If one group of editors were to say the Earth is flat and another group were to say it is round, it would not benefit Wikipedia for the groups to compromise and say the Earth is shaped like a calzone.
Wikipedia may ultimately have to do one of two things, or both:
1) Provide better structure for alternate versions of contested ideas
2) Construct a practically effective demarcation between strictly factual domains, and anything more interpretive.
Such a demarcation will always be challenged; I don’t see any way around that, but I’d also insist that it’s necessary for our sanity. Supposed it was possible, maybe using a browser with links to a database, to try to “brand” (or give the underwriters seal of approval to) those pages that provided straightforward factual assertions, and unretouched photographs, and scans of original source texts, such as all newspapers of which a copy still exists), and to promote the idea that the respectability of any interpretive or ethical claim consists very largely in its groundedness in showing links to the “smells like a fact” zone.
Several versions with explicit labeling of which viewpoint it represents would be a huge step in improving general information retrieval. Hypertext in general was obviously a huge leap, but the problem of presenting the evolution of a school of thought on a particular subject has not been solved satisfactorily IMO. Path dependence of various things is still among the information we regularly do not record/throw away. We should not be reliant upon brilliant synthesists taking interest in each subject and writing a well organized history.
That reminds me of http://xkcd.com/690/.
Also:
-- Raymond Arritt
(Quoting this before dinner is making me hungry.)
Wikipedia may ultimately have to do one of two things, or both:
1) Provide better structure for alternate versions of contested ideas
2) Construct a practically effective demarcation between strictly factual domains, and anything more interpretive.
Such a demarcation will always be challenged; I don’t see any way around that, but I’d also insist that it’s necessary for our sanity. Supposed it was possible, maybe using a browser with links to a database, to try to “brand” (or give the underwriters seal of approval to) those pages that provided straightforward factual assertions, and unretouched photographs, and scans of original source texts, such as all newspapers of which a copy still exists), and to promote the idea that the respectability of any interpretive or ethical claim consists very largely in its groundedness in showing links to the “smells like a fact” zone.
Several versions with explicit labeling of which viewpoint it represents would be a huge step in improving general information retrieval. Hypertext in general was obviously a huge leap, but the problem of presenting the evolution of a school of thought on a particular subject has not been solved satisfactorily IMO. Path dependence of various things is still among the information we regularly do not record/throw away. We should not be reliant upon brilliant synthesists taking interest in each subject and writing a well organized history.