said should go been A brief summary of what I'd like to see as the policy: 1. The ultimate goal of Wikipedia is to be neutral and authoritative. 2. All claims made in Wikipedia should be confirmable by outside sources. 3. For contentious issues, provide the reasoning behind the antagonists' contentions. 4. Recognize that neutrality is impossible to achieve without omniscience. 5. Eliminate ambiguity. (Make as strong claims as possible.) 6. Celebrate terseness. (If another entry says the same thing, link to it. Don't say it twice if possible.) So: When given the choice of two equivalently confirmable statements, one which is "X says A is true and Y says B is true" and the other which is "X and Y agree C is true; they contend on D", choose the latter. Then rewrite that as "C is true; X and Y contend on D and this is why". Since it's just about impossible to search the mailing list archives, I can't easily point to comments I've made there, which critique the "X said A and Y said B" way of solving any problem with bias. But the following links contain some older critiques of the policy, mainly of the LMS version. From http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk%3ANeutral_point_of_view I love the implicit meta-debate going on here, which is whether or not it's possible to avoid bias. That it isn't is the cornerstone of postmodern philosophy. LMS's position is based on the presumption that it's possible to be unbiased. However, I understand what he means. He's really talking about the avoidance of certain forms of bias. The "neutral point of view" is something of a better approach. That said, I too encourage "unbiased" articles. But one thing that does is encourage overuse of words like "usually" and "most", etc. etc. If entries have such vague qualifiers, then they should either be rewritten in a way to eliminate the ambiguity, or the ambiguity shouldn't have been added in the first place. Wiki, like other encyclopedias, does have an inherent bias: that of authoritativity. Which I think is good. People should be unable to argue with the content of entries, but because they're authoritative, not because they're wishy-washy. That said, I largely agree with LMS, though I think biased material has a place in Wikipedia, sometimes under Wikipedia commentary. For an example of another approach, see the OS Advocacy page. http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPOV_is_an_ideal http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_commentary/Responses_to_How_to_B uild_Wikipedia%2C_Understand_Bias