[Foundation-l] NPOV as common value? (was Re: Board statement regarding biographies of living people)

[Milos Rancic]

On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 3:32 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think the point is to have whatever would be the locally relevant
> version of neutrality. On Wikipedia it's NPOV. On Commons or
> Wikisource, I expect it would be neutrality of subject matter. Etc.
> The key point would be (something like) that Wikimedia projects are
> not for pushing views.

NPOV transformation to general neutrality will work in the most of the
cases. A clear example for such transformation is Wikinews. Even
called as "NPOV", Wikinews neutrality is a different kind of approach
because it is a journalistic one.

*But*, even neutrality is not always possible. Wikiversity is the case
because, for example, you are not able to teach/learn about
impressionist critics of art by applying any kind of neutrality. While
this is an extreme example, a lot of scientific fields are more or
less there.

And if you want to force any kind of neutrality there, you would get
the same kind of scientific production which existed in East European
countries during 50s and 60s: A (very good) book about ancient Greek
literature starts with 20-30 pages of Preface in which author explains
relations between ancient Greek literature and Marxism. But, there
were a lot of not so good books which had a lot of grotesque
connections between Marxism and its content not just inside of their
prefaces.

There should be a way how to protect projects' integrity, but it is
not insisting on NPOV or neutrality if it is not possible.