On 8/7/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
The press concentrate on the wiki method and editability as the most amazing thing about Wikipedia.
But I think NPOV is possibly a more important innovation.
I wholeheartedly agree.
I'm sorely lacking in snappy quotes, though. I ask your assistance: Explain NPOV in a sentence. Two sentences if you have to.
"We aim to describe, neutrally and fairly, all significant viewpoints on a subject, without giving any viewpoint weight undue to its prominence within the relevant field. Our goal is not to advocate or rebut any viewpoint, nor to present a new viewpoint, but to describe existing ones in a manner that partisans on all sides can be satisfied with."
This definition doesn't cover sources and attribution, but it is already fairly long, and it could easily be covered by using an accompanying illustration, perhaps referencing the formulation summarised from Jimbo's "NPOV and new physics" email (http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-September/006653.html), under the "undue weight" section of the NPOV page.
I can't think of the perfect example right now, but it would need to be one that has one or more majority views, a significant minority view (presented, say, by several reputable people in the relevant field), and perhaps a few extreme minority views which can be unproblematically omitted.
Some of these terms may also require clarification, such as "fair" (not describing views with a partisan tone, rather "with the tone that all positions presented are at least plausible").