On Thu, 2003-05-22 at 12:56, Jimmy Wales wrote:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ANPOV
I think there's some confusion popping up about NPOV, evidenced in part by Cunc's suggestion that NPOV is a Platonic ideal. I think I know what he means, and I might agree with him in a way, but I think other people may be misunderstanding what he's saying. (Or, perhaps I just disagree with Cunc.)
Don't blame me! The problem is that what is defined on [[Wikipedia:NPOV]] != "neutral point of view". That is, the concept denoted by the four letters NPOV, as defined within the Wikipedia context, is not congruous to the concept denoted by the phrase "neutral point of view".
This is a basic problem.
By way of analogy: say I defined something called "WikiPeace" as "the safety of logged-in Wikipedia users from denigrating comments or improper edits from anonymous users." There is certainly some concordance between this concept and the standard concept of "peace on Wikipedia", as evident from their interchangeability in some contexts:
"That's the fourth time 168.42.100.1 has vandalised my user page. So much for having some WikiPeace/peace on Wikipedia."
But they are not congruous:
"The only way to guarantee WikiPeace is to ban anonymous users."
is true, but
"The only way to achieve peace on Wikipedia is to ban anonymous users."
is not.
Wikipedia:NPOV has a similar problem. It simply does not mean the same thing as "neutral point of view".
For example, take the following paragraph:
But if someone says that a particular statement of mine is not NPOV, that's a different matter. Lots of perfectly true and objective statements are not NPOV, because they would be disputed by people who are reasonable but mistaken.
If one tries to replace "NPOV" with "neutral point of view" they get gibberish.
So lets look at non-gibberish formulations:
Possible formulation 1) "Lots of perfectly true and objective statements are not *neutral*, because they would be disputed by people who are reasonable but mistaken"
That doesn't really make sense.
Possible formulation 2) "Lots of perfectly true and objective statements are not *written from a neutral point of view*, because they would be disputed by people who are reasonable but mistaken"
That also doesn't make sense.
Possible formulation 3) "Lots of perfectly true and objective statements are not *written with the necessary context to explain how people currently perceive the topic*, because they would be disputed by people who are reasonable but mistaken"
Ah, now we're getting somewhere. Note that formulations 1) and 2) actually have something to do with "neutral point of view", but 3) does not.
And that's the problem.
Solution: figure out what concise concept is expressed by "NPOV" in the above statements.
I could give you my prediction as to what would be the positive result of such an exercise, but I'll wait to see if the above is at all convincing to the interested parties.