JAY JG wrote:
But of course it is there to do just that (among other things). For example, Wikipedia clearly insists (via the NPOV policy) that you may not argue only one position on a subject, but must bring countering views citing various holders of positions, inevitably introducing an adversarial element to articles. And the original research policy insists that one cannot argue one's own views, but rather must present other's views, and that tempered with the caveat that extreme minority views need not be presented at all.
It may be worth mentioning that recent ArbCom rulings have done their best to bludgeon home this aspect of NPOV: that all significant views on a disputed topic need mention.
("Significant" then may become a bone of contention^Weditorial discussion. Creationism, for example, is of tremendous social and political importance, but is very unlikely to achieve significant play in almost any scientific article about biology. Osama bin Laden has strong views on America and on Jews, but his views are unlikely to play a great, if any, role in [[Jew]] or [[United States]]; they will only end up in more directly relevant articles because most editors would find it *intolerably stupid* otherwise. The view that Australia is in fact a republic is so insignificant a view by numbers that it is only advocated as [[original research]]. Etc. Etc.)
- d.