On Wednesday 20 April 2005 02:31, Andrew Lih wrote:
I'm glad you brought up NPOV vs. unbiased.
The term is what it is, though in coming to understand it, and now explain it, it is off. Though, it is off in a useful way, it provides a nice sedgeway into what it *is*. (e.g., "A chickpea is neither a chick nor a pea. Discuss.")
In the essay, Larry mentions that this newfangled NPOV as a term was unnecessary, as the term unbiased would suffice.
Neither is appropriate; rather, without slipping into relativism it abstracts to a meta level of representing what people think they know (i.e., a consensus theory of truth) rather than what is (i.e., a strict objectivist stance.)
http://reagle.org/joseph/2004/agree/wikip-agree.html#heading8 [[[ A misunderstood notion about Wikipedia is that much contention arises from its Neutral Point Of View (NPOV) policy (Wikipedia 2004wnp): that debates arise from this seemingly impossible requirement to remain objectively neutral. Yet, the NPOV policy is quite the opposite and instead recognizes the multitude of viewpoints and provides an epistemic stance in which they all can be recognized as instances of human knowledge – right or wrong. The NPOV policy seeks to achieve the "fair" representation of all sides of the dispute such that all can feel well represented. Articles should explain without advocating, characterize without engaging, and honor the intellectual independence of the readers by refraining from dogmatism. Hence, the clear goal of providing an encyclopedia of all human knowledge explicitly avoids many entanglements. ... Consequently, while the perception is that NPOV is the source of much debate, it may act rather as a heat shield: reducing conflict and otherwise channeling outstanding arguments in the productive context of the primary goal of developing an encyclopedia that is representative of many viewpoints. ... It is important to note that this stance does have important ethical implications. The policy of only reporting on what it is well-known has significant implications for minority views. This is acknowledged and debated within the Wikipedia community and the present norm is that Wikipedia should be fairly representative and proportional to the phenomenon it seeks to capture. ]]]