On Sat, Nov 24, 2001 at 02:56:51AM +0100, Kurt Jansson wrote: Cool! We just plug right along, writing. My opinion, and of course take it for what it's worth, is that a certain amount of argument and controversy is inevitable. At first it bothered me. I wanted to get along with everyone, even the people I thought were crackpots. Now I just write what I think is appropriate. I am very careful to try to stay npov, and in my experience 9 out of 10 others do the same. When an individual insists on being npov, I have stopped arguing. I just walk away and let them "win". My opinion is that in the long run, they will get tired and the npov view will win out. With only one or two exceptions, that has shown to be true. -- Dr. David C. Merrill http://www.lupercalia.net Linux Documentation Project david(a)lupercalia.net Collection Editor & Coordinator http://www.linuxdoc.org When people understand what Microsoft is up to, they're outraged. --Tim O'Reilly, O'Reilly & Associates

Hi Kurt, This is a perfect topic for intlwiki-l--that's why the list was set up. I think it would be a good idea to translate parts of the [[neutral point of view]] article, or to write such an article yourself based on that, auf Deutsch. There are many philosophical objections to such a policy, but as far as I can tell, they are all based on misunderstandings or pointless semantic quibbling about the policy. In any case, as a pragmatic matter, it certainly does make it easier for people of radically different viewpoints to work together. It also makes the task of writing an encyclopedia article *considerably* clearer and more focused than it would be otherwise. We haven't yet really discussed what sort of general policies we can expect non-English Wikipedias to follow. It's not even *completely* obvious to me that anybody ought to try to make sure that they follow a nonbias policy; but, of course, I do think they *should* follow such a policy, self-consciously. That is, I distinguish between policies I think the non-English Wikipedias should self-consciously adopt, and policies that I think we ought, somehow, actually to try to enforce. The latter is likely to be a subset of the former. I obviously haven't caught up with my recent mail to the point where I can comment on the suggestion that we find some sort of "editors" for the non-English Wikipedias...that would be relevant here... Larry On Sat, 24 Nov 2001, Kurt Jansson wrote: