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.
--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3456
University of Durham Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK WWW:
http://nick.frejol.org/