## 2 NPOV: Remarks on a Core Policy
### (N)POV in Wikipedia: Two Examples  
To get a better understanding of how WP copes with cultural conflicts and lives up to the expectation of NPOV, we conducted two experiments on its neutrality, analyzing pages dated March 2010. Both cases serve as a motivation for the rest of our paper; they do not claim to be empirical refutations of an \"NPOV Thesis\" in a stricter sense. **Example 1:** The _then version_ of the German WP entry on _[PERSON]_ informs the reader that he _is_ a _terrorist_, the English version avoids direct classification but calls him _leader of a terrorist organization_, on the connected discussion page this classification is challenged by a user as \"_you might as well change it to freedom-fighting organization_\", the Arabic version Google-translates to _founder and leader of Al-Qaeda network_ and contains a wealth of words and citations with positive connotation, the Hebrew version Google-translates to _terrorist leader of the Islamic terrorist organization Al-Qaeda_, and the Chinese version Google-translates [7] to _leader (of) the organization (...) a lot of people think that is a global terrorist organization_. To obtain a more comprehensive picture, we analyzed 87 languages of this topic in their version of March 2010, passed it to Google-translator and categorized the results. We focused on the introductory section (\"[PERSON] _is..._\"), in order to catch the primary focus of the article. In cases where the classification was ambiguous, the entire article was used. In 13 counts the language _clearly calls_ [PERSON] a terrorist (e.g., _is_ a terrorist). In six counts the language _weakly links_ him to terrorism (e.g., _founder of terrorist_ organization). In 14 counts _descriptive language_ is used to establish links to terrorism (e.g., is _said_ to be, _probably_ is, is _claimed_ to be, is _suspected_ to be). In six counts _neutral language_ is used or strongly relativizing links are established (e.g., _is subject of_ the US war on terrorism). Finally, in four counts terrorism is _not mentioned_ and/or phrases with positive connotation dominate (e.g., leader, wealthy, respected). From the remaining languages, one language seemed vandalized according to the translation, in other cases no translation was available, the result was garbled making a classification impossible, or the text was too short. One language was temporarily locked \"due to disagreement among the participants about the content of the article\". **Example 2:** The Hebrew and Arabian WP article on the \"Mossad\" Google-translate to:  
\"_One of the bodies defense system in Israel. Mossad is Israel's intelligence organization, in charge of collecting information security and civilian and military clandestine operations abroad. Institute is considered one of the world's successful intelligence organization in the world and tied him many crowns\"_  
\"_Mossad was involved in many operations against the Arab and foreign countries including the killing of members considered hostile to Israel and continues to do so now even spy operations against friendly countries which have diplomatic relations to Israel._\"  
**Both examples** illustrate how in the very moment a description uses a language, a choice has to be made in words, tone and style, which on an international scale of a globalized internet might have multiple facets. **Discussion:** One may object that one will always find suitable empirical arguments when searching a sufficiently large encyclopedia. Two examples, based on machine translation and subjective classification by an author who wants to prove his point do not show anything [8]. This objection is valid, but the situation is worse: _Every_ systematical study attempting to prove or disprove empirically that \"descriptions cannot have a neutral point of view\" uses a semantic framework of alleged conceptual neutrality as part of the study: Even if such a framework is not explicitly mentioned in the design of the study, the study _de facto_ contains such a framework.