User:Publicola

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An Award
Barnstar awarded by Striver to Scribner, Publicola and Starcare for defending NPOV on the Shock and Awe article, when some people wanted to remove all criticism from the article.


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[edit] This user is a benevolent, single-issue, legitimate sockpuppet

I have recently been involved in a complex controversy involving several articles under my primary Wikipedia username with which I have accumulated almost 5,000 edits.

On reflection, I have an idea which may be a general solution to address the underlying bias issues which led to the controversy. I intend to use this account to advance these proposals so that assumptions which might be made about my prior edits and the controversy surrounding them will not influence any of my contributions with this account.

In short, I intend to watch RFCs and RFMs, and inject compromise solutions into articles which appear to be suffering from edit wars. I will try to be as consistent as possible.

Please let me know how I am doing.

[edit] The problem: two modes of controversy

"Over time, contentious articles will grow from edit-war inspiring to eventually reach a compromise that is agreed upon by all involved editors. This equilibrium will inevitably be disturbed by new users who accuse the article of being absurdly one sided and who attempt to rewrite the entire article. This is the cyclical nature of controversial articles."
-- Raul's Fifth Law of Wikipedia

Any contentious article can fall into two distinct modes:

  • POV oscillation characterized by multiple reverts from one opposing point of view to the other, and back again; and
  • NPOV plurality characterized by inclusion of both opposing points of view.

Generally, we should strive for the latter, but there are several forces favoring oscillation:

  • Newcomers to an article are not as familiar with WP:NPOV, and those subscribing to a particular point of view may edit out support for the opposing point of view.
  • Often people opposed to a point of view don't want to do the necessary research to find verifiable sources supporting their viewpoint, so they content themselves with removing the opposing viewpoint instead of including their own.

[edit] The goal: NPOV plurality

In short, I will attempt to resolve NPOV disputes by including both points of view wherever I see edit wars occuring.

[edit] Controversy is not necessarily a sign of illegitimacy on either side

Legitimate controversies exist when:

  • scientific evidence supports two competing hypotheses;
  • historical documentation supports two opposing theories;
  • different sorts of religious thought conflict;
  • ethnic tensions lead to disparate viewpoints; and
  • political tensions create opposing factions.

There are probably other sources of legitimate controversy. However, not all controversy is legitimate: the holocaust really occurred no matter how many people say it didn't, for example. This does not mean that the claims of holocaust deniers should not be documented. The fact the someone in particular is lying is often more notable than the fact that most people are telling the truth.

[edit] Status update

While I probably should have seen this coming, it seems that leaping headlong into ongoing disputes is not going as smoothly as one could hope for.

I have drafted several versions of my "MPOV" (M=multiple) proposal for bias controversies, which I had hoped to at least take to the Village Pump by now, but I have been unsatisfied with the implications. Firstly, as a policy proposal it reeks of instruction creep, as I am the first to admit, and as a guideline proposal it clearly lacks any substance because it wouldn't be enforced except selectively.

So, I'm trying simply to act as if the proposal were already policy, and see how long it takes for the Arbcom to banish me or something. I just need real experience with the proposal in action before I'm willing to offer it for public consumption. Publicola 09:41, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

m:MPOV -- Doh! Publicola 12:45, 16 July 2006 (UTC)