
as a means to an end. I'm sure whitehouse.gov has excellent editorial 
oversight, for example.

An expert's blog on the other hand, is unlikely to be greatly improved 
by editorial oversight. They already know their own opinions, and 
they're already able to say them. That doesn't mean that their opinions 
are fact, but that does mean we have no particular reason to doubt that 
their opinions are their opinions.


William