Chad Perrin wrote:
On Sun, Apr 17, 2005 at 07:44:45PM +0200, Wouter Steenbeek wrote:
It applied at least to what Steve said. He used the argument of cultural diversity (transferred on wikipedia in wikipedias in zeveral languages) to indicatethe inaccurateness of the NPOV-ideal. I wanted to oppose that.
You are right in saying objectivity and NPOV are not the same. Neutrality originates form Latin "neuter" mening neither (ne-uter "none of both"), so a Neutral Point of View simply means that there are at least two factions with both/ each a fair deal of followers and that the statements agree with neither/ none of them. So, I agree with you and I am convinced Wikipedia can achieve this.
OK, I think I understand. And, I don't think that our differences are very far apart.
Currently, the NPOV model is to try to have competing ideas under the same article title. My proposal is to have some kind of separation of conflicting points of view. In my original proposal, I suggested concurrent article titles, but it doesn't have to be that. Perhaps different points can be presented side-by-side. My thought is that in an NPOV, someone claiming to be neutral may not do the best job of presenting any side's point of view. Why not let the proponents present their case, and then make some kind of interface where the end-user can compare the different points of view? Also, this proposal does not prevent, in any way, a summary article that attempts to synthesize different branches.
It's a question of where should we put differing points of view. If I'm a proponent of the idea that space aliens run the government, I may feel jilted by someone else's summary of my position. However, the original author sees my work as crazy and extreme, so they go and 'fix' it. I 'fix' it back, and so on. What results is a wasteful revision process. Instead, let people build up their sides of the story without destroying other's work.