[Bug-gnupedia] Bias and formatting

[Tom Chance]

Right, I think the peer review system is good but how
do you account for viewpoints and bias? For instance,
trying to get an unbiased article on the Bolshevik
Revolution of 1917, or the first test tube baby, would
be a nightmare as everyone has a different view. And
its increadibly hard not to bring your views into your
writing. So if an article is submitted and somebody
has a view to the contrary, surely a system by which
that view of the subject is made as much a part of the
article as the original itself... as opposed to a
review, which would be little more than a subtext. 

In terms of formatting, I think its obvious that every
page has to have a similar format. A collection of
pages in different layouts, colours and with different
technologies behind them, would just be a big mess. If
you just submit every article as a simple text file,
and then make the site with a cgi script or something
similar that would format the text file into the page,
you would solve the problems of the same format and of
knowledge in formatting in one. Plus it would help
structure the 'pedia. Servers that host/mirror
articles will have a database of text files and then a
series of cgi scripts and html files. This will stop
disperate articles being hosted on geocities and then
soon dissappearing. And an upload page would be VERY
simple to make if the articles were text files! Plus I
think XML might be a abd move because we'll start
evolving it into a 'pedia that's incompatible with
certain browsers and OSs, which is exactly the sort of
thing an open project should avoid.

This project certainly looks VERY exciting though.

Tom Chance

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http://www.state-embers.co.uk

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