I had written:
I totally agree with Jay's point. Wikipedia will immediately lose any credibility it has if it becomes a massive repository of crank views, which it will be if people strictly follow the letter of the NPOV policy as currently written. Articles on and by cranks will outnumber serious issues a hundred to one (at least).
Ray Saintonge responded:
Nobody is supporting "a massive repository of crank view" Saying that Wikipedia would become so is entirely speculative. There is no evidence for this nor for the hypothetical loss of credibility. ~~~~
For goodness sake, that is a strawman argument. You know full well that NO ONE claimed that Wikipedia should be turned into "a massive repository of crank view". I certainly made no such claim.
Rather, I was pointing out the well-known fact that many Wikipedia articles constantly are being altered to include fringe and singular point-of-views. On an open Wiki-project such as this, the NPOV policy has been abused by many people to try and give the views of tiny groups the appearance of having the same level of acceptance as views held by much larger groups. Haven't you read Jimbo's posts on this issue? In any case, it is a *fact* that this is one of the many reasons why many people outside of Wikipedia do not trust us yet. Your dismissal of their concerns does not make them non-existent.
Ray continues:
I agree that that article is dreadful. To begin with it
is
sprinkled throughout with with words like "supposed" or "alleged" which if repeated tend to bias the commentary, and certainly detract from the flow of the text.
Sorry, Ray, but NPOV policy demands that all unproven and/or unfounded claims must be phrased in this way. We don't write about unproven phenomenon like ESP and alien abuductions as facts; we may only write that "Person X claims that they were abducted by aliens, who them examined them with ESP. The alleged experience happened in a cornfield in Iowa in 1977." We do not write about such unproven and extraodrinary claims as if they were facts.
For some time now you have been claiming to accept NPOV, yet at every opportunity you effectively subvert it. Please recognize this, and desist.
Robert (RK)
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