Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view/Archive 025

This talk page is getting really excessive...

The amount of activity on this talk page in the last couple weeks has been rather excessive to say the least. Since at least some of these are the result of content disputes being dragged to this talk page, I propose we put a notice of some sort at the top of the page saying that this is not the place for the discussion of individual content disputes, but rather the policy itself. --tjstrf 23:20, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

This is typical when individuals with personal agendas try to shape policy to better accommodate their views. If an individual or faction repeatedly hammers away at a proposed but rejected change to the point of taking over discussions on other topics and thus the page, it will at that point be obviously disruptive. Such single-minded yammering then can be removed to a subpage or a user's talk page. Should they continue to disrupt this page there's always RFC. FeloniousMonk 18:42, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I've archived the page. The previous major discussion was fruitless and getting disruptive. FeloniousMonk 18:50, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Excessive and disruptive. How? It seems that some folks actually were beginning to see that certain administrators and editors have been gaming the system for too long, and the need to mandate neutral, non-polemical language was making certain folks uncomfortable.

The Wikilawyering and misuse of the NPOV rule has been the issue.

The NPOV rule needs plain language to prevent admins/editors with visible agendas from gaming the system, and using their power to make the rule meaningless. Let's allow the system to work, instead of resorting to personal attacks against well-meaning individuals whose views make certain people ::feel threatened.

I appeal to the Wikipedia community to make the NPOV rule all that it should be, guaranteeing that even the most controversial figures and movements are treated fairly and non-polemically.

If neutrality doesn't mean what it says, then it's meaningless. Opinions in content are unavoidable no matter who includes the material, but slant and bias in included POV and language nullify the NPOV rule. Plain language is needed to keep the unscrupulous from gaming the system and undermining it.

--Pravknight 21:15, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

You are forgetting the official policy of WP:AGF. We assume the good faith of our editors, admins and bureacrats. Your comment above about "visible agendas", "gaming the system", "using their powers", "resorting to personal attacks" etc. is specious unless you have specific cases that you want to bring to the attention of the community (via the proper channels of dispute resolution, please). As for your concerns about living people being treated fairly in articles, see WP:BLP. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 21:22, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

You may want to see Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Pravknight. He's been trying to reshape policy ever since. FeloniousMonk 22:36, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I question the nuetrality of the workers at wickpedia. It seems as though the liberal media have taken over once again. The idea that this is neutal is a joke.

What's so wrong with wanting to make Wikipedia a better more credible place? Let's stop these personal attacks and discuss policy not personalities. Why are you so threatened by my desire to make Wikipedia more, professional, fair and balanced? I follow the rules based upon what I read, then you delete verifiable, sourced material when it disagrees with your agenda, such as where you said that my post undermines your opinion that Dominionism is a threat.

This is supposed to be an encyclopedia where people aren't supposed to have any agendas whatsoever.

Let's discuss the merits of policy here, and not engage in personal attacks.--Pravknight 23:01, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

"This is supposed to be an encyclopedia where people aren't supposed to have any agendas whatsoever" Sure, let us know when you're ready to start.

"Let's discuss the merits of policy here" This page isn't for discussion of "the merits of policy," but for earnest talk on adjustments and corrections. So far you've made no specific suggestions, other than the one you made at your RFC, "I vote for changing NPOV to LPOV=Left-wing points of view only. At least the policy would be honest." Do we really need to be discussing that one?

Another policy, WP:AGF requires me to "Assume that others are trying to help Wikipedia rather than harm it...". But it follows this enjoinder up with " ...unless there is clear and present evidence to the contrary." And documented in the evidence at your RFC, there's ample clear and present evidence to the contrary, hence my concern over your participation here, which others endorsing there share. FeloniousMonk 17:42, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

On the point, "let the policy and guidelines use plain language", I completely agree. If we can make it so obvious that a policy would be hard to misunderstand, we will have gone a great distance toward reducing policy discussion. Simple phrases that editors can quote to support their edits would be helpful. Clean definitions instead of erudite, hot air wiki-speak, common uses of common words will save us all a lot of discussion. Terryeo 16:45, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

The policy is already in plain English and easy to understand. What's attributed to a lack of clarity can usually be better explained by a lack of thorough reading or a want of honesty. I've been watching and participating at this page for over two years, and during that time the pattern I've seen is that those who repeatedly hammer away at this policy claiming it needs to the reformulated have largely those seeking to promote a particular viewpoint or campaign. Arguments made by our RFC'd friend here are a case in point. Most claims of this policy being unclear are simply transparent attempts to weaken or alter the policy to its detriment. Successful, credible long term contributors to the project already find this policy plainly obvious and hard to misunderstand. Of course, that has a lot of explanatory power for why they are successful over the long term. FeloniousMonk 17:29, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Good Monk, I would never agree to it being reformulated. But I do think it could be made more clear. For example, NPOV clearly states that any information used in Wikipedia must have been published, i.e. "all significant published points of view are to be presented". I have gotten into huge and ongoing disagreements over this trivial point. A point of view was unpublished, but an editor had a copy of it. I certainly don't want reformulation. But I do think it could be written for better understanding. I would present the word "published" very early and present it in the nutshell and present it often. I think problems happen because the most basic concepts are not clearly grasped. Terryeo 18:02, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

And in the instance you are referring to Terryeo, you kept attempting to force your own POV definition of "publish" into the discussion instead of the common dictionary definition. --Fahrenheit451 02:46, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I remember that discussion well, F. The Church published a book which I quoted, citing the page number, ISBN, etc. and you didn't have a copy of it. It says "lecture xyz is unpublished". You didn't have a copy of the hardbound, but had a copy of the softbound which doesn't have that chapter in it. So therefore, my information was a "FORCE !" and not a normal, good faith citation. Right, I follow your reasoning. Then my quotations and links to dictionarys too were typed onto the page with FORCE ! right, I follow your reasoning. Terryeo 08:54, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

---

I note in the above discussion, the preponderance of ad hominem fallacy rather than addressing the soundness of what the editor has written--a pattern displayed by many of the various differences of opinion above. I also note the repeated reference to WP:AGF--which judging from its use on all sides above is so ambiguously and poorly written that even explicit quotes from WP:AGF policy are used above to stifle good problem-solving ideas both by the 1) consensus editors and by those 2) who criticize the consensus position. Here again, the underlying flaw in Wikipedia policy (WP:NPOV, WP:AGF, . . . ) is that the minority view has no safe harbor for discussing--even on TalkPages--very concrete suggestions for improving the Wikipedia policy text without being hounded from the discussion by the tactics of the localized consensus faction. So how do we fix these serious flaws in Wikipedia policy text? Where--even--can serious discussions for improving Wikipedia policy text occur without the localized consensus faction breaking up the discussion? --Rednblu 17:14, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

One problem is cliques (or maybe even sockpuppets) acting in concert to intimidate dissenters, particularly on the policy pages. There is at least one such operating here. No point in naming names, you know who you are.

A favorite technique is to allege a concensus and pretend the pesky dissenter is antisocial and a definite menace to society for not agreeing with their particular POV. Some of their techniques are pretty sophisticated, if you know the game. E.g., "Good-Guy, Bad Guy", where one of the clique will pretend to befriend the pest to get him to agree with their artifactual "concensus". Another is to simply gang up until the dissentor goes away. It helps if you have a lot of time on your hands. Interestingly, Wikipedia:concensus recognizes the possibility of such concerted actions and specifically states that a decision reached by such means is "Not a concensus". Pproctor 22:36, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

---

Well said. You point to the high noise factor in the room. But the challenge, it seems to me, is to develop some team work--even in the high noise--for devising some clear and self-consistent wording for Wikipedia policy, such as WP:NPOV. I am thinking there may be some opportunity to write some good clear advice for those that the consensus calls "cranks". The advice might go something like the following.

• If the consensus repeatedly calls you a "crank," you have an increased duty to follow WP:NPA, WP:CIVIL, WP:V, and WP:RS even when you think the consensus flagrantly violates all rules. If you really do have something important to say and the consensus keeps calling you a "crank," then you must take responsibility and have compassion for the long and arduous learning it will take for the consensus to understand the WP:V and WP:RS that you present.

Something like that. I see too many good people go up the wall, as above--just because of the high noise factor in the room. What do you think? --Rednblu 07:51, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:sock puppetry sez re cliques: "It is considered highly inappropriate or unacceptable to advertise Wikipedia articles that are being debated in order to attract users with known views and bias, in order to strengthen one side of a debate. It is also considered highly inappropriate to ask friends or family members to create accounts for the purpose of giving additional support. Advertising or soliciting meatpuppet activity is not an acceptable practice on Wikipedia. On-Wikipedia canvassing should be reverted if possible." Not that this ever slowed anybody Pproctor 01:29, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

---

I am curious. What do you think is the greatest difficulty with the policy text, such as WP:NPOV text: 1) the parked "owners" of the page, such as by the mechanisms you note, or 2) the inherent difficulty of designing a clear system, or 3) something else? What do you think? --Rednblu 04:15, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

The biggest problem with the page is probably that very few people think to demonstrate a specific need for or benefit to the changes they propose. --tjstrf 04:22, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree, I think that is right. But I would add that when people do post "examples" those examples are far removed from the issue that prompts them to come to this page in the first place. Not every time, but pretty often. Terryeo 12:32, 3 October 2006 (UTC

"Appropriate Weight" loophole

"This article is about fruit, except strawberries". Does that violate any WP policies? Fourtildas 04:58, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand what you mean to ask. It is all about applied good sense, really. These many discussions and modifications are really about arriving at agreements which are just good sense, that everyone can apply, ideally, that everyone understands immediately and without difficulty. Terryeo 06:48, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

We are supposed to give appropriate weight to all aspects of the topic/subject. But if I don't want to give appropriate weight to strawberries, can I arbitrarily exclude them from the topic of "Fruit"? I could give many examples of this ploy being used in WP articles. Often the topic is not explicitly stated, or is stated in a vague and ambiguous way so it is impossible to judge whether it "gives appropriate weight to all aspects of the topic". (This is a bad example since strawberries aren't really fruit).

For example, "This article is about the country X, but excluding the aboriginal people who formerly inhabited the territory of X". There are such articles in WP. Fourtildas 05:30, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

You're bringing up USA again? That decision is necessary for stylistic reasons. As I mentioned last time, America is almost the size of Europe. Covering the history of all notable American Indian tribes in the USA article makes as much sense as covering the history of all notable European ethnic groups in the main Europe article. --tjstrf 08:29, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I didn't mention the vast USA, but how about microscopic Israel / Palestine. How would you define the topic/subject of Palestine? The best I can do is "Times and places in the Palestine geographical region when the Jewish race was not dominant". And the topic/subject of Israel: "Times and places in the Palestine geographical region when the Jewish race was dominant". (If you don't know what "race" means, look it up in a dictionary).

My point is that if we are to take the policy about "appropriate weight to all aspects of the topic/subject" seriously then we need to clearly delineate the topic/subject.

And BTW, why does it "make sense" to devote most of the article to the doings of white colonials, and hardly anything to the vast majority of (non-white) people who have lived in the region? Why is it more important to tell our readers where some Swedish or Dutch farmers settled but not mention the Indian Nations that were ethnically cleansed (or insert your favourite euphemism) to make way for them? I can read about Swedish or Dutch farmers elsewhere in WP if I'm interested. Fourtildas 06:07, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I think the undue weight principle is a giant loop hole in NPOV that can be used by the majority to censor out minority viewpoints. See Scientific issues and Undue weight in this page. --Ron Marshall 14:19, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Making necessary assumptions

Currently the section on the FAQ says:

• What about the case where, in order to write any of a long series of articles on some general subject, we must make some controversial assumptions? That's the case, e.g., in writing about evolution. Surely we won't have to hash out the evolution-vs.-creationism debate on every such page?

No, surely not. There are virtually no topics that could proceed without making some assumptions that someone would find controversial. This is true not only in evolutionary biology, but also in philosophy, history, physics, etc.

It is difficult to draw up general principles on which to rule in specific cases, but the following might help: there is probably not a good reason to discuss some assumption on a given page, if an assumption is best discussed in depth on some other page. Some brief, unobtrusive pointer might be apropos, however. E.g., in an article about the evolutionary development of horses, we might have one brief sentence to the effect that some creationists do not believe that horses (or any other animals) underwent any evolution, and point the reader to the relevant article. If there is much specific argument over some particular point, it might be placed on a special page of its own.

Should it say some thing like:

• What about the case where, in order to write any of a long series of articles on some general subject, we must make some controversial assumptions? That's the case, e.g., in writing about evolution. Surely we won't have to hash out the evolution-vs.-creationism debate on every such page?

Wikipedia policy is verifiability, not truth WP:V. If an assumption is made, it is helpful to express it. If the assumption is expressed, it is less likely that a statement will be actively contested, compared with saying something occured and not expressing the assumption. E.g., "according to evolutionary theory, the cow came into existence approximately....etc.". If necessary, several viewpoints based on different assumptions can be mentioned in this manner while retaining a neutral point of view. Remember: "Let the facts speak for themselves." In certain cases of popular non-scholarly consensus (basically most people believe something occurred) with dissident on the part of some but not all scholars, it may be helpful to give the popular consensus first (attributing it as "popular"), followed by an "if not": e.g.,"So-and-so is popularly attributed with inventing the gadget (or finding the thing or accomplishing the feat)... If this was not the case, it has been speculated that...."

In the case of a majority of consensus of scholarship on a given point, it is helpful to identify this consensus. E.g., in an article about the origin of an specific animal, the article would explain that the majority of biologists (or other scholars) have concluded (or believe, or profess, or teach, or publicly hold) that the approximate origin of a certain species was approximately ____ million years ago. In this case, it is unnecessary to explain creationist or religious views of the origin of an animal (views which can be explained on articles about creationist and religious theory) unless it specifically applies to that animal (such as with a cow, the Christian origin would be unnecessary, but if the Hindu origin was that cows were the original rulers of the earth before humans, this would be significant--I doubt Hindus believe that but hopefully you get the point). It also makes it unnecessary to engage in a controversy as to the precise date among scholars (in the case of the evolution of an animal species, precise dates as to the origin of a species would be rare) unless it is necessary to make such a delineation. Although the actual origin of an animal may be contested (any references Wikipedia can use were only written within the past 10,000 years at most), it is highly unlikely that the fact that there is a "majority consensus of scholars" on a topic will be disputed unless there is a significant number of scholars who believe (or profess, teach, etc.) otherwise. In this case it may be important to include this different scholarly viewpoint. If this is done, it may be helpful to include the approximate percentages of scholars who hold such a view (such as: at the US National Council of Biology in May of 2005, a poll of 4000 of the leading biologists was conducted in which 74% of biologists attending professed that the cow and the horse were more closely related by evolution than the horse and the giraffe, 19% professed that the giraffe and horse were more closely related by evolution than the horse and cow, and 7% professed that that all three species were of equal evolutionary distance from one another--this is not the true, but just an example for lack of another right now).

I did an awful job of it (and I would never want this used in its current form!) I will check back later.JBogdan 12:33, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that a large expose about another policy belongs in this policy. Apart of that, I think that you're right that reference must be made to WP:V. Harald88 21:15, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

should we be prefer the information from "secondary" sources over that of "primary" sources?

Recently the following sentence was added to WP:NOR:

Articles which draw predominantly on primary sources are generally discouraged, in favor of articles based predominantly on secondary sources

IMO that sentence not only doesn't belong there as it even may cause conflict with WP:NPOV as well as WP:V. Please comment on its Talk page [1]

I have a hard time taking this subtle distinction seriously, since so many "sources" quoted in WP are the opinionated ramblings of "Some guy on the internet" - the reader has no way of knowing even if they are fact or fiction. I don't understand why we don't require peer reviewed sources. Give an example of something that can't make it into the peer reviewed literature but should be in WP. All that garbage that "some people believe", I guess. Fourtildas 06:31, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

You may want to read the NOR policy (WP:NOR)on that: no rambling internet guys are allowed as source on Wikipedia, except of course to verify (WP:V} a relevant claim about the existence of such sources.

IOW, that is moot, beside the point. Harald88 20:06, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

well, Fourtildas, I think you're right. I think that WP:V or WP:RS should develop a priority of reference, spelling out from strongly preferred to weakly allowed to borderline and finally, "below our reliablility threshold". Of course peer reviewed would be well up such a list and all of our articles would gravitate toward those kind of sources. But without such a list, it is all hit and miss, cut and poke (or whatever you call it). Terryeo 03:45, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

That's already well explained in the policies, see above. Harald88 20:06, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

You don't need "such a list". The academic world operates on a few simple principles. I will think for a few weeks and explain what they are. But here is my first draft:

(1)There is the notion of "the literature". The academic world doesn't care what you say in letters to the editor or talk shows but if you publish in "the literature" you have to defend your facts and logic. If someone points out flaws in your facts or logic and you can't defend it this must be mentioned by other publications in "the literature".

Thank you for your confidence in me. I don't think I need such a list but there are times when I have questions about which source is more reliable. Perhaps the word should be "reputable", I'm not sure. One of the elements is, with the internet, we have a very wide range of reliability. From newgroups, to blogs, to google personal pages, to paid for IPs which host a personal website, to very reliable sites. I don't think it would hurt us to at least have a priority list which spells out that "attributed legal responsibility" (of a source) says the source is more reliable than an attributed website, which in turn is more reliable than an unattributable website. Terryeo 23:12, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

(2) In WP we have a distinction between "new research" and quoting sources. In the academic world there is a distinction between raw data (eg. ancient writings of questionable provenance) and scholarly writing (which is subject to criticism and needs to be defended by the author). I will compare and contrast these in future ramblings. [unsigned apparently by Fourtildas - Harald88 20:11, 27 September 2006 (UTC)]

What I'm trying to get across is that the Peer Reviewed Literature provides a way to see if anyone has pointed out flaws (you can look up a paper in the Citation Index). But if I see a WP article sourced to the Bible or some propaganda pamphlet or Alice in Wonderland, how do I know which is fact or fiction? We should require that a source be an actual person who has studied the Bible or some propaganda pamphlet or Alice in Wonderland and published hir conclusions in some forum where comments and criticisms can be tracked. Material like " the Bible or some propaganda pamphlet or Alice in Wonderland" should be considered "Raw Data" and analysis of it should be considered "Original Research". Fourtildas 06:39, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Dispassionate narrative

I read this phrase in an Wikipedian's essay somewhere (help out if it rings a bell) about the best manifestation of an NPOV tone is one that is dispassionate and not appearing emotionally involved with the subject. Much to my suprise, this point is not really incorporated into the current guideline. (Though it is somewhat alluded to in the line that NPOV is "neither sympathetic nor in opposition to its subject." and in Karada's Sadam Hussein quote ) All in all the guideline is currently "conflict-driven" in how it presents itself, as if an NPOV tone is only used in articles where there is an inherent conflict between views (ala Abortion). But in practice, I think it is more of a matter of what is an encyclopedic tone--regardless if there is a conflict present. I think the phrase "Dispassionate narrative" conveys this point well and I would like to see it included in the guideline as a way of describing what an encyclopedic, NPOV tone would be. Would there be consensus for this inclusion? Agne 00:09, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

"Dispassionate narrative" or "Dispassionate, encyclopedic narrative" communicate the idea of presenting information without emotional heat. Possibly, in an encyclopedia created purely by scholars the other end of the spectrum would manifest. That is to say, the thing could be so dry and encyclopedic as to be colorless and uninteresting. But here, with thousands of editors, that possibility seems remote in the extreme. Therefore YES ! Terryeo 00:34, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't think we could ever get to the point of being so dry as to be colorless. However, we do tend to swing quite easily to the other end of the spectrum with a lot of emotional writing. I always cringe when I see an article with exclamation points (talk pages excluded, of course :p) or the word "actually" in it. Agne 00:53, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

LOL ! Terryeo 03:42, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Mmmhm. Nobody can truly write an article (not even a whole bunch of scholars!) that is 100% free of emotion. It is not humanly possible. The thing is that any emotionality in the article should not lead to significant biases that would degrade the encyclopedicity (is that a real word?) of it. 70.101.147.224 05:49, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Nutshells

This issue is unfortunately being simultaneously discussed in various parallel places, including the respective policy Talk pages as well as here. I think that since the nutshells are clearly the status quo, regardless of how we got there, it makes sense to discuss this issue on a site-wide basis before acting. Personally, I think that nutshells are an extremely useful vehicle for a newcomer to get up to speed quickly. Speaking as a recent newcomer, following the nut icons and crispy graphical box in the policy pages played an important role in helping me quickly get an overall picture of the WP policies. I think losing this important benefit would make life harder on future newcomers and would hurt WP; I would like to be absolutely sure we all understand the consequences and agree to the change, if any, with a wide margin consensus. Thanks, Crum375 19:26, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I would rather see well written first paragraphs. Nutshells aren't wrong, but well written first paragraphs present themselves to the eye of the reader in the same way. And they can contain the same information. Almost every damn page is developing some head template of special meaning. Warnings, alerts, and other things which a person has to wade through before they begin to read about what they came to read about. Let's drop the nutshells and make the first paragraph do the work. In several cases both the nutshell and the first paragraph say almost the same thing, anyway. Terryeo 18:46, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think one contradicts the other. I think we need both good nutshells and good intros. I think they often serve different functions. For the people (mostly newcomers) following the graphical 'nut icons' on their path to quickly learning the ropes, we need to have good (i.e. contain the bare essentials, short and to the point) nutshells. To those with a bit more time and/or patience, the intros have to do a good job introducing the topics to be discussed. Yes, they often overlap, but not necessarily, and in any case they are both important, each in each own right. Crum375 19:09, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Why are you assuming that newcomers need Fisher Price toys? —Centrx→talk • 19:38, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I know for myself, having been a newcomer only recently, that following the clearly visible 'nut' icon and the nutshell boxes helped me get up to speed quickly on the many policies and guidelines, and in general made my learning experience easier. I would like future newcomers to have that same advantage. Crum375 20:16, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

• Tangentially related question... it is apparent to me that many novice users (by which I mean nobody in particular) have several misconceptions of how Wikipedia works. At first glance, the cause of this is the fact that we have way too many policy and guideline pages, and of course the prime fallacy of such pages is assuming that people will read them all. So, assuming that we can't make everybody read everything, and we can't actually get consensus to delete half of them (a fair assumption), how would you propose giving a better wikeducation to newbies? >Radiant< 22:45, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree with your assuptions; we do have a messy designed-by-committee-camel type of policy/guideline structure. And it is tough for newbies to digest, and it does eat up valuable time - for them to learn, for the more experienced ones to teach, and for unfortunately a lot of unnecessary arguments and misunderstandings too. Obviously we need a big simplification, although I think the current WP:5P is a good start, and helped me a lot. The problem is that following 5P you end up very quickly in a maze, and then you discover a lot of inconsistencies, redundancies etc. - not fun, as a newbie especially.

One idea: I think we can have a kind of a 'newcomer path' - like various walking/biking sight-seeing trails in various locales. Like a special color icon with 'next' and 'previous' that the newbie can follow, that takes him/her just to the crucial items (like the 5P), ignoring the more esoteric stuff. The current nutshells could be part of that; we can have, for example, a 'nutshell tour' or 'follow the nuts' - kind of a quick policy tutorial. Any thoughts? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Crum375 (talk • contribs)

• Hm. My first aim would be to remove the inconsistencies (please point out any that you see). I've been meaning to prune all policy/guideline pages to remove excess verbosity, but doing so would cause a big hassle on most p/g pages when people think it "hasn't been properly discussed". I'm afraid that a newcomer path would still be a large amount of texts that novice users cannot reasonably be expected to read. I think the "basic" stuff is fine, and novices usually get that; it's the "moderate" stuff that people get confused about, because by then they aren't reading {{welcome}} any more and tend to have made a lot of assumptions on how Wikipedia ought to work, even if it doesn't. >Radiant< 23:27, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Desperate help needed at the Black people article! Please get involved!!

This article is an absolute mess. It provides no coherent well sourced definition of a Black person and just rambles on and on about various people who were labled Black in different times, places, and languages, and tries to merge them all together as a coherent ethnic group. It would be like trying to merge Native Americans and people from India into a coherent article called Indian people. It makes no sense. We had requested mediation and the mediator said we should use the census as our source. Here's what the U.S. census says:

A Black is “ a person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa. It includes people who indicate their race as "Black, African Am., or Negro,"or provide written entries such as African American, Afro American, Kenyan, Nigerian, or Haitian.”

Black Africa is a synonym of sub-Saharan Africa and all of the non-African groups mentioned (i.e. African-Americans, Haitains) are descendents of the recent African diasporas. And yet we still have editors insisting that South Asians be given equal weight in the article and be considered Black. These people provide no cited definitions or census classifications to defend their assertions, instead they cherry pick from different sources in different countries for examples of South Asians being labeled Black, often in different languages. But by the same logic, I could argue that the Black Irish are Black. The point is the people editing that article need to be forced to adheare to a coherent sourced authoritative definition of a Black person, or the entire article should just be deleted as POV and unencyclopedic.

Dictionary.com[[2]], the free dictionary online[[3]]., the U.S. census[[4]], and the British census[[5]] all emphasize the idea that Blacks are of African origin-in fact it is against the law for a dark-skinned person of South Asian or Australian origin to claim to be black in the census. An article by the BBC makes a clear distinction between Blacks and the dark skinned people of South Asian ancestry[[6]]. This article about race in biomedicines says “The entities we call ‘racial groups’ essentially represent individuals united by a common descent — a huge extended family, as evolutionary biologists like to say. Blacks, for example, are a racial group defined by their possessing some degree of recent African ancestry (recent because, after all, everyone of us is out of Africa, the origin of Homo sapiens)."[[7]]. I really need help getting the editors of that article to stick to a coherent definition, instead of just pushing their own POV. Editingoprah 06:16, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

An early subtitled paragraph in the article presented a narrowly used information about black people (other uses) and I cut it out of there and pasted it near the end section of the article where it is more appropriate. good luck. Terryeo 18:41, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Suggested NPOV language borrowed from sister Wiki

What do you all think of the following language borrowed from the Orthodox Wiki? I was thinking it could be modified for Wikipedia's use: "OrthodoxWiki will be, so far as is reasonably possible, worded from a neutral point of view (NPOV). That is, disputes between Orthodox Christian groups will be characterized and described rather than entered into."--Pravknight 03:41, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Antireligious bias

What do you think about adding a provision regarding antireligious bias to the NPOV rule? Hostility to religion is every bit as much of a form of bigotry as is religious bigotry against other religions or atheism for that matter.

I think allowing antireligious biases undermines Wikipedia's neutrality. --Pravknight 03:56, 5 October 2006 (UTC) So does pro-religious bias. No need to specify further. Septentrionalis 05:29, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

It's necessary to demonstrate Wikipedia's absolute neutrality, such that anti-religious people can't get a pass for pressing their bigotry. I think it needs to be explicit. Saying religious biases aren't allowed, but anti-religious biases are allowed undermines the spirit of the NPOV doctrine. Bigotry is bigotry, plain and simple.

Considering the rise of anti-religious bigotry in Western Europe and North America, I say it's imperative to keep the playing field level. We should talk about issues, but never in a tone that advocates those issues. I find it fascinating how anti-religious people rationalize their bigotry (antipathy) to religion as neutrality. Taking a stance against religion is hardly neutral.

Glad to hear that. I believe that thunder is caused by Thor dropping his saucepans. Do my beliefs get equal time? (and BTW, AFAIK, western Europe is SECULAR).

But I think there are separate issues here: We are not supposed to advocate particular races, religions or nationalities. But is it OK to say that people are "white" or "negro" or "Caucasian" or Muslim or Xian. That is not "Racist" according to WP policy. Whatever. But if somebody blows up a truckload of explosives in Oklahoma we don't mention his race or religion. Fourtildas 08:15, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

However, not everyone is secular, and sensitivity should be exercised in the tone or in expressing a hostility to religion. If something is based in verifiable fact about a sect or person, such that the editors do not become a voice advocating any particular side in a sotry, fine.

I love secularists. (I'm speaking generally and not attacking you personally, so don't take this as such)

I fervently believe in the spirit of toleration of various religious perspectives per my American ideals, but I don't believe secularists believe in toleration in the same vein in the other direction. Actions speak louder than words.

Many Secularists are every bit as bigoted as the Ku Klux Klan, the Nazis or Al-Qaeda when it comes to traditional Christianity, Judaism or other religions. Allowing anti-religious bigotry gives religious people

who do not believe in imposing the draconian penalties of the Book of ::Leviticus, killing people or blowing people up the impression that Wikipedia hates them. I challenge the secular editors to be truly inclusive of religious people, because how is intolerance of religion any different than religious intolerance of other religions or unbelief?

Chesterton once put it this way, "There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions." - ILN, 1/13/06 [8]

I believe all perspectives should be included, such that they do not degenerate into being polemics. Let's talk about disputes and not enter into them personally. That's all I'm asking. Hate is hate, whether the person is religious or secular. I respect opposing views, but I object to making it seem that Wikipedia has an axe to grind against religion--Christianity in particular. See the suggested addition I posted above--Pravknight 14:41, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

What I'm after is clarity to prevent room for Wikilawyering.--Pravknight 05:40, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Can't you just work it into the point on religious bias? We don't need a seperate bullet for it when we can just add ", as well as bias against religion." onto the end of the current sentence. --tjstrf 15:50, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I've removed it. This provision is too easy to game and misuse. All one has to do to exclude content that runs counter to their ideological bent is to make a specious claim that it is biased against their religious views, something the nom here has been trying to disruptively do for over a month. FeloniousMonk 05:27, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes reasonable opposition to the openly-stated secular goals of religious groups who politicise their particular belief system (e.g., on abortion or "Creation Science") is unfairly categorized as "antireligious bias". Such religious groups can't have it both ways-- It is like killing your parents and then asking for mercy because you are now an orphan. Pproctor 15:58, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

NPOV obviously does apply to anti-religious bias, specifying it is simply a formality. It wouldn't be any more gameable than any other NPOV clause. (Take nationalistic bias, you know how often that one is thrown around over trivial issues?) Wanting to eliminate the possibility for abuse is a noble enough goal, but there is nothing about this particular clause that would make it any more gameable than any other clause. --tjstrf 16:09, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

1) It is not "antireligous" to limit science pages to science. I.e. stuff that is falsifiable. By definition, religion is not falsifiable. Main-stream religion has no problems with this, since otherwise (e.g.) there is no room for "faith". There is also St. Augustines injunction that religious doctrime must not conflict with science, lest beleivers be held to ridicule.

2) That said, it is true that a few editors are quick to hammer anything or anyone that might support (say) creationism. Ran into this when I attempted to inject a little NPOV into the biography of Raymond Damadian. I was immediatedly accused of "vandalism" and of being a "creationist" and had my postings on other pages vandalized. Laughable-- in fact, I am well known in evolutionary circles, having discovered one of the few examples of classic Darwinian evolution in humans [9]. Not everyone gets the final word in an issue raised by JBS Haldane. But a few misguided true-beleivers does not equate to a systemic antireligious bias. Pproctor 14:04, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Scientific Issues

I have a problem with the following text:

Undue weight applies to more than just viewpoints. Just as giving undue weight to a viewpoint is not neutral, so is giving undue weight to other verifiable and sourced statements. An article should not give undue weight to any aspects of the subject, but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to its significance to the subject. Note that undue weight can be given in several ways, including, but not limited to, depth of detail, quantity of text, prominence of placement, and juxtaposition of statements.

None of this is to say that tiny-minority views cannot receive as much attention as we can give them on pages specifically devoted to them. Wikipedia is not paper. But even on such pages, though a view may be spelled out in great detail, it should not be represented as the truth.

From Jimbo Wales, paraphrased from this post from September 2003 on the mailing list: If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts; If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents; If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it does not belong in Wikipedia (except perhaps in some ancillary article) regardless of whether it is true or not; and regardless of whether you can prove it or not. In other words, views held only by a tiny minority of people should not be represented as though they are significant minority views, and perhaps should not be represented at all.

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.

I think this approach is just plain wrong in the case of scientific issues. The reality check of science is experiment. Cold fusion for example has had a bad press. However two Noble prize winners in physics, Julian Schwinger and Brian Josephson, have condemed the scientific establishment for its treatment of cold fusion research. Also a large body of cold fusion experiments has been performed by hundreds of scientists. Yet in the case of the Wikipedia cold fusion article we have people trying to suppress the presentation of experimental evidence saying that since it is an encyclopedia is does not have to be accurate or balanced. I think this kind of thing could happen in any new or controversial science.

This has caused a fight that has lasted for years. It would help if there were clear guidelines against suppressing experimental evidence. A guideline requiring separate sections for different points of view would also reduce a lot of the conflict.--Ron Marshall 17:18, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

How can you not name the prominent adherents, reliably cite their views, etc. on cold fusion as with any other subject? I don't think this requires a policy change.

Your second suggestion is basically POV forks lite, and not permissable. --tjstrf 17:24, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

My point is you can't do those things you say because some one will delete them. All the same standards would hold in all sections. The problem is line by line fights waste everybodies time.--Ron Marshall 17:33, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Undue Weight

I deleted some undue weight lines because I have seen the concept abused and I think it offers a license for abuse. --Ron Marshall 17:34, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Reverted; no consensus on this, and removing it would give the cranks free rein. Septentrionalis 18:30, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I admit I did not have consensus on this subject and I am not surprised it was reverted. I am in an on going fight in the cold fusion article with people are abusing the undue weight concept to practice scientific censorship and I am losing patience with abuse of the undue weight concept. I was hoping that deleting the worst text I might stimulate some interest in the issue.

The problem is the undue weight concept opens up a giant loop hole in the NPOV concept for the majority to practice suppression of minority viewpoints. This is especially ridiculous in science where experimental evidence is being treated as the views of an insignificant minority.--Ron Marshall 14:12, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

An example from an arbitration case

I am currently working on Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Kven. This case involves a user who advances a speculative linguistic and historical theory which has had some circulation in the popular press. I have proposed the following principle:

Appropriate weight for speculative theories

"2) It is said in Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Undue_weight that "...the article on the Earth only very briefly refers to the Flat Earth theory...". Indeed, when consulted, it did contain the following language:

In the past there were varying levels of belief in a flat Earth, but ancient Greek philosophers and, in the Middle Ages, thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas believed that it was spherical. A 19th-century organization called the Flat Earth Society advocated the even-then discredited idea that the Earth was actually disc-shaped, with the North Pole at its center and a 150 foot (50 m) high wall of ice at the outer edge. It and similar organizations continued to promote this idea, based on religious beliefs and conspiracy theories, through the 1970s. Today, the subject is more frequently treated tongue-in-cheek or with mockery.

By linking to flat Earth, the possibility of extensive treatment of a generally discredited theory is contemplated,

None of this is to say that tiny-minority views cannot receive as much attention as we can give them on pages specifically devoted to them. Wikipedia is not paper. But even on such pages, though a view may be spelled out in great detail, it should not be represented as the truth.

The question of how to treat speculative linguistic or historical theories which have found some traction in popular imagination is not specifically addressed, but considering the purpose of NPOV to permit fair representation of all significant view points, and considering the flat earth example, it would seem that they should be briefly mentioned and put into perspective in articles which rely on mainstream scientific sources, and only fully explicated in separate articles which clearly identify them as speculative.

Please note that Wikipedia:Neutral point of view as written does not adequately address the question of how to treat instances where one point of view has overwhelming academic support while the other viewpoint is speculative, or held only in popular culture."

What do you think? Adequate treatment or "making it up as you go along"? Fred Bauder 18:39, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

---

Should not the court from the live controversy fashion some well-defined safe harbor suitable for the fact pattern? That is, wouldn't the trade-offs in that linguistic case suggest some concrete and more useful combination of WP:V and WP:RS, even if only from publications in the popular press? Such a safe harbor would comply with the current policy text that the consensus keeps taking away from "the crank" with an accusation of POV-fork. The policy text now reads: "We should not attempt to represent a dispute as if a view held by a small minority deserved as much attention as a majority view, and views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views." (emphasis added). But that formulation provides no actual NPOV because it is too malleable by the whim of a localized consensus faction. Just ideas. What do you think? --Rednblu 20:16, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I think the place to define a safe harbor is here. What I have proposed is just a kludge to deal with a particular situation. The problem has general implications though. Fred Bauder 20:30, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

We need to settle the issue of mainstream scientific theories which are being challenged by minorities who charge that their ideas are being ignored due to non-scientific reasons. The Global warming theory has politics and economics all through it. An even harder case, the Theory of Evolution has metaphysics, methodology and religion mixed deeply with politics.

I'd like to see a Wikipedia which takes no sides on scientific, religious, political or economic controversies. We should simply report what each side says, as in the formula X says Y about Z.

If a view is marginal or a tiny minority, we can indicate the degree of support it has with polls or surveys. The oft-mentioned Flat earth theory has, IIRC, only about 200 advocates worldwide (none prominent). Global warming theory opponents include a prominent MIT professor, a Harvard astronomer, a past president of the National Academy of Sciences, and the man who got the satellites going that measure atmospheric temperature. Evolution is a tough nut, because it's even more of an emotional issue than genocide.

Let's clarify the policy, so that contributors can't cite "undue weight" as grounds for deleting information which runs counter to the mainstream on such controversies. The fact that someone disagrees with the majority is usually important, and the reasoning they give is interesting to our readers. --Uncle Ed 20:42, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Polls or surveys? Yes let's indicate that 50% of Americans are so uneducated as to believe that humans and dinosaurs coexisted or that 20% still think the bloody sun goes round the earth. Vox populi saepe, si non sempre, falsus est. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 23:59, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Your faction keeps bringing up this point, apparently to change the subject. I'm not talking about determining whether the Theory of Evolution is right, but about reporting who thinks it's right (or wrong).

If the POV of some pro-evolution advocates is that opposition to the Theory of Evolution stems from being uneducated, then that POV should be included in any relevant article. But it should labelled clearly as a POV. We should not state it as a fact (as you did), because that would be Wikipedia:POV pushing, which (I think you'll agree) we should avoid. --Uncle Ed 16:01, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Obviously, "That opposition to the theory stems from being uneducated" is a POV and one which is easily disproved. So it should be admitted and countered, not censored. Some quite well-educated people beleive all sorts of crazy things, as the case of Raymond Damadian illustrates.Pproctor 04:46, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

The public does not define what is and isn't science, those practicing science do. Your arguing about relevance, not undue weight. Despite being explained to him quite a number of times, a distinction Ed has repeatedly either failed to understand or willfully ignored is that if the subject of a topic claims to be valid science, as does certain forms of creationism, then the relevant viewpoint as to whether it is actually science or not is clearly the scientific community's, not the general public's. WP:NPOV#Undue_weight clearly and unambiguously tells us that "...the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints ..., and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each." In which case the relevant significant viewpoints would be those claiming to be performing "science," and those actually performing science in receiving the claim. The position of the public on the matter runs a very distant third at best. Meaning raising the issue of polls of public opinion to assert that public opinion is more significant on matters of science than that of the scientific community due to the large numbers of the public holding a particular view is a red herring and particularly bad logic. It's also a transparent gambit to represent a marginally relevant viewpoint as more significant and relevant than it actually is. Furthermore, NPOV also provides for the situation where the scientific community considers those to be making such claims to be practicing pseudoscience, again, as with several forms of creationism: In such instances WP:NPOVFAQ#Pseudoscience kicks in: "The task before us is not to describe disputes as though, for example, pseudoscience were on a par with science; rather, the task is to represent the majority (scientific) view as the majority view and the minority (sometimes pseudoscientific) view as the minority view; and, moreover, to explain how scientists have received pseudoscientific theories. This is all in the purview of the task of describing a dispute fairly." FeloniousMonk 05:13, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Scince is not defined by practicing scientists, at least ideally -- what is "science" or not ideally should be indepedent of what people think. Instead, it is determined by what follows this thing called the "scientific method". Things that do not conform to or are based on scientific methodology are not science -- they are "non-science". If non-scientific "theories" claim to be scientific, then they are "pseudo-science". Summed up:

• Science: something that conforms to/uses the scientific method
• Non-science: something that does not use or conform to the scientific method
• Pseudo-science: non-science that claims to be science.

See? Also, I noticed that the page says "majority (scientific) view", even though a majority view may not necessarily be scientific -- remember the times when the Church condemned science? Maybe most of the time nowadays it is scientific, but this is not a certainty. 170.215.83.83 23:27, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, "science" is just an ad hoc tool kit. What defines "science" is whether something is falsifiable or not, not popular or professional opinion. That is, is there an experiment or observation I can make that might disprove it. Stated simply, falsifiability depends on the existance of "observables". Quite simple really. Anything else is not science. This includes anything that depends upon some supernatural process. So all views that are falsifiable should be admitted. Pproctor 23:43, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. I am thinking. Somehow the facts and tradeoffs of the live controversy are not considered in the edit war over the policy text here. Perhaps, an occasional statement of the "puzzle" as you have given us above would be helpful for us in the future as well. What do others see here? --Rednblu 20:44, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't it seem that whether or not a page on a minority view should be kept or deleted is more of an issue of verifiability and notability, not neutrality? 170.215.83.83 23:24, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think Fred's question on providing for accomodation of speculative notions relate as much to undue weight as it does to Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/FAQ#Pseudoscience. Currently Wikipedia:Neutral point of view as written does indeed adequately address the question of how to treat instances where a point of view has overwhelming academic support while a speculative viewpoint, though popular in popular culture, is rejected, see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/FAQ#Pseudoscience. It says: "If we're going to represent the sum total of human knowledge, then we must concede that we will be describing views repugnant to us without asserting that they are false. Things are not, however, as bad as that sounds. The task before us is not to describe disputes as though, for example, pseudoscience were on a par with science; rather, the task is to represent the majority (scientific) view as the majority view and the minority (sometimes pseudoscientific) view as the minority view; and, moreover, to explain how scientists have received pseudoscientific theories. This is all in the purview of the task of describing a dispute fairly."

Undue weight has been a traditional target here of those promoting pro-pseudoscience views, but that should not be viewed as evidence that the provision is flawed, rather that it is working. The argument that is to "too malleable" is specious: Why speculative/pseudoscientific views need a "safe harbor"? From a "localized consensus faction" accusing innocent editors creating POV-forks and labeling them "cranks"? No. The current undue weight provision has stood the test of time, is easily understood and taken with other provisions, provides sufficient opportunity for speculative viewpoints to be presented fairly, in their own articles. FeloniousMonk 20:47, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm with FM here; what he have here is working well, and this would open up a can of worms to any insignificant POV one could imagine. Jayjg ^(talk) 20:59, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

The undue weight provision is an important one, otherwise we'll end up with Holocaust deniers needing a mention in Holocaust, and the views of white supremacists in Black people. The difference is whether the alternative views are held by a significant published minority, or a tiny one. If the latter, they should not be mentioned, except in an article of their own, and even then with caution. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 21:03, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

• Holocaust denial is rightly mentioned in the article on the Holocaust, not because it is supported or condoned, but because it is a well-known, verifiable minority view of which there are numerous sources.
• White supremacists are also mentioned in the article on Black people for the same reason.
• Of course the Nazi deniers themselves, nor the White supremacists, are given the opportunity to give their personal view as it is excluded by No Original Research, and no comment without reliable sources. --Iantresman 21:32, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I think SV's comment shows a fundamental misunderstanding of undue weight. SlimVirgin and FM seem to think the purpose of U.W. is to keep out unpopular or obnoxious views. However, NPOV requires such views to be in articles. Not only do we have a lengthy article on Holocaust denial but over 500 words of the 16,000-word Holacaust article describe this POV.

We include it not because we believe it or disbelieve it, but rather because it is a significant minority view.

I wonder what SV thinks will happen if Holocaust deniers need a mention in Holocaust - because (1) they already do need a mention and (2) their viewpoint (or "POV") takes up 3.4% of the article. --Uncle Ed 16:11, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Might we consider the real quandaries of a live controversy here? We should not evaluate policy text in a vacuum, would you agree? Where in Wikipedia on any 1) summary page or 2) minority stand-alone page is a safe harbor for the following NPOV summary of the significant published views of geomorphologist Arthur N. Strahler?

• "In discussing the nature of science [earlier in the book], I took the position that no theory or important scientific hypothesis should be described as 'a fact.' Quite apart from the reasons I gave for this preference is a reason applying to public relations between mainstream scientists and nonscientists. The arrogance displayed by the claim of fact --absolute truth, that is -- incites resistance in a substantial sector of the public and can easily generate hostility toward the scientific community." According to Strahler, if the scientific community deals with pseudoscience in a heavy-handed manner, the detailed attack and ridicule likely polarizes "a substantial sector of the general public against mainstream science," such as by inducing in the general public a "pseudoscience cultism" (Strahler 1999, p. 329).

I offer this just as one example of the need for a NPOV safe harbor. --Rednblu 21:13, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia has no interest in creating "safe harbors" for anyone, whether science or not. We report in an accurate an NPOV fashion. Whether there is some general problem about the general public having issues with mainstream science is a general education problem and policy problem with little concern for us. We are trying to write an encyclopedia, not alter the general perception. Furthermore, if anything, being unreasonably sympathetic to pseudoscience would create further polarization and anti-science problems. So this wouldn't even accomplish what your claims it would even if it were Wikipedia's job to do so. The current policy works very well. Weakening this policy would also if anything reduce the already small level of credibility Wikipedia has. JoshuaZ 21:23, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

There are at least two fundamental problems with the idea of weakening undue weight in the case of "speculative theories" (which, let's face it, is often a weasel term for junk science). The first of these is verifiability. Few, if any, "speculative theories" can be properly addressed in neutral terms because they are not accepted for publication in the scientific journals, and therefore are not debated in the independent secondary sources which we rely on. The only sources tend to be their proponents on one side and websites and blogs on the other. This is precisely the problem we had with Aetherometry, where enormously diligent work was done by several people in authortiatively rebutting the nonsense, to the point where Wikipedia was the leading resource rebutting it, but ultimately it was original research and if it was removed the balance gave undue weight to a theory which had been soundly ignored by the scientific community (see AfD). The other fundamental problem is that NPOV is non-negotiable, and allowing "speculative theories" is negotiating away NPOV in order to accommodate the promotion of crank theories which are currently unacceptable; we are trading away a core principle of Wikipedia in order to make it easier to use the project as a soapbox (which, by consensus, it is not). Those "speculative theories" which are addressed in reliable secondary sources, as described above, are already covered and can be described in a degree of detail which is appropriate to its significance and likely interest. Good-faith editorial diagreements over undue weight are usually resolved amicably, it's only when barrows are being pushed that we see people disputing the validity of the undue weight provision. Joshua's point is precisely correct: the supposed "safe harbour" is just another word for a soapbox. Guy 21:32, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

But whether or not a crank theory can be included cannot be judged solely on it's crank-ness (and you seem to imply it by the statement "and allowing "speculative theories" is negotiating away NPOV in order to accommodate the promotion of crank theories which are currently unacceptable" -- which suggests that you are saying crank theories deserve deletion due to crank-ness alone), but instead must be judged on whether or not it has enough notability, verifiability, etc. to be able to make a neutral article. THAT is why the article Aetherometry was deleted -- because it could not live up to those important WP policies, NOT simply because it was "crank". The deletion policies do not say "delete all articles about crank theories" -- they say "delete all unsourced, unverifiable, irretrievably biased articles" on crank theories, actually, on anything for that matter. 170.215.83.83 05:51, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

In response to Rednblu, why do people always claim that Wikipedia needs to do X because it would be "for the greater societal good", or in this case, beneficial to science? That's not our job. Wikipedia is not here to promote societal change of any type except an increase in the free flow of knowledge online. --tjstrf 21:47, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

In case any of you missed it, Nature published the following yesterday:

"The current incarnation of Wikipedia is both phenomenally successful and, in the eyes of some critics, fundamentally flawed. The online encyclopaedia now includes more than a million entries in English alone. Although anyone can edit any article, its accuracy, at least on science topics, is surprisingly high. But Wikipedia has never given experts special standing when it comes to determining content. And that, critics say, deters the people who ought to be contributing from doing so."

"Just how big a drawback that is will now be tested, with the launch of an online encyclopaedia that will give privileged status to scientists and other experts. Citizendium, a pilot version of which is due to go live in the next week, will use all of Wikipedia's content but will host it at another website (http://citizendium.org) and edit it differently. Editors with appropriate academic qualifications will have the power to settle disputes about wording, for example, and stamp articles they perceive to be accurate as 'approved'."

It would appear that there is rather strong support for applying appropriate weight for speculative theories in some places. Williamborg (Bill) 05:18, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

References

About damn time. And might even encourage more experts to come-on-board Wikipedia. Nupedia didn't work because it was far too combersome to get all those experts together. Scraping Wikipedia and then using experts to verify and spiff up as needed will correct a lot of the problems and frustrations here. BTW, "Expertise" is not all those damn-fool degrees and diplomas. It is Experience. Pproctor 04:46, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

The Wikipedia cold fusion article is an example where editors have used the undue weight policy to censor out experimental evidence. This seems strange because in science experimental evidence has the most weight. It seems to me unjustified censorship is not consistent either with NPOV or science. What is the justification for censoring out experimental evidence on a scientific subject that is already acknowledged as controversial. Applying the term pseudoscience to people who are practicing the scientific method is both an insult and a lie. The case of cold fusion is in some ways a unique problem and in some ways not so unique a problem. First cold fusion is a scientific issue and the rules of science should apply. We should be open to people who are practicing the scientific method. It should be recognized that experiment is the reality check of science, not real or imagined expertise or committees. For example Einstein was an expert on general relativity, having created the theory. However he falsely believed that black holes were more likely a hole in his theory than a hole in space. I have read that a black scientist proposed in the 1930’s that black holes were real and was soundly ridiculed for his efforts. Second the cold fusion issue was “decided” by the political method in the May of 1989 and not by the scientific method. I will give a short primer on cold fusion. More details can be found in the September 2006 version of the cold fusion article which has since been censored. Hot fusion is what powers stars. Particles have to be moving at a high velocity to overcome the electrostatic repulsion of like positive charge protons in hydrogen nuclei. When the nuclei come close together the strong nuclear force takes effect and brings them together. In the hot plasma electrons are separated from the nuclei so their negative charge is not as effective in overcoming the proton repulsion as if they were still attached to the nucleus. In 1968 a Nobel prize in physics was given for muon-catalyzed fusion and related work. Muon-catalyzed fusion was the original “cold fusion”. The electron was replaced with a more massive negative muon. Because of its higher mass the muon took up a position much closer to the nucleus. The charge shielding effect of the negative muon allowed nuclear fusion to take place at room temperature. It is typical in science that if you change some of the variables you change the result. The problem with Muon-catalyzed fusion was that the muons had a very short half life and the process was not practical for that reason.

The term, cold fusion, was also applied to an experiment presented by Martin Fleishman and Stanley Pons in March of 1989. They claimed the experiment produced to much excess heat to be a chemical reaction and therefore had to be a nuclear reaction. They were rushed into an announcement of this claim by the desire of the University Of Utah to protect patent rights. Also important details were left out of the announcement for the protection of patent rights. There was a rush to duplicate the results and most, but not all efforts seemed to fail. Some editors in power in the scientific establishment concluded that cold fusion could not possibly be true, that cold fusion was an embarrassment to science, that it should be immediately squelched, and that the end justified the means. The editor of Nature was one of the first to take this direction and was followed by the editors Science, Scientific American, and some of the physics journals. At this point these members of the scientific establishment abandoned the scientific method in favor of the political and entered on the course of insult and censorship. They made sure cold fusion received a very bad press which served to reinforce the insult and censorship approach. The problem with this approach is that a bad press does not change the laws of physics and experiment is the reality check of science. But some how experiments done since early 1989, like the finding of nuclear transmutations which proves nuclear reactions are going on, do not count. This is because it is believed by many the issue was already decided by a bad press. Experimental evidence like nuclear transmutations exists today. If it was know in early 1989 that such evidence existed history would have taken a different turn. It seems that once the establishment has made a mistake ordinary rules of evidence no longer apply. Two Noble prize winners in physics, Julian Schwinger and Brian Josephson, thought that nuclear reactions were going on in cold fusion experiments and condemned the scientific establishment for its treatment of cold fusion research. The cold fusion experiments are described in approximately 2000 scientific papers by more than 200 scientists. Despite efforts at censorship many of these are in peer reviewed scientific journals. The people doing these experiments have PhDs in physics and chemistry. The experimenters are not denying the facts of hot fusion or implying that energy is not conserved. They are simply saying that the variables are different, that cold fusion is more likely a wave effect than the billiard ball effect of hot fusion, and that experiment is the reality check of science. It is also important to note that this is not just an academic issue. A nuclear reaction with relatively benign side effects would reduce poverty, pollution, and global warming.

The September 2006 version of the Wikipedia cold fusion article had a NPOV because it described the point of view of both the skeptics and the experimenters. A new group of editors has reverted the cold fusion to a two year old version that only describes the point of view of the skeptics. Cold fusion is a controversial subject. This battle has been going on for two years

It seems to me that censorship is inconsistent with NPOV, openness, and publishing articles that are presented as an accurate and fair representation of knowledge. This is particularly true of science articles. Undue weight can become a code word for unjustified censorship. I think there is a truth in packaging issue here. If articles are censored they should be presented as such. A statement of what was censored and the reason for censorship should be placed in the article. The justification for censorship should exist in the talk page as long as the censorship exists. In other words let the public know what is really going on and let the public judge if the censorship is merited. Another approach is to not publish articles on controversial subjects if Wikipedia is not going to create a set of rules that prevent unjustified censorship. Either of the approaches would be more truthful than what we have now.--Ron Marshall 17:13, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Don't know where this statement belongs, but will try it here. I was hoping for a short "writing style" manual with suggested word usage. One of the words I would like to see less of is the word "controversial" or "has received much criticism." The statements lacking a reference are the easiest for us low-level editors to dispose of. I think that is already covered here.

While this document states that the subject should "speak for itself," usually, the writer is intending to level innuendo against the subject. e.g. "Hillary's Health Care Coverage Bill was controverial," rather than saying,"Hillary chaired the task force which constructed a universal health bill, which was subsequently rejected by Congress." This sort of case is covered here, but a bit harder to enforce. The devil is in the details.

The words "controversy" and "criticism" immediately place the subject on the defensive. This can be encyclopedic death to a well-known subject, like Hillary Clinton. If we say "Student7 is controversial," it tends to bestow on a little-known subject far too much fame!  :)

A third case is of the type "subject controversially violated civil rights of minorities<footnoted reference>" The reference documents one specific instance, or another vague innuendo. My point is that the subject either did violate their rights, or he didn't. What in the world does "controversy" have to do with it? For me, this is a word that is best left to tabloids. I hope we have nobody and no events in the Wikipedia that isn't "controversial!" If we do, we should consider the article for removal!

I petition you senior editors to try to persuade writers from using these overused words which immediately puts the subject on the defensive. Student7 20:40, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

While you are going to suggest a list of words to avoid, would you also include the word, "gender." This word is being used to mean "sex." Gender is a perfectly good word to use to describe "elle" or "la amie" as french feminine gender. It refers to language, not people. It has been misused by the media for a long time for goodness knows what reason. Not like they are Victorians!Student7 02:11, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

This section is far too long! Can somebody chop it?Student7 02:11, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Views of the Law Giver

In a recent post on Citizendium-l Larry Sanger includes a link to the formulation he had made as of December 21, 2001 [10]. 15:50, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment from Mtrangaris

The following was originally posted at Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view/Archive 025. I have moved it here as it was in the wrong place – Gurch 11:41, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I wonder if there is a neutral point of view or just one held by the editors. For example, is it neutral to say Harry Truman was a killer of people since he ordered the bombing of Hiroshima, etc.? Is it neutral to say a person who says he takes joy when nature kills hundreds of human beings is bitter and disturbed? Is that over interpretation of the person's comments. Is it a violation of neutrality to say a 67 year old man is old?

If so this seems to me to remove the context of the person's life and while they are alive the first ammendment of the US Constitution protects such speech for a reason. Perhaps Wikepedia ought to develop a constitution that promotes more than steralized and irrelavant comment.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mtrangaris (talk • contribs) 21:27, 2 October 2006 (UTC).

There is no need to use any of these labels "killer", "old", even if they were neutral; the articles just describe the person and his actions. —Centrx→talk • 18:41, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Articles, and editing, must be neutral

I have found some confusion about how to apply the NPOV. NPOV can be interpreted as a requirement to produce a neutral article, but in situations involving controversial subjects, a neutral stance is hard to come by. Imagine a situation where there is in fact a neutral stance, as well as this and that view. If it is the article that must be neutral, then NPOV could be used to state only the neutral stance, and eliminate the this and/or that stance. Clearly, it is not the content that must be neutral, but the presentation of the content. ALL (appropriate) views need to be included, not a synthesized version. To attempt to neutralize competing views, even if successful, is original research. It is the editors who need to be neutral. Tommy Mandel 00:14, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I think you got it. Fred Bauder 00:51, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

But my edit was reverted,Well here we go again...

On the project page, the policy reads:

This policy in a nutshell:

All Wikipedia articles and other user-facing content must be written from a neutral point of view, representing views fairly, proportionately and without bias.

While further down it reads:

Explanation of the neutral point of view

The neutral point of view

The neutral point of view is a means of dealing with conflicting views. The policy requires that, where there are or have been conflicting views, these should be presented fairly. None of the views should be given undue weight or asserted as being the truth, and all significant published points of view are to be presented, not just the most popular one.

The two statements:

representing views fairly,

and

all significant published points of view

are not consistent in my opinion. While the latter is clear, the former can be interpreted differently. Especially if an editor wants to read it his way. "Views" can easily be read to mean correct views or popular views, and even our views. Merely adding "all" clears the confusion up. (Obviously there are the exceptions.)

representing all views fairly,

So, I followed procedure, explained what I was doing in the summary and talk page. Even got an agreement, yet I was reverted without summary or discussion. Do the rules apply only to certain editors and not others? Do I have to learn how to become clever in order to edit here?

Tommy Mandel 02:11, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

How about some diffs showing what you did? Fred Bauder 03:02, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

You did fine, and it was a good edit. Yes, the flying reverters tend to smack this sort of edit down without explanation. I call it disimprovement.qp10qp 02:23, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

The difficulty here is the lack of a civilized procedural definition of consensus. Hence, in the absence of civilized law, the "owners" of this turf revert to the natural consensus politics that we all inherited from the ancestors of the chimpanzees. It is all about honor, turf possession, and intimidation. And we are all tempted to retaliate in kind. Who dares challenge the "owners"? Discussion does not matter, discussion is closed, and whoever will not bow to the "owners" must leave. So what should we do next to develop a civilized procedural definition of consensus for this page? --Rednblu 02:53, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

All I can do is try again. So I added "All" in front of views in two places.

And while I was at it, and this may be debatable since it changes NPOV to ENPOV, I changed the sentence

"It is the point of view that is neutral"

to

"It is the editing point of view that is neutral"

The more I think about it, the more important this seems to be. Much effort (edit wars) is expended trying to create a neutral point of view, when really we are supposed to be reporting what is happening, and not neutralizing what is happening. So isn't it the editing that is supposed to be neutral rather than the content per se?

After all, the NPOV of positive and negative is zero or something like that...

It really doesn't hurt to be perfectly clear, right?Tommy Mandel 04:52, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

to be perfectly clear: editors all have their POV. It is the point of view of the article that must be neutral, by fairly presenting published POV's. Harald88 06:28, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I think our language is taking us for a ride here. I think we are trying to say the same thing, but the words come out different. Why is there a resistance to adding "all" to the nutshell when it is clearly stated in the explanation? All is not that long of a word, and it makes what is implied explicite? For example you write:

"by fairly presenting published POV's".

I could argue that presenting one published POV meets the criterion you require. But by merely adding all as in:

"by fairly presenting all published POVs"

Makes a big difference. Much bigger than the small space all takes up.

(As far as "significant" is concerned, I didn't leave that out in the nutshell, you did. If significant is significant then it should be in the nutshell as well) Tommy Mandel 10:02, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

The key word here is probably proportionately. We have an ongoing problem with the attempted presentation of every tiny minority view, however insignificant. The significance of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism to an article on spaghetti or meatballs, for example, is almost certainly sufficiently close to zero that even to mention it gives it undue weight. Other subjects have so little coverage outside of their proponents (and here I usually cite Aetherometry as an example) that we can't cover them neutrally at all. Guy 10:53, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Isn't equating flying spaghetti with scientific analysis of the crop circles pseudoscience? It certainly is a tactic they use...

Tommy Mandel

The reason I consider Tommysun's first edits good (I might as well state this here, as a second flying reverter has now zapped his edit without explaining the revert here on the talk page) is that "representing views fairly", as in

All Wikipedia articles and other user-facing content must be written from a neutral point of view, representing views fairly, proportionately and without bias.

is improved by the addition of "all" (preferably "all significant"), as it could be taken merely to mean representing individual views fairly, proportionately, and without bias.

I don't agree with Tommysun's other edit—which could do with an apostrophe, by the way—but that makes this an interesting test case. The flying reverters tend to revert edits as a job lot, rather than taking each edit on its merit. The right thing to do in this case, in my opinion, is for them to abjure reverting and engage in a thing called editing. That means looking at Tommysun's edits individually, deciding whether he has got a point and then either keeping, changing to something else that addresses the perceived issue, or changing back to the original and explaining the reason on the talk page. In this case I would keep "all significant" and remove "editors"; I don't agree with the speech marks on "all", Tommysun's understandable rearguard attempt to compromise; I'd stick with a straight "all significant" at the second occurrence.

To be honest, the wording here doesn't interest me greatly, but the test of process does. qp10qp 11:33, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Maybe the wording doesnt matter to you, because you have it memorized, but to a typical reader, it matters a lot, especially when they want to read their own interpretaion into the statement.

Tommy Mandel

The nutshell is fine, could maybe be shorter still. Nutshell paras are supposed to be short and to the point. The text in the lead is also fine, it makes the point re significance (there never was any consensus to require us to represent insignificant minority views and I guess there never will be). Editors in the middle of disputes over nuances of application of the NPOV policy in articles (and this includes Tommysun here) should unquestionably not be editing the policy pages to support their agenda. Editing them at all gives out all the wrong messages. The word proportionately is, in my view, of paramount importance and absolutely needs to stay in. Guy 13:48, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Think like mathematics. Does one shorten an equation just because one wants it shorter? Why are you usiong stupid stuff to justify your consencus? Have you read my discussion? If not why are you prejudging my judgement? That's pseudoscientifc my friend. Read what I say not what they say I say. Who said proportionately should come out? Did it get deleted by the computer somehow? I have no problem with that, other than I don't think it is of paramount importance. Compared to what?Tommy Mandel

Instead of knocking Tommysun, why not knock the fly-by reverters who haven't time to explain themselves on the talk page (or even in the edit summaries)? By all means disagree with Tommysun's edits—at least you have explained your opinion here—but by what authority are you telling him what he should or should not be doing? qp10qp 16:13, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I disagree—not over these specifics but the general pattern. I think out-of-nowhere edits made on policy pages (even good faith edits) should be reverted first and then talked about. The person reverting should definitely be willing to engage on talk if it was a good faith edit, but the general position should be that nothing changes until the person desiring the change has justified it. This is contra common practice on articles, where, if you feel you can offer an obvious improvement, you should just do it. Marskell 16:33, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

We had a recent instance here where an admin made a flying change to the WP:NPOV project page without justifying or talking about it on this talk page. The page then got frozen by another admin. Somehow <GRIN>, the frozen version was the changed one, instead of the page being reverted while we all discussed the issue here, as is proper.Pproctor 21:46, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I didn't change policy, I made the statements already in the article consistent with eachother. This is called good writing procedure. Tommy Mandel

I have edited, removing what I consider the awkward language SlimVirgin used with "Significant points of view". All is implied. Fred Bauder 17:20, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Fred, is "implied" explicite? At any rate, sighificant views is alright by me, but who says what is significant? Don't you really want to say meaningful?Tommy Mandel

Here is what I recieved on my talk page --

Your recent edits to our core policy Wikipedia:Neutral point of view consitute disrupting Wikipedia to make a point. You should not make changes to core policy without first achieving consensus on the Talk page. Such disruption is strongly discouraged and can lead to your being blocked from editing Wikipedia. Guy 11:23, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Guy, my question is will you block me forever? Or will it be only for some specific time? Your statement isn't clear about that. (Blocking me forever would be a welcome relief, given what I have experienced here.) This encyclopedia is not free, it is run by the resident group who make sure that it is their POV which is published. There is one exception but I'm not going to tell you what it is. Also, when you followed me to an article I was working so hard on, ask addhoc, and then reverted my edits, did you bother to read the discussion? Did you bother to do the requisite research that would back up your changes? Why did you remove a fact? Isn't that removal the definition of pseudoscience? And did you bother to ascertain which view is dominant among the interested parties or did you base your edit on original research? Is that how we are supposed to resolve a controversy, remove one side so that the other side is the only view? Can I now proceed to all the articles and remove one side of any controversy? Then we wouldn't have any controversy, right? Cool. I once was the editor of a newspaper, published my own newsletter and am the founding webmaster of a significant website, can't tell what they are because, based on experience, you will follow me there too. I am quite familair with twisting the language around to suit one's own purposes. It is not good writing to sacrifice clarity just to save a tiny bit of space. Especially in a nutshell summary situation. Furthermore, I didn't change the policy, all I did is include above what was already written below. And exactly what is concensus anyway?

Tommy Mandel 18:14, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Guy you wrote:

Please see WP:POINT. Also there is long-standing ArbCom consensus that editors with a vested interest in the content of an article should not edit it directly. You have a vested interest in this due to current disputes. Feel free to comment on Talk but please leave the article alone. Guy 17:59, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I certainly agree with that policy. But is it fairly applied? For example, one of your administrators, ScienceApologist, is a admitted big bang proponent. However, he has edited the plasma cosmology and alternative cosmology articles, removing all significant evidence which does not support the big bang view. He has used his position as administrator to force his own views on the group. (See the talk page for nonstandard cosmology, in particular the comment by one of the editors that he is reporting ScienceApologist.) So how does he get away with that? And how often does it happen at Wikipedia where the opposing view is dismantled by one of the opposing editors? That is why "all viewpoints is needed...

And how does the fact that I am a party to a dispute mean that I have a vested interest? Or are you talking about the NPOV article? I came here to read the NPOV policy, and noticed an ambiguity, and without changing that policy, tried to improve Wikipedia by removing the ambiguity. Why is there such a great resistence to adding "all" to views when in the article it is already there? Adding all doesn't change things, it only makes it clear. Is clarity a no-no here? Tommy Mandel 18:28, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

It's just turf, my friend. It's no big deal. And, could we speak a little more softly? -- because loud voices only exaggerate the dimensions of the turf battle. It's just a turf battle -- particularly when you are right. Does that make sense? Can you imagine what difficult learning it will take for "your administrators" to understand what you are saying? You have actually done quite a good job here if you scan upwards. So don't be discouraged. Our challenge is: How can we ease up to get everybody out of turf battle mode so that all of us can deal with the very real problems in the murky and self-contradictory text of the WP:NPOV page? Would you agree? --Rednblu 02:25, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

What is this project they call Citi Zen Dium? Something about a wiki site but learned? That is really cool. Now we can have an online encyclopedia for the kids and one for the grownups. Meanwhile...

I have some suggestions on how to clear up the vague and murky writing. I have some background with language, Zen,(The pointing finger is not the moon) Korzybski,(The map is not the territory) Wittgenstein (later) Contextual meanings and so forth. It is possible to write short and simple. Aren't all wise saying short and simple? You see, what we all need to do, me too, is remember that we are trying to say something, and the words we use should say the same thing we are trying to say. Most of the time they don't. And then there is the Shannon principle. Does the hearer hear the same thing that we are not saying what we want to say? That's quite a trick. So what we do is assume we hear you say what we are hearing you say. But we don't hear you, we hear what ourselves say what it heard you say.

So creating a statement is not a trivial undertaking. The trick I think is to know what we are trying to say, and then find a way that says it. A writer does not accept "good enough" A good writer never thinks it is good enough. A great writer goes to great lengths, e.g., Hemingway.

There are methods for groups to work together. Warfield has what is called the Problematique originally conceived out of the Club of Rome. [[11]] It is an excerpt of his book Understanding complexity. Basically it works like this. A group of say eight adoopts a target question. Then they brainstorm it. Everything is swept in. Then they organize it. Then they evaluate it. Then they simplify it. Then they produce a graphical "poster" of their results. The poster is a collection of simple short statements. But they are the statements that count as determined by eight dedicated knowlegeable professionals. This poster is presented at a grand celebration in a grand hall to acknowledge the work that went into it. It then serves as the introduction for the next group which will take the information that has been researched and continue the quest without having to go through the tiresome exhausting prior research phase themselves. If they had to, they would not do a good job and if they did a good job they would be just wanting to get it over with.

So if you are serious about this project, read my excerptation of his book. I had to do a lot of work to find those simple and short principles he tells us about. So that part is done, what we do with the rest of it is entirely up to us.

And remember, don't remember who said this, but it is not where we are at that matters, rather it is what direction we are headed in...

Tommy Mandel 06:44, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Tommy Mandel 06:44, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok. Sounds good to me. There are a thousand other votes, of course. And we still do not have a civilized measure for consensus, know what I mean? But could we start from this essay, maybe? Is it better? Is it clearer than the current text of WP:NPOV? What does everybody think about it? --Rednblu 08:42, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I like it. Interestingly, it starts with "all views", the wording rejected here yesterday. This wording used to appear at the beginning of this policy too, but seems to be deprecated now by reverters for unstated reasons. Tommysun's edits need to be treated on merit rather than on some agenda or record he's supposed to have, especially such miniscule ones. qp10qp 09:26, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

It reads

Executive summary

Wikipedia has an important policy: roughly stated, you should write articles without bias, representing all views fairly. Wikipedia uses the words "bias" and "neutral" in a special sense! This doesn't mean that it's possible to write an article from just one point of view, the neutral (unbiased, "objective") point of view. That's a common misunderstanding of the Wikipedia policy. The Wikipedia policy is that we should fairly represent all sides of a dispute, and not make an article state, imply, or insinuate that any one side is correct. It's crucial that we work together to make articles unbiased. It's one of the things that makes Wikipedia work so well. Writing unbiased text is an art that requires practice. The following essay explains this policy in depth, and is the result of much discussion. We strongly encourage you to read it.

Warfield uses a work program which starts with Discovery . Here's what he says in a nutshell -

Discovery reflects the idea that no one understands the complexity. A period of time devoted to Discovery is required for two reasons: First, to describe the situation and second, to diagnose the situation. While the Description and the Diagnosis are two tangible products of the Discovery component, the processes of arriving at these products are designed to resolve any of the issues related to the behavior pathologies; and also to assist in developing an appropriate object language with which to analysis, describe, and (re)design whatever situation is under observation or consideration. Pg67

What this means here in particular I think, what is different from his program and what is happening here in this project, is that he strives to include, while the dominant actio here is to exclude.

What is it that we want to say?

Are we in fact saying it with our words?

Proposed additions to article

"Stay away from the article" Guy told me, but that is a violation of some kind of Wikispirit, this is a free encyclopedia and anyone can edit. You can't tell me to stay away. Having said that, a policy project is not an article, and while democracy is wonderful, policy should be accurate, precise and to the point. And so should the editing. If any article in this Wiki needs to be owned, this is it. For better or for worse.

That doesn't mean I can't propose changes and that is what I am doing. I am nominating a policy change

Let's insert this quote (below) appropriately, and write a new nutshell from it.

Executive summary

Wikipedia has an important policy: roughly stated, you should write articles without bias, representing all views fairly. Wikipedia uses the words "bias" and "neutral" in a special sense! This doesn't mean that it's possible to write an article from just one point of view, the neutral (unbiased, "objective") point of view. That's a common misunderstanding of the Wikipedia policy. :::The Wikipedia policy is that we should fairly represent all sides of a dispute, and not make an article state, imply, or insinuate that any one side is correct. [12]

Why this? Because I think that it is a very good statement of Wikipolicy as it was first envisioned. It says what somehow has been distilled out of today's version. Maybe it is more clear, ot explicite. There is a message there that, as it points out, is commonly misunderstood. --

And, it follows, I propose that we use this:

The Wikipedia policy is that we should fairly represent all sides of a dispute, and not make an article state, imply, or insinuate that any one side is correct. [13]

in a nutshell.

The original statement ended with this -

It's crucial that we work together to make articles unbiased. It's one of the things that makes Wikipedia work so well. Writing unbiased text is an art that requires practice. The following essay explains this policy in depth, and is the result of much discussion. We strongly encourage you to read it. [14]

---

Comments by Tommysun : I understand this policy as it was stated in the executive statement, and I undertand the mis-understnding of that policy as well, I think it is mis-understanding of this policy that is at the core of edit wars.

The Wikipedia policy is that we should fairly represent all sides of a dispute, and not make an article state, imply, or insinuate that any one side is correct. [15]

It has gotten that editors want to write what they think is correct. And then there are those who want to correct what they think is incorrect. The article should be correctly edited. But it shouldn';t be the correct article. I think I got it, the data should be correct, but the article shouldn't say that this or that data is more correct.

The data should speak for itself.

Obviously the founding writers knew what they wanted to say, probably spent a great deal of time working it out. But over time, apparently the wording changed for one reason or the other and look at the problems that resulted. We may think we are saying the right thing but are we?

For example I still think that meaningful is a better word than significant. Opps, the nutshell says all sides. All significant sides? Or all meaningful sides? I can imagine the arguments over what is significant and what is not significant. What is meaningful is not so arguable, Neutral is a better word...

(About protection. Perhaps the policy statement should be protected, And perhaps each policy change must go through the discovery>description?diagnosis>design>implementation stages or some sort of protocol before it is inserted. Edits would be meaningful that way.

Tommy Mandel 06:43, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

If we were applying systemic inquiry to this nutshell statement, the discovery has been done for us. The next step is description. Is this what we want to say? It would be interesting if everyone here answered that wuestion, what if everyone wrote in their own words what they think it is saying? Tommy Mandel 06:07, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

---

So, how about this for a plan? Let's try out the "description" phase of your Discovery method with the following understandings maybe.

1. We will develop some clear and self-consistent list of what we think WP:NPOV is actually saying.
2. But this list will not imply "consensus" for moving anything onto the disputed turf of the WP:NPOV page.
3. That is, this list is only a proposal that we will present later to the Wikipedia community as a whole for consideration.
4. Along the way, we may have to consider defining some list of what we think WP:CON is saying.
5. And we may have to develop some list of what the WP:CON page is saying about actually measuring consensus for or against moving the proposals that we develop here into the WP:NPOV page to replace the murky and self-contradictory text there.

Just more ideas for the mix. What is next? --Rednblu 06:31, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I thought I was finally going to bed.

Your number one could be a listing of the keys points to be made in the policy statement. These key points would then be those which appear in everincreasing detail in the article.

Your numbet two would be a brainstorming for all potential key points, what everyone thinks or wants it to say, bar none.

Your number three would be the end result of the brainstorming/organize process.

I don't think these should be submitted to the community unless you provide the problematique so that they are up to speed. The problematique is what the community member would need to get up to speed in order to decide in a competant way. Maybe to let them know what is happening. Maybe for guidance. But not for approval unless they are competant,

Your number three and one half is implementation. That is a discovery process in itself.

Now, looking ahead, there has to be a feedback of the end result back to the beginning formulation. Do they match? Banathy considers this recursive feedback crucial to a properly functining system. The feedback is both negative and positive, negative in the sense that it is a background correcting sensor, and positive in the sense that the end can change the beginning is a more desired way.

Keekp in mind that these are system principles and as such they are meant to be incorporated into your scheme, not the other way around, In other words, it is the process that is important not what names you give to the four steps. The four steps are archetypal, what you call them is up to you. Idea>expand>refine>install. Confirm...

(Musings) Interstingly, confirm would be a fifth step. But we take the confirm/resonate aspect of the system for granted, after all, it is as significant as all the others. And in taking it for granted we don't need it in our modeling. So we leave it out, knowing to the bone that it is really there. Then along comes Jill..."Well, you said to do it, you didn't say to check it." And she would be dead right...Maybe that is what happens - we take a core idea for granted and then forget to include it...And along comes jack.

Tommy Mandel

File names

Does the NPOV policy apply to file names? I’m asking because of Image:Capitol-tragedy600.jpg, the latest image added to the Wisconsin State Capitol article. It’s illustrating supposed erosion of the state law that limits heights of buildings near the capitol. It would be inappropriate for the article itself to call the effect a tragedy, but is it OK to hide that bias in the name of the image file? --Rob Kennedy 02:21, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it would. However, since it's rather inconvenient to rename images, I doubt it is enforced often. If you want to save it, reupload it to a more neutral name, and change it that way, you can. --tjstrf 15:42, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Intro

On Sept 28, someone added to the intro (I think taken from the old nutshell wording) that illustrations must confirm to NPOV. This is tricky. We can ask that there be an overall NPOV balance of illustrations (at least as far as possible), but we can't ask of each separate image that it not be POV, just as we can't ask of each individual sentence that it not be POV. I suggest we leave the image issue out until it's been thought about some more. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 11:36, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

The current issue is naming the illustration in a markedly POV way, see above. Fred Bauder 12:46, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

SlimVirgin wrote: " we can't ask of each individual sentence that it not be POV"

• Would we want to? You're not saying that sentences that describes a point of view, are always non-NPOV?
• In other words, a "point of view", is not necessarily the opposite of "neutral point of view"?--Iantresman 17:48, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

--Iantresman 17:48, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Someone restored this so I've removed it again, because I think it needs to be discussed properly before being added. How are people envisaging that this should apply to images? As each individual illustration may not be NPOV, are we saying that overall there must be a balance of illustrations that are NPOV? And the same with categories? How will this work in practise? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 08:37, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

A specific example of how a category can be POV is the effort to place the article Shekhinah in Category:Goddesses. The question of whether the Shekhinah has ever been regarded as a godess in the Jewish religion (or any other religion) is highly debatable, to put it mildly, and the categorization would appear to take sides on the issue. --Shirahadasha 05:54, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Reliable sources

Why reliable source instead of reliable source? Tom Harrison ^Talk 01:26, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources (and wiki mail) indicates a lot of people don't think it should be a guideline. In particular there is circular thinking that it should be a guideline because policies link to it and policies should link to it because it is a guideline. For now, it should be de-linked and allowed to find its place on its own. When what it is is settled, the linking can be reconsidered. There is growing momentum to delete it altogether; thinking WP:V is fine without it. WAS 4.250 05:09, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

It's not just a guideline, but a central guideline, despite objections. FeloniousMonk 05:19, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I've restored it. FeloniousMonk 05:19, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Proposal to replace (Integrate) NOR and V

All editors with an interest in good sourcing are invited to review a proposal to replace Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Verifiability with one policy: Wikipedia:Attribution. The proposal picks up the key points from NOR and V, and makes some new allowances regarding the types of sources used in pop culture articles, in order to make things easier for editors working in that area. The proposal cuts out the fluff from NOR and V; and having one policy rather than two should reduce the potential for confusion and inconsistency. All comments welcomed. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 10:33, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I like it. Terryeo 18:00, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I support it. Will be a good and efficient simplification. Crum375 18:25, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

At first I didn't like it, the two are different, so how can they be made one? But after reading what you propose, I see you have constructed a system of Attribution and NPOV, the two complementaries of a integrated whole, by your integration. I think that "original research" comes under source almost as an afterthought. It is not one of the pillars of Wiki...Attribution is. Your proposal is a significant, meaningful step forward, like bringing NPOV onstage where it belongs.

"The proposal cuts out the fluff from NOR and V; and having one policy rather than two should reduce the potential for confusion and inconsistency."

By integrating NOR and V as "Attribution" a complementary set composed of Attribution and Neutral Point of View. Is this correct?

Tommy Mandel 01:41, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

There hardly is anyone who has read WP:V and WP:NOR, but never had a thought that these actually should be one. It's pretty obvious: WP:V already excludes OR, with only few bits of clarification left for WP:NOR. However, will this ever fly? I doubt it. I would also strongly prefer and recommend to stick with name verifiability instead of attribution. The latter does not imply potential verifiability and, by name, allows all kinds of sources including own blog. Verifiability sounds stricter, and implies potential attribution. It just describes the policy better. Tradition and familiarity should also be considered: they won't suffer if NOR turns into a section of V, but will if V is replaced with something. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 23:14, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I've always thought that attribution was a subfield of verifiability because without an agreed upon attribution how could a person know what to verify against ? Terryeo 05:15, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Verifiability instead of attribution is alright. The point to be grasped is NPOV and V. In other words NPOV shold be all by itself as one of if not the one primary policy statements. It should not be placed along side other priciples as if it were only one among many. Altho maybe the order could be turned around into Verifiable NPOV. The information should be verifiable with no Wikiangle to it. Tommy Mandel 03:27, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea of merging WP:NOR into WP:V. Please let me know if there is to be a vote on it, since I may not keep this page on my watchlist. — Sebastian (talk) 22:04, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Handling biased sources

The proposed Attribution policy as it stands only extremely biased sources are considered problematic. Run-of-the-mill bias is left for NPOV to handle. While I see sections on avoiding bias in the article, I see nothing explicit about how to handle biased sources. I have no proposal at the moment, and the point is implicit: find less biased sources if possible, and sources reflecting a competing POV otherwise. I mention this in case anyone thinks that more detail is needed. Robert A.West (Talk) 22:50, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Bold text Most debated point?

Hi.

With regards to the whole neutral-point-of-view thing, which part is the most debated? It seems that the "undue weight" part recieves a lot of debate. Why? 74.38.32.128 02:45, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

People mistakenly think neutral means all points of view should be treated the same, equally, as if each had the same amount of evidence for them, as if we as editors were not allowed to evaluate points of view with respect to any criteria whatever. Young-earth creationists want to add "evolutionists say" in front of any statement that contradicts a universe thats 6,000 years old. Scientologists don't want us revealing what they charge thousands of dollars to reveal. Republicans and Democrats want to spin articles on candidates. Corporations want an article on every product they make and no negative information on them. WAS 4.250 03:46, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

That might be right, it might be that people mistakenly think "neutral" means all points of view should be treated the same. But if they do, then WP:NPOV is not well written. The most published point of view should be presented as the most published point of view, and so on. Terryeo 18:22, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Just a point of clarification: There is no reason whatsoever to pay any particular attention to the "most published" point of view if "most published" is based solely on volume. This distinction needs making because, believe it or not, there are certain editors who have tried straight-faced to claim that if a single entity which promotes a particular POV manages to churn out seventeen zillion copies of various publications devoted to that POV, that sheer volume somehow makes it the "most published" or "most widely published" point of view. Of course, that would be entirely ludicrous. -- Antaeus Feldspar 02:21, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

It might be worth having the policy point out exactly what is meant by "most published" because certainly volume of sales figures into it. Elements would include "volume of sales", "quantity of publications created", "age of earliest publication", and "number of languages published in". Terryeo 07:15, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I would not object to having the policy point out exactly what is meant by "most published", because most the elements you suggest that it should include are elements it seems obvious to me it should exclude. There is no reason whatsoever to pay any particular attention to the point of view published in the most languages; the very suggestion seems ludicrous. Neither is "quantity of publications created" any sort of meaningful metric in this regard; does my opinion somehow double in importance if I pound out two hundred rambling screeds from my attic typewriter instead of one hundred? If I translate my argument into more languages than any other publication have I somehow given my argument more importance than any other publication? "Age of earliest publication" may be of historical interest, but not much else; it certainly has very little to do with the criterion we have been designating as "most published". The only one remaining is "volume of sales figures" and since it only takes a sufficient amount of money to manipulate that metric we are ill-advised to pay any special heed to that criterion either. -- Antaeus Feldspar 20:53, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Allow me to point out, for the umpteenth time, that "most published" is irrelevant. The phrase, and the concept, seems to originate with Terryeo: it appears nowhere in the NPOV policy, past or present, so far as I know. The actual issue is to determine the relative prominence of published viewpoints. This is not the same as "most published." BTfromLA 03:57, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I would take issue with your Scientologists statement because 1. the supposedly "revealed" information was stolen, perhaps portions of it have been deleted, perhaps it has been added to, etc. etc. and 2. Any "revealed" information I've seen is pretty much full of specialized jargon. Is it presented as historical fact? As myth? There is little context and the status of it as being first stolen and then "revealed" gives the average reader little confidence. It sounds more like critics are attempting to prevent knowledge about Scientology instead of fulfilling our common goal, "an encyclopedia of human knowledge". Terryeo 18:02, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I would take issue with your claim that "the supposedly 'revealed' information was stolen" because you have been asked numerous times to produce some sort of evidence for your assertion and have never come through. -- Antaeus Feldspar 02:21, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I think the issue is not whether something is true or not. WP is hopelessly underequipped to determine 'truth', whether current or 'ultimate'. Our modest and hopefully achievable goal is to determine verifiablity of notable items and present them neutrally, with proper weighting if there are multiple conflicting acceptable sources. Crum375 18:21, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Reading any Encyclopedia, it doesn't limit itself to TRUTH^tm, but present information about subjects. One man says, "Contract Bridge is played by 2 partnerships of 2 players" while another says, "Contract Bridge is a popular game which can be played by 2 and up to 100s of players. Both of these statements are valid statements but neither statement by itself would be of much use unless supported by further reading and cited statements. Wikipedia excells, it seems to me, in technical areas but becomes bogged in areas of controversy (such as Scientology and the Palestine subjects). Terryeo 05:13, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

The way I have seen "undue weight" applied is that an unchallenged pack of lies is okay as long as its the majority’s pack of lies.--Ron Marshall 18:09, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, if the majority believe something --pack of lies or no-- it will be an encyclopedic subject and merits coverage. As I've pointed out a few times, Wikipedia in the middle ages would give detailed coverage of how the earth was flat, and only minimal coverage of dissenting views such as its possible roundness. --tjstrf 18:16, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia in the middle ages would have quoted the experts such as Aristotle who taught the world was spherical, and presented empirical evidence to verify this, noting that the Earth's shadow during an eclipse is curved, and also that stars increase in height as one moves north. WAS 4.250 18:59, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Were you able to get the majority to cite and reference their pack of lies ? If not, what was the stop in getting Wikipedia's WP:V applied in that situation ? Terryeo 18:19, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

As a general note, 'Lies', just like 'truth' is a subjective assessment, as the 'ultimate' truth is a philosophical concept that is beyond our target as an Encyclopedia. Our goal is to present 'human knowledge'. We define that as the verifiable and notable published information that is available to us, presented in a neutral manner. When there are conflicting sources, we present them according to their prevalence, and may discard the extreme fringes if their proponents are in a tiny minority (e.g. a bunch of guys in a bar). In issues that are non-scientifically provable (aka non-falsifiable), we prefer to call opposing views opinions, as that is more civil than 'lies'. Crum375 18:27, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Well stated, Crum. Now if we can get that communicated to 99 % of the editors so they understand it that way and don't understand it any other way, we will have accomplished something ! Terryeo 01:27, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

My words above are obviously merely a quickie summary of the essential WP mission and rules. My own impression is that a majority of editors here, especially the more experienced ones, and virtually all admins, are well aware of these rules and do a reasonable effort to abide by them. Crum375 01:43, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

This is true. And in my experience the majority of people asserting that the dominant majority view is a "pack of lies" turn out, on closer inspection, to be conspiracy theorists of one sort or another. As do a fair number of those seeking to weaken the undue weight clause. Funny, that. Guy 10:41, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that censorship is inconsistent with NPOV, openness, and publishing articles that are presented as an accurate and fair representation of knowledge. This is particularly true of science articles. Undue weight can become a code word for unjustified censorship. I think there is a truth in packaging issue here. If articles are censored they should be presented as such. A statement of what was censored and the reason for censorship should be placed in the article. The justification for censorship should exist in the talk page as long as the censorship exists. In other words let the public know what is really going on and let the public judge if the censorship is merited. Another approach is to not publish articles on controversial subjects if Wikipedia is not going to create a set of rules that prevent unjustified censorship. Either of the approaches would be more truthful than what we have now.--Ron Marshall 16:46, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

We already don't allow censorship. It's right there in WP:NOT. However, simply because we do not allow censorship does not mean we will write detailed treatises on fringe viewpoints, that would also be a violation of neutrality. --tjstrf Now on editor review! 17:07, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

This is something I still haven't yet understood. How is an article devoted to some "fringe" (whatever the frigg that means) viewpoint intrinsically biased? To me this sounds like we are treading into notability, perhaps adding more weight to the argument for that to be promoted up to official policy on the level of this (neutral point-of-view), verifiability, no original research, etc. as this seems to suggest a key relationship. 70.101.144.160 07:07, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Sounds nice. How much damage are the minority of editors doing? How are they detected? How are they delt with? Tommy Mandel 22:56, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

In general, difficulties manifest on discussion pages, Tommy. If an article's discussion page becomes impossible, it usually migrates to one of the guideline or policy pages. So the task is to write policy and guideline so it can be understood, and so it would be hard to NOT understand it. The "rules" are "don't revert an edit 3 times in 24 hours", be civil, discuss contentious edits instead of just poking it in there and not discussing. Blocks and warnings are used for those who don't abide by common civility. Terryeo 02:34, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

More correctly, it should migrate to the village pump, not the policy pages themselves. But what can you do? I mean other than tell the editors not to ask us for specific content dispute judgment on policy pages, because we already do that and it doesn't work. --tjstrf 02:38, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

One thing that might work would be to have a prepared channel for editing situations where two strongly held POVs have done all they can and need some disinterested, third parties to involve themselves. One example of that is here which worked out well because one of the editors came to the policy page and requested some help. The present, "Request for Comment" takes a fair amount of reading, preparation and is more formal. Whereas a page designated for an editor to simply yell "help, I'm out of fishing line here", would be more simple and more direct. Terryeo 07:07, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Clearly the most debated point should concern the assertion that a tiny minority's views, regardless of factual truth, should not be represented on Wikipedia. What absolute brain-rottingly relativistic nonsense! 70.109.178.254 04:28, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Cutural makeup of editors is affecting NPOV

Assuming that wikipedia users are an even crossection of the internet community at large, the largest group of them (if not the majority) will be white, Christian, Americans.

Now, consider the following articles:

al-qaeda Lord's Resistance Army contras

The al qaeda article opens with "Al-Qaeda or Al-Qaida (القاعدة, translit: al-Qā`ida; "the Law", "the foundation", "the base" or "the database") is an armed Sunni Islamist terrorist organization... "

This statement identifies al qaeda as sunnis (something no doubt quite offensive to most sunnis). Look at the LRA article: they are not described as christian despite being described as such by several reputable sources, and by themselves.

The statement also identifies them as terrorists. The contras article describes them as 'armed opponents' of the sandinista government. Is the difference between a terrorist and an armed opponent the degree of US backing they had?

I would take these debates to the pages in question, but I know for a fact I would be overrulled by the predominantly American editors and their fairly blinkered cultural narrative. I once tried to remove the word 'terrorist' from the opening statement of the 9/11 article and was met with nothing but hostility for daring to suggest wikipedia should just report the facts.

I think the NPOV policy should include some mechanism for stopping nonamerican wikipedia editors being drowned out by the mob.Damburger 07:02, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

The Lord's Resistance Army article does in fact mention the organization's religious side. At the end of the first paragraph in fact. "It is led by Joseph Kony, who proclaims himself a spirit medium, and apparently wishes to establish a state based on his unique interpretation of the Acholi religious syncretism and Biblical millenarianism." If you wished to instead describe it as a Christian-derived cult, you could probably do that as well.

As for removing the terrorist mention from the 9/11 article, all but the smallest minorities would state that it was a terror attack by definition. Those who didn't would probably describe it as either an "act of war" or "holy judgment". The undue weight clause of WP:NPOV comes into play here.

However, on the larger issue of systemic bias, we have a Wikiproject you may wish to join/contact, WP:BIAS, which attempts to fix just the problems you have described. --tjstrf Now on editor review! 08:56, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not saying 9/11 wasn't a terrorist attack - I'm saying that it shouldn't be described as such in the opening statement of the article. Let the facts speak for themselves. And if wikipedia must use the word terrorism, it should use it consistenly.

I'll have a look at WP:BIAS and see if theres anything I can contribute. Damburger 14:20, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Flying an airplane full of fuel into a skyscraper is an unusual event. Military is unwilling to sacrifice their pilots in such a way. On the face of it, the action was a suicide action by several pilots in a coordinated manner (at about the same time). If any culture or person could possibly present that coordinated set of actions as anything BUT a terrorist attack, I would be interested in their reasoning. Terryeo 16:38, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

A dictionary near you defines terrorism as:

1. The deliberate commission of an act of violence to create an emotional response from the victim in the furtherance of a political or social agenda.

2. Violence against civilians to achieve military or political objectives.

3. A psychological strategy of war for gaining political or religious ends by deliberately creating a climate of fear among the popuation of a state.

There are many acts and actors in history where the label is open to dispute, but since this appears to fit just ab out every facet of every one of those three definitions I'd say this was not one of them. Guy 18:09, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

The atomic bombins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki fit all three criteria you list; but Americans tend to get very shirty if you suggest they were acts of terrorism. Just goes to prove my point further: 'terrorism' is in the eye of the beholder. Damburger 18:23, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

We were officially at war with them. However, this argument has nothing to do with the NPOV policy and is just becoming your average political history debate, as such it is not a valid topic of discussion for this page. --tjstrf Now on editor review! 18:29, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

As far as I am concerned the Nagasaki bombing was the worst atrocity ever carried out by any country ever (Hiroshima was enough, Nagasaki was mainly to find out if the Fat Man bomb worked). It caused Group Captain Leonard Cheshire VC, OM, DSO and 2 bars, to quit the service in disgust. But it was still an act of war, and there is informed dissent fomr the view that it was terrorism (actually very few if any sources name it as such). Would you like to cite the independent reliable sources which dispute that 9/11 was a terrorist attack? It is perfectly consistent to be sympathetic towards those who resent the West's appalling mis-handling of the Afghanistan conflict without disputing that 9/11 was terorrism. Guy 18:48, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Terror is used by all sides in all wars and by criminals everywhere and can not more be won any more than a war on drugs can be won. Both "wars" are excuses to limit freedom. Strategies for the mitigation of misuse of drugs in place of a "war on drugs" and strategies to defeat those who attack us (such as Bin Laden) can be successfully implemented without the current attack on our freedoms. And yes, this conversation should take place elsewhere, but some things are more important than others. WAS 4.250 19:23, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree; terror/terrorism is a tactic, not a country. However, if we say more, it will turn into a political forum. Just, briefly, it concerns WP:V: major sources are required to represent 9/11 or smth. else in another way in the lead. For the opposite - calling actual terrorism not so - sources disputing the status should be found, and issue raised up on the talk page. Paragraphs (with sourced allegiations) may be inserted, lead reworded. You might contact me or WNP (in sig) if you are going to do that (having sources) and need help with wording or potential dispute. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 19:47, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Regardless of sources saying 9/11 was an act of terrorism - there are sources that call the contras terrorists and they are described as 'Armed opponents'. The phrase 'one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter' rings true. Its a purely rhetorical word and I think that it shouldn't be used in wikipedia text. Damburger 23:24, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Now get a consensus on it and you can make it stick. Perhaps you need a strategy. Might I suggest finding a word to replace "terrorist" that will be emotionally acceptable? A word used in WWII to describe the Japs who dove their planes into US battleships? Perhaps you can find a better word. But it is the emotional element you need to think through if you intend to create a new consensus. (A new wikiality?) WAS 4.250 05:04, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Words to avoid#Terrorist, terrorism? --Francis Schonken 08:33, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

It should also not be asserted that...

It should also not be asserted that the most popular view or some sort of intermediate view among the different views is the correct one.

Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. If there is a consensus view in the scientific community in respect of a particular scientific subject, with no significant dissent, then that view is, essentially, objectively correct. The fact that some people believe the earth is flat does not make it any less a fact that it is not, and the fact that some people believe that the moon landings were faked does not downgrade the moon landings to being a theory rather than a fact. But this clause is being used to argue for crank theories to be allowed to stand alongside what is, to all intents and purposes, established fact. Guy 10:27, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

It must be emphasized that the determination of what is a concensus/mainstream view necessarily comes from the field, and not as a result of a synthesis by the editor in which case it would violat NO OR.

Tommy Mandel 03:14, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Intro again

How is this sentence to be put into practise?

This applies to all content, including illustrations, maps, reader-facing templates, categories, and portals.

How can categories be NPOV? For example, if someone is placed in Category:Anti-Semitic people (a category I think shouldn't exist, by the way), which for the sake of argument represents the majority published view about them, must we also have a category for the significant minority published view that they're not? And with illustratoins: do we mean that each illustration must be NPOV, or that overall the balance of illustrations must be? And how does it work with maps and templates? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 08:48, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, one example is the category "pseudoscience". Scientology and Dianetics both get that catagory placed and reverted out, placed and reverted out. Another example is that a group of critical editors have manged to create their POV in a widely viewed article. Xenu at Template:ScientologySeries is placed as a part of Scientology doctrine, while in actuality it is no part of doctrine and has no source of information that even implies that it is a part of doctrine except one gesture in one court case. Terryeo 04:32, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Hi. Interesting point about the Anti-Semite category. How does someone get voted in. Is it because they themselves acknowledge that they "hate Jews" or something of the sort. Or is it because someone else is calling them anti-semitic. The first one is arguably NPOV, the second is not but is blatently POV. I agree with you about getting rid of the category, categories that lean toward subjective name-calling and stereotyping to not need to exist. Re calling Scn and Dn "pseudoscience"; perhaps you could make a case for Dianetics, though I consider it more protoscience and many of the core ideas are finding their way into more mainstream therapies, but Scientology is "an applied religious philosophy" and is not held to any limited viewpoint of what is "science" but deals in the umeasurable and is beyond the realm of science, at least as science finds itself defined in our modern era. --Justanother 05:50, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, Terryeo, but since that example depends on premises that aren't true in our universe ("[Xenu] is no part of doctrine and has no source of information that even implies that it is a part of doctrine except one gesture in one court case") it's actually an extremely poor example. -- Antaeus Feldspar 01:56, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh. I see. You have addressed me. You have told me that my communication to Slim is not a valid communication. I see. Why don't you respond to the discussion on the page, the question asked? Then, if you wish to make a comment to me, use my user discussion page, please? Terryeo 01:10, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Continuing on this vein, has there been any resolution as to what to do in cases of dispute? All WP:CG has to say is "you may want to avoid labelling it or mark the categorization as disputed." It seems that there must be some objective criteria in place, else any disputed article will find categorisation as "just another front" in the attempts to push one agenda or another through the addition of Category:X (disputed) and Category:Not x (disputed). What I took away from solutions like Category:Designated terrorist organizations (instead of Category:Terrorist organizations) was that we state the reality (that the organisation was designated as terrorist) without a moral judgement (that it is or isn't in fact terrorist). Is there indeed a consensus that reality should be noted, while perhaps other positions should only be expressed in the body? Let me know... Tewfik^Talk 06:08, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

NPOV=?

Neutral point of view means that you include different point of views, but just in different sections, and in neutral language right? Danke.100110100 11:37, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

It does mean both neutral language and different points of view. Often one point of view will be so different from another point of view that it makes good sense to present them in different sections. In general, the most widely published point of view is presented as being most widely known. Terryeo 16:57, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Include different points of view? Yes. In neutral language? Yes. In different sections? No, this is actually strongly discouraged. The idea of "neutral point of view" is that you cover point A in NPOV fashion, and covering point A in NPOV fashion means looking at one camp's position on it, the other camp's position, the interesting minority position on that point, and the evidence to those positions. Then you cover point B, point C, point D, et cetera, in similar fashion. Devoting different sections to cover different POVs on the same points separately leads to almost all the same problems that would come from devoting different articles to cover different POVs on the same subject separately, a practice that Wikipedia expressly prohibits. -- Antaeus Feldspar 04:25, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

It greatly depends on an individual article. Some articles might not have Points A, B, and C, while other aticles have quite a number of subsections. In any event, neutral language is preferred over biased terms as much as possible in order to not color the article toward one point of view. The idea being to communicate to the reader a particular point of view so the reader can understand it and explore it further if he wishes to. Similarly with all the other points of view as well. In this manner a reader can aquire the knowledge that he wishes without us editors "selling" him on our own, particular opinion. Terryeo 17:10, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Placing cut sentence here

A special case is the expression of aesthetic opinions. was the first sentence of NPOV's Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Characterizing_opinions_of_people.27s_work. I don't believe it is appropriate to attempt to create subdivisions of NPOV. The editor direction which applies to every article applies equally to the expression of aesthetic opinions. The concept of a Neutral Point of View is not "special" for any opinion, nor for any subject. There is no special case. The sentence should not be in the article. "Take special care with ....." might be appropriate but unless we are talking about persons who are still alive, I can't think there should be a "special case" and in the case of biographies of living persons, we already have "special guideline". When we begin to make "special cases" out of aesthetic opinion and "special cases" out of religious opinion and "special cases" out of political opinion it should tell us that we have not written the policy very clearly in the first place. Terryeo 09:18, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you are going down what seems to be a non-existent path, talking about "'special cases' out of religious opinion and 'special cases' out of political opinion" when there is absolutely no mention of any special cases for these subjects.

As regards the "special case" which actually was discussed, regarding aesthetic opinions, it is not a special case in the sense that it constitutes an exception to the rules. It is a special case in the sense that we must specify that it is not an exception to the rules. The verifiable opinions of experts in the field, and popular consensus (when such consensus can be reliably determined), is encyclopedic information which deserves inclusion. This applies to aesthetic opinions as it does to any other subject. However, the first mistake that new editors make regarding aesthetic opinions is generally to believe that their own aesthetic opinions are encyclopedic. The second mistake that new editors make is to overcorrect for the first mistake and think that no aesthetic opinions are ever encyclopedic information. That is why this is a special case; you don't generally have editors striking out sentences like "64% of Americans surveyed by ABC News regard Harry S Truman as one of the top five Presidents" but you do have them removing sentences like "64% of Americans surveyed by ABC News regard The Beatles as one of the top five musical groups" under the mistaken impression that aesthetic opinions are never to be mentioned. -- Antaeus Feldspar 16:40, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Ummm, you are saying that "aesthetic opinions" are not a special case ? That is what I said too. Wikipedia policy and guideline apply equally to all the articles and there is no subject which must be treated individual and with separate, specicified policy particular to "aesthetic opinions". Terryeo 07:59, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I believe I already said what I am saying: Aesthetic opinions are not a special case in the sense that they constitute an exception to the rules. They are a special case in the sense that we must specify that they are not an exception to the rules. -- Antaeus Feldspar 19:25, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

By that line of reasoning what what prevents all the rest of the possible subjects which comprise mankind's knowledge from the same specificity? Why should aesthetic opinions be specified as not being an exception when no other sort of opinion is not specified as not being an exception? Terryeo 08:37, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Most Published

User Feldspar suggests he wouldn't mind the article pointing out what exactly is meant by "most published" and I find myself in agreement about that point. His points include:

• There is no reason whatsoever to pay any particular attention to the point of view published in the most languages.
• Neither is "quantity of publications created" any sort of meaningful metric.
• Age of earliest publication" may be of historical interest, but not much else.
• leaving "volume of sales figures" and since it only takes a sufficient amount of money to manipulate that metric we are ill-advised to pay any special heed to that criterion.

So what is our criteria for "most published" and "least published?" That list seems to eliminate every element and the policy doesn't spell it out. Terryeo 08:17, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps you should also take into account the objections raised by BTfromLA and tell us exactly where in policy you find the phrases "most published" and "least published". -- Antaeus Feldspar 19:27, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank for the opportunity to present the information.

• Wikipedia:NPOV tutorial#Space and balance states: Different views don't all deserve equal space. ... For an entry in an encyclopedia, ideas also need to be important. The amount of space they deserve depends on their importance.

Wikipedia:NPOV tutorial#Moral and political points of view states: We should then list all points of views, according to their importance. NPOV's tuturial makes that point in several subsections. All of these support the idea that "Important" means "important to the public".

• And then WP:NPOV#Explanation of the neutral point of view states: None of the views should be given undue weight WP:NPOV#Undue weight directly addresses the issue, stating: represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a verifiable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each. "Prominence" means "Widely known; eminent" [16].

• The most published information is obviously most prominent in the public's eye because they purchase it. That is how it becomes most published. For example, one view of Topic A has been published in a hundred different books (total book sales of one million). Another view of Topic A has been published in 5 different books (total book sales one hundred). The most prominent view manifests in the more published view of Topic A because that point of view is most important to the public. They paid their good money for it and refuse to pay their good money for the other point of view's books.

• In support of the the idea that "most published" is "most prominent", WP:NPOV#Undo Weight goes on to give the illustration, None of this is to say that tiny-minority views cannot receive as much attention as we can give them on pages specifically devoted to them. To further underline the point that "widely published" should be "most presented" in an article, WP:NPOV#A vital component: good research tells us that the highest quality sources should be used. Prominent points of view have such references, you see ? While lesser known, less available publications of a high quality are more difficult to locate (generally). It follows that a book which has been printed once and sold a hundred copies is less prominent and less important than a second book which has been re-printed 20 times and sold a million copies. Terryeo 21:18, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but your edit summary claimed you were posting a "response to User:Feldspar's question". How can that be, when my question was "exactly where in policy you find the phrases 'most published' and 'least published'" and you still have not told us anywhere you find those phrases? -- Antaeus Feldspar 00:33, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I begin this, posting about how our policies and guidelines apply to all the articles and uses a portion of the policy which singles out a selected group of articles, implying that the area, somehow, in some "special way", treat that area differently. I expressed my reasons why that would be inappropriate. In so doing I used the phrase, "most published" and used the phrase, "least published. I have responded to your question. Terryeo 01:05, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

No, actually, you didn't. The question was not "where in the writings of Terryeo do we find the phrases 'most published' and 'least published'?" The question was "where in policy you find the phrases 'most published' and 'least published'". -- Antaeus Feldspar 04:21, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

For reasons upon which readers are invited to speculate, Terryeo nominates "most published" as a replacement for the terms that actually appear in the policy--"significant," "important," "prominent." "Most published" is way off track, and does nothing but introduce distraction and confusion. To the extent there is a real question here, I think it is this: viewpoints that are significant, important or prominent among whom (and by what measure)? Terryeo's pressrun = prominence argument seems to imply that viewpoints should be reflected according to their popularity within the public-at-large (as represented by the book-buying public, in Terryeo's case, which makes no sense at all--for one thing, buying a book hardly announces that you accept what it says as true). This approach would seem inconsistent with the idea of an authoratative encyclopedia: if 25% of the public believes that you catch venereal disease from toilet seats, should 25% of the Venereal disease article be devoted to neutrally expounding the toilet transmission theory? In that case, I think the ideas about disease transmission by medical experts would be the significant ones for Wikipedia, and folk beliefs that are known to be false would be deserving of little credence. If that example is true, then the answer to the above question would be something like "significant in the eyes of recognized authorities in the field." As with most applications of policy, the answer will necessarily vary from context to context, I suspect--some topics lack recognized authorities, and basically it'll be up to editors to determine where the most authoratative discourse is taking place on their particular topic. I have to believe that this question has been hashed out before... is there a clear consensus about the voice of Wikipedia refelecting expert opinion as opposed to vox populi? BTfromLA 05:57, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I talk about apples and you talk about oranges. My statements are not in the area which you address. In addition, there is an overtone of criticality, of asperity in your post which is unnecessary. Terryeo 08:41, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. He's talking sense, and you're not. You still haven't answered the question. yandman 09:11, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for a flaming opionion, heh. But you didn't comment about either the issue being discussed, nor did you attempt to smooth the criticality or find a common middle ground to further the discussion. Terryeo 11:30, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Since "most published" doesn't ring any chimes perhaps "most prominent" would. If not "most prominent", then "most important". Policy and guideline quoted above use these latter two terms and don't use the term "most published". But that is the area of my question and (apparently) the area which User:Antaeus Feldspar addresses above with his list of qualities which (he says) are not to be used to determine "most prominent" or "most important" or (my term) "most published". You dig the jive, bro? Where several points of view exist, how do we determine the one which should have the most pagespace in an article, what criteria should be used?

I would think that you would start with an introduction that states what something claims to be; or, better, what it could be argued to be by a rational supporter; and also introduces the controversy. Then the main section on what something itself claims to be or could be argued to be by a rational supporter in an NPOV tone and followed by the sections on controversy in an NPOV tone. Not hard and fast rule but just the idea of first say what it is then the controversy. I really don't think any of these "most"s really matter. It helps to look at some examples that are perhaps out of our range of interest. Take a look at Holocaust denial AKA Holocaust revisionism. That starts out with quite an long NPOV recital of what term to use and what the main arguments are. You are well into the article before serious criticism starts. It does not matter that Holocaust denial is not the "most" anything. The point is that the article is about Holocaust denial and it get first lick. --Justanother 20:49, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Unless I'm mistaken, the notion that Justanother proposes--that controversial topics be sympathetically presented before criticism and controversy is introduced, has been considered and decisively rejected. It is sufficiently settled that an alternative to Wikipedia (Wikiinfo.com) sprung up which allows full and seperate expression of both sympahetic and critical views, without attempting to integrate them into a single article. In other words, while individual articles may end up structured as Justanother proposes, WP policy favors a "neutral" presentation of controversial subjects as controversial subjects. But this seems to wander away from the question of how we determines which are the prominent, important views, and in what proportion they should be represented. BTfromLA 23:56, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

POV is not NPOV

Can we consider including in the introduction a clarification of some confusion, that POV is not the opposite of NPOV, and an article may include only one, or more POVs, and still conform to NPOV, but must not bias or misrepresent a POV? I still come across many editors that complain that an article is "POV". --Iantresman 12:53, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I have run into that misunderstanding, too. "Neutral POV" is defined in the policy before "Point of View" is defined. Thus an editor has not yet grasped that everyone has some POV, that Thomas Edison had a POV and that George Washington had a POV and that the government of France has a POV. On this pile of misunderstanding "Neutral POV" is presented and every single Wikipedia article must conform ! The policy is not well written because a term is introduced before the elements which constitute that term are defined. First define POV, then after it is understood, then define NPOV. Our policies should be easy TO understand and hard NOT to understand.Terryeo 20:04, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Good idea! I have been following a lot of discussions lately that demonstrate that "NPOV" is not well understood eventhough it's iMO rather well explained. The faulty sequence of explanation may well be one of the causes. Harald88 12:15, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, it is sloppy to describe neutral-POV without adequately mentioning POV. I would suggest two changes to help clarify this: (1) changing the word "view" to "points of view" in the first sentence (2) Adding an extra sentences comparing POV with NPOV.

All Wikipedia articles must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), representing fairly and without bias all significant points of view (POVs) that have been published by a reliable source. For guidance on how to make an article conform to the neutral point of view, see the NPOV tutorial.

[NEW]: Note that while an article usually includes several significant points of view (POVs), it may contain just one POV, and still conform to NPOV, if no bias is present, and no other significant POVs are known. An article that does not conform to NPOV is described as "non-NPOV" or "non neutral" (ie. biased). An article that misrepresents a POV, or gives one POV "undue weight" over others (see below), is described as "POV pushing".

--Iantresman 12:04, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I would say that is a more clear introduction to the idea. Terryeo 16:04, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

What is NPOV as regards religion?

The topic of "what is NPOV as regards religion" is one that bears separate treatment so I will start a new topic on it. For now consider this; science is a limited subset of what I, if not wikipedia, would consider the most broad definition of philosophy, as is religion; see Philosophy of science and Philosophy of religion. They are on different forks, science dealing with the objective and measurable, and religion dealing with the subjective and unmeasurable. To "stand" on the science fork and evaluate religion is inappropriate, it amounts to practicing Scientism, elevating science to something I think most scientists and philosophers would say that it is not. Most of the world's population believe in the existence of a spiritual world beyond that we can see. That is the "most" everything; most believed, most published, etc. We need to ask ourself how can the spiritual beliefs of a religion be "controversial" (as opposed to the actions of the believers, which can be controversial). All religions have "outrageous" ideas; I know of one that believes that a bit of wine and bread placed in your mouth magically transforms into the actual blood and body of their savior. Another one, well you can go from there. Funny thing is that I just looked for the "Scientific criticism of transubstantiation" and it is all red. There is no criticism. But "we all know" that transubstantiation "doesn't really take place" because there is no scientific evidence that it does and, in fact, science would call it impossible (I am of course mimicking the atheistic and/or Scientism-laced viewpoint that we sometimes see). So why does transubstantiation get such nice treatment and Scientology "space opera" (of which Xenu is but a small part) is held up to scorn? Because the only fundamental difference I see is that Scientology, at least as regards the OT Levels, a mystery religion. There is no real difference in the "weirdness" of the beliefs or in the "unscientificness" of the claims. Yes, at times science and religion do go at it, as in creation-evolution controversy, but that is, IMO, more the exception than the rule; usually science and religion maintain their separation and limit themselves to their respective spheres. But what do we do about the treatment of transubstantiation vs. that of Scientology. Why the disparity? Here is my point. The religious beliefs of others only look weird, IMO, to those that believe that all religions are a crock (atheists and the Scientism folk, whether they know what they espouse or not) and to those that think that their brand of religion is the only one that makes sense. Neither of those viewpoints are NPOV, neither of them are befitting of wikipedia, IMO. The former is very much a minority viewpoint on this planet and would limit man and the human experience to that which can be measured with a scientific instrument. The latter may be a much more prevalent view on this planet but it is, by definition, POV. So what is the proper NPOV viewpoint? I would like to hear from others on this. --Justanother 22:26, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

When a religion -- or, indeed, when any entity -- makes claims which are testable on a scientific basis, they should not be very surprised when those claims get tested, nor when the coverage of the results of such testing makes it to Wikipedia. Especially when that entity claims to be a "precision science" ("[Scientology] is today the only validated psychotherapy in the world... Scientology is a precision science...the first precision science in the field of the humanities... The first science to put the cost of psychotherapy within the range of any person's pocketbook... The first science to contain the exact technology to routinely alleviate physical illness with predictable success" (The Hubbard Information Letter of April 14, 1962)) then it cannot very well assert that it should be immune from scientific examination as a "mystery religion". -- Antaeus Feldspar 02:52, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

It is worth noting that Catholics do not claim that a scientific test of the composition of a communion wafer that had been sanctified by the Mass would actually show that it was physically human flesh. That would be absurd. The way in which the host is transformed into the body of Jesus is not meant to be a chemical transformation of the sort that science could measure, even if it is envisioned as a physical transformation. Catholicism has been fairly careful, for at least the past half century or so, to make clear that the faith is not in conflict with modern science. When Christians do try to make claims that are explicitly at variance with modern scientific judgment, as for instance Young Earth Creationism, wikipedia calls them out just as much as it does the Scientologists. But transubstantiation isn't really like that, because I would doubt there is a Catholic in the world who would actually expect that a scientific test would demonstrate that the communion wafer and wine had been transformed into human flesh and blood. john k 04:02, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I have frequently seen Hubbard's statements about precision, about repeatable results, dismissed because no one could reproduce them. And this is still the situation today. No group of researchers are willing to apply auditing procedures with sufficient precision. A very exact and specific method of communication is required which must be drilled, throughly drilled, first. Certain questions must be asked in certain sequences. The procedures are very exact but because they are very exact they only get results if all of the preceeding actions are learned exactly too. Yeah, anyone could. But it would take them months of study. Terryeo 08:30, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

This is exactly the issue. Scientologists are making empirical claims about their religion that should, at least theoretically, be testable in the real world. If you learn the methods, says Terryeo and his co-religionists, you can reproduce the results, and they work in an empirical, testable way. Catholics do not say that true scientific tests would prove that the communion wine has been transformed into blood - they say that it is a mystery, and that science holds no sway in that arena, because it's not asking the right kind of questions. This is a completely different way of looking at the world than scientologists have, and we shouldn't equate the two. john k 15:15, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

The Hon. Herbert Graham ,Former Deputy Premier, Western Australia stated: "It is inevitable that Scientology will expand ... I think more and more people are looking for a practical philosophy." [17] L. Fletcher Prouty, Col. US Air Force (Ret.) stated: "At the heart of Scientology’s activities is the betterment of all people no matter what creed, what race, what socioeconomic status to develop themselves spiritually and mentally so that each individual can improve his own life." [18] As for professional opinions of whether Scientology is a religion, Prof. James R. Lewis, Chairman, Department of Religious Studies, World University of America commented: "Critics never seem to find the room to mention the Church’s work in educational reform, in the fight against drugs, in the publicizing of medical abuse and in other areas of social reform." [19] Professor Lewis also stated about the Church of Scientology "It can be stated that although the concept of a "Supreme Being" exists, other concepts of faith also play an important role. The most essential is that a human being is said to be a spiritual being." [20] In short, the Church of Scientology believes in a supreme being and goes a step further in regard to man's spiritual existence, declaring that an individual is an individual spirit who can become aware of their spiritual existence through education and auditing. However, such an education requires the precision previously mentioned. Terryeo 16:25, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

This thread appears to have been started as a result of a dipute about Scientology, and I take no position on that issue. I would like to bring up a different issue, regarding how religious views are reported. Generally speaking, I believe that WP should require that when covering a contemporary religion's beliefs and practices, particularly controversial ones, notable sources who actually belong to the religion should be preferred to others in representing the religion's POV. There have been various disputes in which some editors have claimed that Wikipedia should prefer academic or other external scholarly sources about a religion, particularly those with critical perspectives, to sources from within the religion. In my view, when the subject is a religion's own beliefs and practices and the reasons for them, the "insiders'" view should generally be presented first (including diverse views within the religion or among denominations), with various critical, comparative, and other "outsiders'" views following. When sources exclude a religion's own practitioners, theoreticians, and leaders, or put critical perspectives first, this is often a sign that an article on a religious subject has a POV problem. Obviously, care for notability and WP:RS is involved, and a claim a person is a "notable religious authority" requires verification; these thoughts are not meant to suggest that everyone with a religous POV who happens to have a blog or web site should be preferred to scholarly sources. Thanks, --Shirahadasha 06:48, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

• The concept of "preferred" is unnecessary and artificial. Readers are entitled to know both the in-religion and out-of-religion perspectives. Sometimes insiders have a hard time explaining matters to outsiders who do not necessarily share the same assumptions. Sometimes the outsiders greatly oversimplify or unconsciously caricature a position. I can't see that making a hard-and-fast rule makes any sense when there is so much individual variation. Robert A.West (Talk) 07:42, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

  Of course they are, he did not deny that. He was referring specifically to how the in-religion perspective should be reported, and whether or not this would best be obtained by good, notable sources from in the religion itself. 70.101.147.224 19:42, 24 December 2006 (UTC)