Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
NPOV is an editorial skill, one of the more difficult editorial skills to learn. Trying to reduce it to a formula will not work, because there is no perfect scenario like you outline. Sources will always need evaluating, that is the role of editors.
"In accordance with Wikipedia's No original research policy, we do not add our own opinion or in any other way attempt to investigate or evaluate whether they are right or wrong." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RS#Check_multiple_independent_sources]
1st, not all editors are capable of evaluating. Ideally, they would be. The point of verifiability and WP:RS is to take that part out of the editors' hands and put it into the hands of those that meet the requirements set forth. In reality, those interested in an article have a wide degree of evaluation skills and an even wider degree of interest in actually using them, and articles should not be expected to sit around with inaccurate, unsourced information for a year while these other editors get up to speed, assuming they actually are willing and able to get up to speed. For practical purposes, while all this evaluation is going on, there needs to be strict application of the rules. The discussion areas and sandboxes are there for a reason. "The burden of evidence lies with the editor who has made the edit in question...." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RS#Unattributed_material]
2nd, there is in fact such a "perfect" scenario at this very moment. I'll grant you that some of the sources deserve more weight than others, but for purposes of keeping the debate from getting lost for a year, it was simply agreed that secondary and tertiary sources that met WP:RS would all be treated the same.~~~~Pro-Lick
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