Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view/Archive 021

message: I think this calls for some attention to this proposal section. Recap: 
Current version:
Wikipedia:Neutral point of view is one of Wikipedia's three content-guiding policy pages. The other two are Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research. Jointly, these policies determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in article space, taking precedence over any other guidelines as well as over editors' consensus. Because the three policies are complementary, they should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should therefore try to familiarize themselves with all three. The three policies are also non-negotiable and their policy pages may only be edited to better reflect their practical explanation and application.
Support/opposition:
*Francis opposes the entire proposal as well as my addition
*Saxifrage, Tjstrf, Iantresman, Slrubinstein and Avb support the original proposal
*Tjstrf, Slrubinstein, Jossi, FM and Avb support the closing sentence "The principles (...) application"
The most important aspects discussed in detail above are (summarizing from memory, please correct any mistakes): 
*Policy text has two audiences: editors editing articles (article space), and editors editing policy text (project space)
*In article space, these three policies (text, principles, anything) always have the last word, period. Nothing about them can be "superseded" or overridden by the consensus process or any other policies or guidelines. The proposed edit intends to make this explicit. Addition by Avb: In fact, this applies to all policies as stated in the standard policy header: "a standard that all users should follow". However, explaining this as clearly as possible will prevent a lot of unnecessary discussion and edit warring between newer editors in article space. Perhaps this should be added to the standard policy header?
*In project space, the text "non-negotiable policy" is proving to be a source of confusion (and even disruption) since it is taken by some as saying that the policy text cannot be changed (hence a contradiction and source of much unneeded discussion on policy talk pages). The proposed edit intends to make explicit what can and cannot be changed, improving the new language, which has opened the door to new misunderstandings and a new type of criticism from editors not sufficiently familiar with policy development based on practical use throughout the community. Addition by AvB: this aspect of the proposal does not necessarily belong in the lead section and may be placed (after some rewriting) in the article body.
*This proposal intends to retain the text "non-negotiable policy" and explain it rather than removing or changing it. The latter can be discussed separately if editors so choose (e.g. contending that the policies are always non-negotiable, proposing a change to "non-negotiable principles", with sufficient coverage of the principles in question.)
I would really appreciate some more input from experienced editors here. I have no problem to see my edits reverted, but I think this is a well-reasoned and useful proposal that should be discussed and implemented as is or after improvement. The proposal has received support from five editors but no opposition on the talk page in the six days it has been sitting here. One editor opposes it, reverting all related edits and commenting elsewhere on this talk page. Two additional editors support part of the proposal, re-inserting a reverted sentence.
AvB ÷ talk 09:00, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In the unlikely case someone shows up here: I'll be offline for the next five days or so. AvB ÷ talk 20:04, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Recaputilation

message: Please help improve/implement/demolish this 6-day-old proposal. It could really use some more input. AvB ÷ talk 09:26, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Reminder

message: "The three policies are also non-negotiable and cannot be superseded by any other guidelines or by editors' consensus." This is what it said, but is being removed. 204.56.7.1 16:29, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: three policies are also non-negotiable?

message: The article states
:"the implication that it is possible to characterize disputes fairly ... It is an empirical question, not a philosophical one, whether this is possible; and that such a thing is indeed possible is evident simply by observing that such texts are being written daily by the most capable academics, encyclopedists, textbook writers, and journalists.
There is an implicit assumption in this that the academic/educated/journalistic groups in society are in fact NPOV, or otherwise are able to reach some standard of NPOV or objectivity or what-have-you.  This, in and of itself, is a particular bias, a particular point of view.  The process of education itself, particularly as understood in the Western sense, works out of and attempts to form worldviews and ways of thinking.  The discourses of the educated class (of which I am a part, by the way) are no less laiden with specific POVs than are the discourses of ethnically or religiously specific groupings.  Furthermore, unfortunate examples in history are evident where the academic/encyclopedic/journalistic sources of society were in fact "wrong":  for instance, eugenics was an academically supported field for much of the early 20th century, and the educated classes in Europe and America were no less racist through the 17th, 18th, and into the 19th century than were slaveholders themselves.  
Anyway, I'm not sure there really is a solution to this dilemma.  But I wish to close with a poignant quote from Bishop Desmond Tutu: "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”  May those with ears, hear...
Emerymat 00:05, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You're trying to refute an argument that we don't really make.  We're not aiming for abstract neutrality and conflating that with mainstream scholarship.  We attempt to pass on to our readers what the majority (and significant minority) positions are.  If mainstream scholarship gets something wrong (or the terms of the discourse are prejudicial), we're just going to get it wrong too.  You may, nevertheless, be interested in Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias which looks at bias in Wikipedia coverage overall.  Jkelly 00:47, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

text: (edit conflict) Er, you seem to have us mixed up with some group of people attempting to write/create/evangalize perfect, unchaging, entirely objective Truth with a capital T.  We arn't.  We don't.  We realize that everyone is biased.  We realize that everything is biased.  We realize that the winners write the history books, and that the winners write Wikipedia, too.  We try to compensate for this.  We fail, partly.  NPOV means nothing more (and nothing less) than our statement that we attempt, in our writing for Wikipedia, to do as well as "most capable academics, encyclopedists, textbook writers, and journalists" do in getting at fair, unbiased truth.  We know they arn't perfect, and we know we arn't perfect.  You seem to consider this imperfection to be some kind of astonishing news.  It's not.  But thanks anyway, and please do help us to compensate for the biases we, and you, have. JesseW, the juggling janitor 01:01, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The "academic" / "journalistic" / "educated" as not truly NPOV 

message: JA: I don't know what the issue is here.  I was only trying to bring that paragraph into verbatim conformity across all three content, er, -regulating pages.  One page had "content-guiding", which is clearly too weak, and leads to confusion with guidelines.  It is very essential for all sorts of reasons to draw a firm line between policies and guidelines.  Can anybody explain to me what they have in mind here?  Jon Awbrey 21:20, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "Content policies" is the shorter and more accurate definition. ≈ jossi ≈  t • @ 02:55, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Determining, Governing, Guiding, etc. 

message: I've inlcuded maps in the list of things that need to be NPOVd. Often disputed regions are covered showing only one country's point of view, and to plug this loophole, I've included in policy. =Nichalp «Talk»= 03:38, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maps 

message: I need further clarifications here: Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Han Civilisation Delist. =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:13, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Policy negotiable? 

message: :In particular, to elaborate on the last comment above, if you are able to prove something that nobody currently believes, Wikipedia is not the place to premiere such a proof. Once a proof has been presented and discussed elsewhere, however, it may be referenced.
This last sentence in Undue Weight, does not appear to be relevant to Undue Weight, but is part of "verifiability" and "original research"?--Iantresman 20:53, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Undue weight improvement

message: Although it we clarly already have a policy regarding text moves, two Wikipedians have teamed up to hide any clarification or amplification of this. I can only assume it's because they want to censore this policy, because they personally oppose it. 
# (cur) (last) 18:09, 19 June 2006 Francis Schonken (remove link to proposal: that proposal should not be presented as a part of "policy" on this page)
# (cur) (last)  19:05, 19 June 2006 FeloniousMonk m (Reverted edits by Ed Poor (talk) to last version by Francis Schonken)
Francis claimed my link to Wikipedia:Text move is not part of "policy" - on what grounds I don't know, maybe because I placed the  template at the head of the linked page.
But I have seen references to "text moves" on 2 or 3 other pages, and I've noticed that FM and his clique oppose this policy. They feel justified in reverting any changes they disagree with (often with the terse comment that I must discuss all my changes first), while reserving the right to make any changes they want without any discussion at all, before or afterwards. --Uncle Ed 19:31, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Go take a breather, WP:AGF, and come back when you want to rephrase all that without invoking cabals. — Saxifrage ✎ 03:30, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Ed Poor (2) All anyone needs to know about what Ed is on about is there. He also has a long history of trying to create new policy to support his activities detailed at the RFC. FeloniousMonk 04:12, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Text move policy

message: I know the NPOV policy is meant to cover situations in which an editor edits sourced facts into an article but, because of selection of which facts to present from said source, the facts presented a slanted view of its subject.  I think this is covered under the general "don't be biased" mantra of NPOV, and is mentioned secifically under the "Fairness and sympathetic tone" section of the article: "Even when a topic is presented in terms of facts rather than opinion, an article can still radiate an implied stance through either selection of which facts to present, or more subtly their organization. . . ."  As a more concrete example of what I'm talking about: an editor edits the following, sourced blurb into  Ted Kennedy's article, "Kennedy supports a tax on imported rubber and justifies the tax by stating 'rubber imports are not a practical response to current tire prices'[reference]".  The editor leavs the blurb at that, failing to note that the source goes on to say that Kennedy's true motivation/justification for supporting the tax is because he believes domestic rubber production is sufficient and expanding.  This blurb obviously violates the portions of this policy that I've mentioned above, as it makes Kennedy out to have no concrete justification for his support of the tax through selection of which facts to present.  My point for posting here is to ask two questions: (1) is this type of fact-selection NPOV violation mentioned anywhere else in the policy other than one sentence in the Fairness and sympathetic tone section and (2) if not, shouldn't there be a more expansive subsection on fact-selection bias here?  I understand that this problem is somewhat related to undue weight (in that both deal with fact-selection bias), but undue weight doesn't cover a situation similar to what I've posited above. - Jersyko·talk 02:51, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Jersyko, policy is not a replacement for good judgement. Polices are there to assist us in the process of collaboration, so that we can write an encyclopedia. If an editor is selective in his citing of materials form sources, challenge him. An article that is not biased is easy to spot, and one that is not, even easier. There is no replacement for the process of give and take, tweaks, nips and tucks, that an article goes through. It is that process that carries the promise of a good NPOV article. More policy would not help, IMO. ≈ jossi ≈  t • @ 05:39, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: With all due respect, I don't believe I am requesting new policy, I'm requesting a fuller explanation of something briefly mentioned in this policy.  I am not requesting this change merely to bolster my argument in NPOV disputes.  Rather, I believe this is an important subset of NPOV that is barely glossed over in the text of this policy.  I understand that many Wikipedians resist implementation of new bureaucracy and policy for numerous reasons, but since this issue is already perfunctorily treated in the policy, perhaps an exception can be made. - Jersyko·talk 12:55, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Jersyko, I have a practical question: when the kind of flaw you describe is found in articles and someone tries to fix it, have you found that they often encounter resistence?  If the answer is yes, then perhaps the policy needs to be clearer and stronger.  If the answer is no, I'd say that the policy is working fine.  Look, policies are here for the most part to (1) help educate newbies and (2) provide guidance in disputes.  My belief is we should pretty much leave them alone unless they are really failing to accomplish either of these objectives.  I am not arguing with you, I just think the issue here is not resisting implementation or a new bureaucracy, but rather trying to gage just how much of a problem this is.  No policy can or should try to cover every possible instance.  But my opinion is shaped by an even more basic belief: all wikipedia articles are works in progress.  We should never really think of any article as being perfect, flawless.  Sometimes an article is flawed not because a policy is not clear enough, but simply because more people need more time to work on it. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 13:30, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm only aware of two, maybe three situations in which I've encountered resistance on point in my year and a half of editing here.  Perhaps it's not a widespread problem, I have no idea.  Each time that it has come up, however, I recall searching, in vain for the most part, for a section of the NPOV policy (or another policy) that would be entirely on point.  The sentence I mention above is all I have been able to find.  In any event, I suppose that if other editors consider the one sentence to be sufficient for the problem I have described, and if other editors are not experiencing the same phenomenon, I will gladly concede and withdraw my suggestion. - Jersyko·talk 14:25, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Well, would you mind saying a bit more about your experiences?  Were the conflicts quickly resolved?  Were you satisfied with the way things were resolved?  Would it really have made a difference if the policy addressed this more directly or at greater length?  I don't want to discourage a good suggestion, but there is no point in making a change unless we know it will make a difference.  I have been in lots of conflicts where I needed to explain my interpretation/application of the NPOV policy to the matter at hand, and once I did this the matter was resolved.  If your experiences were like mine, then i honestly do not think there is any need to change the policy - talk pages exist because sometimes we just need to hash things out there.  But if your experiences were more protracted and bitter than mine, then maybe yes we do need to clarify the policy. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 14:33, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question & suggestion 

message: Could someone nautral to WoW please check out that article. I do not want to add a VfD because the article itself has potential. I just feel it's a pile of POV as it stands right now. Any guidance as to what could be done would also be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Havok (T/C/c) 20:45, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Criticism of World of Warcraft]] 

message: A handful of editors and I are in conflict with a single admin on a particular subject, and I believe that the problem comes down to different interpretations of what constitutes "undue weight".  I've read through the main NPOV page, and digested as much of this page as I can (it's a LOT!), but haven't seen anything which really addresses my issue.  If I've overlooked it, I apologize, and would thank somebody for pointing me in the right direction; otherwise, I would like to know what the community thinks of the following situation.  In a nutshell -- the rules are clear that, when a vocal minority is in conflict with a substantial majority, the article must be weighted towards the latter -- ie, creationists and flat-earthers are relegated to footnotes on pages about evolution and geomorphology.  Rightly so.  But how does one weight an article when a subject is relatively obscure and the "majority view" of a subject is, well, ignorance?  The admin insists that proper NPOV weighting means that the article should be small and vaguely skeptical; I disagree -- I believe it does not need to be either small or weighted.  But I would appreciate some additional opinions.
For those who are interested, please allow me to give some background on the subject, 
Just to give some background, the conflict concerns an experimental transit technology called "Personal Rapid Transit" (PRT).  PRT has been theorized and experimented with since the 1960s, with several billion dollars having been collectively spent on it over the years, and several full-scale prototypes built, tested, certified by various regulatory agencies, and so forth -- but for a variety of reasons, no PRT system has ever been deployed publicly.  Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in PRT, and a small system has finally been purchased for public installation at London Heathrow Airport in 2008 (see ULTra (PRT)).  There are also funds allocated for a small system in Dubai, and in two places in Sweden.  Worldwide, there is perhaps $50 - $100 million being spent annually on R&D for this technology.
As far as the vast community of transportation engineers and scientists go, PRT is largely unknown.  I'd guess that the percentage who have even heard of it is somewhere in the vicinity of 2%, and most of those could barely define what it is, much less give a cogent support or refutation of its premises.  Commercially, when compared to planes, trains, and automobiles, $50 - $100 million annually is utterly insignificant.   
However, there is a small number of engineers, probably numbered in the very low thousands worldwide, who are either involved with PRT ventures or are just very enthusiastic about the technology (although there is a considerably larger group of non-credentialed supporters who are intrigued by or supportive of the concept).  These people  have produced a voluminous body of work documenting the results of various prototype trials, hashing out design strategies, and generally extolling its virtues.  As implied above, the rest of the transit world has more or less ignored this -- they've got enough else to think about.
There is another, even smaller number of engineers and activists who are aware of PRT and actively critical of it.  My guess is that there would be, at most, about a hundred of these individuals worldwide.  They have produced a body of work criticizing the PRT concept.  This body of work is considerably smaller and less detailed than the body of work of the supporters, but both represent tiny niches within the field as a whole.
So, this brings us to the heart of the matter.  The admin in question asserts that skepticism is the "majority view".  I strongly contest this assertion: apathy is, unquestionably, the "majority view" among transit professionals.  At any rate, the admin feels that the article (and associated articles) should consequently be short and very basic, if indeed they should exist at all, and that above all else they must emphasize that PRT does not actually exist (he repeatedly refers to it as "fictional") -- and he routinely mass-deletes content, adds redundant "in theory" and "according to proponents" tags to virtually every sentence, and threatens to lock down articles when anybody objects to his behavior.
I, of course, do object (but I'm not an admin, so what does that matter?).  I believe that apathy is not a legitimate "majority view", and that it is fully within Wikipedia's purview to do a nice and fairly comprehensive article about highly niche topics such as PRT.   [Solar Sail]s and [Space Elevator]s and have far more extensive articles than [Personal Rapid Transit], for example, despite the fact that the majority of aerospace engineers have no interest in those topics, a minority are actively highly skeptical about them, and those things are in any case far more "fictional" than PRT.
My belief is that there is no need for the issue of "undue weight" to even enter into an article like this.  I believe it should be possible in this case to summarize the works of PRT designers (being very careful to attribute all non-empirical claims -- basically anything concerning PRT that wasn't physically gleaned from a prototype), and also summarize the works of the PRT critics.  I believe that there is no intrinsic POV problem with summarizing both camps in as much detail as their literature provides; the hostile admin, however, believes that going into such detail would be intrinsically POV, given that PRT is "irrelevant" and "fictional".  Edit wars thus ensue.
Am I wrong?  Is he wrong?  Please help! If anyone would like more background on this issue, I urge you to check out the talk pages for Personal Rapid Transit, ULTra (PRT), and UniModal.  I look forward to your responses and thank you for your time! Skybum 01:42, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, for further background on this argument, you can look at Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-04-22 SkyTran/UniModal uncooperative admin, (which resulted in no resolution). Skybum 02:00, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Question about "Undue Weight" & Niche Topics

message: I want to notify that I placed the Orania page under the npov tag. Reasons being the article erroneously assumes the opposing position and ignores the central issue. Example, 2nd paragraph. There is no issue of Apartheid being continued in Orania in the form of exploitation of black labor. The issue is clearly one of Apartheid used to segregate resources and land. Nothing more. So the article violates the neutral point of view in the political bias and misrepresentation of other viewpoints. --Zaphnathpaaneah 06:09, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orania