[Foundation-l] NPOV as common value?

[Milos Rancic]

On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 8:06 AM, Michael Snow <wikipedia at verizon.net> wrote:
> Scientific? Is there something scientific about neutral point of view as
> a framework for Wikipedia, even? It has some similarities to the
> scientific method, I suppose, but I'm not sure that's what we imagine
> ourselves to be doing. Science is part of the knowledge we are
> compiling, certainly. But neutral point of view is not a kind of
> knowledge itself. Rather, it is an approach to knowledge, one that has
> served us well and, as far as I can tell, runs through the culture of
> all our projects.

There are many approaches to knowledge and one of them is scientific.
Encyclopedic approach is a derivative of the scientific approach. NPOV
is one (good) encyclopedic approach.

But, out of Wikipedia, we have other projects, which are not
encyclopedias. Implementing encyclopedic approach to, let's say,
dictionary, may fit up to some extent. Implementing encyclopedic
approach to writing books is just wrong. But, implementing it on
fields of knowledge which should deal with approaches to knowledge is
totalitarian.

If our approach is not scientific, then it the approach is ideological
(including religious). I hope that you don't think that NPOV has some
fundamental differences from other encyclopedic approaches which are
based on lexicographical methods.