[Wikipedia-l] Re: A Solution to Larry Sanger's Criticisms - Project Has Been Around For A While

Mark Williamson node.ue at gmail.com
Fri Feb 4 18:06:33 UTC 2005


Indeed - while experts should not be allowed a monopoly on articles,
they should certainly be allowed some measure of control: ie, they
cannot remove information, or turn it into POV, but...

Well, unfortunately it would seem we have academics with one POV vs.
loonies with another. Rarely do we have Academics with one POV vs
Academics with another POV, which is what we need if Wikipedia is to
be reliable: sensible neutrality, rather than insane neutrality. We
don't want people like Edo Nyland or Antifinnugror able to insert
their POVs as if they were academic opinions on the level of those of,
say, Oswald Szemerenyi or even Joseph Greenburg.

Mark

On Fri, 07 Jan 2005 17:55:58 +1100, Tim Starling
<t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> I think the experience of academics on Wikipedia is much the same as the
> experience of non-specialists on Wikipedia, or of academics acting as
> non-specialists. Academics, as well as other non-insane people, must
> fight with various kinds of looneys if they want the Wikipedia article
> in question to be accurate and neutral. Dispute resolution only works
> where the POV-pushers also break rules of behaviour, otherwise the only
> solution is to fight forever. Put the article on your watchlist, revert
> and argue for as long as you both shall live. In the case of popular
> articles, there's a constant stream of new POV-pushers, so you have to
> keep arguing and fighting even after the original warriors have gotten
> bored and left.
> 
> Larry Sanger wants a shortcut out of this process for experts. I would
> prefer having a shortcut even for non-experts. Various models have been
> proposed in the past, "content arbitration" is a particularly neat term
> for it.
> 
> -- Tim Starling
> 
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