On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 5:04 PM, Bill Carter billdeancarter@yahoo.com wrote:
These single article experiences sure seem to crop up often, huh? Anyhow, I'm talking about many articles involving one subject: journalist Alan Cabal.
It still proves absolutely nothing. Lets say this issue had "cropped up", as you say, one thousand times. In terms of the things we talk about on this mailing-list, that would be staggering, we wouldn't be talking about anything else!
But wikipedia has around 2.8 million articles. A thousand articles are a lot, but it's only 0.03% of the total. Looking at it from that perspective, 99.97% can achieve some sort of NPOV, which is an absolutely incredible result.
My point isn't that 99.97% of wikipedia articles don't have NPOV problems (I have no idea what the number is, but I reckon it's high), my point is that ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE PROVES ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Saying "article X has NPOV problems, therefore NPOV is a stupid and unattainable policy" is an absurd argument, and if you argue that way no one is going to take you seriously.
--Oskar