[Wikipedia-l] confession of a science believing man

[Larry Sanger]

Hi Kurt,

This is a perfect topic for intlwiki-l--that's why the list was set up.

I think it would be a good idea to translate parts of the [[neutral point
of view]] article, or to write such an article yourself based on that, auf
Deutsch.  There are many philosophical objections to such a policy, but as
far as I can tell, they are all based on misunderstandings or pointless
semantic quibbling about the policy.  In any case, as a pragmatic matter,
it certainly does make it easier for people of radically different
viewpoints to work together.  It also makes the task of writing an
encyclopedia article *considerably* clearer and more focused than it would
be otherwise.

We haven't yet really discussed what sort of general policies we can
expect non-English Wikipedias to follow.  It's not even *completely*
obvious to me that anybody ought to try to make sure that they follow a
nonbias policy; but, of course, I do think they *should* follow such a
policy, self-consciously.  That is, I distinguish between policies I think
the non-English Wikipedias should self-consciously adopt, and policies
that I think we ought, somehow, actually to try to enforce.  The latter is
likely to be a subset of the former.

I obviously haven't caught up with my recent mail to the point where I can
comment on the suggestion that we find some sort of "editors" for the
non-English Wikipedias...that would be relevant here...

Larry

On Sat, 24 Nov 2001, Kurt Jansson wrote:

> Hello everybody!
>
> I think the German Wikipedia is more and more reaching a point, were
> there are enough people to start discussions about controversial topics.
> I'm thinking especialy about articles with an esoteric/mystic/religious
> theme.
>
> Is there some kind of procedure that has been established in the
> international Wikipedia?
> Do you stop working on the article and start a discussion? Or do you
> fight on an article until you come to a consensus (or enough people have
> given up ;-) )?
>
> I think in scientific articles it is not such a big problem to specify
> the different opinions and state which one is more and which is less
> accepted. But I have my problems to declare that ghosts, clairvoyance,
> etc. do exist/work, or do not, and that both opinions have the same
> possibility. But maybe that's a just lack of my democratic, pluralistic
> engagement and an excess of my scientific believing emotions. (BTW: is
> parascience a science?)
>
> Am I too afraid of fanatic esoterics/christs/etc that are flooding
> wikipedia with totally biased articles and not willing to discuss about
> their opinions?
>
> Bye,
> Kurt
>
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