Re: [Bug-gne]How Nupedia solves this

[Tom Chance]

> I would argue that it will be _all_ bias in some
> form or other. And
> much worse than that, there will be many subjects
> with only 1 or 2
> non-reviewed submissions (I don't think we will get
> 100 entries on the
> manufacture of acryllic paint. There's a certain
> irony that the
> contentious subjects are the least problem in this
> respect) which
> leaves the reader with limited scope for comparison,
> though you can
> argue that this is no worse than buying a single
> book on the subject.

You're right in the latter half of that. It won't
matter too much because I don't think we should
pretend for a minute that people will look on GNE for
their research, and GNE only. GNE will be much more
like a useful place to look in after you've checked
Nupedia for a perhaps biased, "accurate" view. GNE
will be, in my view of its future, what the WWW is to
us today for research: A good place to find extra
information.

> There is also the problem of what in politics would
> be called
> "entryism", which is a more subtle version of the
> promotion of ideas.
> In this case, you and your friends get together to
> ensure a particular
> view/philosophy is prominent across the whole of the
> collection,
> forming an unrepresentatively large percentage of
> the whole collection.

That could be a problem early on, but only if our
visitors are gullible or mis-educated (I suppose many
will be though). Maybe we could put a notice on GNE
explaining what an open mind is? :-) Hopefully in time
this will peter out though. If you think about it, not
every subject can carry an opinion or agenda. I'm not
sure how you can have opinions on acryllic paint
(other than its effectiveness!), or on cheese sandwich
manufacture. The more polemic subjects like politics,
sociology, philosphy etc. will be the ones where we'll
encounter entryism and all we can do is to hope we get
plenty of differing inputs. We'll probably have to
wait a good 50 years before GNE becomes the sort of
resource we're all hoping for, so lets not get too
worried for now :-)

Tom Chance

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