[Wikipedia-l] Site becoming a bit disquieting

[Jimmy Wales]

I don't think that 24 really understands the NPOV policy.  24 writes:
"It remains to be see if people here wish to find the actual median of
global human opinion."  And also: "There are 6100 million potential
readers of the wikipedia, long term, and views shared near-universally
by 100-300 million of them just aren't good enough to qualify as
neutral point of view, if there is serious dispute about them among
the other 5800-6000 million people."

But NPOV is not about finding the 'median' of human opinion, nor about
presenting only views that are "shared near-universally" by only
Western, technologically advanced, American, or whatever other group
he means.

The examples he gives of things that we wouldn't even want to have in
the encyclopedia betray his misunderstanding.  Selecting just one of
them, "hate views of ethnic groups" is certainly something that
Wikipedia should have an article on.  But the wikipedia should take no
position "for" or "against" those views, but should instead present
those views in such a way that both proponents and detractors can
mutually agree.

Similarly, imagine that 24's hypothetical poll of the entire world
shows that most beleive that "9/11 was caused by US foreign policy" --
what should the wikipedia say about that?  Well, nothing less than
that a poll of the entire world showed that a majority of the world
believes that "9/11 was caused by US foreign policy".  Hopefully our
reporting on this fact would be enhanced by an NPOV discussion of the
reasons why many people believe that, an NPOV discussion of what
Americans believe, and why, and so on.

His threat to post to indymedia.org to bring an onslaught of
progressives is interesting and revealing, as well.  Brion Vibber's
response was correct: please do, go and bring them in.  If lots of
them come all at once, there will be a period of chaos while they come
to understand our NPOV policies, but after that, those who can
tolerate NPOV writing will stick around, and that'll be great.  It'll
help keep those of us who do not share their viewpoints "in line".

But if his indymedia.org friends want to violate the NPOV, then they
will be just as unwelcome as, say, libertarians who come in and want
to violate the NPOV.  Even such "stupid" followers of Ayn Rand, as
your humble host would be held to the fire just as heartily for NPOV
violations.

The interesting thing about the NPOV is that all reasonable people can
understand why we have the policy and adhere to it.  I suppose that if
a large group of people descended on us, people who steadfastly reject
the NPOV *itself* for some reason, insisting that instead of working
hard to reach unanimity on articles, wikipedia should be like Usenet,
with endless shouting and reversals back-and-forth and back-and-forth
of articles from one point of view to another until someone gets too
exhausted to continue...  if that happened, then we'd have a serious
problem.

But I don't think that such people exist in large numbers.  Even
people who I might personally regard as religious fanatics of one
stripe or another generally _can_ agree to a neutral presentation of
the issues.

Having said all of this, I think there is more to say about systemic
bias in wikipedia.

Is there a systemic bias due to the types of people initially
attracted to the project?  Quite possibly, but I don't think that this
has been demonstrated convincingly.  To be sure, the wikipedia is
_uneven_, as the Amazon rainforest example shows.  But unevenness and
incompleteness is not bias, otherwise wikipedia will be "biased" until
every possible sentence in every possible language has been entered.

How is Wikipedia biased?  There are many articles that take into
account what large numbers of people believe, even if no one here
believes those things.  We have some good articles on Islam, even
though -- to my knowledge, at least -- they were not written by
followers of Islam.  

But other articles (or perhaps even the Islam articles!) may
inadvertantly leave out important points of view unknown to the
author.  To the extent that this is true, then Wikipedia is _not_
NPOV, even when we think it is, because of our current ignorance.  But
this is always true of every publication by every author -- we cannot
write about that which we know too little.  At least with Wikipedia,
our _model_ is fertile for change in the right direction.


--Jimbo