I don't know. Sometimes expanding upon a policy or making clear how it applies in certain cases can be clarifying. I find the current NPOV FAQ section to be very helpful in discussing NPOV with people new to it.
An alternative approach is to consider policy somewhat analogous to case law. Without stating that all decisions are prescriptive towards future decisions (I doubt anyone wants to pretend that Wikipedia decision-making is anywhere near as pretentious about its universality as the US court system pretends to be, though isn't), having a list of "here's one issue that was relatively important, and here's how it was satisfied to most people's satisfaction" might serve as a way of defusing future conflicts.
There's an obvious appeal to having simple policies, but in many cases that leads to a reinvention of the wheel many times over and some very bitter disputes. Somewhere on a level near "guideline" could potentially exist something like "here's how we thought about this previously, this may or may not be applicable in the future" which doesn't exist for the sheer purpose of shutting down discussion. (But maybe in the end that's what policy is about anyhow, on some level.)
FF
On 8/27/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 27/08/06, Stephen Streater sbstreater@mac.com wrote:
I agree the main NPOV article is the best place to start (though I couldn't resist the temptation to fix a couple of things anyway). Otherwise we'll need separate sections for NPOV in animations, diagrams, photographs, videos, B/W film, ...
And it'll need regular pruning per [[m:instruction creep]] - it's a very bad place to blur the distinction between the policy and the guidelines on implementing that policy. The policy is simple and hard to argue, but some people unfortunately appear to consider they can weasel past it if they add enough rubbish to the guidelines. Not that I've seen it repeatedly.
- d.
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