[WikiEN-l] Parallel Articles on topics

[William Pietri]

On 06/27/2010 09:34 AM, Fred Bauder wrote:
> [Ian Woolard wrote:]
>> No, it's a disastrous idea; it's inherently antithetic to NPOV. What
>> you'd be doing is creating articles that are deliberately non NPOV.
>
> And war to control the content of the "NPOV" article is not a disastrous
> idea?
>    

Just the opposite. Precisely because it isn't war, it's discussion 
leading to compromise.

As David points out, what we have basically works. Ten years ago, it was 
an open question, but now it's pretty much proved: people of all stripes 
can come together and create a consensus understanding about anything, 
including the world's most contentious topics. It's not always easy, and 
it's not argument-free, but it's not war. There are no anonymous dead, 
no razed villages, no smoking rubble where children once played.

An important tool of warmongers is, in effect, the POV fork. Propaganda 
leading up to war often constructs a version of reality that is 
irreconcilable with the view of the proposed enemy. If understandings 
are different enough, there is no room for compromise -- no attempt at 
compromise -- which means matters must be settled by force.  Diplomats, 
on the other hand, labor to find common ground, the shared 
understandings from which agreements can be made.

As long as we have humans, we'll have different viewpoints, and 
arguments about which is right. But as long as those arguments are the 
pursuit of common understanding, then that's not war, but the stuff of 
peace.

William