SuperFlanker

Since someone rudely demanded to know my real name to find a way to discredit me[1] then here it is:

José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Palacios y Blanco

esEste usuario tiene el español como lengua materna.

en-5This user can contribute with a professional level of English.

This user comes from Venezuela.

Difference between factual criticism and critical opinion

To start off and be clear I am not against critical opinion, nor do I argue its removal this is just an opinion on the differnence between the two.

Wikipedia has a stated policy that all critical opinion if referenced/verified is considered a fact about an opinion meaning that it is still an opinion but verified to be a fact that it was presented by an individual, and can therefore be included, however it also argues in WP:NPOV that it should be balanced and in WP:BLP that it cannot overwhelm the article. Understanding if an article is balanced can be a matter of quantification as opposed to perception (which may be biased) if done correctly.

To ilustrate my point I will use a sports figure as an example. Its article statements can be divided into 4 sub groups

A)Favorable opinion (praise) X player is considered by Jim Rome as the "best since Michael Jordan" [1]

B) Fact that is easily interpreted as positve X player averaged 30 ppg throught his career.[2]

C) Fact that is easily interpreted as negative X player assist to shot ratio is less than 1[3]

D) critical opinion. X player is considered by Jim Rome to be "the most selfish player ever" [4]

In orther to reach a balance only A can balance D and only B can balance C (althoug one could argue against the latter), an article filled with what is easily interpreted as negative statistics but with favorable opinion is biased for the athelete, likewise for the inverse. In order to prove that an article is biased it might be a good idea to catalog each statement into the categories above and later empirically show it.

There are also other restrictions WP:BLP also states that critical opinion cannot overwhelm the article, filling the article with the opinion of critics (even worse if they all mirror each other) is unaccceptable so in order to fullfill WP:BLP and WP:NPOV not only should critical opinion be kept to a minimum to get a point accross but positive opinion should be struck as well to provide the needed balance.Flanker 22:29, 21 August 2006 (UTC)