[Wikipedia-l] pitching an idea

[Chad Perrin]

On Sun, Apr 17, 2005 at 12:36:45PM -0400, Steve Lefevre wrote:
> Furthermore, I don't buy any claims to NPOV. Language is inherently 
> biased. One bias is what gets mentioned. Wikipedia is more comprehensive 
> than other encyclopedias in another realm, but  Another bias is what 
> gets mentioned first. Wikipedia articles are currently serial, so there 
> is always an order to the mentioning of any topic. There are also biases 
> in the wording and terminology of 'controversial' figures and unpopular 
> viewpoints. Who arbitrates who is controversial, or what is unpopular? 
> In the sign-off system I propose, we actually have hard numbers as to 
> what is controversial and unpopular.

I disagree with that characterization of NPOV as a goal.  Rather than
say that it's some kind of myth to which we pretend to subscribe here,
I'm of the opinion that it's more an asymptote rather than a point on a
graph, and we are (in general) "approaching NPOV" incrementally with our
efforts.  The fact that we may never reach an absolute value of NPOV
idoesn't make it any less real, though.

--
Chad Perrin
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