On 4/14/08, Relata Refero refero.relata@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 9:51 PM, SlimVirgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
What we really mean by NPOV is a position that all educated holders of the dominant POVs within the English-speaking world can accept as valid and responsible. It's a wonderful achievement when an article manages to cater to those positions. But it is not neutrality.
Sarah
If anyone doubts both the exact accuracy and the necessity of this statement (especially if one replaces "educated" with "informed"), consider the battles over evolution and creationism. Genuine NPOV would mean that 40% of the articles would talk about Genesis. Genuine NPOV would be a death-knell for this project as a scholarly enterprise. But filtered through our policies on reliability we can keep that fate at bay.
More generally, viewing each of our three original foundational policies individually is a mistake, which is why the last three mega-threads have been more heat than light. Understanding NPOV by itself is absurd, it needs V; V left to itself sounds dangerous, it needs NOR. And so on.
That's right. They are so interdependent that in a very real sense they comprise three parts of one policy.
Sarah