The definitions of neutrality given by Philip Sandifer, Ian Woolard, David Gerard, and Marc Riddell are categorized under definition 1 of neutrality: http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?DefinitionsOfNeutrality, which Wikipedia should be based on. That is, expressing all points of view and allowing you to add your own. Unfortunately, the neutrality described by Wily D and Steve Summit is prevalent in Wikipedia, and is categorized under definition 2. That neutrality only exists in the minds of some people with the point of view that such a thing exists as no point of view.
WJhonson@aol.com says:
In a message dated 4/13/2008 10:00:04 A.M. Pacific >Daylight Time, joeyyuan@cox.net writes:
Wikipedia has a big flaw: neutrality. The core principle of >writing from a "neutral" point of view is contradictory: it has a point of >view in itself, and the point of view is supposedly against points of >view.
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If you hate bigots are you a bigot? Or are you a meta->bigot? "You're a hater, because you hate haters!"
Essentially the same logic applies to your above >statement. "Neutral point-of-view" is not a point-of-view, it is the >absence of any point-of-view.
It is only your point of view that it exists. It is my point of view that it does not.
This model breaks down, of course, when there's really only a single mainstream "POV" on the subject. I can say "Toronto is a city of ~2.5 million people located on the north shore of Lake Ontario" and if we're serious about writing an encyclopaedia, that's fine. I don't need to say qualify whose opinion it is that its a city, whose opinion it is that it's on the north shore of Lake Ontario, and although I should reference the 2006 census for the population, nobody's going to complain that I don't explicitly refer to it at their opinion, and maybe drum up a half dozen similar numbers to represent other opinions (or maybe they will - World Factbook numbers are often written over Canada's pop which is generally taken from StatsCan routinely).
Even if I go ahead and say "Joe Somebody is of the opinion that the Earth is a planet", I'm still stating that as unequivical, neutral fact. I can continue to define this recursively "The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that Joe Somebody is of the opinion that the Earth is a planet" - of course, here I'm stuck - I'm the one reporting that the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported this, and it's grade A original research.
Look, I love being pedantic. But at a certain point we have to abandon that and be pragmatic. There are stacks and stacks of things where a single position is the mainstream position, or even the only verifiable position (for example, I can probably only dig up a single verifiable value for the orbital inclination of 9965 GNU). This is probably also why Phil and I speak a little differently - I do work mostly on things where there's no real disagreement about the facts (asteroids, by and large, for instance).
Ultimately, the way we "tend" to look at it is something like "How pedantic do we have to be about where information comes from before nobody can raise any plausible objections?" And while we're sometimes stuck on issues where some political group or another promotes some position which is generally known to be complete bullshit by everybody who knows what they're talking about, we cling to WP:UNDUE and hold on for dear life - NPOV can be a challenging ride when combined with trying to write a quality encyclopaedia in these cases.
In the end, what is "Neutral Point of View"? It means writing it so that nobody seriously/plausibly disputes it. How you figure out what's serious/plausible? I have no idea, but RS comes in handy.
Cheers WilyD
On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 10:05 PM, Jonas Rand joeyyuan@cox.net wrote:
The definitions of neutrality given by Philip Sandifer, Ian Woolard, David Gerard, and Marc Riddell are categorized under definition 1 of neutrality: http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?DefinitionsOfNeutrality, which Wikipedia should be based on. That is, expressing all points of view and allowing you to add your own. Unfortunately, the neutrality described by Wily D and Steve Summit is prevalent in Wikipedia, and is categorized under definition 2. That neutrality only exists in the minds of some people with the point of view that such a thing exists as no point of view.
WJhonson@aol.com says:
In a message dated 4/13/2008 10:00:04 A.M. Pacific >Daylight Time, joeyyuan@cox.net writes:
Wikipedia has a big flaw: neutrality. The core principle of >writing from a
"neutral" point of view is contradictory: it has a point of >view in itself, and the point of view is supposedly against points of >view.
If you hate bigots are you a bigot? Or are you a meta->bigot? "You're a hater, because you hate haters!"
Essentially the same logic applies to your above >statement.
"Neutral point-of-view" is not a point-of-view, it is the >absence of any point-of-view.
It is only your point of view that it exists. It is my point of view that it does not.
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On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 10:08:20AM -0400, Wily D wrote:
In the end, what is "Neutral Point of View"? It means writing it so that nobody seriously/plausibly disputes it.
This is my position as well. My point (and I think Phil has made it before me) is that when someone does dispute something, they don't dispute that it is verifiable, they dispute that it is accurate.
One piece of evidence is the {{disputed}} tag, which states:
"The factual accuracy of this article is disputed."
Another piece of evidence is that each of the statements:
"Jesus was resurrected." "Jesus was not resurrected."
_is_ verifiable in numerous reliable sources, but we wouldn't include either sentence as it stands (see a previous message of mine today).
How you figure out what's serious/plausible? I have no idea, but RS comes in handy.
I would argue we do this by consensus, using the talk page to work it out.
- Carl