[Foundation-l] PMS propaganda?

[Milos Rancic]

On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 4:41 PM, Dan Rosenthal <swatjester at gmail.com> wrote:
> That's not quite accurate. If the stated purpose of Wikipedia is to
> "bring free knowledge" than saying so is precisely NPOV, because it's
> a mere restatement of what the foundation claims its purpose is. It's
> not a point of view: It's an objective metric based on how the
> organization in question defines itself.
>
> You're confusing the properties of the position with the statement of
> the position. Yes, free knowledge is a point of view. Saying that the
> Wikimedia Foundation's mission statement is to bring free knowledge is
> not a point of view: it's an objective restatement of a fact (the fact
> being that the WMF identifies this as their mission statement).

I think you didn't understand my intention. Saying so in the article
about Wikipedia on Wikipedia is according to NPOV if it is a
"Wikipedia statement". However, I was talking about the page which
defines Wikipedia at Wikipedia (let's say Wikipedia:About). Defining
yourself is not NPOV, it is very POV; actually, strictly speaking,
even the word "encyclopedia" defines that we belong to a particular
(positivist) ideology. (No matter how that ideology is common these
days.) And unlike a definition at the article Wikipedia (which should
be NPOV article), definition at the article Wikipedia:About is doing a
self-definition.