Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view/Archive 019

message: ... don't work, so personally I'd propose to omit WP:NPOVUW entirely from the policy page. Maybe it should better be proposed for MfD or so, per Wikipedia:Redirect#When should we delete a redirect?, reason 2, that is: "confusing" (it creates the confusing, and incorrect, idea that the shortcut actually links to the UW section, someone not knowing that was the intention can only be more confused when reading the "NPOVUW" acronym, and when clicking arriving at the top of the NPOV page, where the "UW" is nowhere explained). And overall, i think NPOVUW to be a horrendous acronym, in the WP:WOTTA meaning. --Francis Schonken 21:32, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If they don't work, then delete them. I seem to remember them working in the past, but that was sometime ago. FeloniousMonk 21:38, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, at RfD now, see Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion#WP:NPOVUW → Wikipedia:Neutral point of view --Francis Schonken 22:06, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It would be nice if the software would support redirects to sections. Not for NPOVUW, but to create e.g. WP:WEIGHT. AvB ÷ talk 12:32, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Agree with AvB exactly.  NikoSilver  (T) @ (C) 20:59, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shortcuts to sections 

message: Per prior requests from the community, this discussion was moved to: User_talk:Iantresman#Moved_from_Talk:NPOV FeloniousMonk 20:03, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've had no such requests, and you have no right to remove discussion from talk pages (now restored above). You also have no right to remove the original verifiable statements from Jimbo Wales. If you remove my discussion from the Talk pages again, I will report you. If you remove verifiable quotes from the article, I will also report you. --Iantresman 20:18, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a strange discussion.  What are "verifiable" quotes?  This policy page is not an article on what Jimbo said in a specific context.  It is about a policy, and it makes sense to paraphrase Jimbo as appropriate.  The paraphrase is entirely verifiable, all we need to do is ask Jimbo if it is fair to ascribe these views to him.  In fact, the page has been in this state for quite a long time.  We should all feel fairly confident that if Jimbo felt his words were being misused, he would have made the change himself.  I repeat: this is not an article on Jimbo and the standard for verbatim quotes does not apply.  It is a policy page and what is important is wording that helps explain the policy.  Verbatim quotes would be unnecessary and inappropriate. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 00:14, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Jimbo Wales comments on NPOV Undue weight

message: I've protected the page because of the reverting, because policy pages in particular need to be stable. Let me know when you're ready to start editing again. Cheers, SlimVirgin (talk) 20:46, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Unprotected.  Revert war seems to be over, I hope. JesseW, the juggling janitor 23:29, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Page protection

message: Would you please include the interwiki for Turkish page? Since here it is protected, I can not do so myself. Thanks. (tr:Vikipedi:Tarafsız bakış açısı) -- tembelejderha 14:48, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. --Mel Etitis  (Μελ Ετητης) 22:41, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: interwiki

message: On April 22, SlimVirgin changed the 2nd sentence of the top-of-page notice from this :
:Feel free to edit the page as needed, but please make sure that changes you make to this policy really do reflect consensus before you make them.
to this:
:Please make sure that any changes you make to this policy really do reflect consensus before you make them.
Since I preferred to old version, I reverted it back.  I'm posting this notice here (and on WP:NOR and WP:V), because it seems like a better place to discuss it than the template page. Ragout 04:30, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Top-of-Page Notice 

message: I've said before I favour the notion of knowing where an editor comes from. I have listed my biases, as I understand them, about major topics on my user page. I'd not favour requiring it from every editor! It's an optional thing (I think it makes our interactions better if you know where I am coming from and vice versa but if you don't agree, no biggie) and certainly don't see the need for it anywhere else though. My concern with the above is that it seems to be more than just that although I confess I haven't parsed out what exactly. ++Lar: t/c 14:58, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, there are those issues. I think problematic cases come with every society though, and that kind of difficulty is one I'm personally willing to accept. Besides, in practise there are very few who manage to walk the fine line between disruption and useful editing so much that they don't eventually get called up for bad behaviour. In practise, it's not so much the worst cases, but the most persistent ones (which covers most of the worst ones) that get dealt with. That's fine by me, since the ones that aren't persistently disruptive stop and become good editors. — Saxifrage ✎ 22:05, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

text: WP is more like a principled republic. Policy is binding, but at the same time it is in a state of flux, trying to keep up with the community as it grows and changes. Somewhat idealistic. But still specific enough to apply to concrete cases, per mutatis mutandis. » MonkeeSage « 03:43, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Disclosure

message: Does NPOV apply to non-controversial subjects, controversial subjects, or both? --Iantresman 18:30, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: NPOV applies to all encyclopedia articles, and is "non-negotiable". (But surely you know that, it's clearly stated; so why do you ask?) Harald88 18:33, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've seen several Wiki policy statement that I thought were clearly stated, but which may be re-interpreted by other statements. So I'm double checking, to make sure I haven't missed anything. --Iantresman 19:05, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Second opinions? --Iantresman 09:09, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "On every issue about which there might be even minor dispute among experts on this subject, is it very difficult or impossible for the reader to determine what the view is to which the author adheres?" Sanger said that. If you write your fringe cosmological views into an article on not-generally-accepted-cosmologies using Sanger's statement as a guide, there's a chance they may stick. If instead you crusade as a devotee of Truth, you are sure to be viewed as pushing a point of view, and the concepts you wish to communicate will tend not to stick. Try being neutral as a tactic - it might work. Metarhyme 16:10, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that seems to be the core meaning of the Wikipedia|verifiability policy, that "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth.", and consequently, theories/ideas should not be present as absolute truths. But if a theory is not controversial, then does NPOV still apply? --Iantresman 16:37, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. The bigbangers are bound by NPOV also. You may wish to hold them to it. Metarhyme 23:27, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV and controversial subjects 

message: According to the page on POV pushing, only excluding all points of view but one, counts as "POV pushing". Does that infer that including a particular point of view (POV), in a neutral point of view style (NPOV), can not count as "POV pushing" under any circumstances? In other words, mentioning a POV is not POV pushing, otherwise any POV already mentioned in an article can be considerd POV pushing. --Iantresman 09:09, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: POV pushing

message: "But to speak seriously, the universality of an opinion is no proof, nay, it is not even a probability, that the opinion is right." (The Art of Controversy, A. Schopenhauer).
This underlines how much "common point of view" is different by "neutral point of view". The ia a hard discussion about truth into medicine (a science dealing with a complex system), and recently emerged the need for a evidence-based medicine.
In brief: when debating about NPOV, it's very important, in my opinion, to look for some evidence supporting a point of view, particularly if it is largely accepted (t.i. "not needing any proof" at a first glance). It's highly probable that such an undocumented point of view is - far from being NPOV - a received idea. Alex brollo 06:23, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe this is addressed by NPOV's companion policy of Wikipedia:Verifiability. — Saxifrage ✎ 09:52, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  From Stratagem XXX by Schopenhauer and NPOV 

message: Is this recently added sidebar  appropriate in a policy page? ≈ jossi ≈  t • @ 15:25, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: See WP:VPP#Zondor's "Bad Things" campaign, I started a  discussion there. --Francis Schonken 15:37, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Well (slighty off-topic) it looked really bad with just a border; I added a default background color ("#fff"), and an id attribute ("badThings") to the div, so it can be customized in monobook.css. I'm not really sure if it is appropriate here or not. » MonkeeSage « 23:59, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sidebar? 

message: The paragraph currently under discussion:There is another reason to commit ourselves to this policy. Namely, when it is clear to readers that we do not expect them to adopt any particular opinion, this leaves them free to make up their minds for themselves, thus encouraging intellectual independence. Totalitarian governments and dogmatic institutions everywhere might find reason to be opposed to Wikipedia, if we succeed in adhering to our non-bias policy: the presentation of many competing theories on a wide variety of subjects suggests that we, the  editors of Wikipedia, trust readers' competence to form their own opinions. Texts that present multiple viewpoints fairly, without demanding that the reader accept any one of them, are liberating. Neutrality subverts dogmatism, and nearly everyone working on Wikipedia can agree this is a good thing.is maybe the clearest instance of a Wikipedia mission statement included in a policy page.
That is, the unavoidable "mission statement" by Jimbo (user:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles) is not a policy page.
So maybe this is a question to be answered first: can/should Wikipedia policy pages include mission statement-like expressions?
My (personal) answer to this question would be: I tend to see the discussed "reasoning behind NPOV" paragraph as an explicitation and adoption into the community of Jimbo's first principle ("Wikipedia's success to date is 100% a function of our open community"). The paragraph currently under discussion makes explicit that this might conflict with the interests of less open communities, and that we shouldn't dodge awareness of such issue. So I oppose to a formulation that makes that point less transparant. Note that I don't think this should prevent a clearer formulation of the implied principle (see next subsection).
Note also that according to Jimbo's principle #6 a further discussion of this issue can and should probably best be taken to the mailing list. Would that be a good idea? --Francis Schonken 11:33, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Mission statement?

message: Couldn't we get rid of the "namely" beginning the second sentence of the discussed "reasoning behind NPOV" paragraph? I've been told that the word namely makes reading of an English text less fluent. So I'd try to get rid of that word in order to get a clearer formulation. --Francis Schonken 11:33, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Namely

message: NPOV correctly implemented would read dispassionately, in a dry analytic fashion such as: "The Chicago Police today reported that three suspects were apprehended driving a vehicle which had been reported stolen by the grand-niece of Richard Daley.", instead of "Three hoodlums were caught red-handed violating the family tranquility of the beloved Daley family. When apprehended, they were committing a felony by being in possession of stolen car and are likely guilty of many other things as well". It's really that simple. Hdtopo 05:18, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not so: it's not obliged to always use dry language - "neutral" doesn't have to be boring. ;-) Harald88 09:09, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps not dry, but I certainly would agree that it should be dispassionate. I think that passionate and POV are very nearly synonymous in this context. :-) — Saxifrage ✎ 22:07, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't you think that Jimbo is passionate about NPOV?  Characterizing passionate points of view in a "fair and balanced" manner would be doing a disservice to the topic if the passions involved were not communicated. Rfrisbietalk 22:27, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps all these talks of NPOV still have to go a long way to understand the real spirit of NPOV. I am not sure though. --Bhadani 15:04, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Wikipedia should not have any passion about a subject, though. That's what the Real World that Wikipedia documents is for. — Saxifrage ✎ 04:45, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Precisely; we are, after all, not a blog or newspaper but an encyclopedia.  We should be disinterested, even as our articles needn't to be uninteresting.  Joe 04:50, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV should be.... 

message: Following banned user Zephram Stark's attempt to rewrite WP:SOCK using two sockpuppet accounts, there is a proposal to limit the editing of policy pages either to admins, or to editors with six months editing experience and 1,000 edits to articles. Please vote and comment at Wikipedia:Editing policy pages. SlimVirgin (talk) 19:12, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal to restrict who can edit policies 

message: No it isn't: the expression POV is used by many wikipedians, but in fact it is a confusing term, often leading to a re-introduction of the "objectivity" concept, which above is dismissed for use in Wikipedia context. This can be exemplified by following quote (taken from a real Wikipedia discussion):
:[Article X is] inherent POV [...] Have moved content to the objective [Article Y] 
The confusion comes from the fact that POV can also be read as the abbreviation of "Point Of View" (which is inherently good for Wikipedia, or, at least, the basic stuff Wikipedia is made of), while many wikipedians use POV in the meaning of opposite of NPOV. Even when attempting to use the expression POV exclusively in this latter meaning, the objectivity concept appears to be lurking around the corner.
If you want to use an abbreviation that means opposite of NPOV, try any of these:
* MO - Mere Opinion
* UVO - UnVerifiable Opinion
* UFO - UnFalsifiable Opinion (resemblance to more common UFO's probably not all that bad)
* UO - Un-verifiable/falsifiable Opinion
----
... I recall it survived a few weeks or so.
The longer Wikipedia exists, the deeper-rooted the dual meaning of POV ("opposite of NPOV" - "point of view") appears to become.
But on the whole (taking the bad and the good), I don't think the use of the NPOV concept in Wikipedia is counterproductive, nor do I see any approach that demonstrably would be more successful. --Francis Schonken 12:59, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: But POV is bad, isn't it?