Shane King wrote:
But your comparison there is hardly fair: you've picked a (potentially) hard theory to judge but an easy source to judge. There are plenty of other sources that aren't clear cut, there are plenty of theories that are clear cut.
Yes, but my example is the usual case.
If judging the credibility of a source is so easy, why are there still millions of people who think FOX News really is "fair and balanced"? ;)
And why do even more people trust Dan Rather?
Anyway, I hope that the average Wikipedian has greater media competence than the average viewer of the evening news.
It seems to me from this single mention that credibility doesn't matter. If it's not credible, we report on others saying so and leave it at that, we don't make the judgement ourselves.
And we also report *that* it is not credible, for example by saying things like "This theory is rejected by virtually all mainstream scientists."
The idea of whether those people are credible is not even mentioned and is hence a non-issue by the NPOV policy. Instead of credibility, we're asked to judge popularity instead (minority/majority views). That may not have been your intention when developing the NPOV policy, but that's how it stands now. I urge you to clarify it if it's not how it should be.
Not popularity! Popularity is seldom very helpful in clarifying credibility.
Which is still biasing towards "credibility", and hence not compatible with the NPOV as written. I quote: "The neutral point of view policy states that one should write articles without bias, representing ALL views fairly" (my emphasis on the ALL). I fail to see how shunting some views to seperate articles and not others counts as "fair".
Really? I don't really see the problem. It isn't "shunting" -- done properly it's just good writing.
--Jimbo