Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Neutral Editors

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The following discussion is an archived proposal of the WikiProject below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the project's talk page (if created) or the WikiProject Council). No further edits should be made to this page.

The proposed WikiProject was abandoned.Housekeeping. (non-admin closure) –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 14:39, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]


Description[edit]

For a lack of a better term Wikipedia is plagued with partisanship. You enter certain articles and you happen upon a battleground. Some of these Battles have been raging so long that no one knows when they started. You can tell when you enter one by the type of names you get called. In a Palestine-Israel related article you might get called antisemitic or said to be pushing Zionist Propoganda depending on which side of the battle your change effects. Editors try to force a source to have NPOV by misrepresenting source. The problems are to numerous to mention. This is a battleground with soldiers in the field. Wikipedia has a host of United Nations like programs.They set up peace treaties and punish War crimes. They even have peace keeping forces. What I would like to create here a Wikipedia version of the Red Cross to go into battle and treat the wounded.

A Neutral Editor Alliance I think could do that.I don't mean NPOV. NPOV with the rest of the policies is important. However I think you have to be neutral from the start. It's ok to have Ideals but I think articles suffer when people get lost in their ideologies. The main thing is to define what a neutral editor is and advocate for neutral editing. Then go in to the battles and win people over with fairness and neutrality when possible. Being out of the fight we can have a better chance at improving the articles and perhaps wikipedia as a whole. At the risk of saying to much I'll just hope I've said enough. Serialjoepsycho (talk) 23:42, 8 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

List of important pages and categories for this proposed group

List of WikiProjects currently on the talk pages of those articles
Please invite these and any other similar groups to join the discussion about this proposal. See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory to find similar WikiProjects.
Why do you want to start a new group, instead of joining one of these existing groups?
Your answer goes here.

Support[edit]

Also, specify whether or not you would join the project.

  1. Serialjoepsycho (talk) 23:42, 8 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

Israel is hardly the only Wikipedia battlefield. I would prefer to add other examples as people join this conversation.Serialjoepsycho (talk) 23:24, 9 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This is a noble goal, but I don't think it will work. These difficult subjects require a lot of information, and you can't be an expert in more than one or two. But see WP:WikiProject Neutrality; you're trying to re-create a discarded wheel. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:58, 10 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You can't be an expert of everything but a jack of all trades can still do alot. Reliable sources are remain reliable regardless of your level of expertise. This wheel has different spokes. There's NPOV and then there's neutrality. People with Bias can make a NPOV and people without bias can mistakenly unbalance the neutrality of a point of view. All editors should push for NPOV. I don't think you need a group for that. But I do think we need a group of neutral editors. Right now if a fight breaks out some administrative process eventually takes place. Certain things get locked.The battle moved to somewhere else. There's generally no one fighting for that fact based middle ground.Serialjoepsycho (talk) 03:40, 10 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with the sentiment for neutrality, but I don't think we need a WikiProject. An essay with a list of editors endorse a viewpoint would suffice, wouldn't it? Please WP:ECHO me if there are any direct replies. Cheers, --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 11:51, 10 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think there could be need for a WikiProject. There are numerous articles out there which editors forego working on due to any edits being heavily debated. In medicine there are articles such as Cannabis (drug), Electronic cigarette and more, which can end up taking up swaths of time. The of course there are the sexual articles.CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 15:07, 10 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing, Piotrus, and CFCF: Piotr, An essay I would absolutely hope would come out of this. It would also be great to have said essay endorsed by multiple people. However I wouldn't want to limit it to that. With that said though such an essay could be independent and should be independent of any group. As CFCF points out there are many situations that come out of this type of behavior. While I don't hope to end heavy debate, I hope that some of the schisms caused by it can be avoided. So for an Essay what is it that should be said about a neutral Editor? Taking into account WhatamIdoing thoughts above I would put a particular note to not trying to end an adversarial process. There is something to say about expertise or least range of knowledge on a subject. Serialjoepsycho (talk) 21:57, 10 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
My concern is as follows: I wonder what kind of practical things could the members do? For Wikipedia:Kindness Campaign, I can send WikiLove messages and such, for example. Would this WikiProject do anything beyond being a place editors could sign under a certain viewpoint? Reminds me a bit of declaring one is an m:inclusionist or a follower of another Wikipedia philosophy: amusing, but mostly pointless (with all due respect). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 22:04, 10 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Piotrus: I think you can declare this principle and put it into action. Such a group would have this principle (as yet completely defined) and go to articles where the principal can be beneficial. Seek out the fights and try to help resolve them. One of the ultimate goals of an active Wikipedia editor I would say is creating a better article. Serialjoepsycho (talk) 22:56, 10 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is needed, but I doubt it will work. Andrew S. Knight (talk) 00:13, 13 February 2014 (UTC) Certainly it would be complicated but the question is if it were to work how would it work. There's many reasons it wouldn't work. And what would work? Just Essay? or More?Serialjoepsycho (talk) 03:46, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

One thing I personally believe would be more workable, and place less reliance on individual editors to be neutral, would be to help create and maintain lists of articles which can be found in highly regarded reference sources on the topics of various WikiProjects or groups, which would be potentially accessible to anyone interested in a given topic. I've started a few such lists at Category:WikiProject lists of encyclopedic articles. Now, I acknowledge that there would be clear difficulties in keeping all such lists current and as comprehensive as possible, and, honestly, several of those existing lists are neither as current or as comprehensive as they could be. I am still working on other additions to them. It wouldn't be a perfect solution either, but it would allow more people to more easily have access to the opinions of recent experts, which is at least something. John Carter (talk) 09:35, 21 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]


Project Abandoned There are a number of good ideas that should be implememnted. Anyone interestedhould. Thanks for participating.Serialjoepsycho (talk) 03:31, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the project's talk page (if created) or at the WikiProject Council). No further edits should be made to this page.
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