This model breaks down, of course, when there's really only a single
mainstream "POV" on the subject. I can say "Toronto is a city of ~2.5
million people located on the north shore of Lake Ontario" and if
we're serious about writing an encyclopaedia, that's fine. I don't
need to say qualify whose opinion it is that its a city, whose opinion
it is that it's on the north shore of Lake Ontario, and although I
should reference the 2006 census for the population, nobody's going to
complain that I don't explicitly refer to it at their opinion, and
maybe drum up a half dozen similar numbers to represent other opinions
(or maybe they will - World Factbook numbers are often written over
Canada's pop which is generally taken from StatsCan routinely).
Even if I go ahead and say "Joe Somebody is of the opinion that the
Earth is a planet", I'm still stating that as unequivical, neutral
fact. I can continue to define this recursively "The Cleveland Plain
Dealer reported that Joe Somebody is of the opinion that the Earth is
a planet" - of course, here I'm stuck - I'm the one reporting that the
Cleveland Plain Dealer reported this, and it's grade A original
research.
Look, I love being pedantic. But at a certain point we have to
abandon that and be pragmatic. There are stacks and stacks of things
where a single position is the mainstream position, or even the only
verifiable position (for example, I can probably only dig up a single
verifiable value for the orbital inclination of 9965 GNU). This is
probably also why Phil and I speak a little differently - I do work
mostly on things where there's no real disagreement about the facts
(asteroids, by and large, for instance).
Ultimately, the way we "tend" to look at it is something like "How
pedantic do we have to be about where information comes from before
nobody can raise any plausible objections?" And while we're sometimes
stuck on issues where some political group or another promotes some
position which is generally known to be complete bullshit by
everybody who knows what they're talking about, we cling to WP:UNDUE
and hold on for dear life - NPOV can be a challenging ride when
combined with trying to write a quality encyclopaedia in these cases.
In the end, what is "Neutral Point of View"? It means writing it so
that nobody seriously/plausibly disputes it. How you figure out
what's serious/plausible? I have no idea, but RS comes in handy.
Cheers
WilyD
On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 10:05 PM, Jonas Rand <joeyyuan(a)cox.net> wrote:
The definitions of neutrality given by Philip
Sandifer, Ian Woolard, David
Gerard, and Marc Riddell are categorized under definition 1 of neutrality:
http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?DefinitionsOfNeutrality, which Wikipedia
should be based on. That is, expressing all points of view and allowing you
to add your own. Unfortunately, the neutrality described by Wily D and Steve
Summit is prevalent in Wikipedia, and is categorized under definition 2.
That neutrality only exists in the minds of some people with the point of
view that such a thing exists as no point of view.
WJhonson(a)aol.com says:
In a message dated 4/13/2008 10:00:04 A.M. Pacific
>Daylight Time,
joeyyuan(a)cox.net writes:
Wikipedia has a big flaw: neutrality. The core
principle of >writing from
a
"neutral" point of view is
contradictory: it has a point of >view in
itself,
and the point of view is supposedly against points of >view.
----------------------
If you hate bigots are you a bigot? Or are you a
meta->bigot?
"You're a hater, because you hate haters!"
Essentially the same logic applies to your above
>statement.
"Neutral point-of-view" is not a
point-of-view, it is the >absence of any
point-of-view.
It is only your point of view that it exists. It is my point of view that it
does not.
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