On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 8:06 AM, Michael Snow wrote:
Scientific? Is there something scientific about
neutral point of view as
a framework for Wikipedia, even? It has some similarities to the
scientific method, I suppose, but I'm not sure that's what we imagine
ourselves to be doing. Science is part of the knowledge we are
compiling, certainly. But neutral point of view is not a kind of
knowledge itself. Rather, it is an approach to knowledge, one that has
served us well and, as far as I can tell, runs through the culture of
all our projects.
There are many approaches to knowledge and one of them is scientific.
Encyclopedic approach is a derivative of the scientific approach. NPOV
is one (good) encyclopedic approach.
But, out of Wikipedia, we have other projects, which are not
encyclopedias. Implementing encyclopedic approach to, let's say,
dictionary, may fit up to some extent. Implementing encyclopedic
approach to writing books is just wrong. But, implementing it on
fields of knowledge which should deal with approaches to knowledge is
totalitarian.
If our approach is not scientific, then it the approach is ideological
(including religious). I hope that you don't think that NPOV has some
fundamental differences from other encyclopedic approaches which are
based on lexicographical methods.
The scientific approach can be just as
ideological and totalitarian as
the religious. A lexicographical approach strikes me as based on
semantics divorced from reality. The bare claim that one's approach is
scientific is often no more than a rhetorical device for supporting
one's point of view. In reality the scientific approach is a subset of
NPOV, where it is balanced with other approaches. An encyclopedic
approach has more to do with comprehensiveness than neutrality; an
ideological encyclopedia can be comprehensive within defined parameters
without being neutral.
I begin from the premise that NPOV must apply to all WMF projects
without exception. What that means to different sister projects is
quite variable. The broad applicability to Wikipedias is much clearer
and more established than in other projects. In the others it is much
less obvious, and the disputes on Wikisource relating to NPOV are a much
smaller proportion than on other projects. If NPOV is accepted as a
broad principle it is the responsibility of each project to define how
it applies to that project.
Ec