On Thu, 26 Jun 2003 07:56:05 -0700, Toby Bartels toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu gave utterance to the following:
I don't either belive in NPOV. Never did and never will. Whatever happens Wikipedia will get the POV of the masses, a conglomerat of all authors working on the project.
Like the cubic earth example, writing "the earth is spherical" wouldnt be correct because 0,001% know it is cubic. Even worse to say that the holocaust has happened because 0,1% know it has. Or saying that God's existance hasn't been proven because 10% know it has.
You are comparing apples and oranges here... The holocaust is knowable because people actually experienced if first hand. The existence of God is not provable and is based upon belief ('faith'). Anyone who "knows" rather than "believes" that God exists is probably violating the tenets of their professed religion.
Actually, 90% know that God exists. Yet our articles on God don't claim that He does. So much for the POV of the masses!
Perhaps Wikipedia needs to be "a documentation of human knowledge and beliefs" - but with the latter we make a qualified statement that a belief exists, and in most cases there is a counter-belief.