on 12/14/02 6:40 AM, mattheww+wikipedia@chiark.greenend.org.uk at mattheww+wikipedia@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
On Wed, Dec 11, 2002, martin.harper@speechmachines.com wrote:
The historical NPOV would seem (if I read Julie right) to be to ignore these later moral judgements as fundamentally ahistorical, anachronistic, and irrelevant. My question is, is the wikipedian NPOV "wider" than the historical NPOV: should we include content that historians would judge inappropriate? If so, how can we include it so that the historical view is not damaged or confused by non-historical approaches?
I think the answer to the first question is 'yes, the later moral judgements are valuable content for wikipedia'.
The second question is harder, but the rough approach should be the usual one, of attributing the later points of view to appropriate groups (even if the group is really almost all modern people).
The difficult cases will be ones where the presentation and emphasis when describing the historical facts is coloured by modern judgements. But this problem is basically the same as making other articles NPOV, particularly ones where most current editors share the same POV. Where people see problems, they can work to fix them.
-M-
I think it might be useful to divide such an article into several parts, one part a sophisticated survey of the subject (all with appropriate references, not just "Whoa! I teach medieval history") done to modern professional standards which attempts (so far as one is able) to reflect the spririt of the times (medieval times that is). Unless one is or chooses to become an expert, one might avoid trying to edit that section.
The other part of the article would be based more on general knowledge and incude such concepts as the dark ages and, of course, the viewpoint (and it is held) that it was the best of worlds. Our hypothetical professional (not so hypothetical in this case) should resign herself to inclusion of viewpoints from popular culture. That viewpoint necessarily involve a look back and judgements on how far we have come from those beknighted days, or how far we have fallen from the golden age of chivalry and Chistian community.
What is going on here is two levels of reality. One body of knowledge is the sophisticated best effort of professional historians; the other common sense, or what we all know.
Fred