[WikiEN-l] Notability on the skfields

[Andrew Gray]

On 15/05/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/15/07, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> > No. NPOV does not take into account on any level whatsoever the issue
> > of addressing hypothetical claims. It states, and I quote, that we
> > must represent "all significant views (that have been published by
> > reliable sources."
> >
>
> "without bias" by representing it as the only view you are
> representing it with bias. And where no other views have been
> published by reliable sources it is impossible to get around this
> without breaching NOR. Thus it is impossible to write a NPOV article
> where there are not a least a handful of citeable sources.
>
> Currently [[Invincible Snowfields]] is trying to get around this by
> very careful wording that contains no opinion whatsoever (and gets
> close to succeeding) but since NPOV demands that you do include
> opinion this is not a valid get out either.

NPOV requires that you give *due weight* to all opinions that exist,
which may include a) making them the primary theme of the article; b)
having a seperate section on them; c) mentioning them briefly in
passing; or d) not mentioning them at all.

(To take an example, for [[Moon]], a) would be "The Moon is Earth's
only natural satellite"; b) would be the various lunar-impact creation
hypotheses; c) would be those vulcanism-on-the-moon reports; and d)
would be "the moon is inhabited by intelligent mice")

It does not require that we give any weight to opinions we
confabulated out of whole cloth, nor that we are bound to report
opinions which simply don't exist.

There are objects in this world about which there are no differences
of opinion (though right now none spring to mind) - do we have to
invent opposing sides duelling over the centre ground to talk about
them neutrally? Of course not.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk