[Foundation-l] NPOV as common value?

[Samuel Klein]

On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 1:25 AM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.

Yes.  Context is relevant to any assessment of neutrality.  An overall
systemic bias among article topics, even if each article is neutrally
written, is not itself neutral.  This extends to whole projects as
well as across/among projects.

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

Well, there is neutral balance in selection of sources from which
quotes are drawn.  You can  have a thousand quotes from napoleon, each
represented neutrally in English with notes about any disagreements in
the translation, but if every one of them is about death and horses,
it will be a biased view of the man and his sense of the world.

> But, is it useful to move sense of NPOV at more and more higher
> levels?

I think so.

> 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.

I don't agree with the first statement, and don't understand the tone
of the second.

> 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).

One wouldn't need to mix approaches, and no article includes in detail
all sides of the issue.  One would need to provide reflective
annotation about parts of the course which were dictated by
limitations in time and format, and about parts where major processes
and sequences differ among the most prominent course-creating bodies
or schols of thought.

> 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.

Neutrality has nothing to do with 'encyclopedia'.  It has something to
do with leavine one's ego and personal expertise out of the picture
when sharing knwoledge with others.  It has a LOT to do with creating
any universal resource to which uncoordinated people can contribute
what they have to teach or share, with a minimum of destructive
opposition and reversion.

> 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.

Science is not yet neutral.  The 'scientific method' we currently use
as a meterstick is a fairly casual method, often producing biased or
context-free results, which would be improved by a bit of the same
self-reflection required to describe something with NPOV.

You are right to use Mathematics as an example of a neutral science,
but it took millennia before this happened, even after it first became
a measurable and respected science and not only an element of language
and business and mysticism.

SJ