--- Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:

...

Each view will be managed by a group of people who make

their own rules as

...

to who else is allowed to add information, with NPOV being

the "mother

...

view" from which other views can be extracted (as NPOV is the most inclusive).

Mav replied: That is moving away from NPOV and creates POV editor groups; both are dangerous to the project. I don't expect you will get any traction in that direction, so I won't waste much time on this topic.

But having NPOV articles that described in detail the views of particular groups of people are fine; they just need to be correctly titled and qualified. This is just a more focused form of NPOV where less relevant material gets an appropriate amount of coverage. It is a fallacy to assume that NPOV means we can only have very general articles (not that I'm saying you ascribe to that fallacy).

I think it all depends on how much you're willing to tolerate the expression of multiple points of view:

1. Non-controversial stuff (like gravity makes rocks fall downward, Rome is in Italy, or Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa)

We all want one well-written, comprehensive article which tells the objective truth about what the world is like, and what people have done in it. These rarely have edit war, and the NPOV policy is irrelevant, because there are no competing versions of reality on these topics.

2. Mildly controversial stuff (like my religion is true, but yours isn't)

Almost all of us choose to "agree to disagree". We regard religion as a realm of personal opinion, and even the most ardent believers are tame enough to soft-pedal it for Wikipedia. Edit wars are rare, but the few that crop up are blatantly obvious (like [[Prem Rawat]]).

For most of these mild controversies, it's possible to create a consensus version that everyone can agree states all points of disagreement fairly.

3. Highly controversial stuff (people go to jail or to war over these issues)

No matter how many of us agree to treat these topics "neutrally", the POV-pushers become unmanageable. Article is in constant turmoil, and even contributors who are widely held to be NPOV-champs find themselves sucked into the endless squabbling.

Summary:

If there is only one point of view of a topic, it's easy to write. Just find out the facts and describe them. If there are two POVs which don't arouse rancor, we can create a consensus article which describes them and their differences.

But if there are severely antagonistic POVs, there's no way to reach consensus, because the POV-pushers refuse to tolerate any mention of opposing POV but one which condemns it.

So it really depends on how much we can tolerate divergent points of view.

Ed Poor