On Sat, 17 May 2003, Ray Saintonge wrote: Well, ask anyone, & you'll most likely be told, ``I have a perfectly NPOV. It's the rest of you who are biassed & don't know all of the important facts." ;-) Geoff

On Sat, 2003-05-17 at 19:43, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote: He did use it as a noun. The reason it looked weird is because most of the people who use "NPOV" in their writing use it as argot for an ill-defined and amorphous collection of ideas, intentions, and results.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ANPOV I think there's some confusion popping up about NPOV, evidenced in part by Cunc's suggestion that NPOV is a Platonic ideal. I think I know what he means, and I might agree with him in a way, but I think other people may be misunderstanding what he's saying. (Or, perhaps I just disagree with Cunc.) Geoff Burling wrote: If someone says that, then they are confusing NPOV with "objective" or "unbiases" or "true" or "the whole truth and nothing but the truth" or something like that. But NPOV is a _social_ concept, as opposed to an _epistemological_ concept. What I mean is that NPOV is defend by the agreement of supporters and opponents of any particular thing. If someone says that I'm not objective about, say, the crimes of the Soviet Union, then it's valid for me to respond: "Yes, I am. It is my opponent who is biased, who is trying to whitewash." In the wikipedia context, arguments about objectivity or truth would be endless. But if someone says that a particular statement of mine is not NPOV, that's a different matter. Lots of perfectly true and objective statements are not NPOV, because they would be disputed by people who are reasonable but mistaken. As I wrote in the original statement of my idea of NPOV, "Of course, 100% agreement is not possible; there are ideologues in the world who will not concede to any presentation other than a forceful statement of their own point of view. We can only seek a type of writing that is agreeable to essentially rational people who may differ on particular points." What's really true or false enters into NPOV only indirectly. --Jimbo

Fred Bauder wrote: I should make clear here, for my own personal philosophical reasons, that I'm not at all a fan of any theory which defines truth or knowledge as somehow "socially constructed". I'm a believer in the correspondence theory of truth, the validity of the senses, the efficacy of reason, the methods of objectivity. What's true is true, and humans are capable of finding and knowing the truth. That doesn't mean, though, that they can all agree on what is True, nor does it mean that a social process for collaborative writing can't justifiably rely on a socially-driven standard. --Jimbo

On Thu, 2003-05-22 at 12:56, Jimmy Wales wrote: Don't blame me! The problem is that what is defined on [[Wikipedia:NPOV]] != "neutral point of view". That is, the concept denoted by the four letters NPOV, as defined within the Wikipedia context, is not congruous to the concept denoted by the phrase "neutral point of view". This is a basic problem. By way of analogy: say I defined something called "WikiPeace" as "the safety of logged-in Wikipedia users from denigrating comments or improper edits from anonymous users." There is certainly some concordance between this concept and the standard concept of "peace on Wikipedia", as evident from their interchangeability in some contexts: "That's the fourth time 168.42.100.1 has vandalised my user page. So much for having some WikiPeace/peace on Wikipedia." But they are not congruous: "The only way to guarantee WikiPeace is to ban anonymous users." is true, but "The only way to achieve peace on Wikipedia is to ban anonymous users." is not. Wikipedia:NPOV has a similar problem. It simply does not mean the same thing as "neutral point of view". For example, take the following paragraph: If one tries to replace "NPOV" with "neutral point of view" they get gibberish. So lets look at non-gibberish formulations: Possible formulation 1) "Lots of perfectly true and objective statements are not *neutral*, because they would be disputed by people who are reasonable but mistaken" That doesn't really make sense. Possible formulation 2) "Lots of perfectly true and objective statements are not *written from a neutral point of view*, because they would be disputed by people who are reasonable but mistaken" That also doesn't make sense. Possible formulation 3) "Lots of perfectly true and objective statements are not *written with the necessary context to explain how people currently perceive the topic*, because they would be disputed by people who are reasonable but mistaken" Ah, now we're getting somewhere. Note that formulations 1) and 2) actually have something to do with "neutral point of view", but 3) does not. And that's the problem. Solution: figure out what concise concept is expressed by "NPOV" in the above statements. I could give you my prediction as to what would be the positive result of such an exercise, but I'll wait to see if the above is at all convincing to the interested parties.

--- Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)bomis.com> wrote: Before I joined Wikipedia, I'd always thought 'point of view' meant who was the narrator in a story, like first person, third person omnicient, etc. Maybe we should invent a word to replace the clumsy acronym "NPOV", since it is already so distanced from its original meaning. Or we could just say "unbiased", but, then again, FOX claims to be unbiased... --LittleDan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com

I agree with the Cunctator that context is important, and perhaps worthy of more discussion. But I am not sure I completely get the current questioning about NPOV. As I understand it, our NPOV policy does not state that every "statement" must be NPOV, it states that articles must be NPOV. What that amounts to in effect is providing multiple points of view and also providing context for each point of view. I do not think that any one contributor has the obligation to write a complete and polished NPOV article; writing articles is a collaborative process. But this does not mean NPOV is a platonic ideal. There may be many kinds of chairs and people may have some sort of abstract notion of "chair" that is an ideal, but we can still point to something and say "that is a real chair" and "that is a good chair" or "that chair still needs one more leg" (if you don't mind an analogy). I do think that every contributor must contribute in a way that acknowledges or makes possible the inclusion of other points of view, and must provide some context and allow for more context to be added. As for what constitutes context, the wikipedia "news style" pretty much covers it, I think -- who what when where why. Naming who, when, and where is pretty simple (although sometimes people resist it -- it is taking ages to get some contributors on the "Supernaturalization" page to offer this kind of context); providing the why is more difficult especially since people may have different notions of why, thus, why itself becomes subject to NPOV (requiring multiple points of view with context) -- still, to me that is the fun of research; it is doable, and I believe the results are worth it. Steve At 01:53 PM 5/23/2003 -0400, you wrote: Steven L. Rubenstein Assistant Professor Department of Sociology and Anthropology Bentley Annex Ohio University Athens, Ohio 45701 --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.478 / Virus Database: 275 - Release Date: 5/6/2003