Hoi,
"extending and correcting history" sounds a bit arbitrary, to say the least.
I have LOTS of things that I would rewrite in mainstream history, and even
evidence for at least some of them, yet... this would be a new history book,
not an encyclopedia.
Honestly, I don't understand how they can keep such a stance within the
bounds of the NPOV policy, let alone original research. I understand
documenting alternative views on a given issue, but ignoring a mainstream
view altogether seems wrong to me.
Even if mainstream is wrong IMHO one is at least supposed to present it as
the dominant POV and THEN discuss it. Especially since I can hardly believe
that data about a character who lived in the VI century can be easily found.
Whatever you get is a tale from a third party, written during the Christian
Revolution and the barbaric invasions (not the most NPOV time in history)
and later endlessly edited by generations of monks who had big vested
interests in writing what they wrote. Or more probably first written long
after his death, based on oral tales and legends of any kind.
It really looks like an issue to "handle with care". I mean, medieval docs
about the "life of Saints" ARE but a wiki, after all. There was absolutely
no control for factuality, in that kind of hand-written wikies, so I guess
the work of hundreds of scholars who went thru those old papers to interpret
them and check them cannot be simply ignored as "futile". One may not agree
with them, but censoring their work is not a good practice.
Berto 'd Sera
Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andre Engels
Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2007 8:58 PM
To: wikipedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Sensitive subjects on some Wikipedias
2007/7/15, Berto 'd Sera <albertoserra(a)ukr.net>et>:
In your case I'd say people seem more interested
in ending a war than in
having a majority POV expressed as such. Probably the best thing to do in
such cases is to define an external authority (as an independent source of
information) that can be trusted as "mainstream" on the subject. I have to
warn you that no such choice is going to be perceived as "perfect" (cfr.
ISO
and languages), yet at least you won't have a few
local wikimedians
"playing
God" over the others.
I have tried. I was asked to solve the issue, and to do so read in the
university library what books I could find about the subject (I'm
talking about Saint Boniface in this case, by the way). The reaction
to this by the one that I disagreed with, was "That Engels is of the
opinion that Wikipedia is meant to propagate the existing historical
knowledge and not to extend or correct it, is a very sad thing." If
'the great majority of historians' is not accepted as an authority, I
don't think anything else will.
There cannot be an immediate list of all such possible
external
references,
because the field is too wide. Possibly you might want
to ask your ArbCom
to
analyze such edit wars and to define such a source for
a given subject
when
needed.
This will be hard - if I put this for the Dutch ArbCom, the probable
reaction will be "the issue is about the content of Wikipedia.
Decisions about the content of Wikipedia are not within our
jurisdiction, so we will not take the case."
--
Andre Engels, andreengels(a)gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels
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