Michael Snow wrote:

Jeff Raymond wrote:

...

The problem is BLP being used as a bludgeon to get rid of well-sourced, verifiable, NPOV information because the neutral point of view is negative.

How can the neutral point of view be negative? That's a contradiction in terms. An article may contain negative information, but the presentation must still be neutral. The notion that if only negative information is available, this excuses making the "neutral" point of view negative, is at the root of many of these problems. It seems that very few of our contributors have the skill and judgment needed to translate highly unfavorable source material into neutral prose.

It's not a contradiction at all, no more so than a neutral point of view that is positive. An article that contains ALL negative information can still be presented neutrally. If we are writing about an infamous serial killer where no favorable information is available at all neutrality is achieved by not saying things that are unverifiable. The result will likely be that he will appear less evil than the public may want, but the overall result will remain that he is a bad person.. There is no question of "making excuses". If we only have negative information we are not "making" the neutral point of view negative.

Let's not confuse absolute and relative information. Absolute information is what is out there; it may or may not be negative. Relative information strives to find the centre of gravity of that information, and thus arrives at a neutral point of view. The neutral point of view is also the result of a collective effort that balances the various interests. Any article that has only one contributor is technically always neutral, because it is the synthesis of all opinions already expressed. When we see it as something that is not neutral we are really comparing it with facts that are not in evidence. The neutrality is rebuttable, but has not yet been rebutted. In the context of a trial it is at the point where the prosecution has presented its evidence, and the defence remains to be heard. When a second substantive opinion is presented in an article by an other editor there will most often be a significant shift in the placement of that ever theoritical neutral point of view. This does not mean that NPOV has been achieved; most likely it hasn't. Ideally that second opinion has set in motion the beginnings of a collaborative effort to synthesize NPOV.

To be sure, your lest sentence is correct, but that is a characteristic of the editors involved, and not of the material that we have been provided to work with. Prejudging whether the editors involved will have the requisite skill and judgement is itself a failure of skill and judgement. There is certasinly material which should not remain for long, but there are better criteria available for working through these problems than the impatience of some administrators.

Ec