User:Jacobgreenbaum

I was interested to see Wiki, but dismayed by what I found. My initial approach was via the Middle East pages, since that's what I was looking up at the time, but the strong pro-Israeli line taken there was disturbing.

After making a few comments on this (my first attempt was ridiculously biased in itself - see Talk:History of Israel, but I immediately encountered the attitude of "if I don't like it, I'll delete it, rather than edit it to show a Neutral Point of View), and attempting to NPOV a couple of sub-sections (all of which quickly reverted to their previous pro-Israel lines), I had a look around elsewhere in the encyclopaedia.

I found an epidemic of articles "adopted" by two sides, each reverting the other's changes. This seems common throughout the project - see Abortion and Creationism and even Gdansk for examples (examine the history and talk pages to see what I'm talking about. Or pick your own examples - there are plenty of them, especially in pages which discuss Israel).

All of which leads me to the conclusion that Wiki is basically a talk board, not an encyclopaedia. I think I see why that is: There is no system for accepting or rejecting changes. Instead, all changes are accepted, with the result that whichever partisan group has the last word (most recent revision) on an article has their partisan viewpoint expressed in that article.

I know that's not how it's supposed to be, but that's the impression I have of the site. Which led me to make this statement on the Talk:Terrorism against Israel board. On my travels around Wiki, I've noticed that my opinion is far from an isolated one. Consider User talk:GrahamN in particular.

It seems to me that this project has need of some structure, in the same sense that the Linux project has structure. That might mean accepting changes only after they've been voted on, with an overall neutral editor in place to help ensure that changes contribute to NPOV, rather than detracting from it. Or it might mean something else. The introduction of the Wikipedia:NPOV dispute page by GayCommunist might be a good starting point, as are the Wikipedia:Votes for NPOVing, Wikipedia:Votes for rewrite and Wikipedia:Votes for deletion pages, but they need some structured change control methodology behind them.

I do feel, though, that Wiki will need some serious changes in how it manages changes if it's going to become an unbiased encyclopaedia.

Until then, I'll continue to think of it as a talk board.