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. |
There is a dispute regarding the Criticism section of an article on a top online game. The dispute has nearly led to edit wars on more than one occasion, and has severely disrupted my attempts to improve the article to GA status.
I am posting here for advice, as the dispute concerns two of Wikipedia's core policies: verifiability and NPOV. This dispute also highlights a problem caused by the Verifiability policy, which I have tried to point out several times, namely, systematic bias.
To summarize the locus of the dispute, when I first tried to improve the article to GA status, the Criticism section documented common player criticisms of the game. However, due to criticisms over lack of referencing, someone removed all the player criticisms and the section became a list of press reviews of the game (all of which praised the game).
Soon after the section was overwritten, the article's talk page was flooded with complaints about the new Criticism section, describing it as highly biased, reading like an advertisement, and blatantly violating the NPOV policy. Two comments I remember are "Previously, only the Criticism section documented any negative opinion of the game" and "The press reviews are totally different from what players think of the game".
On the talk page, there was an argument over the Criticism section, with both the new and old Criticism sections having their supporters, and an edit war nearly broke out. I commented "You'll never find those player criticisms in a reliable source" and suggested the Criticism section contain both player criticisms and press reviews to satisfy both verifiability and NPOV. We had a discussion on the talk page, and decided to restore the player criticisms, but referencing a player review from GameFAQs (which documented several of the player criticisms), and rewriting them in paragraph form, instead of a list.
Recently, when the article was put up for peer review, there were several complaints about the Criticism section. Exasperated, I lashed out at them.
"Make up your mind whether you want:
We now have to choose between verifiability and NPOV. As stated earlier, I suggested a middle ground: have the Criticism section contain both press reviews and player criticisms.
However, I need your advice; please provide it. Thanks.
-- J.L.W.S. The Special One 08:13, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
I am personally of the opinion that if correcting an NPOV violation would require creating a WP:V or WP:NOR violation, then there has been no NPOV-violation to begin with. Honestly, I'd like to see a sentence in the NPOV policy explicitly stating, "Points of view that are backed only by original research or statements and sources that cannot be verified must be excluded from Wikipedia." I don't think the current wording of the undue weight section is strong enough that with unverified or original-research points of view, any weight is undue weight. Don't know how much that helps this particular situation, but I think it's good as a principle for the interplay of NPOV with V and NOR. The Literate Engineer 17:07, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
Hi.
It seems (I could be wrong) that according to the assertion on the "undue weight" segment that "tiny minority" views should perhaps "not be represented at all". This seems to suggest that articles devoted to those views are intrinsically biased. While I fail to understand why, the assertion does seem to say that the views that should be included are those that are notable, and thus I think we could add more support to the case for notability becoming official policy here on Wikipedia. 70.101.144.160 20:42, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
Hi.
I noticed this on the NPOV FAQ:
"Please be clear on one thing: the Wikipedia neutrality policy certainly does not state, or imply, that we must "give equal validity" to minority views. It does state that we must not take a stand on them as encyclopedia writers; but that does not stop us from describing the majority views as such; from fairly explaining the strong arguments against the pseudoscientific theory; from describing the strong moral repugnance that many people feel toward some morally repugnant views; and so forth."
However, what do we mean by "pseudoscience", anyway? Do we mean "pseudoscientific" topics, like UFOs, etc. in which case legitimate scientific methodology can be applied and the hypotheses that result from that would be actual science, or hypotheses that do not conform to scientific methodology yet claim to do so?
Furthermore, he thing suposedly called "pseudoscience" may not be that in actuality, and thus the arguments against it may NOT be "strong". This suggests that all allegedly "pseudoscientific" viewpoints are WRONG, even though Wikipedia cannot check that as a fact, and some allegedly "crank" theories have turned out to be right (not all, certainly, but some). In a truly neutral point-of-view article one can only provide the arguments and facts, it is up to the reader to decide for themselves what the "truth" is regarding a controversial theory. That is the purpose of neutral point-of-view, to let the reader decide for themselves what position to take, and not have Wikipedia force a view on them. 70.101.144.160 22:33, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Powerful institutions can have a huge effect on how we think, by framing concepts for us. As an example, consider the word "defense" as national governments prefer to use it. Talking about the United States Department of Defense is proper in my view, since that is the official name of that organization. By contrast, I think it's improper to use United States defense contractors as a preferred term, since the word 'defense' in this case carries an unnecessary value judgment. The fact that that terminology originates with public relations specialists should not give it extra legitimacy.
I'd say in such a case, we should favor the term 'military' over 'defense', as it is both more value-neutral, and more accurate. Every nation in the world would like us to think their military activities are all strictly defensive. And what does national defense really mean: fostering international goodwill? schooling children and sheltering homeless? building some bombs?
This is just one example of a POV word. Just because a powerful government would like us to carry their message, doesn't mean we need to play along.
Loqi T. 22:03, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
The term "defense contractor" is so common in the United States that it had never occurred to me that the term would have any connotation as described by editor Loqi T. That's just my personal view. As used in connection with the U.S. military, the term "defense" has been used denotatively for so long (since 1947, when the Department of Defense was created) to refer to the military establishment that I would argue that most Americans probably see and hear the term denotatively, and not in the connotative sense described above. I agree with editor Robert A West; Wikipedia articles should use the common term in this case. Yours, Famspear 22:01, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
What is meant by this distinction in the nutshell? Am I overlooking something obvious? Robert A.West ( Talk) 05:14, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
"Disrespecting my religion or treating it like a human invention of some kind, is religious discrimination, inaccurate, or wrong. And what about beliefs I feel are wrong, or against my religion, or outdated, or non-scientific?"
I'm sorry, but the punctuation in that just seems wrong to me. Shouldn't it be either:
"Disrespecting my religion, or treating it like a human invention of some kind, is religious discrimination, inaccurate, or wrong. And what about beliefs I feel are wrong, or against my religion, or outdated, or non-scientific?"
Or:
"Disrespecting my religion or treating it like a human invention of some kind is religious discrimination, inaccurate, or wrong. And what about beliefs I feel are wrong, or against my religion, or outdated, or non-scientific?"
Is it wrong, or am I just tired?
Well Drawn
Charli
e 00:05, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
You're right. The current one's now wrong, as the comma after "kind" has become inappropriate. Didn't used to be that way, though. Take a gander at the United States Bill of Rights. I'll go nix the comma now. The Literate Engineer 17:05, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Page Pedra Branca, Singapore has been proposed to move to another page to solve a few problem. However, such move is likely to be controversial because the ownership of the island is disputed between Malaysia and Singapore. Previously, page Pedra Branca, Singapore was Pedra Branca but somebody unilaterally moved it to its current page. Currently its seem only editors from Malaysia and Singapore are involved in the talk page. I feel a third neutral party would give more objective view on the matter. Please offer your neutral opinion at Talk:Pedra Branca, Singapore. __earth ( Talk) 13:47, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
I came across this page while reading a warning on an article about economics that said "The neutrality of this article may have been compromised by the use of weasel-words". After reading about weasel-words I decided to follow the link about neutrality. But to my surprise, at the very beginning of this article about neutrality there is this sentence: It has "wide acceptance" among editors and "is considered" a standard that all users should follow. I may not have been bothered that much by the weasel-words "wide acceptance" a few days ago,but now since I just read the article about them I cannot stop short of asking "how wide is in fact wide acceptance".The other one "is considered" bothers me as well because I ask myself "is considered" by whom?By the deciding factors at wikipedia?Who are they?What is their area of expertise?What about their own neutrality with regard to the definition of neutrality? So I would encourage the authors of this sentence to be specific, for example by replacing "wide acceptance" with "the majority of editors" and it would help to state how was it possible to determine that the "majority of editors" expressed that opinion, perhaps by searching the keyword neutrality in connection with the editor's expressed approval of this policy to implement this definition of neutrality etc. If the sentence stays the way it is now, it seems odd to me that the people who successfully convinced me that weasel-words are to be reagarded with skepticism make use of weasel-words just in an article about neutrality.Dan 18 November 2006 ( 89.33.140.23 ( talk · contribs))
The reason for my question is the article Beneš decrees.
And more specifically this link: * Ethnic cleansing in post World War II Czechoslovakia: the presidential decrees of Edward Benes, 1945-1948 Available as MS Word for Windows file.
It takes a strong stand against the Benez decrees. My question would be, does this link, which is very much to the point, but also seems not to comply with NPOV have to obey the NPOV policy and therefore be excluded from listing in the "external links" section of the article, or is it permissible to add possibly POV links in the "external links" section? -- Stor stark7 Talk 15:17, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Here is the issue in a nutshell: After lurking (and occasionally making small edits) on an article over the past year, another editor decided to slap a NPOV tag onto an article even though the article was named an FA nine months ago and said editor made no challenge or even comment during the FAC process. Additionally, the article in question has had no substantial changes since it was named an FA and the few changes there have been have actually improved the article further. The claimed reason for the tagging was a perceived bias due to an opinion by the main article contributer (me) made at a different website over six years ago and nothing specifically pointed out in the FA itself. Am I wrong for immediately removing the tag without waiting for an imaginary consensus to form on a talk page that receives no more than one comment every 3 months? Here's the article in question. Thanks! -- Jayzel 02:37, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
There's some debate on WP:EL about whether disallowing links to your own site can be forbidden - whether it is a policy or a guideline. I've been looking for it in the policies, and I was surprised to not find it anywhere. Is linking to your own site a violation of NPOV? Is it forbidden in another policy that I missed? Shouldn't something like this be mentioned in this policy? Or is the guideline COI considered to be enough? -- Milo H Minderbinder 18:20, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Rubbish!! Text says:
OK, so since I adher to the conviction that objectivity exists, then I must therefore lack philosophical sophistication? THX 106 yourself dear human fellow!!
My unsofisticated view is that, given a species with limitless population, a mutual conflict resolving language that is always efficient, and eyes and ears everywhere, then objectivity is the math limit of development for that species' mental model of the universe from here to infinite future (also called: doomsday). However impractical definition, it gives a clear direction of how to increase the degree of objectivity - use the Nobel Committee method: discuss and examine statements for flaws and misunderstandings. Strictly logically: if objectivity doesn't exist, then the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view is purely meaningless. Unstrictly fuzzy logically:' does 1+1=2 exist? No? Yet you regard it as a fact!? (Pinpointing the different abstraction levels in semantics, which regards "existence"). Rursus 11:56, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
This policy has an example encouraging "Most Americans believe that the Beatles were the greatest band". Why are we encouraging this when it's clearly a WP:PEACOCK sentence? — Wknight94 ( talk) 15:35, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Please see discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability#The_first_sentence - it effects the first sentence of this page too. -- Tango 00:07, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Having read WP:NPOV and related pages through again, I see that it is expected that use of the {{ POV}} tag is accompanied by a reasonably full explanation on the talk page of the article. I was wondering is there any concensus that such tags can be removed if no explanation is given (or it is only a very basic ie. "I disagree" comment is made without citing problem areas and explaining the discrepancy)? There is a huge backlog of tags which undermine articles. Many seem to just be added when someone reads the topic which does not support their own POV on the subject. Thanks. WJBscribe 02:35, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Because science claims to be objective and wikipedia claims there is no objectivity I have added science as a biased view to make the policy consistent. I can see many people will have problems with this. To resolve this problem please discuss. -- 80.56.36.253 15:13, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
I see that Crum375 reverted my edit. Please explain or revert your edit. -- 80.56.36.253 15:15, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
Any subject may be described in an NPOV way. However, just as science has a POV, so does religion, or metaphysics. Yet they can all be described in a manner that is consistent with NPOV. Note that describing a POV does not imply the NPOV is contravened. POV is not the opposite of NPOV. -- Iantresman 15:29, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Let me just say this again then; resolve this issue. Either science is NPOV and all articles should take the position of science. Or Science is POV and then put it in the list like I did. Get rid of the ambiguity. And not only to regard with psuedoscience but also with religion. -- 80.56.36.253 13:04, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi.
One thing mentioned here is that only "significant" views should be represented. But what makes a view "significant"? Could this potentially be related to notability? 74.38.34.192 23:43, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
There's a discussion at Talk:Taylor Allderdice High School#RFC over whether a school newspaper is a reliable source and how information sourced from it should be represented, if at all? Thoughts welcome to build a consensus. Hiding Talk 16:06, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Further to my earlier suggestion on POV above, I'd like to suggest the following changing to the introductory paragraph, which currently doesn't mention "POVs" (changes marked in red):
-- Iantresman 16:31, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Are there any objections to the change? -- Iantresman 20:47, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
I think that these suggested changes add nothing substantial. Would prefer to keep as is. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 00:31, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
"However, pseudoscience should not obfuscate the description of the main views, and any mention should be proportional to the rest of the article." - taken from NPOV Pseudoscience
Which Wiki entry does this apply to? The "pseudoscientific" position entry itself or other entries that mention that "pseudoscientific" view. 70.61.219.34 12:55, 19 December 2006 (UTC)adlac
Deepak Chopra says
perception and point of view is woven into the
perciever
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Berniethomas68 07:05, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
"...representing views fairly, proportionately and without bias"
lol. truly.
Even when 100% factual, documented proof is added to "articles" like Global Warming, Ray Nagin, Evolution, they are editied out because some left wing Admins can't comprehend this fact: Consensus <> Truth. Facts = truth.
12.145.177.110 21:36, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
To say the least the NPOV and the presented view of knowledge is not well expressed. The NPOV principle is based on the blief in objectivism. There is nothing wrong with that, but it should be mentioned somewhere. For example the so often included trivias are neutral, but plain, trivial facts are not something one should call knowledge. I think there should be a guideline where to include trivias. It seems the answer to the question has to do something with the audience of an article.
A further ellaboration of the philosophcal foundations should be very valueable for the Wikipedia project.
A very good cristism on the topic: Lanier on wikipedia's objectivism —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.177.135.111 ( talk • contribs) ( [1])
I'm very glad for the responses. If may well be that objectivsm is the wrong - Lanier uses the word collectivsm. I hope it's clear that this relates to the NPOV policy. "A core belief of the wiki world is that whatever problems exist in the wiki will be incrementally corrected as the process unfolds." I wouldn't go so far as Lanier to call the approach foolish - I would call it naive. In any case it's clear that to some extent Wikipedia's 'epistomoligical' roots are not layed out properly.
Since Jimbo Wales wrote this some 5 years ago, multiple mailing lists have come into existence: the ones most appropriate for trans-Wikipedia meta-discussions I suppose to be either mail:foundation-l or mail:wikipedia-l. -- Francis Schonken 11:22, 4 January 2007 (UTC)The mailing list will remain open, well-advertised, and will be regarded as the place for meta-discussions about the nature of Wikipedia. Very limited meta-discussion of the nature of the Wikipedia should be placed on the site itself. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. The topic of Wikipedia articles should always look outward, not inward at the Wikipedia itself.
Out of curiosity, isn’t a Neutral Point of View policy technically flawed since no perspective can be neutral? I mean, the very meaning of a ‘point of view’ insinuates that there is someone viewing it, which inherently incorporates biases. Nothing seems able to be completely objective or neutral; it is just accepted via consensus, convention or presumption. After all, saying something as trivial as ‘2 + 1 = 3’ imparts an ordinal prejudice (as opposed to ‘1 + 2 = 3’).
I assume one would retort that the aim is to achieve as neutral a point of view as possible, which is fine except it seems flawed (and somewhat cruel) to make an unobtainable ideal into an adamant and invulnerable policy. I guess at this point someone would tactfully point out that I’m just a raving lunatic, which seems about right. Don’t pay me too much heed, just trying to stir things up philosophically and metaphysically :P --Relex 08:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.165.244.24 ( talk • contribs) ( [3])
Here's a proposed new section to the NPOV page, to insert probably just after the "Reasoning behind NPOV" section. In a way, it may avoid some of the heat in the objections about objectivism.
Please give comments: should/may I add this to the main NPOV page? Steved2 20:49, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
Alternative reasoning supporting NPOV
Much of the time people worry about how to find good information: what is true, how much to trust it. Most of the discussion about NPOV presupposes that readers are focussed on this. However another way of looking at what we learn, and particularly at what we want to find out when we consult an encyclopaedia, is: what do other people mean and think when they use a given term? For this, it doesn't matter what is true. In fact even from an early age we pick up this "meta" or "status" information about knowledge: in music we learn that there are many different styles, and no consensus about which are good and which are bad, whereas in arithmetic everyone agrees about what is true and there's no point in bothering about alternative opinions in that area (unless you are a research mathematician). Adhering to the NPOV policy ensures readers get this status information that in fact nearly everyone wants and needs.
If you are a radical relativist, and think there is no such thing as objective viewpoints or universal truths, you want to know what these alternatives are, what other people think. If (at the other philosophical extreme) you are a fundamentalist (say a fundamentalist atheist, who believes all religions other than atheism should be banned as dangerous), and you think there is only one truth and conflicting views are both wrong and dangerous, you almost certainly need to know what the other views are in order to combat them and in order to direct your efforts to change others' minds. Thus whatever your view of truth in general, and your view of a given topic in particular, you usually want to know about the main alternative views and the degree of both human and evidential support for them: this is an underemphasised but pervasive aspect of knowledge, and is particularly what you want in getting a first orientation to a topic (which is the chief function of an encyclopaedia). This aspect of orientation is also important for preparing you for following up literature in the area (is it all likely to be in agreement, if lacking in self-criticism; or do you need to explore several literatures to understand the different viewpoints?).
This is true both for grand issues such as the meaning of life, for important practical policy issues such as what are the best national policies for reducing the incidence of AIDS, and also for largely mundane things such as which side of the road the traffic drives on: an article that either only mentioned one side, or spent passion arguing whether left or right was better wouldn't be nearly so useful as one warning that there is no global consensus (the ratio of countries adopting right:left is about 2:1), but that you can expect total consensus within a country and so only need to worry when crossing frontiers.
Yet another kind of reasoning behind adopting an NPOV policy comes from educational theory. Most educational theories today involve, one way or another, the basic insights of "constructivism": that teaching is not just telling, that learning is not just listening. When we think of basic information e.g. what is your email address?, what is the German word for "invoice"?, perhaps telling is the right view; but the more the content is conceptually complex, the more we have to recognise that learning entails construction hidden in the mind of the learner as they link in new structures to what they personally have already in their minds, and the most a teacher can do is to provide some materials for this. The NPOV policy is about providing those materials, and is comparable to teaching by facilitation, while POV approaches are similar to trying to teach by mere telling.
For wikipedia to be used, it needs to give value to readers, and an NPOV policy enriches the content. However we should recognise that for wikipedia to grow, it has to be enjoyable for authors. There is a deep pleasure that almost all of us feel in having our say, in telling it to the best of our ability, giving our best summary synthesis: perhaps an innate human desire to teach, to share knowledge, which underpins the existence of culture in all human societies. We have to recognise, however painfully, that this pleasure is not always and automatically aligned with the greatest value for readers. Perhaps we can redirect our "telling" impulses from telling a conclusion to contributing the main materials from which we built our own synthesis. It is this natural tension between our human POV tendencies as story tellers, and the superior nourishing qualities of NPOV for readers, that gives rise to this debate and to the need for a conscious and explicit NPOV policy.
In summary: information about the status of beliefs in a given area is useful to most readers independently of views about the nature of truth, the nature of the subject matter, and even of ideas about fairness, truth, justice, etc. Equally, readers usually have an interest in knowing about the views of others independently of any choice they themselves may make of which view to favour, and what degree of certainty to accord it. Hence the "NPOV" approach to articles is useful to readers whether or not someone has the truth about a topic, and whether or not there really is such a thing as a neutral viewpoint.
Steved2 20:49, 29 December 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. |
There is a dispute regarding the Criticism section of an article on a top online game. The dispute has nearly led to edit wars on more than one occasion, and has severely disrupted my attempts to improve the article to GA status.
I am posting here for advice, as the dispute concerns two of Wikipedia's core policies: verifiability and NPOV. This dispute also highlights a problem caused by the Verifiability policy, which I have tried to point out several times, namely, systematic bias.
To summarize the locus of the dispute, when I first tried to improve the article to GA status, the Criticism section documented common player criticisms of the game. However, due to criticisms over lack of referencing, someone removed all the player criticisms and the section became a list of press reviews of the game (all of which praised the game).
Soon after the section was overwritten, the article's talk page was flooded with complaints about the new Criticism section, describing it as highly biased, reading like an advertisement, and blatantly violating the NPOV policy. Two comments I remember are "Previously, only the Criticism section documented any negative opinion of the game" and "The press reviews are totally different from what players think of the game".
On the talk page, there was an argument over the Criticism section, with both the new and old Criticism sections having their supporters, and an edit war nearly broke out. I commented "You'll never find those player criticisms in a reliable source" and suggested the Criticism section contain both player criticisms and press reviews to satisfy both verifiability and NPOV. We had a discussion on the talk page, and decided to restore the player criticisms, but referencing a player review from GameFAQs (which documented several of the player criticisms), and rewriting them in paragraph form, instead of a list.
Recently, when the article was put up for peer review, there were several complaints about the Criticism section. Exasperated, I lashed out at them.
"Make up your mind whether you want:
We now have to choose between verifiability and NPOV. As stated earlier, I suggested a middle ground: have the Criticism section contain both press reviews and player criticisms.
However, I need your advice; please provide it. Thanks.
-- J.L.W.S. The Special One 08:13, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
I am personally of the opinion that if correcting an NPOV violation would require creating a WP:V or WP:NOR violation, then there has been no NPOV-violation to begin with. Honestly, I'd like to see a sentence in the NPOV policy explicitly stating, "Points of view that are backed only by original research or statements and sources that cannot be verified must be excluded from Wikipedia." I don't think the current wording of the undue weight section is strong enough that with unverified or original-research points of view, any weight is undue weight. Don't know how much that helps this particular situation, but I think it's good as a principle for the interplay of NPOV with V and NOR. The Literate Engineer 17:07, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
Hi.
It seems (I could be wrong) that according to the assertion on the "undue weight" segment that "tiny minority" views should perhaps "not be represented at all". This seems to suggest that articles devoted to those views are intrinsically biased. While I fail to understand why, the assertion does seem to say that the views that should be included are those that are notable, and thus I think we could add more support to the case for notability becoming official policy here on Wikipedia. 70.101.144.160 20:42, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
Hi.
I noticed this on the NPOV FAQ:
"Please be clear on one thing: the Wikipedia neutrality policy certainly does not state, or imply, that we must "give equal validity" to minority views. It does state that we must not take a stand on them as encyclopedia writers; but that does not stop us from describing the majority views as such; from fairly explaining the strong arguments against the pseudoscientific theory; from describing the strong moral repugnance that many people feel toward some morally repugnant views; and so forth."
However, what do we mean by "pseudoscience", anyway? Do we mean "pseudoscientific" topics, like UFOs, etc. in which case legitimate scientific methodology can be applied and the hypotheses that result from that would be actual science, or hypotheses that do not conform to scientific methodology yet claim to do so?
Furthermore, he thing suposedly called "pseudoscience" may not be that in actuality, and thus the arguments against it may NOT be "strong". This suggests that all allegedly "pseudoscientific" viewpoints are WRONG, even though Wikipedia cannot check that as a fact, and some allegedly "crank" theories have turned out to be right (not all, certainly, but some). In a truly neutral point-of-view article one can only provide the arguments and facts, it is up to the reader to decide for themselves what the "truth" is regarding a controversial theory. That is the purpose of neutral point-of-view, to let the reader decide for themselves what position to take, and not have Wikipedia force a view on them. 70.101.144.160 22:33, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Powerful institutions can have a huge effect on how we think, by framing concepts for us. As an example, consider the word "defense" as national governments prefer to use it. Talking about the United States Department of Defense is proper in my view, since that is the official name of that organization. By contrast, I think it's improper to use United States defense contractors as a preferred term, since the word 'defense' in this case carries an unnecessary value judgment. The fact that that terminology originates with public relations specialists should not give it extra legitimacy.
I'd say in such a case, we should favor the term 'military' over 'defense', as it is both more value-neutral, and more accurate. Every nation in the world would like us to think their military activities are all strictly defensive. And what does national defense really mean: fostering international goodwill? schooling children and sheltering homeless? building some bombs?
This is just one example of a POV word. Just because a powerful government would like us to carry their message, doesn't mean we need to play along.
Loqi T. 22:03, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
The term "defense contractor" is so common in the United States that it had never occurred to me that the term would have any connotation as described by editor Loqi T. That's just my personal view. As used in connection with the U.S. military, the term "defense" has been used denotatively for so long (since 1947, when the Department of Defense was created) to refer to the military establishment that I would argue that most Americans probably see and hear the term denotatively, and not in the connotative sense described above. I agree with editor Robert A West; Wikipedia articles should use the common term in this case. Yours, Famspear 22:01, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
What is meant by this distinction in the nutshell? Am I overlooking something obvious? Robert A.West ( Talk) 05:14, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
"Disrespecting my religion or treating it like a human invention of some kind, is religious discrimination, inaccurate, or wrong. And what about beliefs I feel are wrong, or against my religion, or outdated, or non-scientific?"
I'm sorry, but the punctuation in that just seems wrong to me. Shouldn't it be either:
"Disrespecting my religion, or treating it like a human invention of some kind, is religious discrimination, inaccurate, or wrong. And what about beliefs I feel are wrong, or against my religion, or outdated, or non-scientific?"
Or:
"Disrespecting my religion or treating it like a human invention of some kind is religious discrimination, inaccurate, or wrong. And what about beliefs I feel are wrong, or against my religion, or outdated, or non-scientific?"
Is it wrong, or am I just tired?
Well Drawn
Charli
e 00:05, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
You're right. The current one's now wrong, as the comma after "kind" has become inappropriate. Didn't used to be that way, though. Take a gander at the United States Bill of Rights. I'll go nix the comma now. The Literate Engineer 17:05, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Page Pedra Branca, Singapore has been proposed to move to another page to solve a few problem. However, such move is likely to be controversial because the ownership of the island is disputed between Malaysia and Singapore. Previously, page Pedra Branca, Singapore was Pedra Branca but somebody unilaterally moved it to its current page. Currently its seem only editors from Malaysia and Singapore are involved in the talk page. I feel a third neutral party would give more objective view on the matter. Please offer your neutral opinion at Talk:Pedra Branca, Singapore. __earth ( Talk) 13:47, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
I came across this page while reading a warning on an article about economics that said "The neutrality of this article may have been compromised by the use of weasel-words". After reading about weasel-words I decided to follow the link about neutrality. But to my surprise, at the very beginning of this article about neutrality there is this sentence: It has "wide acceptance" among editors and "is considered" a standard that all users should follow. I may not have been bothered that much by the weasel-words "wide acceptance" a few days ago,but now since I just read the article about them I cannot stop short of asking "how wide is in fact wide acceptance".The other one "is considered" bothers me as well because I ask myself "is considered" by whom?By the deciding factors at wikipedia?Who are they?What is their area of expertise?What about their own neutrality with regard to the definition of neutrality? So I would encourage the authors of this sentence to be specific, for example by replacing "wide acceptance" with "the majority of editors" and it would help to state how was it possible to determine that the "majority of editors" expressed that opinion, perhaps by searching the keyword neutrality in connection with the editor's expressed approval of this policy to implement this definition of neutrality etc. If the sentence stays the way it is now, it seems odd to me that the people who successfully convinced me that weasel-words are to be reagarded with skepticism make use of weasel-words just in an article about neutrality.Dan 18 November 2006 ( 89.33.140.23 ( talk · contribs))
The reason for my question is the article Beneš decrees.
And more specifically this link: * Ethnic cleansing in post World War II Czechoslovakia: the presidential decrees of Edward Benes, 1945-1948 Available as MS Word for Windows file.
It takes a strong stand against the Benez decrees. My question would be, does this link, which is very much to the point, but also seems not to comply with NPOV have to obey the NPOV policy and therefore be excluded from listing in the "external links" section of the article, or is it permissible to add possibly POV links in the "external links" section? -- Stor stark7 Talk 15:17, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Here is the issue in a nutshell: After lurking (and occasionally making small edits) on an article over the past year, another editor decided to slap a NPOV tag onto an article even though the article was named an FA nine months ago and said editor made no challenge or even comment during the FAC process. Additionally, the article in question has had no substantial changes since it was named an FA and the few changes there have been have actually improved the article further. The claimed reason for the tagging was a perceived bias due to an opinion by the main article contributer (me) made at a different website over six years ago and nothing specifically pointed out in the FA itself. Am I wrong for immediately removing the tag without waiting for an imaginary consensus to form on a talk page that receives no more than one comment every 3 months? Here's the article in question. Thanks! -- Jayzel 02:37, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
There's some debate on WP:EL about whether disallowing links to your own site can be forbidden - whether it is a policy or a guideline. I've been looking for it in the policies, and I was surprised to not find it anywhere. Is linking to your own site a violation of NPOV? Is it forbidden in another policy that I missed? Shouldn't something like this be mentioned in this policy? Or is the guideline COI considered to be enough? -- Milo H Minderbinder 18:20, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Rubbish!! Text says:
OK, so since I adher to the conviction that objectivity exists, then I must therefore lack philosophical sophistication? THX 106 yourself dear human fellow!!
My unsofisticated view is that, given a species with limitless population, a mutual conflict resolving language that is always efficient, and eyes and ears everywhere, then objectivity is the math limit of development for that species' mental model of the universe from here to infinite future (also called: doomsday). However impractical definition, it gives a clear direction of how to increase the degree of objectivity - use the Nobel Committee method: discuss and examine statements for flaws and misunderstandings. Strictly logically: if objectivity doesn't exist, then the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view is purely meaningless. Unstrictly fuzzy logically:' does 1+1=2 exist? No? Yet you regard it as a fact!? (Pinpointing the different abstraction levels in semantics, which regards "existence"). Rursus 11:56, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
This policy has an example encouraging "Most Americans believe that the Beatles were the greatest band". Why are we encouraging this when it's clearly a WP:PEACOCK sentence? — Wknight94 ( talk) 15:35, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Please see discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability#The_first_sentence - it effects the first sentence of this page too. -- Tango 00:07, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Having read WP:NPOV and related pages through again, I see that it is expected that use of the {{ POV}} tag is accompanied by a reasonably full explanation on the talk page of the article. I was wondering is there any concensus that such tags can be removed if no explanation is given (or it is only a very basic ie. "I disagree" comment is made without citing problem areas and explaining the discrepancy)? There is a huge backlog of tags which undermine articles. Many seem to just be added when someone reads the topic which does not support their own POV on the subject. Thanks. WJBscribe 02:35, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Because science claims to be objective and wikipedia claims there is no objectivity I have added science as a biased view to make the policy consistent. I can see many people will have problems with this. To resolve this problem please discuss. -- 80.56.36.253 15:13, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
I see that Crum375 reverted my edit. Please explain or revert your edit. -- 80.56.36.253 15:15, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
Any subject may be described in an NPOV way. However, just as science has a POV, so does religion, or metaphysics. Yet they can all be described in a manner that is consistent with NPOV. Note that describing a POV does not imply the NPOV is contravened. POV is not the opposite of NPOV. -- Iantresman 15:29, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Let me just say this again then; resolve this issue. Either science is NPOV and all articles should take the position of science. Or Science is POV and then put it in the list like I did. Get rid of the ambiguity. And not only to regard with psuedoscience but also with religion. -- 80.56.36.253 13:04, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi.
One thing mentioned here is that only "significant" views should be represented. But what makes a view "significant"? Could this potentially be related to notability? 74.38.34.192 23:43, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
There's a discussion at Talk:Taylor Allderdice High School#RFC over whether a school newspaper is a reliable source and how information sourced from it should be represented, if at all? Thoughts welcome to build a consensus. Hiding Talk 16:06, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Further to my earlier suggestion on POV above, I'd like to suggest the following changing to the introductory paragraph, which currently doesn't mention "POVs" (changes marked in red):
-- Iantresman 16:31, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Are there any objections to the change? -- Iantresman 20:47, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
I think that these suggested changes add nothing substantial. Would prefer to keep as is. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 00:31, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
"However, pseudoscience should not obfuscate the description of the main views, and any mention should be proportional to the rest of the article." - taken from NPOV Pseudoscience
Which Wiki entry does this apply to? The "pseudoscientific" position entry itself or other entries that mention that "pseudoscientific" view. 70.61.219.34 12:55, 19 December 2006 (UTC)adlac
Deepak Chopra says
perception and point of view is woven into the
perciever
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Berniethomas68 07:05, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
"...representing views fairly, proportionately and without bias"
lol. truly.
Even when 100% factual, documented proof is added to "articles" like Global Warming, Ray Nagin, Evolution, they are editied out because some left wing Admins can't comprehend this fact: Consensus <> Truth. Facts = truth.
12.145.177.110 21:36, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
To say the least the NPOV and the presented view of knowledge is not well expressed. The NPOV principle is based on the blief in objectivism. There is nothing wrong with that, but it should be mentioned somewhere. For example the so often included trivias are neutral, but plain, trivial facts are not something one should call knowledge. I think there should be a guideline where to include trivias. It seems the answer to the question has to do something with the audience of an article.
A further ellaboration of the philosophcal foundations should be very valueable for the Wikipedia project.
A very good cristism on the topic: Lanier on wikipedia's objectivism —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.177.135.111 ( talk • contribs) ( [1])
I'm very glad for the responses. If may well be that objectivsm is the wrong - Lanier uses the word collectivsm. I hope it's clear that this relates to the NPOV policy. "A core belief of the wiki world is that whatever problems exist in the wiki will be incrementally corrected as the process unfolds." I wouldn't go so far as Lanier to call the approach foolish - I would call it naive. In any case it's clear that to some extent Wikipedia's 'epistomoligical' roots are not layed out properly.
Since Jimbo Wales wrote this some 5 years ago, multiple mailing lists have come into existence: the ones most appropriate for trans-Wikipedia meta-discussions I suppose to be either mail:foundation-l or mail:wikipedia-l. -- Francis Schonken 11:22, 4 January 2007 (UTC)The mailing list will remain open, well-advertised, and will be regarded as the place for meta-discussions about the nature of Wikipedia. Very limited meta-discussion of the nature of the Wikipedia should be placed on the site itself. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. The topic of Wikipedia articles should always look outward, not inward at the Wikipedia itself.
Out of curiosity, isn’t a Neutral Point of View policy technically flawed since no perspective can be neutral? I mean, the very meaning of a ‘point of view’ insinuates that there is someone viewing it, which inherently incorporates biases. Nothing seems able to be completely objective or neutral; it is just accepted via consensus, convention or presumption. After all, saying something as trivial as ‘2 + 1 = 3’ imparts an ordinal prejudice (as opposed to ‘1 + 2 = 3’).
I assume one would retort that the aim is to achieve as neutral a point of view as possible, which is fine except it seems flawed (and somewhat cruel) to make an unobtainable ideal into an adamant and invulnerable policy. I guess at this point someone would tactfully point out that I’m just a raving lunatic, which seems about right. Don’t pay me too much heed, just trying to stir things up philosophically and metaphysically :P --Relex 08:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.165.244.24 ( talk • contribs) ( [3])
Here's a proposed new section to the NPOV page, to insert probably just after the "Reasoning behind NPOV" section. In a way, it may avoid some of the heat in the objections about objectivism.
Please give comments: should/may I add this to the main NPOV page? Steved2 20:49, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
Alternative reasoning supporting NPOV
Much of the time people worry about how to find good information: what is true, how much to trust it. Most of the discussion about NPOV presupposes that readers are focussed on this. However another way of looking at what we learn, and particularly at what we want to find out when we consult an encyclopaedia, is: what do other people mean and think when they use a given term? For this, it doesn't matter what is true. In fact even from an early age we pick up this "meta" or "status" information about knowledge: in music we learn that there are many different styles, and no consensus about which are good and which are bad, whereas in arithmetic everyone agrees about what is true and there's no point in bothering about alternative opinions in that area (unless you are a research mathematician). Adhering to the NPOV policy ensures readers get this status information that in fact nearly everyone wants and needs.
If you are a radical relativist, and think there is no such thing as objective viewpoints or universal truths, you want to know what these alternatives are, what other people think. If (at the other philosophical extreme) you are a fundamentalist (say a fundamentalist atheist, who believes all religions other than atheism should be banned as dangerous), and you think there is only one truth and conflicting views are both wrong and dangerous, you almost certainly need to know what the other views are in order to combat them and in order to direct your efforts to change others' minds. Thus whatever your view of truth in general, and your view of a given topic in particular, you usually want to know about the main alternative views and the degree of both human and evidential support for them: this is an underemphasised but pervasive aspect of knowledge, and is particularly what you want in getting a first orientation to a topic (which is the chief function of an encyclopaedia). This aspect of orientation is also important for preparing you for following up literature in the area (is it all likely to be in agreement, if lacking in self-criticism; or do you need to explore several literatures to understand the different viewpoints?).
This is true both for grand issues such as the meaning of life, for important practical policy issues such as what are the best national policies for reducing the incidence of AIDS, and also for largely mundane things such as which side of the road the traffic drives on: an article that either only mentioned one side, or spent passion arguing whether left or right was better wouldn't be nearly so useful as one warning that there is no global consensus (the ratio of countries adopting right:left is about 2:1), but that you can expect total consensus within a country and so only need to worry when crossing frontiers.
Yet another kind of reasoning behind adopting an NPOV policy comes from educational theory. Most educational theories today involve, one way or another, the basic insights of "constructivism": that teaching is not just telling, that learning is not just listening. When we think of basic information e.g. what is your email address?, what is the German word for "invoice"?, perhaps telling is the right view; but the more the content is conceptually complex, the more we have to recognise that learning entails construction hidden in the mind of the learner as they link in new structures to what they personally have already in their minds, and the most a teacher can do is to provide some materials for this. The NPOV policy is about providing those materials, and is comparable to teaching by facilitation, while POV approaches are similar to trying to teach by mere telling.
For wikipedia to be used, it needs to give value to readers, and an NPOV policy enriches the content. However we should recognise that for wikipedia to grow, it has to be enjoyable for authors. There is a deep pleasure that almost all of us feel in having our say, in telling it to the best of our ability, giving our best summary synthesis: perhaps an innate human desire to teach, to share knowledge, which underpins the existence of culture in all human societies. We have to recognise, however painfully, that this pleasure is not always and automatically aligned with the greatest value for readers. Perhaps we can redirect our "telling" impulses from telling a conclusion to contributing the main materials from which we built our own synthesis. It is this natural tension between our human POV tendencies as story tellers, and the superior nourishing qualities of NPOV for readers, that gives rise to this debate and to the need for a conscious and explicit NPOV policy.
In summary: information about the status of beliefs in a given area is useful to most readers independently of views about the nature of truth, the nature of the subject matter, and even of ideas about fairness, truth, justice, etc. Equally, readers usually have an interest in knowing about the views of others independently of any choice they themselves may make of which view to favour, and what degree of certainty to accord it. Hence the "NPOV" approach to articles is useful to readers whether or not someone has the truth about a topic, and whether or not there really is such a thing as a neutral viewpoint.
Steved2 20:49, 29 December 2006 (UTC)