Delirium wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
>That's why interpreting NPOV as the middle
ground is a big mistake.
>On articles such as these, it may be that we can /never/
>simply state anything as fact, if even basic facts are disputed.
>If everything in an article says ?X said Y about Z.?,
>then (assuming that it's undisputed that X did say that)
>partisans are unlikely to view the article as truly biased.
>(They may view it as unacceptable wishy-washy, but that's different.)
>OTOH, if /we/ say something about Z, then add ?But X said Y instead.?,
>then this can easily be viewed as biased against X.
In doing this though, we really can't afford to be
wishy-washy on
absolutely *everything* if we hope to still be useful at all as an
encyclopedia. For example, we shouldn't have to preface every physics
article with "is claimed by many/most physicists" to appease the fringe
people, or to preface the Holocaust discussions with "is claimed by
those who think the Holocaust happened" to appease the Holocaust
deniers, and so on.
This has been discussed since the early days of Wikipedia,
mostly in connection with creationism and pages on evolution.
I mention this so that you can find those old discussions.
But now every physics page should begin "In [[physics]],",
which sets the context in a social activity, the study called "physics".
So /if/ the people involved (called "physicists") have a mainstream view,
then that is what one would expect to see on the page -- and so one does.
Opinions of the fringe groups can be identified as such
(although not with insulting words like "fringe" ^_^),
but it's still agreed, even by them, that they're not mainstream.
In the Israeli/Palestinian debate, even the mainstream is contested.
-- Toby