[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Leadership (was NY Times article on gender gap in Wikipedia contributors}

[Carcharoth]

On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 4:59 PM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> We should also recognise that our definition of NPOV is actually far from
> mature, and still beset with problems

[...]

> it is not easy to say what "fair, proportionate representation"
> actually ought to mean in practice.

I agree strongly with the opening part of your post (about NPOV),
which I snipped, and am focusing in on the point you raised above, as
one of the problems I have with WP:WEIGHT is the way some people take
a "percentage" approach to it. My view is that the amount of weight
something has in an article is a function not just of the *amount* of
text, but also how it is written (and also the sources it uses).

It may not be clear from the wording of policy, but if something is
sourced to a lightweight source, then it should carry less "weight"
(in the sense of being taken seriously) than something sourced to a
really authoritative source. It might seem that this is not what
WP:WEIGHT is talking about, but in some sense it is. Also, the wording
used: if something is said in a weaselly, vague and wishy-washy way
(*regardless* of the volume of text used), then that carries less
weight than a strongly-worded and forceful sentence. Similarly, a
rambling set of paragraphs actually weights an article less than a
single sentence that due to the way it is written jumps up and down on
the page and says "this is the real point of the article".

In other words, the *way* an article is written affects the weighting
of elements within in, not just the volume. Which all come back to the
tone used in writing, which often affects the reader more than the
volume of text used. Ideally, a succinct, dispassionate,
non-rhetorical tone will be used, and articles looked at as a whole.
It is extremely depressing when arguments devolve into the minutiae of
sentence structure in an effort to find a compromise wording. It often
chokes the life out of the prose of an article.

Carcharoth