On Wed, 27 Jul 2005, Delirium wrote:
Ryan Delaney wrote:
The [[Race and intelligence]] article is a perfect example of this phenomenon. People who know nothing about the research done in this field have many times gone into that article and edited it mercilessly in the name of NPOV because the established scientific opinion presented (and extensively referenced) in the article is very contradictory to the "politically correct" opinion. In my view, Wikipedians need to have more respect for references and experts to prevent this kind of thing from happening. The usual Wiki philosophy usually works in other cases, but in such an emotional subject as [[Race and intelligence]], people tend to go way overboard, and the NPOV and "everyone's equal" policies only make them more convictional about their right to push their POV over that of the academic consensus.
In such cases, where there are mostly-irreconcilable differences of opinion held by various groups, it makes sense to simply describe the opinion of each group, properly attributed. In this case, there could be a section on academic viewpoints, and one on how the issue plays out in the political sphere. Of course, political groups who attack the academic consensus should have their POV reported as well and properly attributed.
Sometimes there might be more than two sections as well---the areas on psychiatry/psychology/mental-illness could use a revamping to better attribute and cover the range of: 1) medical consensus [e.g. what the _DSM_ says]; 2) scientific consensus of current research [often not the same as #1]; 3) philosophical consensus opinion [e.g. on the definition of "mental illness"]; and 4) public/political opinion. So long as all opinions are properly attributed to who holds them, rather than presented as "the right opinion", I don't see why these can't all co-exist.
Well put, Mark.
Often I explain NPOV to non-Wikipedians sometimes resolving to an agreement between different parties to disagree: e.g., some people think George Bush is a good president of the US, some think he is a bad one. As Mark points out here, often NPOV is best served when there are multiple POVs on a subject by explaining the argument & how these various groups came to their conclusions.
All groups involved should embrace this approach in their own best interest, & exert themselves to make sure the POVs of groups opposed to them are accurately explained for one good reason. Although I usually prefer to use the language John Milton expressed it Areopagitica, Sun Tzu might have expressed it in a way that will convince more Wikipedians, that you must know your enemy to defeat him.
Geoff