"Advocacy Articles" Options

[Herschelkrustofsky]

There is a new debate about what might more accurately be described as POV Battleground articles, and it is to be found at Wikipedia:Advocacy articles (T-H-L-K-D). The good news is that they are actually trying to formulate some sort of response to the problem, and among the suggestions are various types of disclaimer labels that warn the reader to expect opinion, not fact. That, IMO, would be a step in the right direction. In other words, abandon the pretense of being an "encyclopedia."

[Mister Die]

Although there is always the issue of a few "cabal" individuals completely dominating an article or subject for their own purposes, it should be noted that there are also instances of others trying to take over articles/subjects and raising the banner of "NPOV" to accomplish this. They then proceed to run roughshod over the article(s) in question while constantly screaming "NPOV! NPOV!" and adding the tag and making it look like there's some sort of huge controversy that doesn't exist outside of the minds of a few activists.

That's why I think that the "this article may not be neutral" tag shouldn't exist, nor should anything similar to it. It's basically saying to the world "yeah, Wikipedia can't actually prevent stuff like this from happening because of its own inanities, so just watch your step, alright?" If anything a warning should emerge as a popup within the page when you visit Wikipedia for the first time, noting that because it's an "encyclopedia anyone can edit" that the content of an article can easily be unreliable, but then again I'd personally add "Wikipedia isn't actually a real encyclopedia" to begin with. As it stands the "NPOV" tag is just used as a weapon in the hands of activists one way or another.

This post has been edited by Mister Die:

[Herschelkrustofsky]

Although there is always the issue of a few "cabal" individuals completely dominating an article or subject for their own purposes, it should be noted that there are also instances of others trying to take over articles/subjects and raising the banner of "NPOV" to accomplish this. They then proceed to run roughshod over the article(s) in question while constantly screaming "NPOV! NPOV!" and adding the tag and making it look like there's some sort of huge controversy that doesn't exist outside of the minds of a few activists.

That's why I think that the "this article may not be neutral" tag shouldn't exist, nor should anything similar to it. It's basically saying to the world "yeah, Wikipedia can't actually prevent stuff like this from happening because of its own inanities, so just watch your step, alright?" If anything a warning should emerge as a popup within the page when you visit Wikipedia for the first time, noting that because it's an "encyclopedia anyone can edit" that the content of an article can easily be unreliable, but then again I'd personally add "Wikipedia isn't actually a real encyclopedia" to begin with. As it stands the "NPOV" tag is just used as a weapon in the hands of activists one way or another.

I'm thinking more from the standpoint of what would be beneficial to the unsuspecting reader who is searching for reliable information. Obviously, from the standpoint of the internal WikiMMORPGist scene, it just becomes another tactical issue.

I would also note that there are probably thousands of WP articles which are non-controversial and probably quite helpful to people who are interested in those topics.