On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 4:41 PM, Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com wrote:
That's not quite accurate. If the stated purpose of Wikipedia is to "bring free knowledge" than saying so is precisely NPOV, because it's a mere restatement of what the foundation claims its purpose is. It's not a point of view: It's an objective metric based on how the organization in question defines itself.
You're confusing the properties of the position with the statement of the position. Yes, free knowledge is a point of view. Saying that the Wikimedia Foundation's mission statement is to bring free knowledge is not a point of view: it's an objective restatement of a fact (the fact being that the WMF identifies this as their mission statement).
I think you didn't understand my intention. Saying so in the article about Wikipedia on Wikipedia is according to NPOV if it is a "Wikipedia statement". However, I was talking about the page which defines Wikipedia at Wikipedia (let's say Wikipedia:About). Defining yourself is not NPOV, it is very POV; actually, strictly speaking, even the word "encyclopedia" defines that we belong to a particular (positivist) ideology. (No matter how that ideology is common these days.) And unlike a definition at the article Wikipedia (which should be NPOV article), definition at the article Wikipedia:About is doing a self-definition.