On Feb 19, 2008 9:38 AM, Raphael Wegmann wegmann@psi.co.at wrote:
On Tue, Feb 19, 2008 at 01:51:29PM +0000, David Gerard wrote:
On 19/02/2008, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
The Core of NPOV is that there is something that is satisfactory to all sides, or at least equally unpalatable to all.
This fails when a "side" is not people whose interest is in writing an encyclopedia, but an outside pressure group who don't understand NPOV and don't care.
I am beginning to wonder, whether the "good guys" are still interested in writing an encyclopedia. It seems to me, that acting "on principle" (no censorship - whatever that means) in this case is destroying more than it adds. I sometimes even get the impression, that people enjoy the strength of the inside pressure group ("you are offended? good! If you change the pictures, I'll revert and block you. :-b").
Do we have a neutral and unbiased article, when it is necessary to protect pages and block editors en mass? I don't think so.
-- Raphael
The "Good guys" are interested in writing an encyclopaedia, just don't mistake the "No censorship at all costs, rub it in the Muslims' faces and lamblast everything else you don't like about their religion/religion in general" crowd as the good guys. There is a short list somewhere, however.
For what it's worth, very few editors are blocked at Muhammad, which is probably good, but definitely a result of heavy protection & various other measures. That said, feel free to look at any time in the history with no protection - you'll see that it's a complete, probably unresolvable mess. The "no images" crowd is not the only group that shows up there with an axe or ten to grind. Externally co-ordinated groups have been a problem there before, and doubtlessly will be again. Not only Islamic groups, but (for instance) one trying to insert the word "paedophile" as much as possible into every article that mentions Muhammad.
Cheers, WilyD