<<In a message dated 1/6/2009 4:31:29 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, cbeckhorn@fastmail.fm writes:
Doesn't the NPOV policy, specifically the "due weight" part, demand that our articles include exactly those things that people educated in the field all know about, and avoid including things that people educated in the field feel are not important?>>
These two clauses have an excluded middle or rather two such. I know and it's important. I know and it's not important. I didn't know about it, but I see now that it's important. I didn't know about it, but I see that it's not important.
Due weight does not *demand* anything at all, but what it states is that we should give the appropriate weight to sub-sections of articles *based* on how the community who knows about them would themselves weight them.
In an articles on "Number Theory" the expansion of Pi wouldn't even be cited much less discussed. However in an article on Pi it might merit at least a citation, maybe one sentence in a ten paragraph article.
In an article on "Normal Numbers" it might merit several sentences.
We have no requirement to base our perspective on the most edge-cutting research, and I would suggest that encyclopedias of the print variety don't either. There is a time to weight to see if the *community* who cares... decides to care.
In the case of the missing neutrino problem it decided it cared. In the case of whether sun spot cycles effect the price of rice it decided it didn't.
It's not our place to decide *for* the community, what sholuld come to the top of the pond. It's our place to just skim the top of the pond and write up what we find.
Will Johnson
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