Jimmy-
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> Do you mean to say that people are not allowed to
> write textbooks that advocate for a certain religion?
Not under the Wikimedia Foundation auspices, no. NPOV
is an absolute
non-negotiable requirement of everything that we do.
I know there was some discussion about NPOV and
textbooks awhile back,
but I really should make clear that I think that discussion wound up
with a definitive answer: under the Wikimedia Foundation, everything
we do is required to be NPOV.
I believe the consensus was that textbooks should be written from the
"POV" of experts on the subject in question. So, for example, a textbook
about evolution would not include a Kansas-style disclaimer because the
creationism POV is largely irrelevant among experts on evolution. It might
include a short segment about the controversy, but would probably tend to
end with something like "There is virtually universal agreement among
biologists that .."
Wikibooks could, in my opinion, be somewhat more expert-centric than pure
NPOV would allow. In case of controversies, we should try to decide
whether this is a legitimate controversy among experts on the subject, or
whether we are dealing with "crackpot" theories which have no place in
serious textbooks. On Wikipedia, we would always try to include the
opposite POV, if only as a link to a separate page. On Wikibooks, we may
sometimes have to decide to remove it entirely.
Regards,
Erik