Peter Mackay wrote:
NPOV, for example, depends on different points of view, including political opinions, being given space consistent with their level of support.
Consistent with their level of support in the world, yes. Consistent with their level of support among the Wikipedia editing community, no. There is a crucial difference.
Beg pardon, but I think you've got that the wrong way around...
I don't think so. Take [[Criticism of Wikipedia]], for instance. I imagine that most regular Wikipedia editors disagree with many of those criticisms. For example, I doubt that many of us agree with Robert McHenry and Andrew Orlowski that it is improper and unsuitable for Wikipedia to call itself an encyclopaedia. However, this is an opinion
Accordingly on other articles, different points of view need to be included based on their prominence and level of support in the real world, not just on which happens to be most popular among the Wikipedia editing community.
People are free to express their political opinions so long as it is done in a civil and non-inflammatory manner.
They may be free to express them, but my point is that they aren't free to inflict them on articles.
That's precisely what I *do* mean. Articles are written by people with political views, and where I know an editor's political opinions (if they are revealed on user or talk pages), I find it extremely rare that they write something in an article that is contrary to those opinions.
A good editor will do it in a civil, factual, sourced and non-inflammatory manner, consistent with NPOV.
Yes. Which is exactly what I said above. Writing consistently with NPOV is not 'inflicting your opinion on an article'. Biasing an article towards your own opinions *is* inflicting your opinion on an article, is obviously not consistent with NPOV. I don't particularly want to end up rehashing the whole userbox debacle, but we *have* seen groups of users banding together with the specific, identified purpose of systematically applying bias to Wikipedia articles.
Jimbo's word on the matter:
The point is, we don't act *in Wikipedia* as a Democrat, a Republican, a pro-Lifer, a pro-Choicer, or whatever. Here we are Wikipedians, which means: thoughtful, loving, neutral.
With all due respect to you and Jimbo, that's not the way it happens. Thoughtful, loving, neutral, touchy-feely gets good marks, but editors don't suddenly turn into opinionless automatons. Nor do we want them to. We want Republicans to have input into articles on the Republican Party. We just don't want it to be Republican propaganda.
With all due respect to you, I think you're slightly misinterpreting what Jimbo (and I) actually mean. I don't think either of us are suggesting that editors should be 'opinionless automatons', just that they shouldn't let their opinions influence the way they write articles.
NPOV doesn't mean we present a totally neutral point of view. It means we present diverse views consistent with the level of support, where the views are inconsistent.
Once again, this means consistent with the level of support in the world at large, not just consistent with the level of support among the subset of us who happen to be editing Wikipedia.
Cheers,
N.