[WikiEN-l] Neutral point of view

[Philip Sandifer]

On Apr 14, 2008, at 10:44 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> A big part of the point of NPOV is that if you don't agree with
> postmodernists like Lyotard (quoted below), you can write carefully  
> and
> clearly, striving for neutrality as best you can manage, and be
> satisfied that the result is useful.
>
> And if you are in agreement with Lyotard, and regard the pursuit of
> knowledge as a language game, you can still play.  "If there are no
> rules, there is no game"... and the game we are playing is NPOV.
>

One of these days I will get around to writing "What Wikipedia Could  
Learn From Postmodernism" to make the second part of that more  
explicit. Suffice it to say that I think that appealing both to the  
sort of classical viewpoint in your first paragraph and to a  
postmodernist Lyotard-style viewpoint is an essential goal of our  
content policies. If we're doing it right then a committed classicist  
(as I suspect Jimbo is) and a committed postmodernist (hi) will both  
be satisfied with our policies.

-Phil