On 25/08/06, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
Since I'm already writing long and unmanageable opinions about NPOV, I thought I'd append one more: the more I think through NPOV, the more I realize what a truly radical position it is.
Yes. This is what I mean when I say that it is Wikipedia's real secret sauce, even more so than being something (almost) anyone can edit.
It is often derided by people who claim that it is not possible or that it is not desirable, but it really does act as a powerful conceptual tool once you start to take it seriously as a goal. It is not the same thing as objectivity at all -- obviously one does not want to jettison an attempt for objectivity, but objectivity does not imply neutrality (I can be objectively non-neutral in my position on a given topic). In academic scholarship it is very rare that anybody tries to be, or wants to be, neutral: neutrality is seen as "not taking a side" in an important debate, and only the most disingenous or aloof intellectuals would think not taking a side on issues is a good, much less ethical, approach.
Which is what Stirling Newberry calls "POV experts" - that academics frequently try to be bigger POV experts than each other.
And yet I find myself trying hard to write for positions that I think are objectively wrong, or to point out the criticisms (without denigrating them) of things that I think are objectively correct. It is a strange exercise, one very contrary to most other forums for writing about and discussing issues. Beyond being a pragmatic tool for making a collective encyclopedia work -- which it does as well -- it is a very strong epistemological stance. I hadn't really quite realized that when I first started here, and I have only really begun to comprehend the depth of the stance in the last half-year or so. It does not surprise me that academics in particular have difficulty with it (and I say this as an academic).
- d.