[Foundation-l] NPOV as common value?

[Milos Rancic]

On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 6:52 AM, Michael Snow <wikipedia at verizon.net> wrote:
> Brianna Laugher wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I think the Board's statement is quite commendable if unremarkable
>> (which is I guess part of the reason for the silence - nothing new,
>> which is as it should be!). Only one comment actually surprised me.
>>
>> 2009/4/21 Michael Snow <wikipedia at verizon.net>:
>>
>>> The Wikimedia Foundation takes this opportunity to reiterate some core
>>> principles related to our shared vision, mission, and values. One of
>>> these values which is common to all our projects is a commitment to
>>> maintaining a neutral point of view.
>>>
>> I find it a bit strange to talk of Wikimedia Commons as having a NPOV
>> policy. Like Wikiquote, our "unit" of interest is something that
>> typically has a strong authorial voice rather than being a synthesis
>> of multiple contributions. (Unlike WQ, it does in some circumstances
>> make sense to edit a file, unlike a quote -- but usually if the edit
>> radically changes the meaning, it should become a separate, derived
>> work.)
>>
>> We are also, like WQ, bound by the creations of others, especially in
>> relation to past events.
> Wikipedia is also bound by the creations of others (or the informations
> of others, if you will). This is expressed in principles like "no
> original research" and the expectation that assertions be backed by
> reliable sources. The commitment to a neutral point of view is not
> directed at what others have said, whether in text, visual presentation,
> or other media. Rather, it focuses on what we do with that material, how
> it is assembled, put in context, and presented to the audience.
>
> For example, in Wikiquote, I think an expression of neutral point of
> view would be to focus on the question of what is actually "quotable".
> It should not be up to me to choose some passage Gandhi wrote, say in
> his autobiography, as a quote simply because it strikes my fancy. That's
> not a neutral approach to selecting what goes into Wikiquote. Properly,
> the passage should have been quoted already somewhere, and I can point
> to that to demonstrate its quotability. This extends also to tracking
> misquoted and misattributed material; we can cite usage of the purported
> quotation and present it alongside the real version where that is traceable.
>> I also find there is some tension between the views of 1) "Wikimedia
>> Commons as a service project" and 2) "Wikimedia Commons as a project
>> in its own right".
>>
> I would suggest that because of our educational mission, especially with
> the focus on freely licensed material, all of our projects should be
> seen as "service projects" in some sense. They exist not for their own
> sake, but for the value others can draw from them. That may be by simply
> "consuming" the material, but it may also involve recasting or modifying
> it, or integrating it with other material. This is also why we are
> looking at the license situation, and every project should allow for
> these relationships, not just within Wikimedia but in the free culture
> movement generally. By its nature the service project aspect is
> particularly obvious for Wikimedia Commons, but this doesn't mean it
> cannot be a project in its own right as well.
>> It *may* make sense to talk to NPOV for Wikimedia Commons, but I don't
>> think it is necessarily obvious, or that it should be assumed everyone
>> has a shared understanding of what that means.
>>
>> Of interest: <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Project_scope/Neutral_point_of_view>
>>
> As a relative youngster among our projects, I expect Wikimedia Commons
> will continue to work out its identity. This policy page is a decent
> basic start toward figuring out what neutral point of view means in the
> Commons setting.
>
> In the context of biographies of living people, I did think it was
> important to tie the issue back to our shared values, especially
> maintaining a neutral point of view. And if that has sometimes been more
> in the background, I felt this was a good opportunity to have it stated
> clearly. It still remains for all of us to sort out its meaning and
> application.

Some of the NPOV-related problems may be solved by talking about
context. If we say that a single piece of art (or propaganda or
whatever) is not a context, then problems related to Commons are
solved.

In relation to your Wikiquote example, I think that you were talking
there about notability, not about NPOV.

But, is it useful to move sense of NPOV at more and more higher
levels? While it is hard, but (I think) possible to make NPOV
educational books up to the secondary school level, it is not possible
to make educational courses according to NPOV. Ideological demands to
educational courses are totalitarian. It would be possible to make
basic math course strictly according to NPOV, but not even about some
fundamentals of natural sciences (I am not talking about
non-scientific disagreements with scientific facts, but about
disagreements between scientists; and, unlike an encyclopedic article,
it may be impossible to make a course by mixing approaches).

NPOV is a very good starting point for writing an encyclopedia. But,
it is not any kind of general knowledge which may be implemented
everywhere. And, if it is treated as such, then it is an ideology.

If the Board is not able to make a general scientific framework for
projects other than Wikipedia, I think that it should hire some
scientists to do so.