[Wikipedia-l] Re: Historical NPOV and wikipedian NPOV

[Robert Kaiser]

Martin Harper writes:
> If I understand Julie correctly, historians tend to refrain from making
> moral judgements about history, particularly when the people of that
> period had a significantly different world view. So it's not OK to say
> that "women were treated unfairly", but it is OK to say that "women were
> not able to vote or own property" - the former being a statement of
> morality and the latter being one of historical fact. ..[snip to save
space]...
>
>
> The historical NPOV would seem (if I read Julie right) to be to ignore
> these later moral judgements as fundamentally ahistorical, anachronistic,
> and irrelevant.

I can't speak for all historians, but the way I understand it, most
historians see their job as to find the facts. Moral judgements, by
definition, are not confirmable facts. However, this is not to say that
moral judgements are irrelevant; a moral society cannot exist without making
such judgements. Without making such judgements societies can - and sadly,
do - fall into immoral situations such as Communism (which in practice is
totalitarian, even if not in theory), Facism, etc. Also, without making
informed and reflectiv moral judgemens societies societies can - and sadly,
do - descend into a malestrom of self-accusation, in which men sometimes
oppress and virtually enslave women; in which gentiles sometimes oppress or
kill Jews; in which heterosexuals sometimes oppress and kill homosexuals; in
which demnocracy is perverted into a violent dictatorship of the majority
(however slight) such as in many African nations today. The list of examples
goes on and on.

But how can anyone make any moral judgements at all without first having
strictly NPOV historical facts? (And also a large helping of common sense,
self-relfection, and the intellectual modesty to admit that other ways of
thinking about a situation must always be considered!) So I affirm the
strict historical NPOV that Julie suggest, and hold that this is how
Wikipedia should _start_ to deal with each historical issue. However, just
because we agree with this standard and start from this position, we don't
need to end here:

> My question is, is the wikipedian NPOV "wider" than the
> historical NPOV: should we include content that historians would
> judge inappropriate? If so, how can we include it so that the historical
> view is  not damaged or confused by non-historical approaches?

I believe that Wikipedia articles should indeed contain material that
includes a definition of NPOV that is wider than the strictly historical
NPOV. Wo perhaps the solution is that we address and describe historical
issues first from the strictly narrow historical NPOV, and then add after
this description a few sentences that say "Today most people hold value
belief X about this situation, because of the following reasons."


Robert (RK)