[WikiEN-l] [[New anti-Semitism]] and violations of NPOV re: top image

[Mark Gallagher]

G'day Sarah,

> The thing that always strikes me now when I read the Encyclopaedia
> Britannica is how POV it is, and I often wonder why we're aiming to be
> as good as them, when in fact (at our best) we can be so much better.

At our best, we *can* be much better than Britannica.  This is for a 
variety of reasons, but I don't think NPOV really is one.  NPOV is Good, 
yes, but it doesn't make us Better.  Maybe this is because my POV is 
closer to Britannica's than yours is, and I'm thus biased.

There's nothing wrong, in my view, with being POV but objective (thanks 
to Fastfission for pointing out the distinction).  The best POV for any 
encyclopaedia, including Wikipedia, to adopt is Mark Gallagher's Point 
of View.  This is quite obvious to me; any encyclopaedia which explains 
itself clearly, objectively, and undeniably biased towards Mark 
Gallagher's viewpoint will be much, *much* better than one that aims 
towards some impractical ideal of NPOV.  As long as the POV is 
*consistent* and *known to the reader* ...

The problem --- the only big problem --- with MGPOV is that some smart 
young lady will undoubtedly point out, "Well, what's wrong with Sarah's 
Point of View?  Why shouldn't Wikipedia be written from *that* instead?" 
  And while it's quite obvious that SVPOV is inferior in every way to 
MGPOV, I don't really have a good explanation as to *why* at this stage. 
  Then we get a certain historian saying that, since he's more of an 
expert than Canberran university students in certain matters, history 
articles should be written according to FFPOV.  Then some smartarse will 
pipe up with, "Who founded this project anyway?" and we'll have fights 
over whether to go with JWPOV or LSPOV.

NPOV is a compromise.  It says that even though that pinko Aussie 
bastard Mark doesn't get to POV-push, neither does that awful 
crypto-fascist[0] Sarah.  NPOV is a good idea for a project like 
Wikipedia, for the comfort of readers and especially writers who don't 
share Mark Gallagher's Point of View, but that doesn't necessarily mean 
a project which adopts NPOV is "better" than a project which doesn't, in 
much the same way as a policy of Not Being Lame About English Variants 
works well for Wikipedia but is not necessarily better than a policy of 
Use International English And Be Damned To What The Americans Want.



[0] I don't actually know what the phrase "crypto-fascist" means, but
     it's part of the standard Pinko Aussie lexicon, so I use it anyway.

-- 
Mark Gallagher
"I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it."
(Raymond Chandler, /The Big Sleep/)