This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
NPOV has an (extremely bizarre!) pseudo-democratic conception of fairness ("undue weight") which can easily be shown by the court analogy to be extremely (!!!!) unfair and biased. If we are to be genuinely fair, Each point of view should be given the same, exact, space for arguing its reasons, regardless of how popular it is. (Another approach is to give each viewpoint the same space on the main article, but allow it as much space as it needs on a different article, for example by using a Viewpoint: namespace)
On many fields (e.g. science!), appropriately informed experts comprise a tiny minority of the population. Viewpoints should be primarily presented and judged by their arguments and logic, not their popularity!
An important point brought up is that the current style policy deals mainly with factually presenting opinions. Thus mocks Wikipedia's claim for being primarily an educational "encyclopedia" rather than a populist "culture blog" which deals with popular opinions.
-- 80.230.233.101 12:35, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
(Note: this is only a short example!)
A general principle: As an encyclopedia, wikipedia's purpose is to educate and convey knowledge. Articles should be written in an expository manner and present verifiable and referenced facts.
An article in wikipedia is comprised of two distinct conceptual parts:
1. Illustration: In this part, the subject should be defined, presented, and elaborated, with an informative and uncritical language. Concepts and assumptions that are native and essential for its exposition are presented from the subject's perspective.
For example: An article about "quark" should adopt a scientific perspective which is useful for the understanding of quarks. "Reincarnation" should be written from a religious or spiritual perspective that allows understanding the subject and its concepts within its proper context.
2. Interpretation: An important part of human knowledge is the interpretation and evaluation of ideas. Wikipedia aims for fairness in its presentation of viewpoints, allowing competing viewpoints an equal space; An article may also contain relevant viewpoints, with accordance to the following requirements:
[An article which is already written in this manner (which is IMO excellent) is Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: note the useful, uncritical, perspective, and the informative "Skeptical view" section in its bottom.] -- 80.230.233.101 09:46, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
Articles are composed of two parts, but those aren't them. They are Wikipedia:define and describe. And after that, dichotomize. Try making some edits to other articles and you will get the hang of it. Bensaccount 17:45, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
Consider the following section [1]. As far as I can see, in this section people keep indenting until it makes no sense to continue. As a consequence, the decision to go back to the margin seems unrelated to the logical content. This section would not require so many indents, if indents were only used for comments that break the normal flow. Moreover, in this example, the readers cannot easily distinguish the comments that have been indented because they break the normal flow from other comments. I would like to know where in WP this kind of issues should be pointed out. I put it here because it does apply to this talk page, but would like to mention this small technical point in a more appropriate location, and only keep a wikilink here. -- Lumiere 16:22, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
I have an example of suppression of information and I am not sure how the NPOV policy applies to this example. It is a genuine question about the NPOV policy, not a way to replace a Rfc. However, I think one must look at the case Talk:Natasha Demkina before one can answer the question. It is about an experiment/TV show to evaluate whether or not a young girl, Demkina, has an X-ray vision to see inside human bodies. She had a score in the test that could only be obtained with probability 1/50, but this was not enough to "pass the test". There is one side that says that the experiment was not well designed and the arguments, I believe, were originally presented by a Cambridge physicist Brian Josephson in his web site. There is the other side which is represented by two skeptic organizations that regroup respected scientists. The current article suppresses the original article by Brian Josephson and replaces it by an article by a journalist in some independent magazine. This article presents some of the points of Brian Josephson, but it first discredits him as being "scorned by his colleague for his enthousiasm for the paranormal" and only have nice words for the other side such as "key member", "respected", etc.
Is this a valid suppression of information? This is a genuine question about the NPOV policy because there is the fact that Brian Josephson has only posted his article in some Cambridge his personal website without any refeering process. Note that there was no refeering process at all for the whole thing. The experiment itself was published in a non peer-reviewed magazine that belongs to one of the skeptic organizations. So none of the sides has sent anything to an independent peer-review process. --
Lumiere 01:33, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
I think something which needs to be emphasised somewhere here is that NPOV should *not* (IMHO anyway) translate into "exclusively positive," as that itself is POV. There are some topics where the inclusion of critical information is not only appropriate, but intrinsic to any factual discussion of the topic. (The Church of Scientology is probably the single best example I can think of here) Too often though the rule here seems to be that "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." I can agree that in some situations that is appropriate...but in order to maintain genuine NPOV, there are occasionally topics where as I said, critical information is highly relevant.
I am aware of the recent modifications to the NPOV article. However, the most important problems are still not treated (treating the most severe problem consist of changing the name of the policy). Here they are, including some treated criticisms that still prevail the thousands of articles in wikipedia. If you think these criticisms are too harsh and unjustified, then ask me about it, because I think that you are just mistaken.
Examples of criticisms:
Misleading redefinition of known concepts:
Pretension of fairness:
Overuse of vague viewpoint quantification:
Unsuitability:
-- 84.228.107.148 14:01, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia is going to stay, and the NPOV policy might change name and progress, but it will not disapear. So, the question is how to improve it. I am not against the above critic. I am just asking myself how we can make good use of it? -- Lumiere 18:56, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree with the critic "Overuse of vague viewpoint quantification:", but it can be taken care of. In general, I think that the NPOV policy should be carefully revised so that it is not only consistent with the remainder of the policies, but in fact reinforce them (in the examples used, etc.). -- Lumiere 19:00, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Most of the critics are not directly about NPOV, but about what it is claims to be. It could be that NPOV is perfectlty reasonable. The critics are only that there is a pretention that it does more than what it actually does. IMO, the priority should be on what it actually does and how to improve it. As long as we do not lie to ourselve about what it actually does, the issue of what it appears to be is secondary. -- Lumiere 19:17, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree with the above comment of -- 84.228.107.148. -- Lumiere 19:48, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Critic 4 contains a part that is directly about the NPOV policy. The critic is that there is no fairness toward the subject itself. The idea is perhaps that allowing viewpoints that are not sympathetical to a basic viewpoint V, which is called the "subject", could be unfair to the viewpoint V, this so called subject. This is true if we adhere to the viewpoint V, even if the other viewpoints are presented as viewpoints, not as the absolute truth. For example, if one is accused to be a thief, it looks bad even if it is just presented as the opinion of someone. If it turns out that V is correct (e.g. the guy is actually not a thief), then there is a valid point here. The best we can do is to filter the best we can the content of all viewpoints with the help of other policies such as WP:NOR and WP:V. Again, we see that NPOV can be improved by taking more into account the other policies. -- Lumiere 19:48, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
1. NPOV claims to have nothing to do with objectivity. However, a closer look reveals it to suggest that an "objective" presentation of viewpoints is a possible and attainable goal.
2. NPOV has been accused of consistently using doublespeak and euphemisms, "neutral point of view", means "communally accepted perspective" or "common bias".
3. NPOV shows a pseudo-democratic conception of fairness towards viewpoints ( undue weight), which is considered misleading and insulting for the known concept of "fairness" by some critics.
4. NPOV professes to fairness towards viewpoints, but does not take fairness towards the article's subject into account, thus allowing articles to become strongly critical of the subject, if there are no prominent defenders of it. (however, this may be considered unethical in practice)
5. NPOV actively exemplifies using vague and unscientific expressions like "some people", "most people", "many people" for the quantification of viewpoints. Critics see this as being generally unhealthy towards creating a supposedly accurate encyclopedia.
6 Another criticism is that NPOV naively presumes all participants to be equal in power and persistence over the expression of their supported viewpoints, in order to attain its goal. Therefore it is inappropriate for an encyclopedia that features credited seniority of editorship and hierarchical administrative structure.
There exists an interpretation of the NPOV policy, especially of the section WP:NPOV#A simple formulation, that suggests that a magical way to include an allegation Y into an article is simply to write "Joe said Y" where it is a verifiable fact that Joe said Y. I would suggest that we clarify this issue. Especially in the context of scientific content, it should be recognized that there is not such a big difference between the statement "Joe said <some statment> [ref]" and "<some statement> [ref]" when [ref] is a reference to the article written by Joe. The same info is conveyed in both cases; it is only easier to see that Joe is the author in the former case -- we use this former approach when Joe is very well known in the subject area as a way to acknowledge the importance of the author. In the case of scientific content, the main criteria should remain that the statement Y is published in a reputable source. -- Lumiere 21:50, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
One idea I came up with for possibly improving or at least bolstering the existing NPOV policy would be to place a disclaimer either on the front of the site, or automatically via template on each entry stating that, although policy is used to keep the quality of articles as high as possible, because of the dynamic nature of the site, it is unrealistic to expect that it will at all times have the same degree of editorial quality and objectivity as a conventional encyclopedia.
I personally believe that the ambition for this site to have the same degree of quality and factual accuracy as a print encyclopedia is entirely unrealistic anyway, if for no other reason than the nature of the technology itself. That however is not to say that this site cannot still be immensely useful and valuable...it already is, and will doubtless continue to be. I am also not necessarily suggesting that the maintainers adopt a lower standard, either; rather simply that readers be informed of the magnitude of the difficulty involved in attempting to maintain said standard on a constant basis.
Edit: I just noticed the disclaimer link at the bottom of the page; about no guarantee of validity etc. That's more or less exactly what I had in mind...but the disclaimer link a bit more prominently might be good.
Petrus4 04:00, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia, which means it is a representation of human knowledge at some level of generality.
But human beings disagree about specific cases;
for any topic on which there are competing views, each view represents a different idea of what the truth is, and insofar as that view contradicts other views, its adherents believe that the other views are false and therefore not knowledge.
Where there is disagreement about what is true, there's disagreement about what constitutes knowledge.
Wikipedia works because it's a collaborative effort;
but, while collaborating, how can we solve the problem of endless " edit wars" in which one person asserts that p, whereupon the next person changes the text so that it asserts not-p? A solution is that we accept, for the purposes of working on Wikipedia, that "human knowledge" includes all different significant theories on all different topics.
So we're committed to the goal of representing human knowledge in that sense. Something like this is surely a well-established sense of the word "knowledge"; in this sense, what is "known" changes constantly with the passage of time, and when we use the word "know", we often use so-called scare quotes. Europeans in the Middle Ages "knew" that demons caused diseases. We now "know" otherwise.
We could sum up human knowledge (in this sense) in a biased way: we'd state a series of theories about topic T, and then claim that the truth about T is such-and-such. But again, consider that Wikipedia is an international, collaborative project. Nearly every view on every subject will be found among our authors and readers. To avoid endless edit wars, we can agree to present each of the significant views fairly, and not assert any one of them as correct.
That is what makes an article "unbiased" or "neutral" in the sense we are presenting here.
To write from a neutral point of view, one presents controversial views without asserting them;
to do that, it generally suffices to present competing views in a way that is more or less acceptable to their adherents, and also to attribute the views to their adherents. Disputes are characterized in Wikipedia. They are not re-enacted.
To sum up the primary reason for this policy: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, a compilation of human knowledge.
But because Wikipedia is a community-built, international resource, we cannot expect collaborators to agree in all cases, or even in many cases, on what constitutes knowledge in a strict sense.
We can, therefore, adopt the looser sense of "human knowledge" according to which a wide variety of conflicting theories constitute what we call "knowledge."
We should, both individually and collectively, make an effort to present these conflicting views fairly, without advocating any one of them,
with the qualification that views held only by a tiny minority of people should not be represented as though they are significant minority views, and perhaps should not be represented at all.
There is another reason to commit ourselves to this policy. Namely, when it is clear to readers that we do not expect them to adopt any particular opinion, this leaves them free to make up their minds for themselves, thus encouraging intellectual independence.
Totalitarian governments and dogmatic institutions everywhere might find reason to be opposed to Wikipedia, if we succeed in adhering to our non-bias policy: the presentation of many competing theories on a wide variety of subjects suggests that we, the creators of Wikipedia, trust readers' competence to form their own opinions themselves.
Texts that present multiple viewpoints fairly, without demanding that the reader accept any one of them, are liberating.
Neutrality subverts dogmatism, and nearly everyone working on Wikipedia can agree this is a good thing. Neutrality has long been, and will always be, the only way Wikipedia can remain an unbiased source of information for the whole world.
Without stating it clearly here above Bensaccount argues to completely delete the following chapter:
Contrary to Bensaccount, when I first read this article I found that chapter very helpful as it motivates and summaries in a thoughtful way Wikipedia's NPOV policy. Thus, deleting it will IMO be detrimental for quick understanding of newcomers, even if "everything has already been said elsewhere".
What may IMO be worth consideration is to abbreviate it.
Note about his argument: As he did not refer on all points where "everything has already been said elsewhere", I'm also not convinced that everything has really been said elsewhere. Harald88 17:09, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
I see that this section (or chapter) strongly advocates a no suppression policy, using the mechanism of attribution of viewpoint to whoever have this viewpoint. The problem is that this is not in accord with other policies such as WP:NOR which by definition must suppress information. If we interpret this section in a strict manner, we could have an entire article that provides some original research of Joe simply by explicitly stating that it is the opinion of Joe. Joe will be very happy because not only his original research is presented, but even better is name is explicitly mentioned several times! I think that it is time that we consider the spirit of each policy and make sure that there is a balance between WP:NPOV (which is primarily about non suppression) and WP:NOR and WP:V which are mainly about higher quality.
Note that I see no conflict between the basic idea of these policies. To the contrary, it is well argued in WP:NOR and WP:V that these policies support a high quality form of NPOV that is consistent with the basic formulation of NPOV of Jimbo Wales. The problem occurs only with specific sections (or chapters) of NPOV such as section 4 discussed here and even more with section WP:NPOV#A simple formulation previously discussed. -- Lumiere 20:17, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
My comment is perhaps different than the point of Bensaccount, but it is consistent with his point. By selectively taking some components of NPOV and putting the emphasis on them and ignoring others, one can provide a very biased angle on NPOV. For example, there is nothing mentioned about the fact that if a statement represent the viewpoint of a majority (e.g. of the scientific community), then we should be able to find appropriate references in text book, etc. Moreover, I think that such a fundamental section should also consider the other policies. The policies WP:V and WP:NOR regularly refer to the other policies including NPOV, but NPOV refers very little to the other policies. NPOV appears as if it was disconnected from the other policies. -- Lumiere 20:59, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Bensaccount, you're making massive changes to the article and upsetting people in the process. Please use standard Wikipedia process for a case such as this and make your edits to a copy in your userspace. When you are satisfied with the results, present it here for discussion and develop consensus for its adoption. The alternative is edit warring and strife, and to have that happen at the NPOV policy page reflects poorly on all of us. — Saxifrage | ☎ 21:00, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
I personally support the proposal of Bensaccount to remove section 4. I can see that some people might like this section very much, but we must question why. What is so well explained in that section that was not explained before? I don't see anything. To the contrary, I only see vague abstract principles to support the idea of no suppression of information with no mention of other factors such as no original research which need to be considered to avoid conflict with other policies in practice. -- Lumiere 01:46, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
In general, if we do not only consider scholarly contents, what is a reputable source should depend a lot on the viewpoint that is presented and how it is presented. For example, if a viewpoint is with no ambiguity clearly presented as the religious Catholic viewpoint, a publication from the Vatican would be perfectly fine. If the viewpoint is presented as a scientific viewpoint, for example if it is the viewpoint of an organization that presents itself as a scientific organization, then a reputable scientific publisher should be required. Even if the organization does not present itself as a scientific organization, if the viewpoint is presented as a scientific content, for example if the Vatican enters into a scientific debate, then a reputable scientific publisher should be required. This is implicit in the idea that the purpose of a reputable publisher is to clearly identify where the viewpoint belongs. There should be a good match between the nature of the publisher and the nature of the viewpoint. As another example, if some viewpoint is a critic of some scientific experiments (the method used etc.), this viewpoint should be published in a reputable scientific publisher. This is also the idea of finding a prominent adherant to a viewpoint. The idea is not that a prominent adherant give any validity to the viewpoint. It is only a way to uniquely identify the viewpoint and make sure that there is a good match between the actual viewpoint that is presented and what it claims to be. I am just saying that this principle should be more explained in the NPOV policy -- it is already the idea of NPOV, but it should be better explained. It will make a good link with WP:NOR and WP:V. -- Lumiere 15:00, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
NPOV has an (extremely bizarre!) pseudo-democratic conception of fairness ("undue weight") which can easily be shown by the court analogy to be extremely (!!!!) unfair and biased. If we are to be genuinely fair, Each point of view should be given the same, exact, space for arguing its reasons, regardless of how popular it is. (Another approach is to give each viewpoint the same space on the main article, but allow it as much space as it needs on a different article, for example by using a Viewpoint: namespace)
On many fields (e.g. science!), appropriately informed experts comprise a tiny minority of the population. Viewpoints should be primarily presented and judged by their arguments and logic, not their popularity!
An important point brought up is that the current style policy deals mainly with factually presenting opinions. Thus mocks Wikipedia's claim for being primarily an educational "encyclopedia" rather than a populist "culture blog" which deals with popular opinions.
-- 80.230.233.101 12:35, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
(Note: this is only a short example!)
A general principle: As an encyclopedia, wikipedia's purpose is to educate and convey knowledge. Articles should be written in an expository manner and present verifiable and referenced facts.
An article in wikipedia is comprised of two distinct conceptual parts:
1. Illustration: In this part, the subject should be defined, presented, and elaborated, with an informative and uncritical language. Concepts and assumptions that are native and essential for its exposition are presented from the subject's perspective.
For example: An article about "quark" should adopt a scientific perspective which is useful for the understanding of quarks. "Reincarnation" should be written from a religious or spiritual perspective that allows understanding the subject and its concepts within its proper context.
2. Interpretation: An important part of human knowledge is the interpretation and evaluation of ideas. Wikipedia aims for fairness in its presentation of viewpoints, allowing competing viewpoints an equal space; An article may also contain relevant viewpoints, with accordance to the following requirements:
[An article which is already written in this manner (which is IMO excellent) is Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: note the useful, uncritical, perspective, and the informative "Skeptical view" section in its bottom.] -- 80.230.233.101 09:46, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
Articles are composed of two parts, but those aren't them. They are Wikipedia:define and describe. And after that, dichotomize. Try making some edits to other articles and you will get the hang of it. Bensaccount 17:45, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
Consider the following section [1]. As far as I can see, in this section people keep indenting until it makes no sense to continue. As a consequence, the decision to go back to the margin seems unrelated to the logical content. This section would not require so many indents, if indents were only used for comments that break the normal flow. Moreover, in this example, the readers cannot easily distinguish the comments that have been indented because they break the normal flow from other comments. I would like to know where in WP this kind of issues should be pointed out. I put it here because it does apply to this talk page, but would like to mention this small technical point in a more appropriate location, and only keep a wikilink here. -- Lumiere 16:22, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
I have an example of suppression of information and I am not sure how the NPOV policy applies to this example. It is a genuine question about the NPOV policy, not a way to replace a Rfc. However, I think one must look at the case Talk:Natasha Demkina before one can answer the question. It is about an experiment/TV show to evaluate whether or not a young girl, Demkina, has an X-ray vision to see inside human bodies. She had a score in the test that could only be obtained with probability 1/50, but this was not enough to "pass the test". There is one side that says that the experiment was not well designed and the arguments, I believe, were originally presented by a Cambridge physicist Brian Josephson in his web site. There is the other side which is represented by two skeptic organizations that regroup respected scientists. The current article suppresses the original article by Brian Josephson and replaces it by an article by a journalist in some independent magazine. This article presents some of the points of Brian Josephson, but it first discredits him as being "scorned by his colleague for his enthousiasm for the paranormal" and only have nice words for the other side such as "key member", "respected", etc.
Is this a valid suppression of information? This is a genuine question about the NPOV policy because there is the fact that Brian Josephson has only posted his article in some Cambridge his personal website without any refeering process. Note that there was no refeering process at all for the whole thing. The experiment itself was published in a non peer-reviewed magazine that belongs to one of the skeptic organizations. So none of the sides has sent anything to an independent peer-review process. --
Lumiere 01:33, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
I think something which needs to be emphasised somewhere here is that NPOV should *not* (IMHO anyway) translate into "exclusively positive," as that itself is POV. There are some topics where the inclusion of critical information is not only appropriate, but intrinsic to any factual discussion of the topic. (The Church of Scientology is probably the single best example I can think of here) Too often though the rule here seems to be that "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." I can agree that in some situations that is appropriate...but in order to maintain genuine NPOV, there are occasionally topics where as I said, critical information is highly relevant.
I am aware of the recent modifications to the NPOV article. However, the most important problems are still not treated (treating the most severe problem consist of changing the name of the policy). Here they are, including some treated criticisms that still prevail the thousands of articles in wikipedia. If you think these criticisms are too harsh and unjustified, then ask me about it, because I think that you are just mistaken.
Examples of criticisms:
Misleading redefinition of known concepts:
Pretension of fairness:
Overuse of vague viewpoint quantification:
Unsuitability:
-- 84.228.107.148 14:01, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia is going to stay, and the NPOV policy might change name and progress, but it will not disapear. So, the question is how to improve it. I am not against the above critic. I am just asking myself how we can make good use of it? -- Lumiere 18:56, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree with the critic "Overuse of vague viewpoint quantification:", but it can be taken care of. In general, I think that the NPOV policy should be carefully revised so that it is not only consistent with the remainder of the policies, but in fact reinforce them (in the examples used, etc.). -- Lumiere 19:00, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Most of the critics are not directly about NPOV, but about what it is claims to be. It could be that NPOV is perfectlty reasonable. The critics are only that there is a pretention that it does more than what it actually does. IMO, the priority should be on what it actually does and how to improve it. As long as we do not lie to ourselve about what it actually does, the issue of what it appears to be is secondary. -- Lumiere 19:17, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree with the above comment of -- 84.228.107.148. -- Lumiere 19:48, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Critic 4 contains a part that is directly about the NPOV policy. The critic is that there is no fairness toward the subject itself. The idea is perhaps that allowing viewpoints that are not sympathetical to a basic viewpoint V, which is called the "subject", could be unfair to the viewpoint V, this so called subject. This is true if we adhere to the viewpoint V, even if the other viewpoints are presented as viewpoints, not as the absolute truth. For example, if one is accused to be a thief, it looks bad even if it is just presented as the opinion of someone. If it turns out that V is correct (e.g. the guy is actually not a thief), then there is a valid point here. The best we can do is to filter the best we can the content of all viewpoints with the help of other policies such as WP:NOR and WP:V. Again, we see that NPOV can be improved by taking more into account the other policies. -- Lumiere 19:48, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
1. NPOV claims to have nothing to do with objectivity. However, a closer look reveals it to suggest that an "objective" presentation of viewpoints is a possible and attainable goal.
2. NPOV has been accused of consistently using doublespeak and euphemisms, "neutral point of view", means "communally accepted perspective" or "common bias".
3. NPOV shows a pseudo-democratic conception of fairness towards viewpoints ( undue weight), which is considered misleading and insulting for the known concept of "fairness" by some critics.
4. NPOV professes to fairness towards viewpoints, but does not take fairness towards the article's subject into account, thus allowing articles to become strongly critical of the subject, if there are no prominent defenders of it. (however, this may be considered unethical in practice)
5. NPOV actively exemplifies using vague and unscientific expressions like "some people", "most people", "many people" for the quantification of viewpoints. Critics see this as being generally unhealthy towards creating a supposedly accurate encyclopedia.
6 Another criticism is that NPOV naively presumes all participants to be equal in power and persistence over the expression of their supported viewpoints, in order to attain its goal. Therefore it is inappropriate for an encyclopedia that features credited seniority of editorship and hierarchical administrative structure.
There exists an interpretation of the NPOV policy, especially of the section WP:NPOV#A simple formulation, that suggests that a magical way to include an allegation Y into an article is simply to write "Joe said Y" where it is a verifiable fact that Joe said Y. I would suggest that we clarify this issue. Especially in the context of scientific content, it should be recognized that there is not such a big difference between the statement "Joe said <some statment> [ref]" and "<some statement> [ref]" when [ref] is a reference to the article written by Joe. The same info is conveyed in both cases; it is only easier to see that Joe is the author in the former case -- we use this former approach when Joe is very well known in the subject area as a way to acknowledge the importance of the author. In the case of scientific content, the main criteria should remain that the statement Y is published in a reputable source. -- Lumiere 21:50, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
One idea I came up with for possibly improving or at least bolstering the existing NPOV policy would be to place a disclaimer either on the front of the site, or automatically via template on each entry stating that, although policy is used to keep the quality of articles as high as possible, because of the dynamic nature of the site, it is unrealistic to expect that it will at all times have the same degree of editorial quality and objectivity as a conventional encyclopedia.
I personally believe that the ambition for this site to have the same degree of quality and factual accuracy as a print encyclopedia is entirely unrealistic anyway, if for no other reason than the nature of the technology itself. That however is not to say that this site cannot still be immensely useful and valuable...it already is, and will doubtless continue to be. I am also not necessarily suggesting that the maintainers adopt a lower standard, either; rather simply that readers be informed of the magnitude of the difficulty involved in attempting to maintain said standard on a constant basis.
Edit: I just noticed the disclaimer link at the bottom of the page; about no guarantee of validity etc. That's more or less exactly what I had in mind...but the disclaimer link a bit more prominently might be good.
Petrus4 04:00, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia, which means it is a representation of human knowledge at some level of generality.
But human beings disagree about specific cases;
for any topic on which there are competing views, each view represents a different idea of what the truth is, and insofar as that view contradicts other views, its adherents believe that the other views are false and therefore not knowledge.
Where there is disagreement about what is true, there's disagreement about what constitutes knowledge.
Wikipedia works because it's a collaborative effort;
but, while collaborating, how can we solve the problem of endless " edit wars" in which one person asserts that p, whereupon the next person changes the text so that it asserts not-p? A solution is that we accept, for the purposes of working on Wikipedia, that "human knowledge" includes all different significant theories on all different topics.
So we're committed to the goal of representing human knowledge in that sense. Something like this is surely a well-established sense of the word "knowledge"; in this sense, what is "known" changes constantly with the passage of time, and when we use the word "know", we often use so-called scare quotes. Europeans in the Middle Ages "knew" that demons caused diseases. We now "know" otherwise.
We could sum up human knowledge (in this sense) in a biased way: we'd state a series of theories about topic T, and then claim that the truth about T is such-and-such. But again, consider that Wikipedia is an international, collaborative project. Nearly every view on every subject will be found among our authors and readers. To avoid endless edit wars, we can agree to present each of the significant views fairly, and not assert any one of them as correct.
That is what makes an article "unbiased" or "neutral" in the sense we are presenting here.
To write from a neutral point of view, one presents controversial views without asserting them;
to do that, it generally suffices to present competing views in a way that is more or less acceptable to their adherents, and also to attribute the views to their adherents. Disputes are characterized in Wikipedia. They are not re-enacted.
To sum up the primary reason for this policy: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, a compilation of human knowledge.
But because Wikipedia is a community-built, international resource, we cannot expect collaborators to agree in all cases, or even in many cases, on what constitutes knowledge in a strict sense.
We can, therefore, adopt the looser sense of "human knowledge" according to which a wide variety of conflicting theories constitute what we call "knowledge."
We should, both individually and collectively, make an effort to present these conflicting views fairly, without advocating any one of them,
with the qualification that views held only by a tiny minority of people should not be represented as though they are significant minority views, and perhaps should not be represented at all.
There is another reason to commit ourselves to this policy. Namely, when it is clear to readers that we do not expect them to adopt any particular opinion, this leaves them free to make up their minds for themselves, thus encouraging intellectual independence.
Totalitarian governments and dogmatic institutions everywhere might find reason to be opposed to Wikipedia, if we succeed in adhering to our non-bias policy: the presentation of many competing theories on a wide variety of subjects suggests that we, the creators of Wikipedia, trust readers' competence to form their own opinions themselves.
Texts that present multiple viewpoints fairly, without demanding that the reader accept any one of them, are liberating.
Neutrality subverts dogmatism, and nearly everyone working on Wikipedia can agree this is a good thing. Neutrality has long been, and will always be, the only way Wikipedia can remain an unbiased source of information for the whole world.
Without stating it clearly here above Bensaccount argues to completely delete the following chapter:
Contrary to Bensaccount, when I first read this article I found that chapter very helpful as it motivates and summaries in a thoughtful way Wikipedia's NPOV policy. Thus, deleting it will IMO be detrimental for quick understanding of newcomers, even if "everything has already been said elsewhere".
What may IMO be worth consideration is to abbreviate it.
Note about his argument: As he did not refer on all points where "everything has already been said elsewhere", I'm also not convinced that everything has really been said elsewhere. Harald88 17:09, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
I see that this section (or chapter) strongly advocates a no suppression policy, using the mechanism of attribution of viewpoint to whoever have this viewpoint. The problem is that this is not in accord with other policies such as WP:NOR which by definition must suppress information. If we interpret this section in a strict manner, we could have an entire article that provides some original research of Joe simply by explicitly stating that it is the opinion of Joe. Joe will be very happy because not only his original research is presented, but even better is name is explicitly mentioned several times! I think that it is time that we consider the spirit of each policy and make sure that there is a balance between WP:NPOV (which is primarily about non suppression) and WP:NOR and WP:V which are mainly about higher quality.
Note that I see no conflict between the basic idea of these policies. To the contrary, it is well argued in WP:NOR and WP:V that these policies support a high quality form of NPOV that is consistent with the basic formulation of NPOV of Jimbo Wales. The problem occurs only with specific sections (or chapters) of NPOV such as section 4 discussed here and even more with section WP:NPOV#A simple formulation previously discussed. -- Lumiere 20:17, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
My comment is perhaps different than the point of Bensaccount, but it is consistent with his point. By selectively taking some components of NPOV and putting the emphasis on them and ignoring others, one can provide a very biased angle on NPOV. For example, there is nothing mentioned about the fact that if a statement represent the viewpoint of a majority (e.g. of the scientific community), then we should be able to find appropriate references in text book, etc. Moreover, I think that such a fundamental section should also consider the other policies. The policies WP:V and WP:NOR regularly refer to the other policies including NPOV, but NPOV refers very little to the other policies. NPOV appears as if it was disconnected from the other policies. -- Lumiere 20:59, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Bensaccount, you're making massive changes to the article and upsetting people in the process. Please use standard Wikipedia process for a case such as this and make your edits to a copy in your userspace. When you are satisfied with the results, present it here for discussion and develop consensus for its adoption. The alternative is edit warring and strife, and to have that happen at the NPOV policy page reflects poorly on all of us. — Saxifrage | ☎ 21:00, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
I personally support the proposal of Bensaccount to remove section 4. I can see that some people might like this section very much, but we must question why. What is so well explained in that section that was not explained before? I don't see anything. To the contrary, I only see vague abstract principles to support the idea of no suppression of information with no mention of other factors such as no original research which need to be considered to avoid conflict with other policies in practice. -- Lumiere 01:46, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
In general, if we do not only consider scholarly contents, what is a reputable source should depend a lot on the viewpoint that is presented and how it is presented. For example, if a viewpoint is with no ambiguity clearly presented as the religious Catholic viewpoint, a publication from the Vatican would be perfectly fine. If the viewpoint is presented as a scientific viewpoint, for example if it is the viewpoint of an organization that presents itself as a scientific organization, then a reputable scientific publisher should be required. Even if the organization does not present itself as a scientific organization, if the viewpoint is presented as a scientific content, for example if the Vatican enters into a scientific debate, then a reputable scientific publisher should be required. This is implicit in the idea that the purpose of a reputable publisher is to clearly identify where the viewpoint belongs. There should be a good match between the nature of the publisher and the nature of the viewpoint. As another example, if some viewpoint is a critic of some scientific experiments (the method used etc.), this viewpoint should be published in a reputable scientific publisher. This is also the idea of finding a prominent adherant to a viewpoint. The idea is not that a prominent adherant give any validity to the viewpoint. It is only a way to uniquely identify the viewpoint and make sure that there is a good match between the actual viewpoint that is presented and what it claims to be. I am just saying that this principle should be more explained in the NPOV policy -- it is already the idea of NPOV, but it should be better explained. It will make a good link with WP:NOR and WP:V. -- Lumiere 15:00, 23 January 2006 (UTC)