Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view/Archive 012

message: Some of the criticisms against the current formulation of NPOV ignore the other policies. Therefore, before we begin to write a clearer formulation, it is important that we agree on its correct interpretation in the light of other policies. It would be useful that someone that has a lot of experience with the NPOV policy and the other policies explains how the NPOV policy, especially the section WP:NPOV#A simple formulation, is or can be rewritten in a way that is consistent with the other mandatory content policies: WP:V and WP:NOR. I have my own viewpoint and I intend to defend it, but I think it will be easier if we start with the viewpoint of someone that has more experience with the WP policies. --Lumiere 16:43, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you are overplaying the point somewhat - see my comments on what "a neutral point of view" really means in the section directly below, jguk 12:45, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Can you explain what you mean with "overplaying the point somewhat"?  I have replied to your comments below. I feel that in these comments you  basically suggest that the NPOV policy does not need to be explained. I completely disagree.  --Lumiere 14:01, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Connection with other policies.  

message: Neutral aspectGeneral articleOn competiting viewsSpecific articleOn a specific view
Tone (Verifiable facts)(ie. no judgements, opinions or ascertions)RequiredRequired
Statement biasAllowed if it is verifiableDisallowed if it is not
Article balance(ie. Competing views)Required(Weighted)Not required(May be acknowledged)
Here's how I see neutrality, and how it applies to general and specific articles. I note the following:
*A non-verified fact defines "point of vivew". Hence a verifiable fact is a "neutral point of view"
*Biases statements are allowed if they are verifiable'. 
*The degree of article balance will depend on the nature of the article.
*The two counter-intuitives options are (a) Verifiable biased statements of fact, are allowed (b) Articles on a specific subject should not be balanced
--Iantresman 10:22, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If I get you correctly, by your first point, you mean that a non verifiable fact is unaccaptable when writing from a neutral viewpoint? --84.228.107.148 10:49, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I see where you're coming from. Then perhaps it just needs qualifying. If a statement is not contested, then there is no problem. However, if a statement is subsequently contested, then it should be verifiable. --Iantresman 13:24, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

text: If that's the case, then it would be wrong. A non-verifiable "fact" is perfectly okay under this policy (it is WP:V that requires that information is sourced). Indeed, this policy does not prohibit totally false information from being added into an article (as long as that article retains a neutral viewpoint), jguk 11:46, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you give an example of what/where false information would be acceptable? --Iantresman 13:24, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I get the impression that verifiable information is covered, or at least related to NPOV. If I state "President Bush is a tyrrant", then that is a personal point of view, as indeed is any statement which can not be verified. On the other hand, if I state that "Sources have called President Bush a Tyrrant [Ref]", then I am no longer presenting a personal point of view, if I am able to attribute and verify it. The very ability to verify the statement changes it from a personal point of view, to a neutral point of view. It also just happens that this falls under the Verifiability policy. --Iantresman 15:05, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Yes, and it can also be argued in a similar way that we should not only consider verifiability WP:V, but also no original research WP:NOR. We definitively need to refer to these other policies because the NPOV policy can be misinterpreted to mean that as long as we replace "President Bush is a tyrrant" with "Sources have called President Bush a Tyrrant [Ref]" then it becomes acceptable just because it is a verifiable fact irrespectively of whether or not the sources have a reputable publisher. A technical point here: the term "source" is typically used in WP:V to mean the publisher, not the authors. (If you prefer, whether or not a source is considered reputable depends only on the publisher, not on the authors). So, we should be careful when we use "sources" to mean the authors as Iantresman just did above (and me also because I had to connect with his terminology.)  BTW, the term "verifiable" in WP:V is also confusing -- they should also change it because clearly WP:V (and WP:NOR) requires much more than just verifiability in some source -- they both independently require a reputable source (which means a reputable publisher), and what is a reputable source or publisher depends on the subject area.  --Lumiere 16:19, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree, the policy would have raised the bar if it was named something like WP:Authoritativeness --Anon84.x 16:53, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sure, when I suggest the statement "Sources have called President Bush a Tyrrant [Ref]", I was assuming "reputable sources", rather than, for example, someone's blog. For example, a published book or magazine, peer-reviewed article, etc --Iantresman 16:59, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a problem I'm trying to solve in my proposal. I call it "significance" --Anon84.x 17:03, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Sounds good to me. --Iantresman 17:06, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I think that no original research WP:NOR amounts to non-verifiability. If it's peer-reviewed, then it's not original research in the sense that it is the contributing editor's research. I'm sure that there are a number of unique theories that have been promoted by individuals (eg. Royal Rife's beam ray), which is original research, but he's not promoting it. --Iantresman 17:05, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

text:  I agree that there is a large overlap between WP:V and WP:NOR. However, it is definitively not a justification to ignore WP:NOR. I believe that WP:NOR was written before WP:V. Also, in my opinion it is much clearer in terms of what is a reputable source or at the least it contains crucial information about it that is not contained in WP:V. On the other hand, WP:V goes into more details about the dynamic to source a content, remove it if it not properly sourced, etc. --Lumiere 17:33, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Strictly speaking, we do not need WP:NOR as a policy as there is nothing in there which does not automatically follow from our Verifiability policy. Don't get me wrong, it's useful to have as guidance - but now we have a proper Verifiability policy, which we didn't until sometime in 2005, WP:NOR can be deprecated to it, jguk 12:43, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I had not thought of it, but it looks like you're right: the motive behind NOR was that editors should not be demanded to try verifying other people's research by themselves, but instead rely on published peer reviewed material (roughly, I write this by memory). Thus it looks like NOR can be presented as chapter in the WP:V policy, thus simplifying things. Harald88 20:17, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Summary of "neutral point of view" aspects

message: Without warning, User:David Gerard suddenly banned me for editing (or in his words "messing around"). He then locked the article. User:Katefan0 subsequently reverted all of the recent edits to the page. Both these users promptly abandoned this page without a trace. I think these users owe me and all the people who have recently contributed to this page an explanation (more than that one sentence). Bensaccount 17:22, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It would seem that some admins are trigger happy. Would it hurt them to put a little more effort into discussing the matter instead? Bensaccount 22:48, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: LOL, this from the guy banned for not discussing changes to the policy that clearly did not have consensus? DreamGuy 14:30, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Ban & Lock - What was wrong with the recent edits?

message: We've all seen arguments where people keep arguing that this is "POV" or someone is being "POV" where in normal English we'd just call something an "opinion" and note that someone has an opinion on something. Indeed, the made-up term POV is bandied around usually to mean something along the lines of - you are wrong, I am right, and because it is a NPOV issue, the point is non-negotiable, which isn't a very good place to start from if the issue is to be resolved. Plus far too many  people read NPOV as equating to "no point of view" as opposed to the real requirement, which is to write from a neutral viewpoint.
My blue sky thinking (which I don't claim to be a panacea, just an interesting thought) is why don't we rename the policy page Wikipedia:Neutral viewpoint and make the shortcut link to it WP:NEUVIEW (or WP:NEUTVIEW). It goes without saying that the underlying concept behind the policy would remain completely unchanged - just the name of the page would change - plus it would enhance people's perceptions that it is about requiring a neutral viewpoint, rather than no  viewpoint, or neutrality more generally: it would help define the policy in positive terms and (and perhaps I'm going too far here:) ) may help stop content disputes escalating in scale and viciousness, jguk 12:38, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I cannot understand you. You are violating WP:WOTTA. --Lumiere 18:08, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  KMA ;) Nah, seriously, I was alerted to this because jguk mentioned it on IRC (Freenode #wikipedia). I said there that I thought it was a bad idea, and came here to "officially" say the same. Otherwise I don't really have too much interest in discussions about NPOV because I think the system is OK. Nach0king 18:11, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  What you say have me worry about how to interpret the rule "do not change the main page without a consensus".  I do not blame you. We all have our interest, and they change with time. However, the rule should be interpreted to say that you should have some concrete argument against or in support of some proposed improvement before we can count your opinion as a support or an opposition. Is that make sense? --Lumiere 18:29, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Blue sky thinking - Requested move 

message: Is this because there was something said in the #wikipedia IRC? May I login in this IRC channel? There is something more important to be said. --Lumiere 22:00, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Currious to know why there is so much interest about a title issue?