On 2/19/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia(a)philwelch.net> wrote:
This depends--context is everything. For instance,
I'm libertarian,
but I've edited [[Libertarianism]] because I like to pretend I know
something about the subject. In the interest of full disclosure I
might mention that I am libertarian, which might unknowingly color my
contributions. If I edited a lot about politics (I don't), I might
want to outright state, "Here are my biases, if they get in my way
let me know and help me improve."
Not surprisingly, I see a big difference between *admitting* a bias,
and proudly *proclaiming* a bias. Someone who recognises that their
bias is a problem is more likely to step back when told their edit is
not NPOV. Someone proud of their bias is more likely to accuse that
person of themselves having a bias.
If someone's pushing a POV, you can tell from
editing patterns alone.
On the other hand, if someone is making valuable, good-faith, albeit
biased contributions, it's a lot easier to assume good faith when
they say straight out "here's my bias, if it shows in my
contributions too much feel free to correct."
Yep. Do you think POV userboxes express that humility?
This might surprise you, Steve, but people with a
strong interest in
something generally have an opinion about it too, and vice versa.
People usually edit articles about their own interests, after all.
Yes...I don't have any intelligent response to make to this comment at
the moment. But I'll get back to you. :)
Abortion in particular is the biggest issue where
people's opinions
tend to create blind spots. Pro-lifers tend to fail to understand and
appreciate abortion-choice arguments while abortion-choicers tend to
fail to understand and appreciate pro-life arguments, and no one
seems willing to acknowledge that the other side holds their opinions
in good faith. It's these blind spots which make it utterly crucial
for us as editors to be open with one another about our biases so we
can correct one another's mistakes.
What if the userbox was "People who believe in abortion are scum"? How
would you treat their edits then? Is there a liimt to how biased a
person can be and still make useful edits?
For the same
reason that we don't allow strong POV usernames
(AntiAbortionCrusader etc), shouldn't we discourage stating of POVs on
userpages?
Not if we want to get an encyclopedia written according to the
neutral point of view.
Then shouldn't we allow strongly POV usernames?
Steve