On 30/01/2008, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 29, 2008 6:00 PM, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
POV pushers get burnout or get weeded out? Really? How do we make this happen faster?
I know that certain subjects (Israel-Palestine, for example) always have attracted a continual stream of people with an agenda. But I would say that for the most part, the culture that recognizes the value (not just the policy) of NPOV is growing, slowly but surely.
What tends to happen (that I've seen over and over) is that contentious subjects accumulate a core of editors who may hold very strong opinions on the subject, but realise we're here to write an encyclopedia and put that first.
(e.g. I'm an ardent and hard-working critic and opponent of Scientology, but try to edit those articles for the good of the encyclopedia and happily acknowledge that the Scientologist editors on them have brought lots of them to better NPOV, even those whose edits tend not to stand. I'm really pleased on the whole with our articles on the subject.)
I'm always heartened when there's a hot issue and activists issue a call to arms to edit the Wikipedia articles - we always get new good Wikipedians who do get the "write an encyclopedia" thing :-) Activists are activists because they're trying to make the world a better place, and we're also an enterprise to make the world a better place.
- d.