This is a draft Wikipedia policy, following on from much discussion on the NPOV talk page.
There have been 3 or 4 drafts of this policy and it is now being submitted for wider consideration. Please help make this a good policy and contribute.
FT2 18:58, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Note: as explained below, this is in fact not a policy but some useful examples to help the average editor recognize POV manipulation; FT2's proposal here is to give it a separate page as annex to WP:NPOV, instead of just including it on the NPOV page. Harald88 10:29, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
There is nothing in this proposed policy not implicit within existing NPOV policy. So it is not really a "new policy" as such. Instead, it is felt to be valuable to explain POV suppression in more detail that WP:NPOV allows, and how it can arise (Talk:NPOV consensus), and helpful to do this in its own policy page separate from WP:NPOV.
So the request is, not to create new policy, but that the community allow this chunk of WP:NPOV to be placed on its own policy page, where it can be clarified more fully (as consensus says it needs) without detriment to the main NPOV page size.
The next best alternative is to put it in a section within WP:NPOV, but this is not as preferred, since it makes the main NPOV policy page longer; the size of WP:NPOV is already under discussion on its talk page.
Also crossref (for example):
The term "information" as opposed to "facts" is preferred to date. Although wikipedia deals in facts, it's been felt that talking about "information suppression" rather than "fact suppression" is more generally useful.
In principle, do you see a policy of this kind being useful? (subject to refining the actual wording and layout)
Comments:
Hipocrite, that's interesting! Please provide a link related to your remark about use of this page for pseudoscience, so that we can all judge on the cause of your opposition and perhaps do something about it. Thanks in advance! Note that "killing" this proposal can in no way be helpful for disputes, except for those who lack good faith and don't want other editors to understand their POV propaganda tricks. Alerting editors against information suppression is already part of NPOV policy ( [1] is linked), and more clarification has already been decided on; the voting here is about the presentation (phrasings as well as alotting this information space on a separate page, which has advantages and disadvantages). "Killing" this essential information will no in way happen, but a net "no" vote is likely to result in size compression. Harald88 22:12, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
Several names have been suggested, including: POV suppression, POV suppression and selective misrepresentation, Selective information suppression, Information suppression, or some combination of these.
Is the current name sufficiently apt, or do you feel a different name would better describe it?
Comments: Originally it was meant to be a short paragraph on the NPOV policy page (and honestly, I don't mind if it will finally end up like that; let's not waste time on cosmetics). But if it is going to be discussed on a separate page, I think that it's important to make immediately clear (=in the title) that this subject is relevant for the NPOV policy. Harald88 11:49, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
Harald88 21:40, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
The goal is this:
The NPOV policy states that neutrality is expected and non-negotiable. However it has come up repeatedly and from several authors on its discussion page, that POV suppression is not sufficiently addressed by WP:NPOV. In part this is because it's worth actually summarizing how a point of view can be suppressed, as well as what neutrality means, and WP:NPOV doesn't at present do this well.
This omission has reportedly made life harder than necessary, as reported by several editors on talk:NPOV, and there has been support consensus for clarifying POV suppression as an issue, because the suppression of information is not about failure to verify or original research. Instead it's about de facto failure to give other views equal respect and handling.
This is an area that is commonly misunderstood by newcomers. WP:NPOV does cover it, but WP:NPOV is a major policy (like WP:CIVILITY is), and cannot go into depth on every topic without becoming excessively long and self-defeating. POV suppression is an aspect of NPOV that some editors feel should be moved to its own policy page and linked from WP:NPOV, because it is substantial, notable, valuable, a common issue, and a distinct sub-part of NPOV policy.
So in effect the discussion is not about the policy, as such, but about whether this text has a page to itself or is included in the WP:NPOV page. All the things in this draft are already implied within WP:NPOV. The discussion is that in order to cover them more fully, there is a sense that it ought to be a short page of its own, rather than being a long section of a lengthy NPOV page. In fact no policy is proposed to be changed. The community is being asked for permission to move a sizable and self-contained chunk of NPOV onto its own policy page, in order to simplify WP:NPOV, allow space for a more useful treatment, and highlight and clarify how POV suppression can occur, as an important aspect of NPOV.
Hope that explains. FT2 23:24, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
I have mixed feelings on this. I have seen reasonable views suppressed. On the other hand, to paraphrase Improv, there is already an equal an opposite problem of including "extremely minor views from kooks". Possibly work to get some or all of what is here incorporated into WP:NPOV, but weighted against the opposite concern? -- Jmabel | Talk 01:08, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
I don't think thats a problem as such. The proposed policy is neutral as to viewpoints and only reflects ways in which a viewpoint can be unfairly represented. It does not change the relative strengths of different viewpoints. In that sense it cuts both ways. Taking the above article issue on how creationism should be mentioned in the evolution article, as an example:
Viewpoints should be notable, and presented in a neutral balanced manner. The proposed policy is looking at ways in which that is abused and viewpoints are either being claimed to be unimportant or tiny-minority when they are not, or when they make other more mainstream views and criticisms seem less important when they are not. BOTH are POV suppression issues. People with scientific, religious or political views are all capable of suppressing views as any other people. That's not to say such beliefs and views are in any way judged by Wikipedia as "wrong", merely noting that they should not be taken as so right that they become a reason or justification for other notable (but conflicting) views to be artificially minimized or misrepresentatively reported.
This proposed policy is saying, "You can report your notable views. You can argue how important different views are. But certain practices commonly used to artificially boost one view or deprecate another in debate, or used to misrepresent how important they are in an article or how they are described, aren't neutral reporting at all, and are usually breaches of NPOV." That's the purpose.
A minority, implausible, or weak viewpoint will still be a minority, implausible or weak viewpoint, even if represented neutrally. Ensuring the neutral representation and "level playing field" for discussing views, is critical to Wikipedia, and this proposed policy names and identifies common ways some editors try to manipulate the neutrality of that debate when breaching NPOV. Whether it is a majority view they are artificially promoting, or a minority one, suppression or misrepresentation of information is in conflict with NPOV. That's what this is about. FT2 14:51, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Observation after the above. The draft proposal states, very carefully:
The aim of NPOV is to ensure that views, and the subject, are presented neutrally and fairly. If the evidence, and credibility of proponents and critics, of "round earth" and "flat earth" respectively are considered as a whole by editors, I have little doubt that we would find a "balanced manner" of presenting the subject as a whole would give flat earth a low level of prominence, and would clearly state the arguments against it by scientists and others if necessary.
What this is saying is, if someone raises "flat earth" on the talk page, saying "why isn't this given more prominence", it must be fairly considered. We can argue it is a tiny-minority view and low credibility, we can end up giving it one sentence or no space at all perhaps in the article -- all this says is that neither side of the talk page debate nor the actual wording in the article (if any) should use the kind of tricks named in the policy proposal, to artificially manipulate the sources or bias the debate to add "support" in a non-neutral manner in doing so. FT2 21:29, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Zenmaster proposes the following additions:
I now parked them here, because they are for later discussion, and mixing his proposal with the existing one would mess things up. The text as it stands is the near-final result of a long discussion on the NPOV Talk page, and we're here to discuss details as well if it should be paragraph on the NPOV page or, as proposed, be a separate article that is linked from it. Zenmaster, please don't disrupt this discussion! Harald88 11:38, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
This page is an interesting essay, but it doesn't propose anything actionable. If you want to clean up POV, or add sources, or remove bias, please do form a project to do so (or join WP:CSB). There's no need to change policy to do any of that. R adiant _>|< 11:32, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Hi Radiant, are you talking about Zen-master's essay on this spage, or about the way the project is explained? I think to have spotted (IMO) a mis-phrasing of FT2: the Information suppression page is meant to be nothing else but useful information that accompanies the NPOV page. To call that "policy" is therefore confusing. IMO the text above should read :
This is a draft clarification relating to Wikipedia NPOV policy, following on from much discussion on the NPOV talk page.
BTW, at first sight its purpose is very different from that of the "remove bias" project, except perhaps if there are plans to to merge wp:csb with wp:npov.
And to FT2: I would suggest that it's high time to include the useful suggestions on the project page. Harald88 23:24, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Look at Edward Smith (psychologist), and the related article Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Edward_Smith_(psychologist). The votes are overwhelmingly in favor of deletion. This VfD caught my attention because I have verified the scientific findings of Edward Smith with my own experimentation and observation, and Edward Smith's contributions are generally large and plain to see. The thing is, no one has pin-pointed his identity, or what educational certificates he has or doesn't have. Furthermore, none of his findings are published in popular scientific journals. ...Nevermind the fact that his contributions are all truthful, major, and verifiable. The reason that so many people are attempting to delete this article is because it disproves the fanatical belief that approval by major publications, completion of long college rituals, and/or certain identity, are prerequisites of making major contributions to society. It's just such a blatant and comically shameless display of information suppression on behalf of a false POV belief, and by SO MANY people, that I just HAD to mention it, for laughs if nothing else. IrreversibleKnowledge 03:13, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
(The issue on that article (which now appears to have been deleted by consensus) was that there was minimal evidence the individual was notable, and that his field existed beyond his personal advocacy of his beliefs. The issue for a wikipedia article is not if the subject matter is true, but if it is notable beyond a tiny group. Various wikipedia policies state that true information that is only tiny-minority, may none the less not belong in Wikipedia. Its been deleted now so I can't check for myself if this was the case or not for this article. FT2 ( Talk) 03:43, 13 January 2006 (UTC))
Above I see : "Oppose ... I would support a refinement of notability criteria instead." Notability should be mentioned as planned (see discussion) to avoid that it is overlooked, but this article has nothing to do with that. Assuming that this voter has actually read the article and the comments, apparently it lacks clarity. But in what way? Any suggestions? To me this is a real riddle. It may be (to verify) that the example list is too long, and/or that the split can't be fully compensated with clarifications; in that case it would be better to drop this proposal and instead shorten it and bring it back to the NPOV main page, as was intended before it became too long. But in that case there will also be little room for refining the notability criteria as would be easily possible to include in this article, with a title extension. Harald88 01:35, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
1. Radiant's insistance that the discussed NPOV subpage should be tagged as an "essay" seems to imply that he/she disagrees that there is any need for an opinion poll.
Does anyone know the guidelines on these matters?
2. The tag contains an inappropriate comment: "It expresses the opinions and ideas of some Wikipedians but may not have wide support."
Instead, it is the draft outcome of a long discussion process on the NPOV policy page, which is (I suppose) why has been tagged in a way to get the attention for polling to verify support for moving it as a NPOV guideline on a separate page (possibly expanding it to include more about the notability requirement).
Radiant may be right about the keyword "essay", but I am afraid that changing the tag could sabotage the polling process that is under way. Checking the dictionary, it turns out that "essay" can have different meanings. Probably Wikipedia uses the term to label the personal opinions of one or two people. That is certainly inappropriate, thus I reverted it.
Does anyone know the different effects of the different tags, and what would be the most appropriate tag here? There could be another tag that is more appropriate than either one.
3. I now discovered the article Wikipedia:NPOV tutorial that is linked from the WP:NPOV page. That article is a similar helpfile, (and it seems worth of consideration to merge this article with that one!) but I don't see the tag "essay". Who decides on such things, and why?
Thanks in advance! Harald88 18:16, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
come on, this is an essay on WP:NPOV and Wikipedia:Notability. Redirect or delete. And no, giving less of a platform to fringe views is not censorship, it is NPOV. The Internet is crawling with kooks and conspiracy theorists, and Wikipedia needs some sort of defense against these. dab (ᛏ) 12:07, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
For the record, User:Radiant! has posted a complaint on my talk page [3]. The key points he states seem to be wildly in error and I have responded on his talk page for clarification if any [4]. I make a note of this here since if there is any basis to his points of course it might be relevant to the process.
Given the style of debate above, there seems an assumption of bad faith here. I am at a loss to understand why that should be, but I formally request Radiant to calm down, work with others, and understand his/her view is only one persons'. This page, which has gone through due process, has been described at length above, and the repeated re-categorizing, retagging, moving etc is inappropriate to a proposed policy which is under discussion.
It is perhaps not irrelevant that Radiant's user page displays he/she is a " mergist", that is, "mergists believe that while much information may warrant inclusion somewhere, very little of it probably warrants its own article." So that is a point of view. Those who discussed the matter originally on talk:NPOV (as documented above), and those who voted "support" above, feel differently. Those views need to be respected and a consensus worked towards. Repeated unilateral action such as retagging, recategorizing and moving to take it out of proposed policy, is in contradiction to its purpose, which is exactly to discuss the benefits and demerits or establishing a new policy page for this item. That is the purpose of this article.
FT2 ( Talk) 15:51, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Link deleted again by Radiant! Feb 5 2006, reinstated Feb 19. His edit narrative reads "Clean out old surveys" despite that he knows it is current and was reinstated from his previous edit, a bare 3 days before this. FT2 ( Talk) 02:56, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
Shouldn't we fork the WP:FORK policy to disallow creation of POV forks of existing policies? er, — Dunc| ☺ 13:20, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Hi. I have been looking all over for a talk page where I can ask whether a certain writing style or statement is POV or information suppression. Does such a page exist? Thanks bcatt 13:56, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
What if the talk page is "commandeered" by people who refuse to examine arguments that challenge their POV? bcatt 16:45, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Ask for whichever you think likely to work. I have found the Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal helpful. Septentrionalis 01:33, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps this is as good a place as any to discuss the possibility of resurecting the Thought police article, perhaps by salvaging usable npov content from earlier versions (still available in the article's history). Deletion review might not be the best means, since the basic complaint dealt with npoving, so the last version may not be worth the trouble of getting undeleted. Oddly, pov-forking as an issue was invoked as a justification as well. Odd, in that the article now redirects to Thoughtcrime, a title which garners barely a quarter of the hits of Thought police, which is clearly the primary subject in this case, not the other way around. For that matter, thought policing may actually be a broader topic than censorship itself, a question that might be answered when and if the article is reworked for npov and restored. Ombudsman 04:41, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
Haven't seen any work going on here for a while. Radiant, the most vocal critic, has left, but there was by no means a "consensus" shown in the talk page. If this message doesn't garner any replies over the next week or so (haven't been any on-topic messages here for almost 2 months, I'm tempted to slap on a "historic" or "essay" tag onto the proposal page. I may be wrong, but it doesn't seem to have a snowball's chance of becoming policy at the moment... TheGrappler 23:08, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
Yes, what is the status of this proposal? I would put on the relevant tag, which seems to be Template:Rejected, but this is much stronger in declaring that the proposal is actually rejected, rather than just defunct or inactive. -- Centrx 01:46, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Shouldn't the position of information be considered relevant?
For example, consider a case where two opposing points of view are acknowledged and cited. However one is treated as the "default" and listed directly up top as the "fact" and cited thoroughly. Pluto not being a planet, perfect example.
... Somewhere lower down and less noticeable in the article the opposing viewpoint is presented.
But, oh yes, we acknowledged both points of view fairly and evenly, because it's perfectly fair that the other point of view be in a sort of word-ghetto! Dodger ( talk) 01:41, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
This is a draft Wikipedia policy, following on from much discussion on the NPOV talk page.
There have been 3 or 4 drafts of this policy and it is now being submitted for wider consideration. Please help make this a good policy and contribute.
FT2 18:58, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Note: as explained below, this is in fact not a policy but some useful examples to help the average editor recognize POV manipulation; FT2's proposal here is to give it a separate page as annex to WP:NPOV, instead of just including it on the NPOV page. Harald88 10:29, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
There is nothing in this proposed policy not implicit within existing NPOV policy. So it is not really a "new policy" as such. Instead, it is felt to be valuable to explain POV suppression in more detail that WP:NPOV allows, and how it can arise (Talk:NPOV consensus), and helpful to do this in its own policy page separate from WP:NPOV.
So the request is, not to create new policy, but that the community allow this chunk of WP:NPOV to be placed on its own policy page, where it can be clarified more fully (as consensus says it needs) without detriment to the main NPOV page size.
The next best alternative is to put it in a section within WP:NPOV, but this is not as preferred, since it makes the main NPOV policy page longer; the size of WP:NPOV is already under discussion on its talk page.
Also crossref (for example):
The term "information" as opposed to "facts" is preferred to date. Although wikipedia deals in facts, it's been felt that talking about "information suppression" rather than "fact suppression" is more generally useful.
In principle, do you see a policy of this kind being useful? (subject to refining the actual wording and layout)
Comments:
Hipocrite, that's interesting! Please provide a link related to your remark about use of this page for pseudoscience, so that we can all judge on the cause of your opposition and perhaps do something about it. Thanks in advance! Note that "killing" this proposal can in no way be helpful for disputes, except for those who lack good faith and don't want other editors to understand their POV propaganda tricks. Alerting editors against information suppression is already part of NPOV policy ( [1] is linked), and more clarification has already been decided on; the voting here is about the presentation (phrasings as well as alotting this information space on a separate page, which has advantages and disadvantages). "Killing" this essential information will no in way happen, but a net "no" vote is likely to result in size compression. Harald88 22:12, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
Several names have been suggested, including: POV suppression, POV suppression and selective misrepresentation, Selective information suppression, Information suppression, or some combination of these.
Is the current name sufficiently apt, or do you feel a different name would better describe it?
Comments: Originally it was meant to be a short paragraph on the NPOV policy page (and honestly, I don't mind if it will finally end up like that; let's not waste time on cosmetics). But if it is going to be discussed on a separate page, I think that it's important to make immediately clear (=in the title) that this subject is relevant for the NPOV policy. Harald88 11:49, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
Harald88 21:40, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
The goal is this:
The NPOV policy states that neutrality is expected and non-negotiable. However it has come up repeatedly and from several authors on its discussion page, that POV suppression is not sufficiently addressed by WP:NPOV. In part this is because it's worth actually summarizing how a point of view can be suppressed, as well as what neutrality means, and WP:NPOV doesn't at present do this well.
This omission has reportedly made life harder than necessary, as reported by several editors on talk:NPOV, and there has been support consensus for clarifying POV suppression as an issue, because the suppression of information is not about failure to verify or original research. Instead it's about de facto failure to give other views equal respect and handling.
This is an area that is commonly misunderstood by newcomers. WP:NPOV does cover it, but WP:NPOV is a major policy (like WP:CIVILITY is), and cannot go into depth on every topic without becoming excessively long and self-defeating. POV suppression is an aspect of NPOV that some editors feel should be moved to its own policy page and linked from WP:NPOV, because it is substantial, notable, valuable, a common issue, and a distinct sub-part of NPOV policy.
So in effect the discussion is not about the policy, as such, but about whether this text has a page to itself or is included in the WP:NPOV page. All the things in this draft are already implied within WP:NPOV. The discussion is that in order to cover them more fully, there is a sense that it ought to be a short page of its own, rather than being a long section of a lengthy NPOV page. In fact no policy is proposed to be changed. The community is being asked for permission to move a sizable and self-contained chunk of NPOV onto its own policy page, in order to simplify WP:NPOV, allow space for a more useful treatment, and highlight and clarify how POV suppression can occur, as an important aspect of NPOV.
Hope that explains. FT2 23:24, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
I have mixed feelings on this. I have seen reasonable views suppressed. On the other hand, to paraphrase Improv, there is already an equal an opposite problem of including "extremely minor views from kooks". Possibly work to get some or all of what is here incorporated into WP:NPOV, but weighted against the opposite concern? -- Jmabel | Talk 01:08, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
I don't think thats a problem as such. The proposed policy is neutral as to viewpoints and only reflects ways in which a viewpoint can be unfairly represented. It does not change the relative strengths of different viewpoints. In that sense it cuts both ways. Taking the above article issue on how creationism should be mentioned in the evolution article, as an example:
Viewpoints should be notable, and presented in a neutral balanced manner. The proposed policy is looking at ways in which that is abused and viewpoints are either being claimed to be unimportant or tiny-minority when they are not, or when they make other more mainstream views and criticisms seem less important when they are not. BOTH are POV suppression issues. People with scientific, religious or political views are all capable of suppressing views as any other people. That's not to say such beliefs and views are in any way judged by Wikipedia as "wrong", merely noting that they should not be taken as so right that they become a reason or justification for other notable (but conflicting) views to be artificially minimized or misrepresentatively reported.
This proposed policy is saying, "You can report your notable views. You can argue how important different views are. But certain practices commonly used to artificially boost one view or deprecate another in debate, or used to misrepresent how important they are in an article or how they are described, aren't neutral reporting at all, and are usually breaches of NPOV." That's the purpose.
A minority, implausible, or weak viewpoint will still be a minority, implausible or weak viewpoint, even if represented neutrally. Ensuring the neutral representation and "level playing field" for discussing views, is critical to Wikipedia, and this proposed policy names and identifies common ways some editors try to manipulate the neutrality of that debate when breaching NPOV. Whether it is a majority view they are artificially promoting, or a minority one, suppression or misrepresentation of information is in conflict with NPOV. That's what this is about. FT2 14:51, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Observation after the above. The draft proposal states, very carefully:
The aim of NPOV is to ensure that views, and the subject, are presented neutrally and fairly. If the evidence, and credibility of proponents and critics, of "round earth" and "flat earth" respectively are considered as a whole by editors, I have little doubt that we would find a "balanced manner" of presenting the subject as a whole would give flat earth a low level of prominence, and would clearly state the arguments against it by scientists and others if necessary.
What this is saying is, if someone raises "flat earth" on the talk page, saying "why isn't this given more prominence", it must be fairly considered. We can argue it is a tiny-minority view and low credibility, we can end up giving it one sentence or no space at all perhaps in the article -- all this says is that neither side of the talk page debate nor the actual wording in the article (if any) should use the kind of tricks named in the policy proposal, to artificially manipulate the sources or bias the debate to add "support" in a non-neutral manner in doing so. FT2 21:29, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Zenmaster proposes the following additions:
I now parked them here, because they are for later discussion, and mixing his proposal with the existing one would mess things up. The text as it stands is the near-final result of a long discussion on the NPOV Talk page, and we're here to discuss details as well if it should be paragraph on the NPOV page or, as proposed, be a separate article that is linked from it. Zenmaster, please don't disrupt this discussion! Harald88 11:38, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
This page is an interesting essay, but it doesn't propose anything actionable. If you want to clean up POV, or add sources, or remove bias, please do form a project to do so (or join WP:CSB). There's no need to change policy to do any of that. R adiant _>|< 11:32, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Hi Radiant, are you talking about Zen-master's essay on this spage, or about the way the project is explained? I think to have spotted (IMO) a mis-phrasing of FT2: the Information suppression page is meant to be nothing else but useful information that accompanies the NPOV page. To call that "policy" is therefore confusing. IMO the text above should read :
This is a draft clarification relating to Wikipedia NPOV policy, following on from much discussion on the NPOV talk page.
BTW, at first sight its purpose is very different from that of the "remove bias" project, except perhaps if there are plans to to merge wp:csb with wp:npov.
And to FT2: I would suggest that it's high time to include the useful suggestions on the project page. Harald88 23:24, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Look at Edward Smith (psychologist), and the related article Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Edward_Smith_(psychologist). The votes are overwhelmingly in favor of deletion. This VfD caught my attention because I have verified the scientific findings of Edward Smith with my own experimentation and observation, and Edward Smith's contributions are generally large and plain to see. The thing is, no one has pin-pointed his identity, or what educational certificates he has or doesn't have. Furthermore, none of his findings are published in popular scientific journals. ...Nevermind the fact that his contributions are all truthful, major, and verifiable. The reason that so many people are attempting to delete this article is because it disproves the fanatical belief that approval by major publications, completion of long college rituals, and/or certain identity, are prerequisites of making major contributions to society. It's just such a blatant and comically shameless display of information suppression on behalf of a false POV belief, and by SO MANY people, that I just HAD to mention it, for laughs if nothing else. IrreversibleKnowledge 03:13, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
(The issue on that article (which now appears to have been deleted by consensus) was that there was minimal evidence the individual was notable, and that his field existed beyond his personal advocacy of his beliefs. The issue for a wikipedia article is not if the subject matter is true, but if it is notable beyond a tiny group. Various wikipedia policies state that true information that is only tiny-minority, may none the less not belong in Wikipedia. Its been deleted now so I can't check for myself if this was the case or not for this article. FT2 ( Talk) 03:43, 13 January 2006 (UTC))
Above I see : "Oppose ... I would support a refinement of notability criteria instead." Notability should be mentioned as planned (see discussion) to avoid that it is overlooked, but this article has nothing to do with that. Assuming that this voter has actually read the article and the comments, apparently it lacks clarity. But in what way? Any suggestions? To me this is a real riddle. It may be (to verify) that the example list is too long, and/or that the split can't be fully compensated with clarifications; in that case it would be better to drop this proposal and instead shorten it and bring it back to the NPOV main page, as was intended before it became too long. But in that case there will also be little room for refining the notability criteria as would be easily possible to include in this article, with a title extension. Harald88 01:35, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
1. Radiant's insistance that the discussed NPOV subpage should be tagged as an "essay" seems to imply that he/she disagrees that there is any need for an opinion poll.
Does anyone know the guidelines on these matters?
2. The tag contains an inappropriate comment: "It expresses the opinions and ideas of some Wikipedians but may not have wide support."
Instead, it is the draft outcome of a long discussion process on the NPOV policy page, which is (I suppose) why has been tagged in a way to get the attention for polling to verify support for moving it as a NPOV guideline on a separate page (possibly expanding it to include more about the notability requirement).
Radiant may be right about the keyword "essay", but I am afraid that changing the tag could sabotage the polling process that is under way. Checking the dictionary, it turns out that "essay" can have different meanings. Probably Wikipedia uses the term to label the personal opinions of one or two people. That is certainly inappropriate, thus I reverted it.
Does anyone know the different effects of the different tags, and what would be the most appropriate tag here? There could be another tag that is more appropriate than either one.
3. I now discovered the article Wikipedia:NPOV tutorial that is linked from the WP:NPOV page. That article is a similar helpfile, (and it seems worth of consideration to merge this article with that one!) but I don't see the tag "essay". Who decides on such things, and why?
Thanks in advance! Harald88 18:16, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
come on, this is an essay on WP:NPOV and Wikipedia:Notability. Redirect or delete. And no, giving less of a platform to fringe views is not censorship, it is NPOV. The Internet is crawling with kooks and conspiracy theorists, and Wikipedia needs some sort of defense against these. dab (ᛏ) 12:07, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
For the record, User:Radiant! has posted a complaint on my talk page [3]. The key points he states seem to be wildly in error and I have responded on his talk page for clarification if any [4]. I make a note of this here since if there is any basis to his points of course it might be relevant to the process.
Given the style of debate above, there seems an assumption of bad faith here. I am at a loss to understand why that should be, but I formally request Radiant to calm down, work with others, and understand his/her view is only one persons'. This page, which has gone through due process, has been described at length above, and the repeated re-categorizing, retagging, moving etc is inappropriate to a proposed policy which is under discussion.
It is perhaps not irrelevant that Radiant's user page displays he/she is a " mergist", that is, "mergists believe that while much information may warrant inclusion somewhere, very little of it probably warrants its own article." So that is a point of view. Those who discussed the matter originally on talk:NPOV (as documented above), and those who voted "support" above, feel differently. Those views need to be respected and a consensus worked towards. Repeated unilateral action such as retagging, recategorizing and moving to take it out of proposed policy, is in contradiction to its purpose, which is exactly to discuss the benefits and demerits or establishing a new policy page for this item. That is the purpose of this article.
FT2 ( Talk) 15:51, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Link deleted again by Radiant! Feb 5 2006, reinstated Feb 19. His edit narrative reads "Clean out old surveys" despite that he knows it is current and was reinstated from his previous edit, a bare 3 days before this. FT2 ( Talk) 02:56, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
Shouldn't we fork the WP:FORK policy to disallow creation of POV forks of existing policies? er, — Dunc| ☺ 13:20, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Hi. I have been looking all over for a talk page where I can ask whether a certain writing style or statement is POV or information suppression. Does such a page exist? Thanks bcatt 13:56, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
What if the talk page is "commandeered" by people who refuse to examine arguments that challenge their POV? bcatt 16:45, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Ask for whichever you think likely to work. I have found the Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal helpful. Septentrionalis 01:33, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps this is as good a place as any to discuss the possibility of resurecting the Thought police article, perhaps by salvaging usable npov content from earlier versions (still available in the article's history). Deletion review might not be the best means, since the basic complaint dealt with npoving, so the last version may not be worth the trouble of getting undeleted. Oddly, pov-forking as an issue was invoked as a justification as well. Odd, in that the article now redirects to Thoughtcrime, a title which garners barely a quarter of the hits of Thought police, which is clearly the primary subject in this case, not the other way around. For that matter, thought policing may actually be a broader topic than censorship itself, a question that might be answered when and if the article is reworked for npov and restored. Ombudsman 04:41, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
Haven't seen any work going on here for a while. Radiant, the most vocal critic, has left, but there was by no means a "consensus" shown in the talk page. If this message doesn't garner any replies over the next week or so (haven't been any on-topic messages here for almost 2 months, I'm tempted to slap on a "historic" or "essay" tag onto the proposal page. I may be wrong, but it doesn't seem to have a snowball's chance of becoming policy at the moment... TheGrappler 23:08, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
Yes, what is the status of this proposal? I would put on the relevant tag, which seems to be Template:Rejected, but this is much stronger in declaring that the proposal is actually rejected, rather than just defunct or inactive. -- Centrx 01:46, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Shouldn't the position of information be considered relevant?
For example, consider a case where two opposing points of view are acknowledged and cited. However one is treated as the "default" and listed directly up top as the "fact" and cited thoroughly. Pluto not being a planet, perfect example.
... Somewhere lower down and less noticeable in the article the opposing viewpoint is presented.
But, oh yes, we acknowledged both points of view fairly and evenly, because it's perfectly fair that the other point of view be in a sort of word-ghetto! Dodger ( talk) 01:41, 12 August 2011 (UTC)