I know that, you know that, people participating in this thread knows that, but for all practical purposes that's a forgotten random pre-WMF edit. I am not questioning the importance of Neutral Point of View, one of our core values. While larger wikis have this value enshrined and well enforced, smaller emerging wikis sometimes struggle with the concept. If a wiki decides to ignore NPOV and decides to censor content or over value a particular perspective, we lack a resolution to confront or guide them.

There exists at least one example of this https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/ace.wikipedia_and_Proph...

As for the point of non-Wikipedia projects, I think it still applies. If an entire language edition of wiktionary, wikiversity, etc entirely advocates a certain point of view we should have problems with it. Consider if something like what happened to ace.wikipedia were to happen on a wiktionary or wikiversity project.

-- とある白い猫 (To Aru Shiroi Neko)

On Tue, Sep 17, 2013 at 3:56 AM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:

...

Hi all,

I realize Resolution:Biographies of living people[1] implies this but I fail to see any resolution that establishes neutral point of view as one of our non-negotiable values. I think there is merit in having an over-arching resolution on a Neutral Point of View policy.

I also feel Resolution:Biographies of living people suffers from the absence of such a definition of what exactly "neutral point of view" supposed to mean.

[1]:

https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Biographies_of_living_people

Neutral point of view is one of the founding principles of Wikipedia and was promulgated by its founder, Jimmy Wales, and strongly supported by its co-founder, Larry Sanger, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view&am...

The first edits to the page is dated November 10, 2001 but I think the very first edits of that page are no longer available. It's not an unwritten constitution...

Fred

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Wikivoyage uses https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Be_fair, which isn't exactly the same thing.

Thanks,

Rschen7754 rschen7754.wiki@gmail.com

On Sep 16, 2013, at 7:33 PM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:

On 16 September 2013 21:45, とある白い猫 to.aru.shiroi.neko@gmail.com wrote:

...

Hi all,

I realize Resolution:Biographies of living people[1] implies this but I fail to see any resolution that establishes neutral point of view as one of our non-negotiable values. I think there is merit in having an over-arching resolution on a Neutral Point of View policy.

I also feel Resolution:Biographies of living people suffers from the absence of such a definition of what exactly "neutral point of view" supposed to mean.

[1]:

https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Biographies_of_living_people

I am not certain that neutral point of view applies to all Wikimedia projects. Wikiversity programs may deliberately examine one aspect of a subject while ignoring others, for example. It is difficult to apply the concept of "neutrality" to images and other media, some of which is explicitly non-neutral (see the Jyllands-Posten Muhammed images). I am not sure that "neutral point of view" applies to Wiktionary at all.

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For data oriented projects such as Wikidata, Wikisource, Commons I think NPOV still applies as we shouldn't censor data just because our POV has issues with it.

Consider this in the context of

- Mohammed image controversy for Commons (how they aren't deleted) - Bible versions for Wikisource (how we don't only present the correct version) - (Although a new project) Interwiki links for Wikidata (how we don't exclude languages)

Of course not being censored is not the same thing as being neutral but if censored, neutrality is further away.

-- とある白い猫 (To Aru Shiroi Neko)

On Tue, Sep 17, 2013 at 5:57 AM, Michael Snow wikipedia@frontier.comwrote:

On 9/16/2013 7:33 PM, Risker wrote:

...

I am not certain that neutral point of view applies to all Wikimedia projects. Wikiversity programs may deliberately examine one aspect of a subject while ignoring others, for example. It is difficult to apply the concept of "neutrality" to images and other media, some of which is explicitly non-neutral (see the Jyllands-Posten Muhammed images). I am not sure that "neutral point of view" applies to Wiktionary at all.

Once the topic unit is selected (an article title in Wikipedia, a word in Wiktionary, or a destination in Wikivoyage, for example), I think a concept of neutrality within that topic is not actually that difficult. Whether we require it everywhere is a policy choice, but it is certainly possible. Maintaining the design of a Wikiversity program need not be different in kind from avoiding off-topic digressions in a Wikipedia article.

Obviously it makes sense to adapt our understanding of neutrality to the mission of each project. I believe our projects have generally tried conscientiously to maintain that spirit in a way that suits their context. But although it may superficially appear non-neutral to enforce criteria and boundaries for topic units, I think the answer to that lies in the ambition to universality of our projects. If by simply defining a topic we deviate from neutrality, the way to restore it is by covering all topics.

When dealing with source material, as with Wikimedia Commons or Wikisource, then "neutrality" may be a concept one step removed from the mission of the project. Faithful reproduction may be closer to what we are really looking for. However, neutrality is still a value worth considering in terms of the overall collection of source material, and certainly in how that material gets presented and contextualized in our other projects.

--Michael Snow

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Katie Chan, 17/09/2013 11:57:

– have a strict *neutral point of view* (NPOV) policy." -- https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Neutral_point_of_view

And if you look at the history you'll see that the "but not" part is disputed. As for me, I've spent a few years debunking the myth that NPOV doesn't apply to Wikiquote: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Neutral_point_of_view_on_Wikiquote.

Nemo