Hi,
On 16-6-2011 22:50, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Wikipedia is great for certain kinds of things. If there is no serious
controversy, articles tend to improve over time. When there is
controversy, though, Wikipedia supposedly has a neutrality policy, but
they never figured out how to find true neutrality, instead they
decided to ban "POV-pushers." I.e., one side or sometimes both sides.
Where one side engages a faction of editors, Wikipedia becomes
hopeless, as you know. As few as two or three can wreak havoc. When
there are two dozen -- for prespective, there are about 1800
administrators and the active core is a few hundred editors and
administrators, but many thousands are reasonably active -- it's
nearly impossible for Wikipedia to even recognize the problem, because
it typically takes expertise to understand bias, other than the use of
"peacock words," which is pretty simple. And experts get banned first,
since experts have a strong point of view and a tendency to dismiss
others as ignorant of their field, because ... they are!
Instead of recognizing the problem and providing support for experts
(which would include expecting civility, by the way), Wikipedia took
the easy way out: just ban "troublemakers." On controversial articles,
that would mean anyone whose position is perceived as being fringe or
minority. And there goes neutrality, right out the door.
Hear, hear ... I fully agree with thou.
Just a thought, as Wikipedia seems not to be able (or isn't willing) to
solve this problem, what about setting up a website with so-called
green- and red-lists for wikipedia subjects that are respectively not
and are biased by administrators just as a tool to help everybody so it
is known which subjects should be treated "with a grain of salt".
Naturally input for these lists should be provided by REAL experts that
are proven to be an active expert in that particular area; in my book
that means that someone who is working in the field of hot-fusion is
most-likely NOT an expert in the cold-fusion or LENR or CANR area!
Kind regards,
MoB
