The rules/policies are absolutely ok when applied by editors with common sense or for non-controversial articles.
For articles on controversial topics a group of editors will feel that they have to protect the article from "evil POV pushers". They have a mission: "Wikipedia must not expound fringe ideas" In some cases they do the right thing by deleting really bad sources, but they have simply lost any form of perspective, they overshoot, some willingly, some unwillingly. They turn the article into a "dark alley" where only they rule. There is no way to evolve an article in such atmosphere. Those who tried all got blocked or banned, as there will always be a reason to ban an editor. "polite POV pushing" is suffient. Uninvolved editors who really enjoy working on wikipedia stay away from controversial articles. Wikipedia is based on consensus and just as crooks in a dark alley the editors will have reached a consensus to misuse the rules/policies. Example: The indian scientific journal "current science" was dismissed by one editor as "not reliable source", because they had published a paper by Steven Krivit and it was argued that their peer review is not done properly and that the journal is not significant. The atmosphere is already so devoid from common sense that such a argumentation is simply accepted by fellow editors, just to keep a paper from being mentioned in the article. Wikipedia fails with the set of editors that make up the consensus. POVbrigand On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 8:48 PM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote: > Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <a...@lomaxdesign.com>, an expert in Wikipedia, wrote > descriptions that seem contradictory to me. First he says the policies are > great, then he says they are not followed: > >> >> If you are interested in helping with Wikipedia, do register, but be aware >> that it can be an abusive community, the policies and guidelines are >> fantastic, and commonly not followed. They are not followed because the >> users who understood them gave up pushing the boulder up the hill and >> watching it roll back again. . . . > > > I do not see how a set of rules can be "fantastic" when they are routinely > ignored. A rule is only fantastic when it is enforceable. > > The rules lead to many problems: > >> Users who persisted in insisting on policy, against the desires of any >> kind of cabal or informal collection of editors pushing a particular point >> of view . . . > > >> That is, the Arbs know how to be administrators, they all come from that, >> but they don't know how to *manage* administrators. They are chosen by >> popularity, not for management skills, and Wikipedia overwhelms even the >> best of them. > > > It seems to me you need rules that people can live with and that do not > overwhelm even the best administrators. Rules that result in people being > "overwhelmed" need revision. > > >> >> The larger community *does* support the guidelines and policies, the >> cabals attempt to subvert them and even sometimes openly oppose them. > > > If the larger community supports these things, why are they not enforced? Is > there no enforcement mechanism? In that case the rules are inadequate. > > >> >> Look, want to accomplish something on Wikipedia? > > > No, I hope it withers away. > > Maybe what Abd has in mind here is that the rules are good and with a little > tweaking they would work. > > It seems to me these rules were invented for Wikipedia. They do not work > well because they are novel. I am conservative. I think it is better to > apply old rules that were invented for conventional media and for > conventional academic forums, such as the rules used to run physics > conferences. Rule number one should be everyone has to use his or her real > name. > > - Jed >
