From: Sheldon Rampton Monday, December 08, 2003 3:30 PM Jimbo wrote:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:
Setting aside the question of scientism's merits, isn't the talk
page
_supposed_ to be a place where POV statements are allowed?
Allowed, yes. Encouraged, no.
That's different from my understanding of how things are intended to operate. I've been operating on the understanding that articles themselves strive to attain NPOV, but that in order to achieve that goal, individual users need a place to express their differing points of view so that they can work toward a satisfactory synthesis. It would seem therefore that expression of points of view is actually _necessary_ on the talk pages. Am I understanding things properly?
I suspect Jimbo interpreted "POV statements" as "comments about other users", which would make what he said comprehensible.
This is why I will again promote the usage of readable English instead of NPOV/POV jargon. For example, instead of "POV statements", "opinions" works well and is less open to misinterpretation.
Actually, it's possible that Jimbo is hearkening back to another old-school Wikipedia principle, which is that of release from the concept of "owning" one's text in the Talk pages.
The Talk pages work best when every so often someone goes in and synthesizes the relevant issues into an anonymous (and hopefully neutral) summary.
This is nigh-impossible to do when people are possessive of their comments on the Talk page and aren't particularly interested in working toward a consensus. And by consensus I do not mean a majority or supermajority vote. I mean a single statement which everyone agrees captures the relevant issues, if imperfectly.