From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Nick Boalch
Peter Mackay wrote:
NPOV, for example, depends on different points of view, including political opinions, being given space consistent with their level
of support.
Consistent with their level of support in the world, yes.
Consistent
with their level of support among the Wikipedia editing community, no. There is a crucial difference.
Beg pardon, but I think you've got that the wrong way around...
I don't think so. Take [[Criticism of Wikipedia]], for instance. I imagine that most regular Wikipedia editors disagree with many of those criticisms. For example, I doubt that many of us agree with Robert McHenry and Andrew Orlowski that it is improper and unsuitable for Wikipedia to call itself an encyclopaedia. However, this is an opinion
Hardly an average Wikipedia article, wouldn't you agree?
Accordingly on other articles, different points of view need to be included based on their prominence and level of support in the real world, not just on which happens to be most popular among the Wikipedia editing community.
That's the problem. In theory, theory and practice are identical. In practice, they aren't.
WP articles are not written by the general community, they are written by editors, usually a handful of core contributors. NPOV works out to what these editors agree it is, simply because nobody else has any significant input.
This especially applies to articles on specialist or relatively obscure topics. High-profile articles fare better because there are more eyes on them.
People are free to express their political opinions so
long as it is
done in a civil and non-inflammatory manner.
They may be free to express them, but my point is that they aren't free to inflict them on articles.
That's precisely what I *do* mean. Articles are written by
people with
political views, and where I know an editor's political
opinions (if
they are revealed on user or talk pages), I find it extremely rare that they write something in an article that is contrary to those opinions.
A good editor will do it in a civil, factual, sourced and non-inflammatory manner, consistent with NPOV.
Yes. Which is exactly what I said above.
It may be what you meant to say, but it certainly is not what I understood you to say. Hence my response.
Writing consistently with NPOV is not 'inflicting your opinion on an article'. Biasing an article towards your own opinions *is* inflicting your opinion on an article, is obviously not consistent with NPOV.
Beg pardon, but it is. If (say) a Republican and a Democrat write an article, each one only writing material that supports and reinforces their partisan views, but the end result is balanced and consistent with community support, then that is NPOV.
I don't particularly want to end up rehashing the whole userbox debacle, but we *have* seen groups of users banding together with the specific, identified purpose of systematically applying bias to Wikipedia articles.
Sure. Wikipedia is generally able to handle this.
Jimbo's word on the matter:
The point is, we don't act *in Wikipedia* as a Democrat, a Republican, a pro-Lifer, a pro-Choicer, or whatever. Here we are Wikipedians, which means: thoughtful, loving, neutral.
With all due respect to you and Jimbo, that's not the way
it happens.
Thoughtful, loving, neutral, touchy-feely gets good marks,
but editors
don't suddenly turn into opinionless automatons. Nor do we
want them
to. We want Republicans to have input into articles on the
Republican
Party. We just don't want it to be Republican propaganda.
With all due respect to you, I think you're slightly misinterpreting what Jimbo (and I) actually mean. I don't think either of us are suggesting that editors should be 'opinionless automatons', just that they shouldn't let their opinions influence the way they write articles.
That's plain bizarre. There's absolutely nothing wrong with editors inserting their own opinions into articles. It happens every day. So long as it is done with NPOV in mind it works fine. Here is the fundamental statement of NPOV, taken from [[WP:NPOV]]:
"The neutral point of view is a means of dealing with conflicting views. The policy requires that, where there are or have been conflicting views, these should be presented fairly, but not asserted. All significant points of view are presented, not just the most popular one. It should not be asserted that the most popular view or some sort of intermediate view among the different views is the correct one. Readers are left to form their own opinions."
May I highlight that sentence: "All significant points of view are presented, not just the most popular one."
-- Peter in Canberra