[Wikimedia-l] Why the Wikimedia Foundation should openly articulate its political POV by establishing a new neutral wiki for world political knowledge (modeled on Wikipedia)

[Bod Notbod]

On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 3:00 PM, Carmen <yarrusso at charter.net> wrote:

> For example, in the encyclopedic Wikipedia, there's one article called Brooklyn Bridge. It should not be arbitrary or subjective or contain original research, etc. Essentially anyone in the world could edit this article. But in a political Wikipedia, there would be four (POV) articles for each subject: one pro and one con POV article that only select government representatives could edit, and one pro and one con POV article that virtually anyone in the world could edit.

If we look at [[abortion]] on Wikipedia we find a link to [[abortion
debate]] with sections '#Arguments_in_favor_of_the_right_to_abortion'
and '#Arguments_against_the_right_to_abortion'.

So really I'm rather at a loss as to what the political wiki would add
except this right for politicians to have their own domain where they
hold authority on editing. But I doubt you would disagree with me
(going on your email) when I suggest that elected politicians are
pretty well served when it comes to platforms for making their
opinions known.

I guess I would agree with you that the public could be served better
by the media when it comes to assessing policy. But that brings us
back to Wikipedia's coverage of abortion as we have it now which, on
the face of it, seems* to present a rounded picture.

* I say "seems" cos I'm not going to claim to have read it.

I agree with Nathan that your argument seems muddled. You seem to be
suggesting that your innovation is to present POV arguments as
explicitly disallowed by Wikipedia. But you are also saying that this
POV is presented by giving arguments for and arguments against; ie two
POVs. But what we find on Wikipedia is generally already arguments for
and against - its NPOV in practice is to present relevant arguments
which taken alone are POV but when matched with the alternate views is
brought to neutrality.

So what are you left with? I suggest it would merely be Wikipedia but
broken into separate pages for convenience... a convenience which may
well lead to results that seem at odds with what you want to achieve.

What do I mean by that? Well, you want an informed public. Is a member
of the public going to be better informed if they read both arguments
or if they just read one side of the argument? And what do you think
is likely to happen if people are able to visit just one side of the
argument (which now has its own page in your scheme), unmolested by
the other side's voice (which would be present in Wikipedia)?

Bodnotbod