On 4/14/08, Relata Refero refero.relata@gmail.com wrote:
There is not much support for contemporary critical theory. Sorry, really cheap shot.
It is a cheap shot, but it's one that I think is important to defend against. The dominant and mainstream academic view on the nature of language and research is heavily informed by contemporary critical theory. How writing is presented on the freshman comp level is informed by contemporary critical theory. I know that the conclusions of contemporary literary theory are less than popular among the techno-libertarian crowd that makes up Wikipedia's core base, but the fact remains - if you want to pursue the goals Wikipedia is trying to pursue, you've gotta pursue them according to the prevailing rules and standards. (Or you've got to admit that you're not - if Wikipedia wants to explicitly repudiate postmodern thinking in its policies it's welcome to.)
More seriously, we are again arguing over semantics. It is generally accepted that no individual can have a neutral point of view. It is generally recognised when an individual is editing an article to skew the point of view that the article espouses. The idea of having NPOV as a core policy is that we want people's edits to be in line with making a fair attempt to not skew the article towards their own POV too much; that's all.
I actually think (and have argued both at conferences and on Wikipedia) that NPOV is more radical than that. NPOV is not just a goal, but an epistemology - it serves to replace the goal of metaphysical or ontological truth with a socially defined truth - presenting a mainstream overview. (In this regard it's much more allied with contemporary critical theory than I think most people realize) The nice thing about a socially defined truth is that it can be more readily checked, especially with a social editing system, since then the method of writing and the standard of evaluation are closely related. Hence our dependence on consensus and discussion.
-Phil