Re: [Bug-gnupedia] Separating content from presentation

[Bryce Harrington]

On Fri, 19 Jan 2001, Bob Dodd wrote:
> [snip]
> > There is a difference between accepting all *reasonable* submissions
> > (i.e.  well-written, factually-correct) and accepting *all*
> > submissions. Clearly, some articles may leave out certain facts if it
> > serves the interest of her views, but others will presumably write in
> > with corrections, etcetera.  One doesn't have to accept *all*
> > submissions to accept all *views*.
> 
> "Well written?" Well... OK, but I challenge you to define "well
> written" and get the overwhelming majority to agree it :-))

"Written well enough that an editor will fix up the rest, and not simply
cackle as he sets fire to it."  ;-)

I've seen some extremely insightful articles that were written by people
for whom English was a second language, which made the articles
extremely hard to follow.  But when an fluent english speaker went
through and cleaned it up (adding 'the', fixing tense, etc.) the article
suddenly became extremely good.  So IMHO, even poorly written articles
can evolve into better ones.

> "Factually correct", I think you'll have more problems with... Question
> (1) for 10 points: who invented the electric light bulb? Question (2):
> what happened at Tianemen Square. Question 3:  who were the original
> inhabitants of north america?. Question 4, should creation theory have
> the same status as evolution? Question 5: were jews gassed at
> Auschwitz? Question 6: well, I think you can see where this is going...

Yup.  Also, I should mention that we are writing in a medium somewhat
less permanent than stone.  Evolution is possible.  A detailed but
highly erroneous (or opinionated, or misleading, or whatnot) article
could potentially be evolved into a better one.  That's sorta what the
whole point net projects are about - collaborative optimization.

So potentially, even bad articles could at the very least be a "piece of
grit in the oyster" that could spur people on to make something better.
If a bad article makes someone think, "Gee, even *I* could do better
than this drivel..." then just maybe we'll gain an author that we
otherwise wouldn't have?  ;-)

Of course, if the whole encyclopedia is filled with inane and trite
junk, it'll gain a bad rep, so at least *some* degree of moderation will
be needed.  

>  I'm not saying that some entries aren't easily discarded, I certainly
> can't see many people believing that the moon is made from cream
> cheese, but those entries aren't the problem... The only way you can be
> fair about this is to allow all (real) *views*, however mad or
> insulting to the intelligence they may appear, and then allow the
> cataloging folks to do their job. Different catalogs are likely to
> emphasise different views. And some entries are unlikely to see the
> light of day (except for humourous purposes perhaps :-)) I say "real"
> to cover spam, "first post", "Microsoft sucks", and plagiarism...

Agreed.

Bryce