Yes, while some value judgements are not very encyclopedic, some (non-POV ones) make things a lot more interesting than cold hard facts. The creator of this thread was correct in noting that an Encyclopedia's task is not to share facts, but knowledge

~Ilya (User:Ilyanep)

On 10/25/05, Anthony DiPierro wikispam@inbox.org wrote:

On 10/25/05, Ilya N. ilyanep@gmail.com wrote:

...

Does NPOV or NOR allow analysis at all? Not in the slightest.

While it is meant to discourage pushing a viewpoint and putting uncited research up on Wikipedia, what would happen if someone were to analyze a point in an article?

In some cases it would seem to be pushing a point of view (even if the opposite POV is expressed) and sometimes would cause an edit war

In other cases it would be seen as original research (oh no! You can't

say

...

that without citing it!)

Maybe I'm just not understanding correctly what you mean by analyzing.

I was thinking the same thing. Wikipedia's policies don't really allow for analysis or presentation of value judgements. They don't allow "comment on literary merit". And unless I'm misunderstanding what these critics want, I agree with the policies, that we shouldn't try to do this.

There are some complaints above that we should address, but others I think we should ignore.

Anthony

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Fastfission wrote:

That's not true. They both allow for attributed POV and analysis.

"Respected scholar John Doe has said that the impact of Pepys on future literature is incalcuable, and at least 20 books per decade are published on him."

..and so forth would be perfectly in line with NPOV and NOR. What would not be appropriate are unattributed, "universalized" statements of value, but there's nothing in NPOV or NOR which says that all value statements whatsoever should be stripped out of articles.

And if the hypothetical statement above is only half of the story, it is easy enough to add a line of "Though some other scholars, such as Jane Doe, think that he is often overrated, pointing to his lack of intersubjective hyperbolity in his later work" or whatever the case may be.

We can push viewpoints, if we identify whose viewpoint it is and we give them and other relevant viewpoints their own representation in a neutral and attributed way. We just can't push *our own* viewpoints.

Can the Foundation create another project whose job it is to create viewpoints that we can then cite?

Or is this the job of Wikisource and Wikibooks?

Or aren't we allowed to cite them, per the "no self-references" rule?

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On Tue, 25 Oct 2005, Ilya N. wrote:

Does NPOV or NOR allow analysis at all? Not in the slightest.

While it is meant to discourage pushing a viewpoint and putting uncited research up on Wikipedia, what would happen if someone were to analyze a point in an article?

In some cases it would seem to be pushing a point of view (even if the opposite POV is expressed) and sometimes would cause an edit war

In other cases it would be seen as original research (oh no! You can't say that without citing it!)

There was an incident a few years back where Lir challenged the commonplace assertion that "Nightfall" was considered Isaac Asimov's best short story. Arguments flew back & forth until someone dug up a suitable quotation with a proper attribution, & ended that minor crisis. However, that event illustrated a problem with Wikipedia, in that expressing a judgement or making an analysis often leads (or has the likelihood of leading) to a revert war.

Most editors aren't interested in getting bogged down in one of those, & will write defensively & only set forth facts (e.g., "Hamlet is a drama in five acts believed by most critics to have been written by William Shakespeare"). Our articles suffer because of this.

Now the obvious solution is to do the necessary research & report what important critics have said about the work of literature; to use Hamlet as an example, I happen to have at hand _The Reader's Encyclopedia of Shakespeare_, which happens to have an article that consists of lengthy quotations about this play by Sam Johnson, Goethe, Coleridge, Turgenev, T.S. Eliot & others -- which even if this wasn't a problem would still make for a better article. (In the cases where an encyclopedia article is quoted, it because the article was signed by a recognized expert.)

However, for some authors no body of secondary literature exists. For example, Mary Gaitskill is an author worthy of an article in Wikipedia; but were I to attempt to write an analysis of her works using quotations, I'd be forced to use only book reviews many of which are written by people lacking authority. (Frankly, whatever the NYT Book Review might write about her would be about as insightful as whatever Lyndon LaRouche could have written -- & none of us would be permitted to quote him on her works.)

Another problem is that analysis of some writers is daunting to anyone who isn't an expert. For a long time [[Paul of Tarsus]] had the comment that he is considered one of the important figures of Christianity -- but failed to explain why. I did the necessary research to fill in this hole, & wrote something that was close enough to answering the question that other people could improve on what I wrote -- or argue with each other other how to improve on what I wrote. (Some of my comments were deleted for being POV -- even though having read his writings, it's obvious that Paul's influential views on sexuality was because he was a prude, not because he had any special insight from God.)

Geoff