[WikiEN-l] Re: Clutch is on a POV tirade

[Larry Sanger]

> From: The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com>
>
> On 12/9/02 7:05 AM, "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
>
> > Clutch, notice that "It's true" is not usually a defense against a
> > charge of POV.  I could write, on a page about North Korea, that it is
> > led by muderous tyrants with no right to exist, much less right to
> > nuclear weapons.  Well, that's true.  But it is still not NPOV.
> >
> The "murderous tyrants" bit is NPOV, but it would require some backing up.

No, Cunctator, Jimbo was absolutely right.  This is important, and it's
quite simple: the fact that, surely, some North Koreans and other
communists around the world would disagree with that characterization
means that it cannot simply be asserted like that without attribution and
with a fair statement of contrary views.  No amount of "backing up" would
render it **NEUTRAL**; it would merely render it well-backed-up, which is
quite a different thing from neutrality.  Cunc, "neutrality" does not mean
whatever you want it to mean.  In particular, it doesn't mean "true claims
backed up by evidence."  It's rather more complicated than that, as the
[[neutral point of view]] article makes clear.

Now, if you disagree with this, and you want to continue unsubtly plugging
for a change of our neutrality policy, you would make your position much
more credible by actually presenting an argument that we all ought to
understand "neutral" to mean whatever you think it does mean (your views
on this are none too clear to me; as best I can make out, you think it
means "supported by evidence," which is clearly a non-starter, so I'll do
you the favor of not actually attributing that view to you).

> From: Jonathan Walther <krooger at debian.org>
>
> I wasn't obstructing NPOV, but I was obstructing peoples attempts to
> make sure that the POV shared by myself and countless others was
> eliminated from the article.

See [[neutral point of view]], the section headed "A consequence: writing
for the enemy."  In your efforts to make an article balanced, it is
completely wrongheaded to tip the scales in the direction of your own
views and then expect others to correct the problem.  That entails
creating a bias situation precisely analogous to the one you reacted to in
the first place.

Others can be expected to remove small bits of bias here and there; but
they certainly cannot be expected to spend very significant amounts of
time copyediting partisan screed.

> If warnings are in order, I think they should be directed at those who
> want to silence any view other than their own.

That was plainly not what was happening, however.  Deleting a bunch of
sentences that were basically just a partisan screed, that could not
easily and straightforwardly be shaped into something fair and attributed
--and most importantly, that the author could very well have made
unbiased--is perfectly acceptable.  We've been doing it for a long time.

> From: Jason Williams <jason at jasonandali.org.uk>
> On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 05:45:02AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote: > Our
> process should not be a competitive process of posting POV claims >
> and daring others to fix them.
>
> I'm not so sure this is a good general rule. Probably if used in too
> many cases or taken to extremes then it is a bad thing, but used
> sensibly it can be a good thing in my opinion.

I tend to disagree.  I don't think we should encourage anyone in this
regard.  Give an inch, and they'll gladly take a mile.  It's just far too
convenient as an excuse: "Oh, I know there was a little bias there, but I
was trying to provoke a debate."  How conveeeeenient.

Larry
-- 
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell