[WikiEN-l] NPOV and how to find and maintain it

[Sam Korn]

On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 3:34 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
<abd at lomaxdesign.com> wrote:
> It's time that I pipe up on this.
>
> Under the subject header, Re: [WikiEN-l] Neutrality enforcement: a proposal
> At 06:30 PM 5/8/2009, Sam Korn wrote:
>>On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 11:24 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>>[...] Even though a core of opinionated-though-neutral editors
>> > accumulates, there's an eternal stream of people who don't know and
>> > don't care about NPOV or Wikipedia principles in general - as far as
>> > they're concerned, someone is being WRONG on the Internet.
>>
>>Indeed.  The solution to Israel-Palestine disputes on Wikipedia is
>>that there be some lasting resolution to the meatspace
>>Israel-Palestine conflict.  Sadly, I think that is beyond the
>>capabilities of even our esteemed Arbitration Committee.
>
> Actually, no, though it's the community that can help, and the
> Committee can only have some influence. There is no way for the
> Committee, as far as I can see, to enforce what is needed, but it
> could recognize it and encourage it and discriminate between
> disruption that maintains lack of consensus and disruption that
> increases consensus.

I meant that resolving the meatspace Israel-Palestine conflict is
beyond the capabilities of the Committee.

> The key to understanding this is, first of all, that NPOV isn't a
> thing, a fixed state, a property of text in itself, it is a balance
> that represents consensus.

No.  NPOV is not determined by consensus.  Wikipedia's content is
determined by consensus with NPOV being the guiding principle.
Something does not become more neutral because fifteen Wikipedia
editors say it's neutral.

> We can measure NPOV by the percentage of editors who agree with a
> text, and our goal should always be 100%.

No.  The mere fact that no-one complains that their point of view is
under-represented does not mean that it isn't.

It is no more possible to create neutrality by public vote than it is
[[wikiality|to create reality by public vote]].

-- 
Sam
PGP public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sam_Korn/public_key