On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 3:00 PM, Carmen <yarru...@charter.net> wrote: > For example, in the encyclopedic Wikipedia, there's one article called > Brooklyn Bridge. It should not be arbitrary or subjective or contain original > research, etc. Essentially anyone in the world could edit this article. But > in a political Wikipedia, there would be four (POV) articles for each > subject: one pro and one con POV article that only select government > representatives could edit, and one pro and one con POV article that > virtually anyone in the world could edit.
If we look at [[abortion]] on Wikipedia we find a link to [[abortion debate]] with sections '#Arguments_in_favor_of_the_right_to_abortion' and '#Arguments_against_the_right_to_abortion'. So really I'm rather at a loss as to what the political wiki would add except this right for politicians to have their own domain where they hold authority on editing. But I doubt you would disagree with me (going on your email) when I suggest that elected politicians are pretty well served when it comes to platforms for making their opinions known. I guess I would agree with you that the public could be served better by the media when it comes to assessing policy. But that brings us back to Wikipedia's coverage of abortion as we have it now which, on the face of it, seems* to present a rounded picture. * I say "seems" cos I'm not going to claim to have read it. I agree with Nathan that your argument seems muddled. You seem to be suggesting that your innovation is to present POV arguments as explicitly disallowed by Wikipedia. But you are also saying that this POV is presented by giving arguments for and arguments against; ie two POVs. But what we find on Wikipedia is generally already arguments for and against - its NPOV in practice is to present relevant arguments which taken alone are POV but when matched with the alternate views is brought to neutrality. So what are you left with? I suggest it would merely be Wikipedia but broken into separate pages for convenience... a convenience which may well lead to results that seem at odds with what you want to achieve. What do I mean by that? Well, you want an informed public. Is a member of the public going to be better informed if they read both arguments or if they just read one side of the argument? And what do you think is likely to happen if people are able to visit just one side of the argument (which now has its own page in your scheme), unmolested by the other side's voice (which would be present in Wikipedia)? Bodnotbod _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
