Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view/Archive 44

The video

I removed the video again. I wonder if we should just nominate them for deletion so that people aren't tempted to stick them in here. Gigs (talk) 16:58, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

You removed the video without any good reason. You never had consensus to delete it in the first place. What is the specific problem with the wording of the video. The video also helps blind people get interested in policy. QuackGuru (talk) 17:07, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

There was no consensus to add it, and it was removed previously. Gigs (talk) 17:17, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

You have confirmed there is currently no consensus to delete when you have not given a specific reason about what is specifically the problem with the video.

Again, what is the specific problem with the wording of the video. Are you going to remain silent and not answer my question again. Your silence equals consensus. QuackGuru (talk) 17:25, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Was the idea of a video discussed? I don't think it's a good idea. A policy consists in the current wording on the page, not someone's idea of its "main points" in a video. PL290 (talk) 17:58, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

The "main points" of the video works for me when you click on the video. I see you can't explain what is the problem with the wording of the video. It seems you just don't like having a video regardless of what it says. QuackGuru (talk) 18:06, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Open question that has been ignored. Again, what is the specific problem with the wording of the video. QuackGuru (talk) 18:06, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

The problem is not with the 'specific wording' of the video, as far as I'm concerned (though the video does have a bit of a 'sesame street' feel to it which annoys me). the main problem I see is that the video itself would be very difficult for editors to edit or modify - it locks in a particular version of NPOV simply by being unchangeable by most editors. that seems like a fairly hefty violation of the policy process; why does whoever developed this video get to have the last word in defining NPOV? --Ludwigs2 18:42, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

This echos the similar consensus at WP:V over a similar video. It was viewed as giving what amounted to an essay about the policy an undue amount of "official-ness". Because of this, including the video in the policy was viewed as inappropriate. Putting the videos somewhere in the help materials, or as external links at the bottom, might be an appropriate thing to do. Gigs (talk) 18:49, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

I suggested a compromise using a stronger disclaimer or your suggestion to move the video towards the bottome of the page could also work. The problem is that editors claim the video is a problem when no editor has explained what is actually problem over the 'specific wording' with the writing of the video. If there is no real problem then nothing needs to be fixed. QuackGuru (talk) 19:05, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

No, I don't think moving it to the bottom would help. Nor would providing any kind of link to it. Both would give credence to what is, frankly, a ridiculous attempt to encapsulate one person's summary of one version of a policy. Sorry, no, just a bad idea. This is a wiki, and the current wording of any policy is found on the policy page. PL290 (talk) 19:14, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

You have refused to explain what is the specific problem with the wording of the video. QuackGuru (talk) 19:17, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

By repeatedly referring to "the specific problem with wording", you have refused to pay any attention to what editors are saying here. And, if I may borrow your terminology for a moment longer, you have refused to answer my question about whether the possible use of such a video was discussed in the first place. I take your silence to mean "no". PL290 (talk) 19:22, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

There was a previous discussion about using the video here. I noticed have not answered my question again about what is actually the specific problem with the wording of the video. Should I take that as consensus to include the video. QuackGuru (talk) 19:30, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Please link to that discussion if it exists. and please respond to the point I and others have made above about the problems with using video from an editorial perspective. --Ludwigs2 22:01, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

First, let me say that I think the video is excellent as a basic introduction to the concept of NPOV for new editors... but... I don't think it should be included on the actual policy page. There is a lot that the video does not say, and it is important that editors read and understand the entire policy, and not just rely on the summary version that was contained in the video. I am sure there is a place for the video (and others like it) ... but the policy page itself isn't it. Blueboar (talk) 22:25, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

The video gives a naive idea of NPOV and actually encourages the common misunderstanding that NPOV is about "balancing" of the type that has become an unfortunate habit of some journalists, who hunt after fringe theorists with a title in order to get a "balancing quote" for a statement that the Earth rotates around the Sun. We don't do anything like that, but it doesn't become clear in the video. Hans Adler 14:31, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I support removing the video, regardless of its accuracy. While a gentle overview may be desirable, having such media in a vital policy is a minefield: Do I have to watch the video to understand the policy? If I watch the video, can I ignore the policy text? What if the video appears to conflict with the text? What if wikilawyers argue using points made in the video? Further, it is too hard to maintain a video. Johnuniq (talk) 23:40, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

The fact that people feel a need to make FAQs and videos to "explain" this basic policy is testimony to how confusingly written this page is. If we tidied the whole thing up, said what we really mean - with each point made once, but clearly - then we could dispense with separate FAQs and videos, as people would find out what we mean simply by reading the policy. (At the moment I guess I would include the video somewhere at the bottom among the "see alsos" - it has the status of a kind of essay.)--Kotniski (talk) 10:27, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

A simple formulation section name

The section name has been changed again without consensus to Asserting facts. The section name is confusing becuase it is not just about asserting fact. It is a simple formulation on how to present the verifed text with or without attribution in the text. QuackGuru (talk) 19:30, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

it would really be nice, QG, if you would engage in discussion rather than restricting yourself to declamations. --Ludwigs2 22:03, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't like "A simple formulation" (because it isn't simple)... but I agree that "Assert facts" is not right either. What about: "State facts - attribute opinions" Blueboar (talk) 22:10, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't agree with the name change becuase we don't always state facts without attribution in the text. For an opinion, we can sometimes avoid attribution in the text with an inline qualifier like the way this sentence is written: "It is generally categorized as complementary and alternative medicine (CAM),[2] a characterization that many chiropractors reject.[3]". There is serious disagreement over whether chiropractic is CAM but the way it is written is without According to or Simon-says attribution. I prefer to stay with "A simple formulation". QuackGuru (talk) 16:53, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

But it isn't a "simple" "formulation" - it's just another part of the policy, as confusingly written and limited in scope as all the others. And if you're now saying that we don't always state facts without attribution, then the whole premise of the section (the bold bit at the start) needs to be changed. --Kotniski (talk) 08:02, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

The point that QG makes is that the categorisation of chiropractic as CAM is not a "fact", but an "opinion". It is a non-sequitor to suggest that he is saying we don't always state facts without attribution. --RexxS (talk) 13:20, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

He said "we don't always state facts without attribution in the text". Which seems to be in direct contradiction with the thesis of the section. (I agree, we do sometimes state "facts" with "attribution in the text", which is another reason to reword the section.)--Kotniski (talk) 13:28, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

He said "For an opinion, we can sometimes avoid attribution in the text with an inline qualifier ..." and that's a different issue. Perhaps you'd like to explain how we determine when we might attribute "facts" (as defined in the section)? Does it have anything to do with editors not liking what the "facts" state? --RexxS (talk) 15:33, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, pardon me for pointing out the obvious, but "A Simple Formulation" is (at this point in time) a completely wrong and misleading section title. this is not 'a simple formulation' of NPOV anymore (assuming it ever was), but has become a restrictive point about when we do and do not need to use attribution as opposed to mere citation, which is just one minor consideration in NPOV. The section ought to be called something like "Attribution and assumptions of generality".

Also, do we want policy written from the context of a bitter battle to legitimize/delegitimize chiropractic? That strikes me as a bit perverse from any rational perspective, and not where policy should be coming from. --Ludwigs2 15:56, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

You are confused about attribution and citation; they are by no means "opposed". In principle, all statements should be verifiable – that's what citation is for. Attribution is used to allow us to report a source's findings when it is disputed by other sources.

• This section is about when to attribute and when not to attribute a statement – is it disputed by reliable sources?
• Both statements that are attributed and those that are not may require citation – can the reader verify it?

The latter issue is covered in WP:When to cite, and you confuse the discussion on this section by arguing that ASSERT has anything to do with citation.

What we actually want is for policy to describe the best practices that have long enjoyed consensus. We certainly don't want key principles (such as when to attribute) to be removed from well-established policy, just to suit the purposes of POV-pushers whose agenda involves casting doubt on undisputed, widely acknowledged findings. That stands no matter what page it is on. The bottom line is that making proper use of reliable sources always solves those problems. I don't take kindly to attempts to move away from source-based contributions, simply to please those who wish to substitute their personal opinions wherever they don't like what they read. Perhaps you'd care to endorse my stance on that? --RexxS (talk) 16:31, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't see anyone disagreeing with you over these principles - all we (well I) want to do is to make the policy section in question read clearly and logically. Wouldn't that be to everyone's benefit?--Kotniski (talk) 16:35, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I think Rexx has gotten into the habit of opposing whatever I say without reflection. clearly I'm not disagreeing with him, and clearly I'm not confused about the attribution/citation issue, and clearly I'm not proposing anything he suggested in the above passage, but he's reading into what I say in a very dim light. it's really stretching the limits of AGF.

Rexx, I suggest you take a day off from this dispute - as I did yesterday - and collect your thoughts on the matter, because you are beginning to edge into incivility. --Ludwigs2 18:44, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm actually going to suggest that you both stay around. You're easily the most thorough and generally calm proponents of both sides when you disagree and I'm not even convinced you disagree that much. Ludwigs, Rexx is, I believe, heavily influenced by what he sees as blatant POV pushing on the chiropractic article. There is obvious concern from him, and others, to avoid opening the doors to undue mention of fringe claims or to calling reliable claims into question using attribution. That is a great goal if there is consensus that no dispute actually exists among reliable sources. Where that dispute is a gray area, I don't think policy is currently sufficient to clarify. Rexx and QG have pushed for what I see as a gray area to be treated like the simple case of plain fact. I think that's categorizing the problem away by applying to it the rubric which produces a desired result. And, even if it did so accurately, I still think there is something missing which prevents explaining the state of research more fully. ASF should be used to keep things simple, but not too simple. And reader understanding should take precedence over verbatim adherence to policy. If that sounds like POV pushing, well, I don't think that's quite right. But there's no need for anyone to take a walk. Just drop the interpersonal commentary and let's get back to issues. Ocaasi (talk) 21:25, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I shall be happy to get back to the issues, Ocaasi, and I thank you for your timely reminder. Your summary of the situation at Chiropractic is accurate. I have to say I know nothing about the subject, other than what I read in the article and the sources. I'd like to think I have no affiliation with any point of view, and I'd prefer to keep it that way. My experiences there are similar to the situation I found myself in at Abortion a while ago, so it's not just one article. The point of mentioning those articles here is that they represent examples where an editor can disagree in good faith with the findings of a reliable source, but is unable to find equally reliable sources to dispute them. I still think that ASSERT should be a simple formula such as: "State without attribution the findings of reliable sources, when they are not seriously disputed by other reliable sources". I think that is common enough practice to deserve documentation in this policy as a starting point. However, I am persuaded by your argument that exceptions could be justified, and I'd be happy to look for an objective test to help others decide when such exceptions could be made. As you know, I put great store in the best quality sources, but I would have to concede that mainstream views are likely to have an advantage over minority views when seeking publication in the best scholarly journals. Whether that yields sufficient bias to cause us to re-examine our strong preferences, is a matter that deserves further debate. --RexxS (talk) 22:57, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Let me say first that all I meant by 'taking a day off' is exactly what the phrase says. People tend to get too stuck in the immediate moment of a debate. sometimes it's a good idea to remind yourself that the problem is not going to be resolved in the next hour (or the next day, or even the next week), and then take the day to go do other things (on project or off project) before you come back at it. again, thinking long-term is better than thinking short-term.

I also think Ocaasi's analysis is correct. I dislike POV-pushers as much as anyone; the only reall difference is that I see POV-pushers on both sides of the fence. Plus, I don't like the way that this policy - which should be a pure and unadulterated content policy - keeps getting modified to turn it into a behavioral policy. NPOV should not be a tool for controlling over-zealous editors (we have actual behavioral policies for that). let's keep NPOV focussed on what it's supposed to be about - Neutral presentation of topics. --Ludwigs2 16:03, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Ludwigs, I know you were only suggesting a brief calming and nothing else. It was a good idea in context. I just thought you should both stay engaged, if possible.

Let's come up with a list of all the ways that ASF can be abused in both directions and see what guidance we can distill. There's already mention about general categories of concerns which Ludwigs detailed somewhere above. I agree that policy should not be behavioral, though maybe a behavioral guideline could be crafted as a separate essay/policy or as part of the FAQ. My overall framework is that indeed NPOV should be focused on neutral presentation of topics and that attribution should be used to inform not to undermine, and lack of attribution employed when stating things simply but not more simply than is helpful or fair. I also think we need a pointed RfC on MEDRS and ASF to clarify situations like the Chiropractic literature review and ASF, or to update the Arbcom findings on Chiropractic in light of recent discussions. User:Ocaasi 69.142.154.10 (talk) 22:19, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

The wording for the purposes of this policy

I think everyone knows this is a policy page and the paragraphs at the top of the page clearly identfies this page as a policy. I can't think of any reason why the extra verbage of for the purposes of this policy improves the ASF section. I did, however, recently move the wording to the NPOV FAQ pag. QuackGuru (talk) 16:53, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think we need people arguing about whether our definition of fact or opinion is a universal one or not. This disclaimer is necessary to show that we are making a potentially synthetic distinction. Gigs (talk) 17:52, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

It's appropriate to disambiguate the definition of fact which Wikipedia uses from the definition of fact which is commonly understood and taught in most logic/science/journalism classes. This helps avoid confusion as well as the hegemonic notion that Wikipedia can define its own words, and it brings attention to the project's unique and self-contained regulatory system in a way that helps users to realize that we can and do craft policy to fit the specific needs of editing as opposed to writing policy generally about the whole world. I think it's important to remember that not everyone automatically or intuitive grasps the intention of ASF, and even among those who do there are complex opinions. It's a good idea to keep the policy language simple but also to help walk readers through any complications. An unexpected definition is just such a case where clear guidance is better than just saving words. Ocaasi (talk) 07:46, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Agreed - and it would be even better (as already suggested) to reformulate the section without defining the concepts "fact" and "opinion" at all (they aren't necessary for saying what the section is attempting to say).--Kotniski (talk) 08:04, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

You really don't think that would leave too much ambiguity? I personally think ASF is being over-strictly interpreted to present a scientific POV, but I understand the concern about there being open season on mainstream science. How would your version handle some of the more fringe topics? Ocaasi (talk) 08:29, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "my version", but we can talk about which statements need inline attribution without attempting the impossible and classifying certain statements as "facts" and others as "opinions" (something that brings the policy into disrepute, since everyone is quite convinced that their own opinions are facts and any opposing facts are opinions).--Kotniski (talk) 09:46, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Defining how a term is used in a document enables the reader to interpret the document correctly. This is particularly important if usage is ambiguous in—or even conflicts with—the wider context within which the reader approaches the document. There is a marked conflict in this case: we stress that this policy "should not be interpreted in isolation from" WP:V, which tells us, "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth", making it unclear what we mean if we now refer to facts. Defining the term enables correct interpretation and application of the policy. Defining terms is something I would encourage more of in our policies generally. PL290 (talk) 12:49, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

But that merely means that we should avoid using terms like 'fact' and 'opinion', which coneys to most people's the idea of 'truth-value' (i.e., facts are 'true', opinions may or may not be). There's no sense trying to redefine common-language terms with new, specialized meanings on wikipedia. let's just choose language where we don't need to worry about whether the term is being misconstrued in the first place. --Ludwigs2 14:09, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Indeed; that would be the ideal, though typically it's useful to give some terms a particular meaning within a document. The overall point that I'm making in response to the original question "Why must we state 'for the purposes of this policy'" is: documents sometimes need to define their usage of terms, and when they do, they make it clear they're doing that as opposed to providing an absolute definition of the word. They do this using phrases such as "for the purposes of this policy", or a table of terms in a "Terms and definitions" section. PL290 (talk) 14:29, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Global Warming and controversial articles

I am new to this discussion. I came here due to the global warming issue, on which I have been in sympathy with one of the sides, the one that has not been able to get its points of view across here on Wikepedia due to some very zealous editing by at least one editor and one administrator. On October 14th, that administrator has been banned from that topic for six months for what I will call "abusive revisions." Presumably this applies to the MANY articles that apply to this topic. Obviously, global warming (which I will abbreviate as AGW, for "anthropogenic global warming") is a controversial topic. Wikipedia - due mainly to the actions of those two individuals - essentially has never had any of the opposition POV presented. AGW is not the only controversial issue.

It appears from this one topic that the policy of NPOV is a failure. At least for controversial topics.

I see from a quick perusal of the current postings on this discussion that everyone is going round and round about what is the definitions of this word and that classification - and it appears no one is agreeing on anything.

This kind of bickering about word definitions is getting no one anywhere, if AGW is any indicator. Controversial issues cannot be handled in the same manner as, for example, lepidoptera migration.

I would suggest that when there is a controversial topic that the Wikipedia page have a CONTROVERSIAL TOPIC NOTICE at the very top of the page, immediately below the article title, in big bold letters and a box around it. Below that there would be something like this to explain the situation:

THIS TOPIC HAS BEEN DEEMED TO BE CONTROVERSIAL.

1. The reader is advised that CONTROVERSIAL TOPICS are at risk of editing and revising by the conflicting sides.
2. What you read in this article has a greater-than-normal risk of being non-factual and - especially - biased.
3. This article is separated into PRO and CON sections, and is controlled so that editors can only post revisions and additions to their own POV section.
4. Anyone editing on this page was required to declare himself/herself as either PRO or CON, before being allowed to post to this topic.
5. The reader is warned that he or she reads this topic at his or her own risk.

I suggest also that there be a NEUTRAL section, in which facts are to be stipulated, meaning that any fact added must be agreed to by both sides of the issue. (That process of agreement would be determined by Wikipedia's board - and that may take some hashing out.)

This is a first draft of the idea.

History of this issue:

What I know at this stage is that the CON side of the AGW issue has thus far been completely edited out of the Wikipedia site - pretty much since the beginning of Wikipedia. As a result, people on the CON side of AGW have little respect for and almost no use for Wikipedia. This is a sizable number that is growing all the time, due to the revelations of Climategate. (As it stands, the "Climategate" article reads as a one-sided apologia for the PRO side.) Wikipedia can keep up the status quo, but their actions of today - voting to ban William Connolley for six months from the topic by a vote of 7-0 - indicate that some accommodation may be possible between the CON side and Wikipedia. Needless to say, after nine years of being locked out, the CON side is skeptical about Wikipedia's dedication to honest presentation of information on this topic. The vote was an encouraging sign, but if Wikipedia wants to move forward, it would do well to not only get rid of the offenders, but to change the way things are done.

That is the reason I am here, although I am not here in any "official capacity." I am doing this as an individual, at least at this time.

Informal discussions among the CON side are taking place as I write this. The banning of Connolley comes as a bit of a shock, and it will take time for any consensus to form. A large portion is presently arguing that we simply tell Wikipedia to blow it out of their nether orifice. There is little - very little - or no trust on that side. Connolley and Kim Dabelstein Petersen have soured the milk, as it were. The underlying reality is that if Wikipedia wants participation by the CON people in balancing the AGW topics (of which there are MANY), then some process needs to be put in place by which PRO-AGW people are not still free to remove CON points of view - and ESPECIALLY references to the hundreds of peer-reviewed articles that argue against AGW. At the present time anyone reading Wikipedia's AGW articles would have the impression that there is NO level of discussion at all even necessary - that every assertion by the PRO side is true and is the only information worth considering. THIS IS VERY FAR FROM THE CASE, and if Wikipedia is to present some level of balanced, the current status quo is completely inadequate, given the history and the current level of distrust by those on the CON side. The PRO characterizations of the CON side as some sort of anti-science ignorant rabble is simply nonsense politicization of the issue. 75% of the posts on the most popular CON blogs are specifically linking to scientific studies. The most popular one (www.wattsupwiththat.com) has won awards as the top science blog.

Since this is an intensely debated and certainly controversial topic, I suggest that whatever can be worked out on this topic would likely be a good framework for dealing with other controversial topics on Wikipedia. Where NPOV does not work, why not deal with controversial topics in a different way? SteveGinIL (talk) 08:30, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

It's a good idea to have warnings about controversial articles, so good that many controversial articles have it on the talk page already. Check out Talk:Chiropractic as an example or any other page that is subject to general sanctions from ArbCom. Policy about dealing with controversial topics usually evolves ex-post, after the shit has hit the fan and cases wind up in arbitration. Others can probably explain the details better. Ocaasi (talk) 08:48, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Medical/Science/Fringe examples in ASF

Regarding the bold parts:

For instance, the published finding of a reliable literature review is a fact, when it is not disputed by another secondary source. That there is a planet called Mars is a fact. That Plato was a philosopher is a fact. No reliable source seriously disputes any of these statements, so Wikipedia articles can simply assert them. Facts can be asserted in Wikipedia's voice (e.g. "Mars is a planet.") and without an inline qualifier (e.g. "According to...", "John Doe believes...", "The book Manual of Cardiovascular Medicine stated...", "A systematic review...").

I think these recent changes need to be discussed. Because:

• They read awkwardly. It is odd to have the first example of a fact be an esoteric statement about a reliable literature review. To begin with, most people don't even know what a literature review is.
• This example sticks out as a single-purpose edit to advance a certain debate in science/fringe articles, most recently Chiropractic (I'm not saying QG has a single purpose, but that this edit does). Policy should be articulate enough to not require these kinds of examples (outside of an FAQ) except simply for illustration.
• There is an odd juxtaposition between literature reviews and plain facts. Is there really consensus that "This risk of spinal manipulation outweighs the benefit" be treated identically to "Mars is a planet". I personally don't think so, and I think the policy needs to better deal with any nuances or better explain why there aren't any. Ocaasi (talk) 08:21, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I think this is a very clear example of something being forced into a policy to help in a particular dispute - it certainly doesn't belong there.--Kotniski (talk) 09:48, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm happy to discuss these edits:

• The order of examples has little importance, but literature review is a well-defined concept and can be linked for those who don't understand the term.
• It's not QG's edit alone. The wording there was partially mine, and I stand by my assertion that we do treat undisputed findings of the best quality sources in the same way as common knowledge, i.e. simple assertion without attribution. We have the means to give guidance on determining the best quality sources: WP:RS and refined examples such as WP:MEDRS (which clearly distinguishes between how we use secondary and primary sources). The example I gave is precisely for illustration: it illustrates that our verifiability requirements means that what you call "plain facts" and what I call "undisputed findings" are presented in the same way, because they pass the same tests of scrutiny. That has always been the consensus as far as I can see.
• What makes it an "odd juxtaposition"? What test can you apply to distinguish between the factual nature of "Worldwide 42 million abortions are estimated to take place annually" and "Plato was a philosopher"? Once cited, is there something inherent about them that I'm missing, which requires us to treat them differently? The only difference between those and "The risk of spinal manipulation outweighs the benefit" is that more interested parties don't like it. Wikipedia should not be a vehicle for pandering to editors' personal opinions. We're much better off following clear documentation of our norms, which depend on the authority of peer-reviewed sources and of the editorial oversight process in quality publications. There may be occasional exceptions when consensus is that it improves the article, but that is what needs to debated on article talk pages, not the general policy that ought to be clearly stated here.

If there are nuances that are common enough to include in policy, then let's find the commonality of those nuances and document them. I don't see any exposition of what these may be, and my experience is that the commonest objection to ASSERT is that an editor doesn't like the undisputed findings of a reliable source. I suggest that's a pretty poor basis to write policy. --RexxS (talk) 13:08, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

• The order of examples was only about readability, not substance. Typically, you would start with a more easily digestible scenario and work up to more complex ones.
• You wrote, "we do treat undisputed findings of the best quality sources in the same way as common knowledge, i.e. simple assertion without attribution". The problem here is that certain things don't read well as plain facts, because they're not plain facts. For some, it is natural that they be presented in a context, either as the result of a study, as the standing opinion of the medical community, as the current consensus of research, as something, but not merely as a plain fact about the world. It's one thing to apply the same scrutiny to these types of claims, but it's another to word them identically.
• 'Mars is a planet' is an unequivocal statement. No one disputes it, because it is not only well established but the definition is concrete and there are no material grounds on which to challenge it. Risk-benefit analysis, to use the chiropractic example, is not 'a fact about the world' in the same way that the definition/categorization of a planet is. It's important for readers to realize that a risk benefit analysis is the result of someone's analysis (or at least some review's analysis). This is not to muddy the waters but to prevent claims from being treated as obvious and inherent where they are actually complex and human-constructed.
• The example you gave of abortions is a great one, because of the word 'estimated'. That word says everything to indicate to the reader that there is a degree of process involved. To directly state that the number of abortions is 42 million would ignore the fact that there was human counting as well as human approximation. There is a degree of humility, of flexibility, of acknowledgment that though there are prevailing estimates, they are not ironclad and can change. Unlike Mars, which will always be a planet, at least through the next several review cycles.
• That has been my gripe about ASF, not that I want to lessen claims, but that those claims are more nuanced than they are being presented. (For example, current risk-benefit analysis of chiropractic is a medical consensus which reflects current research that has of yet failed to provide a positive justification to override the small but noteworthy correlation between chiropractic and death, such that until benefits can be proven, any risk renders the practice inadvisable--and this despite the fact that a longstanding community of practitioners supported by international bodies such as the WHO have not found similar basis for caution and that ongoing research involving vba stroke has not yet been conclusively (causally) linked to chiropractic, and that the studies on which the only systematic review to ever render a definitive negative risk-benefit finding have been based on case reports which though a part of a systematic review still held in high regard, are nonetheless not up to the gold standard of systematic reviews of randomized-double blind trials and future cohort studies, which have yet to occur in sufficient quality or quantity.)
• I think all of that is relevant. You want to simply state a fact. I think our job as editors is to think and to present the debate to the reader with all of its complications. You want to use policy as a basis for stating as strongly as possible something that is fairly nuanced. You're concerned that ASF can be misused; I'm aware that it can work badly in both directions, and that just because there is one danger doesn't mean that any move in the opposite direction is a good one.
• It's not true or reasonable that just because some fringe claims are pushed by using in text attribution that all fringe claims will be. Or that any use of in text attribution is harmful and indicative of such pushing. I think there's a slippery slopeness and a rigidity in there which doesn't permit editors to make choices that can take account of the complexity of a situation. Why should our text read like reductive medical school treatment synopses when they can read like thoughtful encyclopedia articles? That's what I think of when I see attribution, not attack on science!.Ocaasi 69.142.154.10 (talk) 22:45, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

You make a very valid point that someone like myself cannot distinguish between your genuine concerns, expressed in good faith, and the subtle POV pushing that undoubtedly occurs in some cases, because I'm insufficiently expert in the subject matter to make those kind of judgements. But if I'm required to be a subject expert, doesn't that contradict the very nature of editing a wiki?

I could reply that I have to treat the categorisation of planets the same as the findings of medical research. To me, both are constructs of human ingenuity, and neither has the imprint of an underlying truth. Not so long ago, we could have quoted "Pluto is a planet", but look at where we are now. No doubt some crank somewhere believes Mars is insufficiently spherical and has not cleared its orbit sufficiently to qualify as a planet. I do believe there are some facts that have underlying truth: "The prime factorisation of any integer is unique" is an example, and I don't think it needs attribution to Euclid or Gauss (although a citation would be useful for verification).

Nevertheless, I sympathise strongly with your position, although I can't share it, because I don't know how to take account of the complexity of the situation that you describe. I'm not equipped to make those sort of judgements, and I'd guess that most of the active editors aren't either. I'm tempted to say use the template "This article is need of attention from a subject expert", but I've never seen that yield a good result.

The problem you pose is real, but I don't have any good suggestions on how to solve it. What I do strongly believe, though, is that removing the guidance we have now will lead to more problems, not fewer. Do you have any thoughts on how we could include into policy the sort of exceptions to ASSERT that you describe? --RexxS (talk) 23:35, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

You know, I'm just going to add this insight without really getting into this conversation (because it mirrors conversations elsewhere, and I'd rather keep things focused). Medical issues are a particularly temperamental spot on wikipedia because (IMO) (1) medicine has a long history of overt quackery (from snake-oli salesmen to potentially dangerous cures to drug companies selling more-or-less useless products - it's easy to bamboozle people who are concerned about their health), and (2) medicine has a potential to be dangerous/damaging to individuals. however, the problem I run into whenever I work on medicine-related fringe articles is that some editors can't or won't distinguish between actual, overt quackery and the vast middle area of products and practices which are neither quackery nor mainstream. Chiropractic can be dangerous, but it is not inherently dangerous, and is successful enough at some things that it is licensed and has a devoted clientele. Most practices that fall under the CAM rubric are either innocuous or mildly beneficial: i.e., some clients are paying an amount of money to do something that reassures them and makes them feel good emotionally, with little to no risk. Frankly, for something like therapeutic massage you're less likely to suffer harm than you are from getting hit by a foul ball at a baseball game; the baseball game costs more, the massage makes you feel better, but somehow baseball is a great American pastime while therapeutic massage gets dumped into the A-list of evil anti-medicl practices. why is that? (psst... that was a rhetorical question...) --Ludwigs2 03:45, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Rexx, I appreciate your response and am tossing around some ideas. I don't quite know which ones will stick yet, but at least there's a common domain to look at. Ludwigs, I've commented before that I think at the extreme, some editors are creating their own policy synthesis between MEDRS and ASF to force what amounts to a scientific point of view on articles. That's the weapon. The strategy is to claim as many articles as possible as under the purview of MEDRS. I don't think Rexx does this, but I'm not sure that in his hearty defense of fact and science that he's not supporting others who would like to. If we can craft a policy that equally frustrates or equally tempers both CAM-supporters and skeptics, and gives them a way to reasonably discuss claims, then we'll have done a good job. The reason baseball is still a great American pastime is because it has never been the subject of an evidence-based systematic review. Once it is, watch out and hold on to your peanuts. Ocaasi 69.142.154.10 (talk) 04:47, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Most Alternative Medicines have never been subject to a systematic scientific review either. and please don't use neologisms like 'evidence-based'. that term was invented by skeptics as a way of talking to people who don't understand how evidence is really assessed in scientific medicine. don't know whether it was intentionally designed to mislead people or if it just worked out that way, but it's a baaaaad term. --Ludwigs2 15:37, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, I'll quibble here a bit. I like evidence, and evidence-based anything would be preferable if it was applied equally. It's not, and it's clear that when it comes to many long time medical practices evidence-based medicine is not given the same strict reading as it is in cases like Chiropractic. Can you give me a brief idea (here or on my talk page) what you mean about how this term has been misused, and what "really" happens in scientific medicine? Ocaasi 69.142.154.10 (talk) 22:41, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

since this is a bit of a tangent, I'll put it in your talk. --Ludwigs2 23:02, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Removal of "Assert facts" again

Kotniski with this edit, has once again removed the section's first key principle: "Assert facts" - i.e. without attribution. It can't be undone because of his later edits, so I've reluctantly reverted to the version prior to his major change. This is an inevitable consequence of making major changes that have no consensus, and emphasises the importance of seeking consensus for the wording of major changes first. I'll ask why he thinks the removal of the fundamental guidance that this section has always given could be considered an improvement. --RexxS (talk) 15:12, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

I prefered Kotniski's re-write. It related the section directly to the concept of maintaining a neutral point of view (which is what this policy is about), which I don't think the "long standing" version did well enough. Blueboar (talk) 15:31, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't believe that "Assert facts" is really the main point of that section - the main point is "don't assert opinions". As a corollary we understand that uncontroversial "facts" are usually asserted directly, but I don't think there's ever been a rule that they have to be (in some contexts, the information about where a fact comes from will be of genuine interest to the reader). And my version anyway continued to say that undisputed facts are normally stated directly. However, I don't mind my proposed list of points being extended by the inclusion of another, saying something like "don't use attribution to cast undue doubt on the certainty of an assertion" (I probably don't really mean those exact words), if this is really a widespread problem in some areas of WP.--Kotniski (talk) 15:43, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

I've reverted back to Kotniski's version - not because I'm satisfied with it, but because it's better than what's there now. Plus, I'm getting fed up with editors who are over-concerned with the moment-by-moment wording and not much concerned with the long-term health of the policy. let's work through the discussion, shall we? --Ludwigs2 15:46, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Kotniski's view that the main point of the section is "Don't assert opinions" (or, at least, that is what the main point should be). Blueboar (talk) 16:28, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

I'll leave you to it then; I won't break my own 1RR rule. It's a pity that editors choose to force through what are undoubtedly major changes of emphasis while discussion is taking place. I'm saddened to see that those tactics are chosen over trying to seek consensus. The removal of the principle of asserting facts without attribution as the starting point for guidance is a mistake, but you obviously have your reasons for wishing it see it gone. --RexxS (talk) 17:34, 16 October 2010 (UTC) WP:ASSERT

Ah, well... What goes around comes around, I supposed. At any rate, the discussion is still ongoing, and I'm still interested in hearing other ideas. There's no real difference to my mind which version is currently installed (except for the minor difference that other editors are more likely to pay attention and participate when they see a change in the page). If you want to lay out what specifically you don't like about this revision (beyond it just being a change), I'm listening. --Ludwigs2 18:21, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

thought on the 'naming' section

It occurred to me while I was reading over Kotniski's revisions that we might want to include some language on odd conjunctions in article names. I'm thinking specifically of the articles I've recently had experiences with - Israel and the apartheid analogy, and another one called, I think, israel and violence (though that may have been deleted). I think there should be some restrictions on article titles like 'X and Y', "X considering Y", "X as Y", and etc. I'm not quite sure how to phrase it yet, but something along the lines that we shouldn't use article titles to imply a relationship, connection, or factual state of affairs without due cause.

I know this has been discussed elsewhere, but I can't for the life of me find where. anyone know off-hand? --Ludwigs2 17:14, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

It is discussed at WP:Article titles#Titles containing "and", where we frown on such titles. Blueboar (talk) 19:32, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

ah, excellent. that link works. --Ludwigs2 19:58, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

NPOV question from Ché

Hi, it's me, CybergothiChé, HAI!!!!!

OK, I have a question regarding NPOV, in regards to immigration (not the wikiarticle). When one or a family or whatnot were to immigrate to another country, they could also be said to emigrate from their original country. But the immigrate and to emigrate are both different points of view regarding the same action, the migration of said persons from country A to country B.

So, in keeping with a neutral point of view, would it not be appropriate to say, rather than immigrate or emigrate, migrate, when referring to the relocation of persons beyond national borders?

CybergothiChé (talk) 21:21, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't matter, its not the kind of "point of view" that the POV policy is covering. I think you are being facetious.·Maunus·ƛ· 21:26, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think I am being facetious, and I do believe that this is the NPOV that this covers, regarding impartiality, for example :

• during the second world war, many emigrated from Europe to escape the clutches of Nazi Germany

could also be written

• during the second world war many immigrated to Australia to start new lives

however, it could also be written as such:

• during the second world war many migrated from Europe to Australia to start new lives free from the clutches of Nazi Germany

and, furthermore, although your comments are appreciated, I am also asking what everyone feels, aiiiiight.

CybergothiChé (talk) 21:38, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I think the choice of terminology has more to do with whether the people are more concerned with leaving where they were or going where they are headed. The Nazi era had many people who left Germany mostly to get away from the regime, while in other times and places people want to move for more proactive reasons. It's not really an NPOV issue in general, since immigrant and emigrant are both largely value neutral. it would only be an NPOV issue if people start using the terminology in oddly pushy ways (e.g. saying that the Soviets encouraged Siberian immigration amongst party opponents). There's no real problem here, and no need to make a problem out of some minor semantic ambiguity. --Ludwigs2 22:14, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Explanation of the neutral point of view

Things seem to have gone unexpectedly quiet since the rewrite of this section - does that mean people are now happy with it, or are we just fed up continually discussing it? As the main author, I'm not entirely satisfied with the result - it now seems to place excessive emphasis on the "don't make facts look like opinions and vice versa" issues (three out of five bullet points). Any ideas on how to restore the balance? Perhaps reintroduce one or two of the (vague but) pithy sentences from the previous version, like "describe disputes but don't engage in them", as good expressions of the essence of NPOV?--Kotniski (talk) 09:55, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

I suspect it's a little of both. With some editors I see no indication that they do (or will ever) embrace any change, I suspect others are either tired of the debate or collecting their thoughts on the matter, and I think most people find the change either beneficial or too innocuous to comment on directly. What I think we should do is tweak it a bit more, as seems appropriate, and then if it stands for a bit without further comment we should post a Policy RfC/Pump Notice informing people of the change. That way we can be sure that the change has broad support, which should quell any future disputes.

with respect to your other concern, we could rewrite the passage as follows (don't know if this is better, but I'm throwing it out there):

Wikipedia's concept of neutrality aims at ensuring that the reader gets a clear, balanced and accurate understanding of the topic. It is not generally possible to give hard-and-fast rules for accomplishing this – much depends on the good faith of editors, who should be striving to provide information, not promote a particular cause - but in general editors should avoid 'packaging' topics in order to color, magnify, diminish, or otherwise misrepresent the material. Observing the following guidelines and playing close attention to the principles of verifiability will help to achieve the degree of neutrality which is appropriate for an encyclopedia.

Present uncontested assertions in a factual voice, and attribute other statements properly.

Most articles will need to cover significant opinions and conflicting assertions that have been expressed about their subjects. These should be attributed in the text to particular sources, or sometimes (where opinions appear in multiple sources) be described as "widespread views of..." or similarly attributed in a more general way. On the other hand, seemingly factual, uncontested assertions made by reliable sources should normally be presented in a factual voice, except where they are specifically being disputed.

Prefer non-judgemental language.

A neutral point of view neither sympathizes with nor disparages its subject, although this must sometimes be balanced against clarity. Present opinions and conflicting findings in a disinterested tone.

Indicate accurately the relative prominence of opposing views.

Ensure that the reporting of different views on a subject adequately reflects the relative levels of support for those views, and that it does not give a false impression of parity, or give undue weight to a particular view.

For example:

• Broad evaluative statements - such as "genocide is an evil action" - should not be used, but such ideas may be presented with attribution, as in "genocide is widely considered to be an evil action by scholars and political figures" or "genocide has been condemned by the United Nations as an inherent evil."
• Concepts that are widely established and generally uncontested in sources should be presented in a factual voice, without specific attribution, even on article topics that are explicitly critiques of them. They should not be worded in any way that makes them appear to be contested. For instance:
  • The Theory of Evolution should always be presented as the dominant scientific paradigm, even on pages that ostensibly dispute it such as Creationism or Lamarckism.
  • The Holocaust should be treated as a historical event, not as a theory or belief that must be attributed to a source, even on topics such as Holocaust denialism that call it into question.
• Overstatements - "An overwhelming majority of US citizens utterly despise the horrifying events of 9/11" - should be avoided. In general, avoid descriptions designed to emotionally magnify a particular perspective. The various points of view on a topic should be balanced according to their prominence in the literature, not according to their emotional salience.

--Ludwigs2 18:41, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

To reply to Kotniski's opening question, I'm an example of being fed up continually discussing it, along with feeling like I just no longer know what to suggest. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:26, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

If you want my 2¢, this is a standard (if unfortunate) part of the wikipedia talk dynamic. Certain debates inevitably go through what I think of as a 'kamikaze' phase, in which some editor(s) set aside the principles of consensus discussion and merely throw themselves into the fray with a single-minded, unwavering dedication (with basically the same rationale as the original kamikazes - not to win the battle, but to cow opposition by demonstrating the lengths they are willing to go to to defend their position). There is nothing to be done about it except to buck yourself up and face them squarely until they run out of steam. After that, there is generally a window of opportunity for productive discussion. Be thankful that the storm is over relatively quickly here - I know of pages where the kamikaze phase goes on for months. I'd say we have a week or so to talk before more strafing runs begin, which is why I suggest we work out a reasonable version, implement it, and then put it up for RfC while we can. That's the only way this is going to reach long-term stability.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, AGF, I know. AGF means you should assume your friends not going to pee on your carpet; it doesn't mean you should smile politely and thank them when they do it anyway. --Ludwigs2 03:20, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Rug pissers didn't do this. MastCell ^Talk 04:57, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

It's nice when people get my obscure references... --Ludwigs2 15:49, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

I think there was so much tied to the specific look, feel, and wording of the prior section that this substantial change has pulled the rug out from particular objections. The basic content is the same, there's just nothing to get huffy about benchmarking against. I do think there's a chance of people reverting wholesale to the old version. Which makes fixing this one up a good idea.

Also, can we combine the Pseudoscience and Religion sections under a broader heading for "Controversial Subjects"? Ocaasi 69.142.154.10 (talk) 05:45, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, speaking from my own position of not caring that much, I'd advocate for the "Old version, pre-April 2010", seen at #'equal validity' convenience break, above. As time passes since the Kamikaze period, I find that that the various objections to it just don't seem to matter very much to me. And with that, I abide. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:01, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

The more I think about this issue, the more I keep coming around to the conclusion that Neutrality (on wikipedia) really deals with two issues:

• Inclusiveness: making sure that wikipedia articles cover the full range of significant viewpoints on a topic, not just a skewed subset.
• Fairness in presentation: Making sure that the article does not use rhetorical language tricks to present a skewed vision of the topic, but instead presents an impartial, accurate, unembellished description of the material.

Something along those lines might be even simpler than Kotniski's wording or my attempted revision above (though it would lose some specificity in the process) - what do you think?

@ Trypto: I'm not averse to the pre-April 2010 version at all, though that only applies to the 'Give equal validity' section, and I do rather like the revision I recently made to that section here. maybe we could take some of the wording changes I made and apply them to the old version?

The reason there is so much emotion tied to the language of this policy, I think, is that there's been a lot of warfare over what constitutes a 'significant' viewpoint and what constitutes a 'fair' presentation (things that always come into question whenever there's an ideological conflict on an article), and people have been trying to structure the policy language to legislate solutions to those kinds of problems. But you can't really legislate that kind of problem out of existence: people who are taking the encyclopedia seriously don't need the legislation (because they will be able to see the value of consensus results and moderate their own behavior), and people who don't take the encyclopedia seriously will always find some way to twist policy language to mean what they want it to mean.

I think you're right about the pseudoscience and religion sections being merged (and generalized). maybe I'll do that today, and we can discuss the result. let's keep this discussion focused on the explanation section, though. --Ludwigs2 17:11, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Copy-edit/clarity, brevity, redundancy

I did a major-minor copy edit through the first half of the policy. I don't think there are any substance-related changes at all, but let me know or revert anything that stepped on an important phrase or piece. I mainly tried to shorten loose phrasing, remove redundant statements, and organize the headers a bit.

• The most significant changes were removing the following text from WP:Undue

  Wikipedia should not present a dispute as if a view held by a small minority deserved as much attention overall as the majority view. Views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views. To give undue weight to the view of a significant minority, or to include that of a tiny minority, might be misleading as to the shape of the dispute. Wikipedia aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation in reliable sources on the subject.

Though certainly important policy, I don't think there's a word of it that's not stated earlier in the section, almost verbatim.

While it may be repetitious, this text is vital to understanding the concept of WP:UNDUE. I think it should be returned. Blueboar (talk) 14:28, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

I see you concern, but I'm not sure that mere repetition is the solution. The first paragraph of Undue reads:

"Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represents all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint. Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means that articles should not give minority views as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views. Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all."

I think we should sharpen or focus that paragraph, perhaps integrating it with the removed material so that it says what it means the first time and does it well enough to get the job done. When repetition is being used for emphasis, I think it means that the policy needs to be written better. I'm not pretending to have any weight on the outcome here, and would prefer some other editors weigh in. Meantime, Blueboar, if you prefer to have it in while we discuss, go for it. Ocaasi 07:32, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

• I did some cleaning up to WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV. AttributePOV was almost entirely redundant with the now-refactored ASF. Which I think might mean that we could even further tighten things up by adding a bullet point to the Explaining NPOV section about AttributePOV.

• I think that the GEVAL issues can be somewhat easily resolved by just fusing it with Undue such that it is not a separate section, but just a clarifying paragraph. Although nicely written and apparently somewhat iconic, it really doesn't say anything that is not included in Undue.

Questions

• I renamed the somewhat awkward "Handling neutrality and disputes" to "Handling neutrality disputes", but I'm reconsidering that those titles are not identical in meaning. Thoughts?

• Do the renamed section headers need to be {anchored}?

• As I mentioned above, I combined the pseudoscience and religion sections under a common header, but I could use some more experienced hands to contextualize them. Particularly, I'm thinking about a section that addresses how NPOV applies to controversial topics--history, fringe science, religion, and political debates--but without crafting any new policy, of course. As it stands, the two named sections beg the question--why those, and why not the rest?

• Should the history section be rewritten as a paragraph rather than a list?

• Can we get rid of the Notes section by incorporating or eliminating the two footnotes?

• What does it mean in the Intro that NPOV is expected of "of all articles and all editors"... Does that mean editors must be NPOV in their advocacy? I think this phrasing is either implicitly redundant or vaguely overbroad. Can we clarify, or is it alright as is?

• Can we pick a less SAT style word than obfuscate? ("While pseudoscience may in some cases be significant to an article, it should not obfuscate the description of the mainstream views of the scientific community.") I prefer language which an average reader won't need a dictionary for. Can we say it more simply?

Thoughts? Feel free to intersperse comments in this post. Ocaasi (talk) 02:12, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Ambiguous wording

I'm puzzled by a paragraph in the section "Due and undue weight".

Also, if you are able to prove something that few or none currently believe, Wikipedia is not the place to present such a proof. Once it has been presented and discussed in Wikipedia:Reliable Sources, it may be appropriately included. See: Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Verifiability.

That seems to say that an editor who is able to prove something should take their theory to the page Wikipedia:Reliable Sources for discussion with other editors to obtain approval for its inclusion in an article. Is the intended meaning that an editor should wait until the theory has been "presented and discussed" outside Wikipedia in reliable sources? If so, it should just say "reliable sources", using a piped link to "Wikipedia:Reliable Sources" so that the word "Wikipedia" isn't visible in the readable form of the page. Girlwithgreeneyes (talk) 16:17, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

You're right that it could be taken either way, though this policy page at least, seems to use the Wiki:Page convention without piping. I'll pipe it. Ocaasi (talk) 16:46, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Done, but a question. I left Reliable Sources capitalized. Is that splitting the baby? Ocaasi (talk) 16:49, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I think to be consistent, it shouldn't be in capitals. The previous (one-line) paragraph has "reliable sources" in lower case. Girlwithgreeneyes (talk) 16:57, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Yup, lower caps all over. Ocaasi (talk) 17:12, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I approve. Good catch. Blueboar (talk) 17:17, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

NPOV/FAQ

A long-term consideration that we will need to deal with. wp:NPOV/FAQ has gotten out of sync with the main NPOV page, and is beginning to contradict it in some ways. Partly this is due to long-standing problems with the FAQ, and partly to the fact that QuackGuru has taken to reasserting his preferred elements of NPOV (such as ASF - things which have been removed or rewritten recently) over there. I'd plow in and revise it myself, but I suspect that would create a direct conflict (which I'd rather avoid). So instead, I thought it better to open a discussion here about the future of the NPOV/FAQ. What parts of this should we revise, what parts delete, what parts retain? --Ludwigs2 19:29, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Agree it's a mess, but it's main problem is that it's so overwitten. It might be a bit circuitous, but I'd like to try and rewrite it all for clarity before tossing parts. Can you point out some obvious outdated or contradictory parts? Ocaasi (talk) 00:42, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I did a bunch of major/minor copy-edits to the common questions. I didn't touch ASF or Pseudoscience, since they seem to be the most touchy. Take a look and see if it does the job with a little less verbiage. Ocaasi (talk) 03:51, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure we really need two separate pages anyway. It would be far better to have just one page that explains everything in an easily understood manner. There isn't really that much to say about being neutral - the current content of the two pages is really just repeating the same points over and over again (with the occasional dubious or incomprehensible statement here and there).--Kotniski (talk) 08:23, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree that policy should be more simple if possible, but I think we should wait to try and let this current policy status settle in a bit before doing more major scrapping... Ocaasi (talk) 08:42, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

The principles line

"The principles upon which these policies are based cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, or by editors' consensus."

This line does not appear in the other core policies which have otherwise identical paragraphs warning not to take them in isolation. I don't really disagree with it, but since it's making a claim about all three core policies, it seems strange to only have it here. On a related note, do you think it would be good idea to make the "don't take this in isolation" paragraph into a transclusion for consistency? Gigs (talk) 01:58, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Good points. I think the situation is: The 3 core policies should not be taken in isolation, and none of them can be superseded by other policies or guidelines, or by editors' consesnsus.

Transclusion would also make sense, I think. Ocaasi (talk) 02:40, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

I went ahead and zapped this line, as there was a discussion on WP:V about the line and there was a universal consensus not to include it. Gigs (talk) 02:47, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I suggest that a link to that discussion would be in order. Blueboar (talk) 14:19, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Sentence replaced re. non-negotiability of the principles upon which this policy is based

RE this edit, I've reverted it.
..... The sentence removed by User:Gigs has been a stable part of this policy for nearly five years now, since early 2006. Here is WP:NPOV at the end of 2006; 2007, 2008, 2009, and 31 October 2010. The "principles upon which [this policy] is based" are set forth in introductory form in WP:NPOV#History_of_NPOV. .... Kenosis (talk) 23:02, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree with restoring it. I just don't see what harm the sentence does. And I read the talk at WP:V, and, frankly, it seems like a lot of navel gazing, nor does it automatically apply to this page. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:46, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Since it's making claims about all three policies, I'd argue that yes, it does apply to all three pages. If it's not appropriate there, it's not appropriate here either. It says "these policies", not "this policy". Are you arguing that WP:NPOV is somehow less negotiable then WP:V? Gigs (talk) 04:46, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

I added a wikilink principles. (Update: This has since been reverted by another editor.[1])

Re "It says 'these policies', not 'this policy'." - How about changing it to "this policy"?

Re "Are you arguing that WP:NPOV is somehow less negotiable then WP:V?" - That does seem to be the case that NPOV has less flexibility compared to NOR or V. See for example Founding principles which makes a definite statement about NPOV. --Bob K31416 (talk) 14:08, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

I apologize for the delay in responding to Gigs over a day later. after discussion has already continued here, but I wasn't back online again until now. IIRC, similar foundational principles were also set forth by Jimmy Wales regarding WP:V as well as WP:NOR, which are core policy, non-negotiable and not eligible to be overruled by consensus. Are they no longer cited at WP:V? I should go review that discussion and give WP:V a thorough look-through--which will take awhile. Will get back to you on this a bit later on. ... Kenosis (talk) 22:31, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Since this does relate to more than one policy, may I suggest a centralized discussion. I think we need to avoid a situation where the editors at V reach a consensus to omit it, and the editors at NPOV reach a consensus to keep it. Blueboar (talk) 14:48, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Agree that it belongs on all or none of the pages. Seems like it needs an RfC of sorts as Blueboar suggested. What exactly does that sentence mean? What about IAR or ArbCom or Jimbo, copyright, blp, etc. Maybe the sentence needs rephrasing. Ocaasi (talk) 15:38, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Simply changing from "these policies" to "this policy" and providing the wikilink founding principles instead of "principles" would avoid these problems. Also, Ocaasi raises a good question regarding the sentence as it now stands, "What exactly does that sentence mean?" And just a reminder of the point made in my previous message that NPOV is given prominence in the Founding principles so it could be appropriate to put the modified sentence in WP:NPOV and not in WP:NOR and WP:V. --Bob K31416 (talk) 16:11, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Here are the choices so far.

1. Keep the sentence.

"The principles upon which these policies are based cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, or by editors' consensus."

2. Delete it.

3. Modify it.

a) "The founding principles upon which this policy is based cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, or by editors' consensus. --Bob K31416 (talk) 16:40, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

b) "The founding principles upon which these policies are based cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, or by editors' consensus." Gigs (talk) 16:51, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

• Your 3-a option seems fine to me, but I think it should be "these policies" and included in all three, so we need to have that RfC like blueboar suggested. I think we should present something like 3-a as the RfC proposal, noting that a lack of consensus to add 3-a will result in the removal of the current line from NPOV; it's all or nothing. -- I have added 3-b to reflect my change. Gigs (talk) 16:50, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

This seems to be having some circular logic. Can we form a consensus to decide the value of our own consensus? My impression is that all three core policies are above ed consensus and we can't form a consensus to change the situation.-Civilizededucation^talk 17:05, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

They are subject to the normal process of consensus like all our policies. The principles underlying them are not negotiable though. Gigs (talk) 17:11, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

The a) above suggests that even the founding principles underlying two of our three policies can be supreceded by ed consensus.-Civilizededucation^talk 17:22, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

No it doesn't. --Bob K31416 (talk) 17:34, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

It's obvious that you did not intend it that way. But, AFAICS, it does.-Civilizededucation^talk 17:46, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Simply, your interpretation isn't what it says. I believe your interpretation is an honest one, but it may have been brought on by trying too hard to carefully find something wrong, and that resulted in your seeing something that wasn't there. Regards, --Bob K31416 (talk) 22:51, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

(ec) One would hope not, although it's hard to say who would enforce those principles in the fact of a "consensus" to vary them. (The page you all keep referring to as "founding principles" is nothing of the sort, of course - it's just another consensus effort by editors to express, after the fact, the principles that they think underlie all Wikimedia projects.) --Kotniski (talk) 17:23, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Re Founding principles is " just another consensus effort by editors to express, after the fact, the principles that they think underlie all Wikimedia projects." - Interesting point. How can we find out what their status is relative to Wikipedia policy? Thanks. --Bob K31416 (talk) 17:53, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

FWIW: User:Jimbo_Wales/Statement_of_principles Gigs (talk) 18:05, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't think they really have any status, unless (for example) the WMF Board passes a resolution laying down specific principles that it expects projects to adhere to. (After edit conflict: and the same applies to Jimbo's statement - which is also subject to editing by others - and other fundamental principle pages like WP:5P. And policy pages in fact. Nothing we write on any of these pages gains any authority by the fact that we've written it, although all of these pages in practice do a pretty good job of describing the norms which actually are accepted.) --Kotniski (talk) 18:13, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Re "Nothing we write on any of these pages gains any authority by the fact that we've written it, although all of these pages in practice do a pretty good job of describing the norms which actually are accepted." - "in practice" seems to be the key phrase. For example, Wikipedia policy has an authoritative influence on debates at articles. Since Wikipedia is a subset of Wikimedia, in practice have the Founding principles been an authoritative influence in forming Wikipedia policy? --Bob K31416 (talk) 18:29, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Re "Nothing we write on any of these pages gains any authority by the fact that we've written it" - If this were true, there would be little point in arguing about what's written here. But in my experience it's not true at all; in discussions about content people frequently quote from policy and guideline pages to support their arguments, and generally other editors accept this as valid. If you argue against the implications of a guideline, you get told to go away and get the guideline altered if you can. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 23:38, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, OK, I suppose that's quite often true in practice, though it's not always done appropriately (for example, when they don't do it to support their arguments, but as a substitute for arguments that they otherwise don't have). I don't see any basis, though, for saying that anything is absolute and non-negotiable - particularly content policies, which the only possible enforcers (admins and ArbCom) are notoriously reluctant to take action to uphold.--Kotniski (talk) 09:50, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Agreed that it's a bit much to state "absolute and non-negotiable". It's an editorial policy after all, which requires the exercise of judgement, discretion, choice of sources, words, syntax, etc., by a large number of participants. Presently the sentence doesn't any longer include the words "non-negotiable", which to me is reasonable since the wiki has come a long way since Jimbo and Co. set the project in motion, and the words "neutral point of view" are quite well ingrained in the consciousness of the community. So now it reads like this, without "non-negotiable" which could easily be misleading in the context of a concept that is often debated and tweaked w.r.t. how best to express the basic principle and its manifestations such as WEIGHT, handling controversial or fringe views, etc. Especially without the words "non-negotiable" I don't see a problem with keeping the long-standing statement right up front in the policy--IMO it's a reasonable hedge against losing track of important foundational principles, of which this page is the first and perhaps the most central. ... Kenosis (talk) 16:05, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

There are two separate issues here: 1) Whether the principles can be superceded; and 2) Which principles? As pointed above there's Meta's Foundation principles, the NPOV history itself, Wiki 'common law', Jimbo, 5P, etc. These are related but separate questions... Ocaasi (talk) 16:38, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Look, this is not that difficult, and I'm not sure why it has turned into such a prickly issue. Clearly, the principles of the project cannot be superseded. I'm not even sure what it would mean to do that. Consider these statements:

• Wikipedia is an encyclopedia
• Wikipedia ought to try to remain neutral
• Wikipedia editors should be civil to each other

Can you imagine any case (short of complete dysfunctional breakdown) where editors would seriously argue against any of these? Sure, everyone has different ideas of how these principles ought to look on project, but no one disagrees with the principles themselves. Policies and guidelines (and etc.) are all efforts to capture some sort of community consensus about how these principles should be implemented, and so policies and guidelines can and do change as community understandings change.

In other words, we never change the principle that we want to be neutral, but we might change our understanding of what it means to be neutral. so where's the problem again? --Ludwigs2 17:44, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

No issue, just some ambiguity about the referent of 'these principles', since there are multiple potential targets; a wonky hypothetical about whether NPOV itself can be changed through consensus; and the relevant issue of whether NPOV can be overridden by either another policy or guideline, or by a local consensus of editors on a specific article. Ocaasi (talk) 18:49, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

"NPOV changed through consensus" well of course it can be, all there is, is "consensus." Balance of opinion is in the eyes of the beholder. Some beholders are honest enough to be neutral and acknowledge other viewpoints. Others are not and pervert "balance" in the creation of WP content to give baseless/ misinformed/ malevolent fringe theories the semblance of respectability. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 19:09, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

let's table the skeptinoia for the time being, please...

The problem here is that a number of editors (mostly through short-sightedness) try to build particular language bits into particular policies in order to give themselves leverage in particular kinds of disputes. These will inevitably conflict with other language bits that other editors have added into other policies, but rather than doing the sensible thing (which is to sit down and discuss the problem to try to create a general solution), they get all up in arms about it and try to defend their favored little language bits (because they've committed themselves to talk-page arguments based on those language bits, and don't want to lose that little margin of authority in content debates). The result is ugly tempers and messy, inconsistent policies, and headaches all around. The way we should be handling things is like so:

• Types of official pages
  1. Principles - wp:5P, wp:Trifecta - trump everything. We're writing an encyclopedia, we should try to be neutral, we should try to be nice to each other. These things don't change.
  2. Policy gives general statements about how principles should be implemented across the project. Policy trumps everything except principles
  3. Guidelines give more specific statements about how to apply policy in specific cases or arenas.
• Conflicting statements should always be rationalized and removed as they are discovered. This means:
  • Statements on lower-level pages should be removed or rewritten to conform to higher-level pages
  • Contradictory or redundant statements in pages at the same level should be removed or rewritten until there is only one statement in one document.
  • Policy-fork pages should be deleted entirely, unless there's a real need to retain them.

In other words, rather than trying to decide which policy page is 'right' and what can be overridden by editors, we should force people to do the endless basic housekeeping that that this kind of rules system requires. If we keep our official pages neat and tidy, contradiction issues will not arise.

Frankly, I think all our policies could use a good decrufting and decreeping, and after that's done I think all pages marked as policy or guideline should be subject to a higher editing standard (e.g. no one - not even sysops - be allowed to edit them without achieving some level of consensus first). basically we should trim them back to bare essentials and then force future development to be slower and more consensus-based. Not that I think this has a chance of happening, but it's what we really should do. --Ludwigs2 20:12, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I think I pretty much agree with you. But since as you admit it's unlikely to happen as a single major reform programme, we should try to move in that direction incrementally. The alternative is just to give up, which is a bad idea. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 21:54, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Also agree. The problem, as you mentioned, is the entrenched interests--as well as the fair possibility that decrufting removes something important. But the effort is thoroughly warranted. Ocaasi (talk) 21:58, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I agree. I actually took the time to defrag wp:consensus a few weeks back, and I've been putting some effort into keeping it clean. I've been thinking about doing the same here on NPOV and on wp:Reliable sources, but NPOV is much too active at the moment for me to do major cleanup, and reliable sources is really a policy-fork that should get its pieces farmed out to other policy pages and be deleted. That level of wikidrama I am not up to at the moment. I'm doing what I can, but it can't hurt to bring up the idea.

Maybe what we really ought to do is start up our own on-line constitutional congress: gather together 15 or 20 dedicated editors with a mandate to revise and copyedit all our policy pages. I'd volunteer. --Ludwigs2 22:36, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I would, but my musket skills are rusty. WP:WikiProject_Policy_and_Guidelines is doing some nice work, although they have yet to put their tag on WP:Policies and guidelines yet, so maybe that's an indication of the level of participation over there. I think your general idea is good but, as you indicated, predictably hell-raising. What about rewriting drafts yourself, taking them to the talk page, trying to incorporate missing elements and them having some good 'ole RfC straw polls about which policy draft is better. Like a policy homecoming queen election. Ocaasi (talk) 23:11, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

suggestion for resolving this

maybe it's time we rewrote {{Content policy list}} to be a bit more specific - structure it with 'principles', 'policies', and 'guidelines' sections, with a few short blurbs about the relationships between them all (principles are immutable, policy is broad abstract ideals based in principles and established by consensus, guidelines are specific implementations of policy). we can then drop that template on all the major policies and guidelines to keep a consistent overview. --Ludwigs2 18:20, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Prevalence and prominence clarification

In NPOV UNDUE we state "that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint." We also state "in determining proper weight, we consider a viewpoint's prevalence in reliable sources, not its prevalence among Wikipedia editors or the general public." I'm in a discussion where these terms have come under question. It centers around a point of view being prevalent or prominent among many reliable sources compared with a view that has less or equal distribution among the sources but is given more space in those sources. Let's say viewpoint A is in 20 reliable sources and viewpoint B is in 15, but viewpoint 15 is given more space in those 15 than viewpoint A. Viewpoint B requires more explanation and has more details. Assuming neither view is a majority view, should weight be applied somewhat equally, or should point B be given more weight, or viewpoint A? Is it the prevalence / prominence (do these mean the same thing?) within reliable sources, or prevalence / prominence among reliable sources? Morphh ^(talk) 21:20, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I realize that this isn't all that helpful, but I think it is actually a mix of both. Also, the relative quality of the sources has to be figured into your decision. If you can not reach a consensus... try an RfC to get more opinions. Blueboar (talk) 14:08, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Honestly, I get a little fed up with arguments of that sort. This passage was never meant to encourage a bean-counting approach. As I point out in stats classes, if you use interval-level calculations on ordinal-level measurements, you just end up with highly precise nonsense. The goal here is to give the average encyclopedia reader a well-informed and non-misleading overview of the topic. if we have two minority viewpoints, and it is not obvious on inspection which viewpoint is 'more' minor, we really shouldn't get into the whole 'photo-finish' debate about which one is ever-so-marginally ahead of the other, because that will just mislead the reader. Treat the two as roughly equal, and move on to other things. --Ludwigs2 19:29, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

See what the reference texts and textbooks say about the two views. Balance them accordingly. Leadwind (talk) 17:28, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

NPOV on Science and Pseudoscience

There exist viewpoints, theories, and methodologies which incorporate both scientific data and nonscientific data. For example, a gambler may follow a methodology that incorporates statistical outcomes (science) with gut feeling or intuition. One aspect is falsifiable, the other aspect is not.

I suggest that a template be created for entries that refer to viewpoints, theories, or methodologies that are inclusive of both falsifiable and non-falsifiable statements. This would remove the need to flag certain ideas or statements as pseudoscience which were never meant to be wholly scientific in the first place. Mcmarturano (talk) 01:32, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Can you give us an example of an actual article where this template would be used? Blueboar (talk) 21:11, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes the specific entry I have in mind is Naturopathy. See my comments on Talk:Naturopathy. Mcmarturano (talk) 22:52, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

The larger issue here at play is that a method is only pseudoscientific if it purports itself to be scientific, but is in fact not. Nonscientific methods which do not make scientific claims should not be flagged as pseudoscientific or have to defend themselves from attacks made under a pseudoscientific flag. Mcmarturano (talk) 23:11, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Which specific methods are you referring to? -- Brangifer (talk) 00:16, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Any of the ones listed in naturopathy#methods but a couple examples would be color therapy or rolfing. I don't think that practitioners of these methods forward them as scientific. Mcmarturano (talk) 14:26, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

The practitioners may not see them as pseudoscience... but critics do. Blueboar (talk) 14:50, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I am not a policy wonk, but I think that the in discussion template is intended to inform people of a discussion related to major updates in wording or intent for a particular section. Should we pull the template from the policy page?

Mcmarturano, I came here from Talk:Naturopathy#Evidence Basis to link you to the WP:VALID section.

Thanks, I will review this. Mcmarturano (talk) 01:27, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

The question "is my gambler's intuition better than playing the calculable odds?" is very much a falsifiable proposition. chromotherapy and rolfing both make health claims - either they have a verifiable measurable impact on health, or they do not. I think, on balance, this conversation would work better either at WT:FRINGE or one of the relevant wikiprojects. - 2/0 (cont.) 15:00, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi 2over0, this is what I am not sure about. The entry should not be treated as WT:FRINGE as it is on a whole medical system. Can you recommend any of the wikiprojects? Mcmarturano (talk) 01:27, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

The article Naturopathy is covered by Wikipedia:Fringe theories regardless - the question whether you are interested in clarifying a point of policy or whether you want to attract the attention of additional editors to the article. I see you already found NPOV/N, so posts to any further venues should point to the centralized discussion. Wikiprojects Alternative medicine and Rational Skepticism are linked at the top of Talk:Naturopathy as being interested in the article. I believe that Wikiproject Medicine is more active than either, and a post there might also find people interested in some aspects of the article. See you back at the main discussion. - 2/0 (cont.) 02:16, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. To answer your question: both. I am interested in both clarifying a policy and drawing other editors to the article. I want to know if other users feel this entry satisfies NPOV and if not how it can be improved. There are several positions at conflict within the entry. Naturopathic philosophy and practice, as a whole, draws from both evidence-based medicine and pseudoscience. The entry should represent the most neutral point of view relative to all of these positions. Yes? Mcmarturano (talk) 02:41, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Actually, no... NPOV does not say we should "present the most neutral point of view relative to all of these positions". NPOV says we should present all views neutrally (and with due weight). If the reliable sources say something is pseudoscience, we note this... and if other reliable sources disagree, we note that as well. NPOV means that We don't take a position... we report on the position taken by our sources.

Now... there are reliable sources that label Naturopathy as pseudoscience... so, we report this fact. If there are reliable sources that say Naturopathy should be not considered pseudoscience, we can report that as well. Are there such source? Blueboar (talk) 14:07, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Blueboar, yes, there are numerous other sources that should be given at least as much weight IMO. I have prepared a list in Talk:Naturopathy. Mcmarturano (talk) 07:33, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Mcm, I wanted to be a naturopath once upon a time, but I hate to break it to you: Blueboar has the right call here. Wikipedia is only as intelligent as mainstream science and knowledge are. Structurally, it's not capable of giving full credit to anything that works better than science can explain. If mainstream medical science is wrong about naturopathy (or GMOs, or Rolfing, or acupuncture), then WP is dutybound to be wrong in pretty much the same way. Leadwind (talk) 17:45, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Leadwind, you are right but I am not trying to validate naturopathy with this entry. My main concern is to make it clear on the distinctions between philosophy and practice. Furthermore where criticism is levied against a subgroup of practitioners, the others should not have to bear the brunt as well. Mcmarturano (talk) 07:33, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I think the encyclopedia always dies a little when we fight about whether something should be labeled "pseudoscience". Realistically, where naturopathy makes pronouncements about health (e.g. vaccines are bad, chelation therapy and live blood analysis are good) then we should note that these claims do not enjoy scientific support. On the other hand, some aspects of naturopathy are more akin to a philosophy or belief system, which cannot be "pseudoscientific". Ideally, we'd avoid broad strokes as much as possible - I think we can trust readers to appreciate these gradations without putting words like "pseudoscience" in big letters. Where individuals or organizations have notably described naturopathy as pseudoscientific, we can of course cite them, but I'd favor a more nuanced approach when we use the encyclopedic voice. MastCell ^Talk 17:58, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

MastCell this is the basis of my proposition that the entry should be treated at least as much as philosophy as health science. Mcmarturano (talk) 07:33, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

explain "majority view"

There's a section on Wales's rules of thumb for the majority viewpoint, but there's some confusion about whether an article should treat a contested viewpoint as the majority viewpoint.

Can we add a sentence to the effect of: "If an article describes multiple viewpoints on a topic, it should identify which viewpoint is the majority viewpoint (provided there is one)"?

Defenders of minority viewpoints routinely resist the idea that any particular historical opinion is in the majority. The people who think Jesus never existed, for example, are notorious for saying "the jury is out" or at least "the jury is still out on whether the jury is still out." If the policy stated that it's good for an article to call out the majority view, it would help those of us who are trying to give the majority view the majority of the coverage. Leadwind (talk) 17:38, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

These things are highly dependent on context. For example, the "Majority view" doesn't mean "we polled the entire world, and 51% of all people believe this, so its what we call the majority view". Basically, your going to have to let us know which specific article has the problem, so we can comment on how NPOV plays out in that article. --Jayron32 17:50, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Jayron, I'm dealing with the specific pages (Gospel of Luke and Gospel of John) on the noticeboard, but the general issue is that defenders of minority viewpoint reject the search for a majority viewpoint in the first place. If the policy clearly spelled out "you should figure out what the majority viewpoint is," that would help. As it stands, defenders of minority viewpoints like to say that WP shouldn't identify the majority viewpoint because that's taking sides. SO can we tell everyone that, yes, it's actually important to an article that the editors are aware of which viewpoint is in the majority (if there is one)? Leadwind (talk) 16:06, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

new first paragraph

First sentence should define the term.

Now: Neutral point of view (NPOV) is a fundamental principle of Wikipedia and of other Wikimedia projects. All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view. This means representing fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources. This is non-negotiable and expected of all articles and all editors.

Proposed: Editing from a neutral point of view (NPOV) means representing fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views on a topic. All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view, as found in reliable sources. NPOV is a fundamental principle of Wikipedia and of other Wikimedia projects. This is non-negotiable and expected of all articles and all editors.

Just a suggestion from someone new to this page. Leadwind (talk) 17:53, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't see any problems with the proposed re-write. Blueboar (talk) 14:02, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I read the rewrite differently than the original re WP:DUE. Reducing the visibility of that area in the lead section doesn't bother me much, but "... neutral point of view, as found in reliable sources" does. Reliable sources often lean towards or away from particular POVs. How about dropping the portion of that from the comma onwards? Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 03:31, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree that "as found in reliable sources" is awkward, but we need to keep the "reliable sources" phrase in the first paragraph.

Proposed: Editing from a neutral point of view (NPOV) means representing fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources. All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view. NPOV is a fundamental principle of Wikipedia and of other Wikimedia projects. This is non-negotiable and expected of all articles and all editors.

The first sentence is longer now, but it's more like the original. How's that? Leadwind (talk) 04:23, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I like it. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 05:51, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I like it too Rjensen (talk) 06:34, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Last chance for someone to say boo before I change it. Leadwind (talk) 21:08, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Go ahead and change it... if someone reverts, we can discuss further. Blueboar (talk) 00:50, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Important content was lost.

In all the recent editing, important concepts were lost, such as "Therefore, material should not be removed solely on the grounds that it is "POV"" This was a long standing practice and an important part of the NPOV policy. Where was the discussion to change the policy like this? Gigs (talk) 17:13, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, I quite often see material being removed, quite properly, solely on the grounds that "it's POV" - though I suppose the point is that simple removal of offending text is not always the right solution. This would seem to sit nicely at the start of the "Achieving neutrality" section. --Kotniski (talk) 17:47, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

The spirit of that line is that all of our well-sourced information is the point of view of some source somewhere, especially critical analysis from secondary sources, which is supposed to be the bread and butter of our articles. It was an important line of defense against people invoking "NPOV" when they wanted to wikilawyer the removal of something they didn't agree with. Information from reliable sources usually isn't "POV" in a sense that contravenes this policy. Phrasing, style, and presentation can be. But those problems can usually be fixed by editing. Anyway I think it was a very important point that has been lost in the editing of the last month. Gigs (talk) 00:55, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Sure, I'm happy for it to be put back (with suitable explanation); as I say, I think it would go very logically as a lead paragraph to the "Achieving neutrality" section.--Kotniski (talk) 09:00, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

How's this? Gigs (talk) 18:00, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Or to put it another way: "don't remove material you think is POV... rewrite it so it becomes neutral" Blueboar (talk) 21:57, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Although that's not always possible - if someone just writes a sentence of their own personal opinion into an article, and you know of no source you can attribute it to, then you'd probably want to simply remove it (and we see that happening every day). Or on other occasions the solution is neither to remove nor rewrite, but to add more text about alternative viewpoints. Anyway, I'm happy with Gigs' addition.--Kotniski (talk) 07:10, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

I've tweaked it out a little - I think it's better, but I may be wrong. That being said, the blurb feels a little coatrack-ish to me; or at any rate, I don't think it really fits with the material discussed in the subheaders. I need to think about that a bit more, though. --Ludwigs2 07:42, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the subheaders probably belong in a separate section titled "Aspects of neutrality" or something like that, or simply to become one level higher headers themselves.--Kotniski (talk) 10:46, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

NPOV is a lost cause

I honestly think that asking that an article be NPOV is a lost cause. Especially in articles involving history or accomplishments, such as direct example I quote the irritating tendency of Americans to put a bias "Americans are the best of the best" in almost all articles in English I see. I do not try to fix why it would go up against hordes of angry fanboys and people who believe that the only truth is what is said about them, and frankly I just try to read content they have in fact both sides instead of articles "propaganda-like" like the article about the F-22 Raptor in English. A little more and reading the Wikipedia will be like watching Fox news for me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.189.118.10 (talk) 16:25, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Fixing language

About this change and revert: [2] I changed this sentence:
"Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means that articles should not give minority views as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views."

to this:
"Articles should adequately describe majority views, giving them due weight, and avoid giving undue weight to minority views by providing as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views."

And was reverted by Ludwigs2. I don't see that there's any change in meaning. The original is unwieldy and grammatically suspect, what's there to discuss? Ludwigs2, if you think there is a change in meaning, can you fix the grammar without changing the meaning? LK (talk) 10:17, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Without disputing the unwieldyness of the original sentence, I believe that this edit does change the meaning, or at least push it in a problematic direction. The problem lies with articles that are specifically about non-majority views - such articles should give a detailed description of the non-majority view, and introduce the majority view solely to maintain proper perspective. We shouldn't write articles on, say, religious cults from the perspective of mainstream faiths, because mainstream faiths will have nothing good to say about cults the the resultant article will be biased against the cult.

This is a subtlety about the idea of 'majority': the majority of (for example) Branch Davidians view their faith one way; the much larger majority of mainstream Christians view it in a different, more unsavory manner, but arguably with less knowledge. On the Branch Davidian article, the views of the minority should be prominent, and the mainstream Christian view should only be there to keep the Davidian view from being represented as the mainstream Christian view. See what I mean? --Ludwigs2 15:07, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but that seems to be a problem with both versions of the sentence - I don't see that one version is better than the other (or that either is particularly good). We can of course give very detailed descriptions of minority views if those views are themselves the matter under discussion - what we shouldn't do is give such prominence to minority views about the topic at hand as to give the impression to readers that those views are more widely held (among reliable sources) than they actually are.--Kotniski (talk) 15:23, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

My reaction is very much like Kotniski's. For what it's worth (not much), I added some commas to the sentence, in the hope that at least it will make it easier to follow. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:57, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree - the reason I reverted back to the original was that it was less specific and directed than the revision, which ameliorated some of the problems with the passage as a whole. but the whole thing needs a rewriting. --Ludwigs2 20:00, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Not that I care much, but I'm not sure why there was an objection to the commas. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:09, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

NPOV and inflammatory labeling

You know, I refactored the above over to the noticeboard, and then I read it more carefully and there is a policy issue that we ought to at least consider. it's a question of how we deal with ostensibly inflammatory labels on project. The problem breaks down as follows:

1. Term/label X is or has been used to indicate a class of objects or events in some scholarly/analytic typology.
2. Term X has developed (in one fashion or another) a pejorative sense, and is commonly used in the real world as a pejorative.
3. Definitions of term X are weak and varied in scholarship, leaving a reasonable amount of doubt as to proper categorization.
4. It is unclear whether sources are applying term X to topic Q because Q naturally fits in the analytic category X or because sources want to place Q as X or the purposes of defamation.

I run into this problem all the time with a number of common terms - pseudoscience, fringe science, leftist, socialist liberal, fascist, nationalist, etc. etc. On one hand, we don't want to be too PC and neglect to apply a label where it properly applies; on the other hand, we don't want to allow editors to create a truth simply by repetition on wikipedia. Sometimes this can be resolved just through sheer weight of sources (if pretty much every source calls Q as X there's not much to argue over), but most of the time what we have is a handful or two of agenda-driven editors using questionable sources to add/remove a questionable label to/from a topic.

My own approach to this runs along the lines of 'no reasonable doubt': I don't apply labels without attribution if there is any reasonable doubt that the label might not apply correctly. This gets me in some tremendous fights with editors who (for whatever reason) want stronger language against a given topic, so I can't say that it's a very satisfying approach. how could we address this more effectively? --Ludwigs2 18:44, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Personaly I would say we do not use any label that the subject themselves have not applied to themsleves. This avoids the general problom of name calling and in truth should not harm any other pages (after all you can include the label and jusy say everyone thinks it). For exampple what happens if three or more sources say X and no one else has anyhitnig to say? How about if Group A is called something they explicitly deny? If something is called something then we can have a section avoout that, but we should (to my mind) never call something something they deny. Inclide the argument (and allow the reader to decide for themsleves) but any label (Such as liberlal accademic or far-right party) is (to my mind) included oonly to either undermine credibility of a sources (such as 'Liberal' accademic Sir Kevin Throtmangler has said) or to make a political point (the 'far-right' centre for kickking in Muslims). If its so obvious that we need to draw attention to it then...we don't need to.Slatersteven (talk) 19:32, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

There is a question of contexts as well - categories, templates, infoboxes are places where readers look for information about "what x is" - there should be no room for contentious labels in these contexts. In the article body of course it is different and it may be perfectly valid to say that "A, B and C and the majority of Q have said that x is y but he denies this". There is also difference in cases where ontological status has been established in a court of law or under a similarly authoritative kind of definition. In a phrase such as "(Convicted felon) A is a murderer (according to judge B)" the parentheses shouldn't be necessary. ·Maunus·ƛ· 19:52, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Fair point where its been tested in (say) a court of law then yes we could apply a lable. Its when it is just an opinion that I have an issue. There is also the fact that labels change (for example many eminant historians have said that fascism as a term no longer means what it used to or that left and right mean different things based upon cultural outlook). As such I thin wwe should avoid labals altogether in intor and info boxes. and when tehy do appear we attribute them and make it clear is just an opinion (excepting self labaleing or 'offical' designitions).20:01, 12 December 2010 (UTC)Slatersteven (talk)

Ludwigs: You're "no reasonable doubt" principle would ideally work, but it doesn't really work in combination with AGF. Who judges whether the doubt is reasonable or not? Seems to me that the only workable guide is how strong the sourcing is. If all the sourcing is weak/questionable then that's easy to resolve - none of the sourcing should be used to support anything in the article. Beyond that, you're question seems to come down to "how do we get people to agree on Wikipedia". I'll nominate you for King if you can resolve that one.

Steven: Obviously there is no case for saying we should avoid calling people things they do not wish to be called. It's just a question of how strong the sourcing is and how much weight we give it. A passing reference to someone being a sheep-thief on page 8 of the Nantwich Express should be treated with caution. But if someone has been on the front of every newspaper in the world because they were convicted at the Old Bailey for stealing a sheep then that person is indeed a sheep-thief, regardless of whether they accept the description or not.

Maunus: I can tell you have never tried to edit the Murder of Meredith Kercher page. --FormerIP (talk) 20:05, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

But what about some has is called a sheep stealer by everyone in one country and a few elsewhere, they deny it and have never been convicted of it? How about if three national newpapers call a person a sheep thief whilst discuing the cattle stealing but they say nothing to deny the accusation? I belive I said that where someone has been found to be something by a court of law we can call them that. My issue is with a situation where some one (or a group) can be labled, deny it and we still call them that. Its an opinion, it may be held by every RS we find, but its still an opinion that the target denies and for which there is no imperative (only subjecive) evidance. Given that these debates end up in PA and and all kiinds of other beaslyness what does allowing such labaling bring to pages that is worth the bad feeling and general errosion of behavure? Indead if we were dealing with an accusation of criminal activity many of these labels would effectivly be libalous (it does not matter how many sources accuse you of sheep stealing, its not ture untill tested in a court of law) yet becasue the labels are not (neccersarilty) an direct inslut (rhatther they are often a kind if finger wagging) they cannot be tested.Slatersteven (talk) 20:15, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

FormerIP - there's a nomination process for kingship? cool!

However, you're kind of missing the point. To give a stupid example where everyone can see the problem, Let's say some editors tried to edit the Barak Obama intro to read "He is the first African American and socialist to hold the office." Now, there are a large number of sources which have referred to Obama as a socialist. There are a larger number of sources that identify 'socialist' as a pejorative in the American context. There is good reason to believe that many of the sources that label Obama as socialist are not interested in using the term in an analytical sense - they are after the pejorative - but they don't say that outright, and they are otherwise often considered to be reliable sources. Now, on Obama's article, editorial judgement has been to exclude any mention of socialism (the word and its derivatives do not appear anywhere on the page, though I daresay it's probably somewhere in the talk page archives). I take it that's because Obama's page is watchlisted by everyone and their grandmother, and the sheer weight of conspicuousness makes everyone very edgy about strict NPOV interpretations. The question is why Obama should get that kind of conservative (in the sense of 'hesitant to say or do anything outlandish') interpretation of the policy, while other articles suffer through some (shall we say) rather more radical interpretations of neutrality. I mean, I know that the answer to that is in the neighborhood of 'the squeaky wheel gets the grease', but I'm thinking there has to be a better, more consistent way to approach the matter. --Ludwigs2 20:50, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

There's no nomination process for King, but I was thinking of posting in the Village Pump to see if we could set one up just for you.

You're Obama example is probably a good one, and I think it fits right in with what I'm saying. I'm not familiar with the sourcing involved but I would suppose that, generally, sourcing that calls him a "socialist" has been found to be insufficiently strong to warrant inclusion in the article. Whether that's the right conclusion or not, I think it is the right way for the process to work. Presumably, we are talking about predominantly non-neutral or low-brow coverage. Were it the case that reporters for the New York Times consistently begin their stories "Today, socialist President Obama...", then that would be a different matter.

As far as I can see, problems arise when: you have editors who are POV-pushing and unwilling to objectively consider all the sourcing available or; you have editors who take a faulty view that they can use anything in an RS in any way they like. Fixing that is how you get your coronation. --FormerIP (talk) 21:16, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I think the principle of WP:LABEL is clear but there is a precedent to ignore it. I personally think it is a bad thing but the community as a whole continues to allow definitive statements of what an organization is when secondary sources are provided even if it is disputed by primary sources.Cptnono (talk) 22:21, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

The self-identification principle works well for BLP categories (homosexual, atheist) but not in situations where someone is something but doesn't want to admit (criminal, pseudoscience, etc.) I think NPOV and Weight are sufficient here. If enough reliable sources use a term, include it, and unless it is the commonly employed term, require attribution of sorts (i.e. Right Wing commentators have dubbed Obama a socialist, a term which political scientists point out doesn't fit his political philosophy. Obama describes himself as a democrat, as do the vast majority of media and scholarship...). In other words, your reasonable doubt approach makes sense, but I'd combine it with a preponderance of sources approach--to use a loaded word you need to show it has substantial representation in reliable sources, and if the sources share a common POV it should be noted/attributed. Ocaasi (talk) 00:14, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

The reason why the Obama example is a good one is the same reason why the Obama example is a bad one. What happened there (at a guess, but I'm quite certain this guess is accurate) is that the prominence of the page and the (assumedly) obvious POV-pushing of anti-Obama activists produced a kind of mob rule by neutrality-minded editors and admins, and that the state of the page was determined less by careful discussion and analysis of sources and more by heavy-handed action by editors worried that the page would become a highly visible embarrassment to the project. Note that the article is under long-term probation and long-term semi-protection. I'm not complaining, mind you - I respect the fact that that many editors are willing to put their foot down in the interests of NPOV, and see this as a valid form of project consensus - but it only applies in cases where thousands of editors have the page in their sights looking for embarrassing pushiness. On backwater pages, the exact same behavior would not be seen as an effort to protect NPOV, but rather as an edit war in which all parties are equally guilty.

besides, we run into the classic problem of logic here. we are basically forcing editors to demonstrate that sources do not treat Q as X, and it's literally impossible to prove a negative (we still haven't shown that Saddam Hussein didn't have WMD). The way to resolve this, I think, is to add some sort of 'innocent until proven guilty' language to NPOV. There are a few places it could fit (the 'impartial tone' or 'words to watch' sections) but NPOV is so desperately in need a of a full rewrite that I'm hesitant to twiddle with little spots at the moment. maybe I should do that first. --Ludwigs2 02:06, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually this is a huge issue. A week ago there was a large discussion of List of Jewish Nobel Prize Laureates - because it includes people who did not selfidentify as Jewish. Currently there is an ANI thread about a number of BLP articles where persons are being described as Scientologists without having selfidentified as such - there is also a List of Scientologists which is likely to have similar problems.·Maunus·ƛ· 02:17, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Your point about backwater pages is a good one, Ludwigs, although we do have 3O and the NPOV board at our disposal to help a little with that. Even getting large numbers of eyes on an issue doesn't always help, though. In the case of the Communist Genocide and Communist Terrorism articles, for example, we just ended up (IMO) with lots of POV-pushers in AfD discussion. The unresolved problem for WP is, in part at least, how to enforce NPOV when a significant number of editors would rather not.

Coming back more to the specifics of this discussion, maybe an "innocent until proven guilty" clause would help things be clearer. But I think it is effectively what is there already. No sort of strong or contentious claim should be made without appropriately strong sourcing. In cases where there is not much sourcing available, that's still the same. We shouldn't be lowering our standards - any potentially contentious claim always requires good sourcing and if it isn't there then it is always right to remove the relevant content.

Maunus, I think the issue with self-identification is simply wrong-headed. If we have strong evidence that someone is Jewish or a Scientologist and there is no reason to suppose that the matter is controversial, why on earth do we need to have a quote on the matter from them? I really can't think of a good reason. Then again, I'm not a big fan of list article in any case, so if one has been deleted on that basis then oh-dear-never-mind. --FormerIP (talk) 02:42, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

It wasn't deleted I just mistyped the link, its still there. The problem was that there were sources according to which some of the persons added explicitly denied that they considered themselves to be Jewish, they were simply being classified as such because of their families were Jewish (Nuremberg style). Secondly we do have a policy called WP:EGRS that specifies that categories cannot label living persons according to Ethnicity, Gender, Religion or Sexuality unless they uncontroversially selfidentity as such. So wrongheaded or not it would be a breach of policy. I think there is a tendency also to forget the spirit of the BLP policy which says "Biographies of living persons (BLPs) must be written conservatively and with regard for the subject's privacy. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid: it is not Wikipedia's job to be sensationalist, or to be the primary vehicle for the spread of titillating claims about people's lives, and the possibility of harm to living subjects must always be considered when exercising editorial judgment" I think being conservative clearly applies to category use as well as the article text. And I think it justifies a policy of rather putting too little info than too much.·Maunus·ƛ· 03:02, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Important clarifier: EGRS (at which point I feel the need to remark that Chrome suggests replacing that acronym with "negroes" (!)) doesn't apply to article content. We do have a generally duty of care with BLPs, of course, but this discussion isn't specifically about BLPs. --FormerIP (talk) 03:25, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

But we are specifically discussing categories and infoboxes - EGRS does apply to those. The call to be conservative is not from EGRS but from WP:BLP. In any case there is no policy that states that dead people can freely be labeled with EGRS categories, I don't see why we would do that unless faced with very compelling reasons. ·Maunus·ƛ· 03:44, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I may be missing something, but I think this discussion is about content generally and how to deal with weak or conflicting sourcing either in a BLP or elsewhere. --FormerIP (talk) 03:49, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm less concerned about living persons, since we have a very strong BLP policy to take care of those. the real problem lies with groups, historical figures and ideas. Just to give you an idea of how twisted this can get, a recent dispute I had involved a (now deceased) but once-prominent dentist - Weston Price. He was a leading figure in the early ADA, a well-known and highly regarded researcher in his time, but happened to advocate for a theory (focal infection theory) that's now been (mostly) refuted and has some modern (mostly pseudoscientific) proponents. getting caught between the pro-FIT editors who were trying to label him as a genius-before-his-time and the anti-fringe editors who were trying to retroactively label him as a pseudoscientist was just an ugly, unpleasant experience. In fact, the anti-fringe editors editors actually did try to invoke BLP - not for Price, but to keep anyone from questioning whether Price's primary critic (Stephen Barrett, who is still alive) was a reliable source (apparently, in their eyes any claim that Barrett wasn't an RS was tantamount to a defamatory statement; go figure).

You know, what I think I'm going to do is redraft NPOV in user space - mostly to clean up a lot of the redundant/argumentative stuff that's in there now. I'll see if I can craft something that satisfies this problem there as well. I'm counting on you all to act as a human shield when I bring the draft up for consideration, because there's nothing else more guaranteed to draw the roosters out of the henhouse than that. --Ludwigs2 06:25, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

The issue of the BNP's label of facist (somethingm they deny) has been raised again. This in essence is my point. We have to have somekind of guidance as to wht labels can and canot be aplied in leads and info boxes. If a label is not self applied it is going to be contested oon a fairly regualr basis. Tying up pages and users time. I would also point out that many of the kind of sourcing that has been rejected as 'proving' the UAF are left wing are exactly the same kind of sources used to prove the EDl is far right. We need a consistant approach to such contentious labels.Slatersteven (talk) 18:13, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Flat Earth etc.

I restored (with help from DVDm) the Flat Earth example, as it is correct as it stands. Perhaps this is clearer with emphasis:

For example, the article on the Earth does not mention modern support for the Flat Earth concept, the view of a distinct minority; to do so would give "undue weight" to the Flat Earth belief.

Earth certainly mentions flat Earth but as a historic belief. It does not mention modern adherents or even suggest there are any.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 20:23, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

But it might do, surely? It wouldn't automatically be a breach of our neutrality policy if it did, I wouldn't have thought, just a question of editorial judgement as to what to put in the main article and what to leave readers to find by following wikilinks.--Kotniski (talk) 13:54, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

The flat earth example is a poor one for wp:UNDUE. In the same wp:UNDUE definition, the Wiki founder said " ..If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents.. ". This implies that minority POV's are accepted. Since there is a whole page devoted to Flat Earth and many prominant people believe in a flat earth, then the flat earth belief belongs in Wiki to give a NPOV. It isn't necessary that there be a truth to it, just the minority belief.

The reason this topic came up was that Mr. Blackburne wanted to use the flat earth as an example and he equated flat earth to untruth. I was trying to add a test of relativity that did not support relativity theory. Since Mr. Blackburne equated relativity to truth and any test not confirming relativity to untruth, he wanted to use the premise that UNDUE weight would be created by even mentioning any test that does not agree with the truth. Truth is defined as >51% of the scientists believe in it. One definition of what wiki is not is that it is WP:NOTDEMOCRACY. But, it seems that for scientific articles, once >51% believe it, then no other conflicting data can be mentioned in the article. So, majority rules and the minority isn't even a footnote.D c weber (talk) 02:36, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

No. Just no. The patently rediculous is still patently rediculous. WP:UCS is also an important principle. --Jayron32 02:56, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Also, note that it is not true that "for scientific articles, once >51% believe it, then no other conflicting data can be mentioned in the article.". It is closer to the de-facto wp:truth that for scientific articles, once >99.99951% believe it, then no other conflicting data should be mentioned in the article. That is, more or less, what the policies have in mind. DVdm (talk) 10:58, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I admit I don't understand what you two are discussing. The fact that views are ridiculous is not a reason to avoid mentioning them - though they shouldn't be mentioned in a way that implies to the reader that they might have some validity. I suspect there may be some confusion between these two understandings of "mentioning".--Kotniski (talk) 10:41, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Propose changing the wp:UNDUE sentence to - "For example, the article on the Earth does not directly mention modern support for the Flat Earth concept, the view of a distinct minority; to do so would give "undue weight" to the Flat Earth belief." This is needed, because there is a link called Flat Earth on the Earth site, and when you go to Flat Earth link, there is text describing modern flat earth beliefs which is a significant minority and so belongs in Wiki encyclopedia. So, "modern flat earth viewpoint" is indirectly mentioned on Earth.D c weber (talk) 17:46, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I think this sentence, in whatever form, is far too specific. We simply have no basis for asserting that to mention certain facts in a certain article would be giving undue weight - that would depend on many other factors. Nor do we want to keep updating the policy depending on what mentions or links that particular article happens to contain at any one time.--Kotniski (talk) 10:16, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Indeed I think that having a specific example in this policy should avoided. Authors might be tempted to push a certain view onto a certain article depending on what happens to be present in the example article. A local consensus to modify the situation on the example article does not necessarily warrant a change to the targeted article, let alone to the policy article and/or the philosophy behind it. I agree to remove the Flat Earth example. DVdm (talk) 13:58, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Better Intro to "Explanation of the neutral point of view" - what is this about

Hi!

In the current presentation of NPOV, I'm lacking a good introductory paragraph on NPOV.

Readers should not only be bombarded with cold list-based wikipedia rules, but deserve well-written paragraphs, that really show what is behind the non-negotiable rules.

In particular, readers should - earlier up in the article - already be shown, that wikipedia is not exclusively about provable cold hard facts, but that different (possibly conflicting) views are presented by showing: who believes what? - and why? - and how prominent are the various views?. While

• articles on math, logic and science can often include provable facts;
• articles on history, art, politics, aesthetics, morals, society and social perception etc. cannot include provable facts, but need to show different or conflicting views.

So why can an encyclo-wikipedia present differing views??? Because they are a reality, and because there are people who have these views... and that's what the article should fairly and factually show (with source).

A good introduction was the following (link),

The neutral point of view neither sympathizes with nor disparages its subject, nor does it endorse or oppose specific viewpoints. It is not a lack of viewpoint, but is rather an editorially neutral, point of view. An article and its sub-articles should clearly describe, represent, and characterize all the disputes within a topic, but should not endorse any particular point of view. It should explain who believes what, and why, and which points of view are most common. It may contain critical evaluations of particular viewpoints based on reliable sources, but even text explaining sourced criticisms of a particular view must avoid taking sides.

The neutral point of view is a means of dealing with conflicting perspectives on a particular topic. It requires that all majority views and significant minority views published by reliable sources be presented fairly, in a disinterested tone, and in rough proportion to their prevalence within the source material. Therefore, material should not be removed solely on the grounds that it is "POV", although it may be shortened and moved to a new article if it gives undue weight to a minor point of view, as explained below.

Neutrality requires views to be represented without bias. All editors and all sources have biases (in other words, all editors and all sources have a point of view)—what matters is how we combine them to create a neutral article. Unbiased writing is the fair, analytical description of all relevant sides of a debate, including the mutual perspectives and the published evidence. Editorial bias toward one particular point of view should be removed or repaired.

This is a well-written intro, and should - in my opinion - be incorporated back into the article... Earrrl (talk) 08:13, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the intro could doubtless be improved, but I don't think we want to go back to that one - it's excessively wordy, mixes up ideas, and contains highly dubious statements. Is there anything concrete that you think this old intro said that you think is missing from the current policy? (In fact, I think it's time to think about restructuring this page a bit - I notice that WP:UNDUE is currently hidden away as a section of a section, when in fact it's pretty much the crux of the whole policy - one of the most important aspects, anyway, and ought to be placed far more prominently. And there's still lots of redundancy on this page.)--Kotniski (talk) 08:36, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

As I said in a different thread above, I'm going to do a rewrite of this page in userspace, just to clean up the kind of messes that are being pointed out here. give me a few days on it. --Ludwigs2 15:13, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

In the proposed text above, I like material should not be removed solely on the grounds that it is "POV". The concept of NPOV by adding, not deleting, is currently missing from this policy page. Emmanuelm (talk) 06:52, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

But material is removed on the grounds that it's POV, all the time, and quite properly. It's not possible to make sweeping generalizations like that - there are different right approaches (remove, tag, add, reword,...) depending on the situation.--Kotniski (talk) 10:05, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Info re the concept of NPOV by adding vs. by deleting is present on this policy page. See WP:NPOV#Due and undue weight. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 23:32, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

The trouble is that neutrality is not generally adhered to on Wikipedia on topics that have any political connection at all. For example, where John Locke vs Leibniz is concerned, lies are often told in favour of Locke. E.g. "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is from Locke, according to Wikipedia.

Often the tone of neutrality is simply a way of edging out competitors to Liberalism and Aristotelianism. The main example is of course the main living competitor, who is Lyndon LaRouche. In earlier times, it would have been Nicolaus of Cusa, or Johannes Kepler, Leibniz. Even earlier, it would have been Socrates and Plato, not their enemy and detractor Aristotle. Indeed, there is no neutrality; neutrality so-called is a cover.

Wikipedia ought to ditch the political correctness and neutral tone in favour of real thought. By taking into account how many people hold a view as evidence of its neutrality or correctness then Wikipedia makes itself just another arm of the mainstream print media. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 175.39.36.110 (talk) 07:31, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

"Controversial subjects" does not discuss political subjects -- why?

The paragraph Controversial subjects discusses religious and fringe topics but not political subjects. But politics represents the bulk of controversies in media. For example, it was noted in the discussion above that the article Barack Obama does not contain the word "socialist". What part of the NPOV policy is OK with that? Emmanuelm (talk) 07:02, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

You may want to read WP:Controversy. I personally do not like this essay, but it is a start. Clearly, we need better. Emmanuelm (talk) 07:02, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Concensus seems to be that, whatever Barrack Obama is, he is not what mainstream politics identifies as "socialist". This is all a matter of opinion (not allowed) anyway. However, reporting that such and such a source identifies him as "socialist" might be OK Drjem3 (talk) 22:39, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

NEW: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard/users

The brand new notice board Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard/users is proving very unpopular. As one critic wrote at this diff:

...Basically it seems to be aimed at identifying 'problematic' users who are actually working within policy, for no other reason than to 'correct' their opinions, or to force them off Wikipedia. This looks to me to be exactly the same attitude that has run into difficulties at the Wikipedia:Activist draft essay: an inversion of WP:AGF that says you can somehow 'detect' a malevolent type of contributor (though how is never really defined, except in terms so vague it could include everyone), and then treat them differently - assume malice until proven otherwise. Frankly, if this is the way that Wikipedia is going to operate, I don't think it will have much of a long-term future. ..

The Activist essay is being linked to this and obviously is providing a rationale for it. I'm calling for it to be MfD. So people with expertise on this policy might want to check it out. CarolMooreDC (talk) 00:39, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Agree. The whole thing is structured to be a witch hunt. And, by its own title and definition, it is judging people overall rather than actions /editing. North8000 (talk) 01:03, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

And its really an end run around this policy page and wikipedia processes. The originator SlimVirgin failed with her more narrow but related proposal Wikipedia:Neutrality_enforcement in spring 2009. So now she just creates this, saying "let's try it for six months and see how it works." CarolMooreDC (talk) 01:38, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not knowledgeable about that, so my scope was just the noticeboard North8000 (talk) 02:01, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Now with 4 for and 4 against, it's been "Consensed" to call it the Advocacy/Noticeboard. Oi! Can't wait to see WHO the first victim is. (Me! Me!! :-) CarolMooreDC (talk) 04:18, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Notice it is up for deletion

The article is now up at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Advocacy/Noticeboard . CarolMooreDC (talk) 19:45, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Missing metric in wp:undue implementation guidelines

The core of the current wp:undue implementation guidelines is prevalence in "RS"'s. I think that adding another metric "degree that the content it about the topic of the article." would help. For example, Rush Limbaugh's opinions on Barack Obama are covered in a huge amount of sources that meet wp:rs. Current wp:undue standards would entitle one to put a section into the Barack Obama article covering Rush Limbaugh's opinions of him. Since the actual subject of the content is Limbaugh's opinions, not Barack Obama, that would count it as being less about the topic of the article.

Another example is injection of heavy coverage of another topic. It's claimed that global warming affects polar bears. Global warming topics are covered in an immense amount of "RS"'s. Based on prevalence in RS's, wp:undue permits placement of a huge section (probably bigger than the base article) on global warminginto the Polar Bear article. The proposed metric would tend to reduce this, saying that the topic of global warming material is more about global warming, not not Polar Bears.

Finally, it would help on inuendo via false implied relevance. Let's say that that Republican operatives found out that Joe Blow, an avowed member of the Democratic Party, kicks dogs, and made sure that that got wide coverage. WP:undue would enable placement of a large section on Joe Blow's dog kicking into the Democratic Party Article. My proposed metric would say that this material is about Joe Blow, not the Democratic party. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 01:59, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Just clarifying, by metric, I mean that it influences (not dictates) suitability determination, North8000 (talk) 11:00, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Try to draft something to work this in? North8000 (talk) 03:14, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Objectivity

This is another version of NPOV. Objectiveness or objectivity means detachment from the creator/editor. --Diamondland (talk) 08:29, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Objectivity is a major missing metric from the "Reliable Source" definition in wp:ver/wp:nor (I'm hoping to change that some day) and this policy relies on that definition. For example, in wp:undue. Perhaps we could inject that criteria here. North8000 (talk) 12:38, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Infobox?

refactored to the noticeboard at Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/Noticeboard#Infobox?. --Ludwigs2 17:25, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Harmony

I've restored the sentence Kotniski was removing/changing: "Because these policies work in harmony, they should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should try to familiarize themselves with all three."

It has been in the policies for years that the three content policies hang together. You can't understand NPOV without understanding that we're referring to the neutral presentation of reliable source material (V), not the views of people in general. And you can't understand NOR or V properly without having some sense of the other one. I think it's worth retaining that point in the lead. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 17:05, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not removing that point, just doing two things:

1. Removing the absurd "these policies work in harmony" - it's bad enough having a badly organized, overlapping set of policies anyway, without their including self-congratulatory propaganda to give the impression that everything is perfection. This phrase doesn't explain anything, isn't needed, it's just a meaningless feel-good phrase, and certainly isn't justified when many in the community feel that the way these policies are split is anything but harmonious.
2. Changing "editors should try to familiarize themselves with all three" - this is just a practical point, I can imagine someone reading this and thinking that he's expected to read all these three (rather long and needlessly complex) policy pages before he starts editing. We want people to know the key points, not read the whole policies.

Bearing in mind that the point of substance (that we have three overlapping policies, and here are links to the other two) is not being taken away, does anyone have any objection to the change in wording? --Kotniski (talk) 17:18, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

But to say that the policies work in harmony does mean something. I explained above what it means. It's common to have to explain to new editors that NPOV has to be interpreted alongside V, for example, because we don't mean that all views have to be presented neutrally (or presented at all). And V has to be read in conjunction with NOR to grasp the attributed-versus-attributable distinction. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 17:24, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

So that rather implies that they don't work in harmony, right?, if they're split up in ways that force people to skip from one to the other in order to understand them. I'm not trying to remove the "they should not be interpreted in isolation" bit, which says the thing that you want to say; I'm just removing the "look how great we are" fluff that comes before it. (Even if you do think these policies are harmonious, there's still nothing except extra verbiage to be gained by saying it).--Kotniski (talk) 17:31, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

OMG, to think that a user might actually have to read the core principles of Wikipedia before he thinks he's qualified to write an online encyclopedia. Three little pages? These policies do work in harmony if adhered to. They just don't work in harmony when subverted by POV. But in a sense Kotniski is right, it might be better to say "These three core policies jointly determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in Wikipedia articles. They should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should try to familiarize themselves with all three." He's right that "harmony" is fluff and unnecessary. But definitely, editors need to be obligated to familiarize themselves with all three, if they're going to do a significant amount of editing. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 18:09, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

In a related discussion at WP:VPP#RfC: What is the status of WP:COPYVIO?, someone (User:Taemyr) suggested "Verifiability is one of Wikipedia's core content policies, as is No original research and Neutral point of view. These policies jointly determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in articles. They should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors basing an argument in one of them is expected to be familiar with the other two as well." Would that be acceptable?--Kotniski (talk) 07:18, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

It says the same thing, except that the writing isn't as clear. The policies do work in harmony; there's no point in removing that word for the sake of it. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 08:49, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

It certainly doesn't say the same thing about what we expect of editors - it no longer tells the lie that we expect all editors to read through these three pages. And if "harmony" doesn't add anything (and it isn't clear even to us what it's supposed to mean, or whether it's true), why add it as extra verbiage?--Kotniski (talk) 10:37, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't mind the word "harmony", but I also have no problems using a different word with the same meaning. What if if we said "work together" instead of "work in harmony"? Would that resolve the issue? ... or is the objection that the policies don't work together? (I would disagree with that... they are definitely supposed to work together, and I think they do.) Blueboar (talk) 02:03, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't know what it means to say that policies "work", let alone that they work "together", or especially "in harmony" (which sounds self-congratulatory). It's just a string of potentially confusing words that at best doesn't add anything of any value to the information of substance that comes after it.--Kotniski (talk) 10:41, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Kotniski, the ideal (never really achieved anywhere in full, mind you) is that 'the rules' should be both complete and exclusive: in other words, policy as a whole should cover all the issues it needs to cover for the proper guidance of the encyclopedia, but each issue should be covered only one place in policy so that there are no internal inconsistencies. What's happened historically, however, is that as people confront and disagree over new things that might need covering in policy, they have tended to write new policy pages, without integrating with other pages (and sometimes specifically to subvert what's written on other pages). the result is the current mess of redundant but conflicting policy and guideline pages. This reflects a larger problem with the encyclopedia as a whole, mind you: an excessive focus on individual pages, with almost no effort to produce overarching or meta-level structure. --Ludwigs2 16:20, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

By "work in harmony" or "work together" we mean that no Policy or guideline should be seen as "trumping" the others. it means we are supposed to follow all of our policies and guidelines at the same time. And it means that when any two policy/guideline pages conflict, that conflict needs to be discussed and resolved (through concensus).

Would it resolve your concerns to say that our policies and guidelines are "supposed to work in harmony"? (thus acknowledging that it is possible for two pages to conflict at the moment you look at them... but the goal is to have them work in harmony?). Blueboar (talk) 16:35, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I still don't see what the benefit is of saying it. Surely no reader is going to think that we deliberately write policies that contradict each other?--Kotniski (talk) 07:46, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Actually, from my experience deliberately writing conflicting policies (or at least conflicting guidelines) is something that often happens. The various project notability and style guides are a prime example. Blueboar (talk) 15:12, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's true. So you think we ought to mention this harmony thing here, by way of saying "look, sometimes Wikipedia's guidance pages are knowingly contradictory, but we're pretty sure that these particular three happen not to contradict each other at the moment"? (Then when someone finds a contradiction, we could comment out the clause until the contradiction is resolved - a kind of reverse tagging, since we're apparently not allowed to actually tag anything in these policies as doubtful even if it is.)--Kotniski (talk) 23:08, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

No, but I do think it is worth repeating in our core policies that they are supposed to work in harmony with each other. Blueboar (talk) 00:58, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Isn't that true of all our policies, guidelines etc.? And isn't it what readers would expect anyway?--Kotniski (talk) 08:53, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Achieving harmony?

Or to take a far more potentially beneficial line, what's the mood at the moment as regards combining/reorganizing/simplifying these three policies so that they really might "work in harmony" - I know it's been talked about before many times, but would there be enough people interested in making it happen sort of now-ish? --Kotniski (talk) 17:22, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Definitely. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 18:12, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like fun. It also sounds a bit like an incitement to masochism. I'm in. --Ludwigs2 09:28, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

WP:nor has a huge overlap with wp:ver. And I've been an advocate for some substantial changes. But I've never see dis-harmony between them as being a particular problem. North8000 (talk) 11:21, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

We could probably combine them all into one statement of how to write here, something like... Wikipedia aims to be a reliable source of knowledge. All Wikipedia content should be based on the best sources, which are, as nearly as possible, third party scholarly texts representing the consensus of experts in the field. Wikipedia authors must not add their own views or research to the views expressed in the sources, and information that the sources deem highly important should be included. Wikipedia must also present material with the same relative weight as that found in the sources. Because it follows its sources precisely without going beyond them or leaving things out, Wikipedia itself must take a Neutral Point of View, presenting the material in the sources without bias. That's just off the top of my head, but what I wanted to do was show the natural flow of thought from reliability --> sources --> NOR --> WEIGHT --> NPOV. Then go on from that core statement to explain the various aspects. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 03:16, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

The problem this is going to face (and the reason, in fact, why wp:V, wp:RS, and wp:NOR have such a vast overlaps) is that there is currently an unresolved schism in the conception of the project. on one hand you have editors (like me) who feel that the purpose of Wikipedia is to provide neutral, accurate descriptions of topics, and that sourcing is a check&balance intended to prevent articles from straying off true. on the other hand, you have editors who feel that the purpose of wikipedia is to provide recapitulations of sourced material, nothing else. each viewpoint has something to recommend it, and each viewpoint has down sides:

• 'Topic-centered' encyclopedia
  • (+) done well, it is most in line with neutrality and balance
  • (-) done poorly, it leads towards original research and synthesis
• 'source-centered' encyclopedia
  • (+) done well, it ensures accuracy and clear attribution
  • (-) done poorly, it leads to a bureaucratic quagmire that defends entrenched POVs

The later approach is behind a bunch of policy and guideline implementations (WP:RS, WP:MEDRS...) and is largely driven by anti-fringe editors who use sourcing as leverage to take down fringe advocacy. Before we can clean up policy, we need to find some way to bridge this schism and determine precisely what the purpose of sourcing on wikipedia is. --Ludwigs2 16:04, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Ludwig, you have said a lot of brilliant stuff here. And I think that you already know the answer to your question, you have already said it. The purposes is " purpose of Wikipedia is to provide neutral, accurate descriptions of topics" and sourcing is merely a means to that end. If you read/logically distill the major policies closely, they also say this, but in a few areas the say it so badly in a way which often causes (e.g. the infamous ".....not truth") that cause them to widely be misquoted. North8000 (talk) 16:47, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Well Ludwigs, what you say may be so, but I see it as a very good thing to be specific about what we mean by good sources. I think a major simplification is needed so that editors can start to notice where policies or guidelines are off in the first place. It's too complex, and that's disrespectful of new editors. Speaking of FRINGE, I noticed that it says that a) you can base an article on a fringe topic on unreliable sources... and b) therefore you have to use other unreliable sources with the opposite POV... but c) only reliable sources should be used and d) unreliable sources are reliable for fringe subjects, and e) expertise is not necessary. That's an example of how these things conflict I guess but I've seldom seen it that bad. But in general, is specifically defining the rules going to lead to more wikilawyering, rather than giving those with good sources more power and therefore leading to the settling of disputes? I do see a problem with POV pushing, and do you have a better solution than to fall back on simple relaying of sources? Given that "off true" for one person is very different from that of another person? More contradictions: "Any material lacking a reliable source directly supporting it may be removed [3]... Remove material only where you have good reason to believe it misinforms or misleads readers in ways that cannot be addressed by rewriting the passage. [4]. "Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means that articles should not give minority views as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views. Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all [5]" which allows the argument that because an opinion is mainstream and discussed in reliable sources it should have more room in the article no matter what the tiny minority of experts on the subject say. I mean, is that screwed up or what? Why is it written that way when it doesn't mean "widely held" but "widely held by experts in the field published in RS?" I mean seriously folks, let's get it down to a reasonable size and then maybe we won't be able to garner these kinds of examples with a mere 10 or 20 minutes of looking for them. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 04:50, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, FRINGE is a polemic guideline. While I personally agree with the intent of FRINGE (wikipedia needs some guideline on how to deal with funky/crazy crap that's notable enough for inclusion), the guideline as is was mainly written by skeptics on the warpath. it could use a major tweaking, but every time I try to do stuff like that the skeptic community issues a fatwa against me, and I end up getting stoned (and not in the good way ). waddayagonnado.

I do have to say, though, that this this lack of cross-policy organization has been bugging me for a while. maybe I should write up a 'policy tree' (basically an outline of policy, for structural organization purposes) and see if I can get approval for it at the pump. that might make these kinds of discussions easier. --Ludwigs2 18:25, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

As a quick aside... the original intent of WP:FRINGE was to spell out what is allowed on Wikipedia ... not what isn't allowed. Blueboar (talk) 01:00, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Really? I didn't know that... I wonder if we could edit it back in that direction without encountering too much flak? --Ludwigs2 01:56, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd also like to see that happen. I tried to start tidying FRINGE a few times, but was beaten back by skeptics too, so I gave up and took it off my watchlist. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 12:16, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

What specifically are you wanting to change? And are you saying you're against skeptics? BE——Critical_{__Talk} 18:57, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I've not looked at it for a long time, but I recall that it was poorly written and took an extreme position. I'm not against skeptics, but we have editors who call themselves skeptics while striking up absolutist positions that are the opposite of skepticism. My memory is that they were in control of the page when I tried to edit it, so I left it. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 19:03, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Rewriting Fringe would be an interesting project. I suppose it's a problem with the NOTABILITY guideline that subjects with almost no RS are allowed. I'm personally rather unhappy about that. Any article here should have sufficient RS for a good article without much use of the sources mentioned in Fringe. I guess skeptics can go on the warpath too, sorry you've been mistreated. That policy tree idea is great... it would help show how one policy related to or derived from another. And hopefully if it had consensus it could be used as a template for reform. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 07:26, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I haven't looked at it in a long time either. The problem with it, largely, was that it was written to imply (more-or-less) that only sources critical of fringe topics could be considered reliable, and that they should be given every advantage. you get passages like the 'particular attribution' clause - which I argued against and still IAR when I see it - which basically says that any statement critical of fringe topics from any person who has any kind of academic standing (regardless of field) should be treated as though it were the general opinion of the scientific community and the highest quality source on the article. ridiculousity...

Maybe it's time to try a new round of revisions, though. I have a couple of other irons in the fire for the remainder of this week (including taking a stab at that policy tree), but I'll take a look at it on saturday and try a few test revisions to see what happens. --Ludwigs2 19:38, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good. I would think that attributing a rebuttal to a particular scientist would only give greater weight, not less. I assume that by "particular attribution clause" you mean where it talks about specifically naming the source. I don't really see where it says that people who have no expertise in the subject at hand are RS? That would certainly be a large error, but it does say "the opinion of a scholar whose expertise is in an unrelated field must be evaluated appropriately." It should probably give some guidance on that. I can see how some of the things in FRINGE could be used to write POV text. Taking it literally, you would say "So-and-so believes that humans evolved by convergent evolution to resemble chimpanzees and that they do not share a common ancestor. However, humans and chimpanzees evolved from a common ancestor." In other ways, FRINGE seems to be solving problems that don't exist. Creationist peer-reviewed journals would be RS for the Creationist perspective, and unless we're taking sides in the debate and contrasting fact and fiction instead of describing the debates, then there's no problem. There's no one going to be arguing that "you just stated as fact that XY, and you said you could do that because it was a peer-reviewed journal, so I have a peer-reviewed journal too, buddy, and now I can state as fact that not XY." BE——Critical_{__Talk} 20:50, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Five pillars of Wikipedia redirected to Wikipedia?

Why on earth is my search-entry Five pillars of Wikipedia redirected here to the overall article on Wikipedia? The aimed for article exists (five pillars of wikipedia) and I wanted to re-view it. I don't know how to change such frustrating redirections. It feels very manipulating. I hope someone may help, thank you. --Xact (talk) 02:19, 7 February 2011 (UTC))

Were you looking for this page? If so, you need to remember to add the Wikipedia: prefix when you do a search on it. The Utahraptor^Talk/_Contribs 02:22, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Dear raptor from Utah, it is not the mere objective of finding the desired article that caused my frustration, but the semiotic implication. I regard the five pillars of wikipedia very highly. What the significance of these pillars is, are of course opt to continuous consideration and prudent conversation, but they need not to be put in the backyard of this project. --Xact (talk) 03:09, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Neutrality versus Objectivity

This question is regarding a peculiar discussion at Wikipedia:Norway. In Norwegian we have the word for both 'neutral' (nøytral) and objective (objektiv), still the Objective is preferred for Neutral in the translation. I intuit this as pertaining to a policy, which challenges the original neutrality policy of wikipedia. Also neutrality has a political colour, so to say, in Norway, cause this is traditionally associated with the Swedish political mainstream ideal. This may be a cause for the situation in Norway.. Nevertheless I find the Norwegian translation of this pillar very problematic. Objectivity is quite another ideal from neutral point of view. Objectivity is far more conservative in relation to established order and authority, than what is neutrality. The neutral is a possible ground within a process, wheras objectivity relates to an hypothetical end-product. The Wikipedia will never result in a publishable encyclopedia (an object). It will constantly be in a dynamic process. Wikipedians should not, I think, regard Wikipedia as inferior to an Encyclopedia. It will stay as something else, and it will continune to influence the way we (including the academic community) are thinking in terms of methodology. Theory is a practice in this new paradigm. Wikipedia is far ahead of the encyclopedias in disclosing this binarism (Theory & Practice). Still I'm somehow afraid of the conflict on Wikipedia:Norway. I hope it is not symptomatic. There's obvious efforts to sort of tame Wikipedia in regard of its seminal influence. I think it is an strategic error to present Wikipedia as the free encyclopedia, cause it signals an upper limit in reference to the very much better, but not so cheap encyclopedias like Encyclopedia Britannica. On the other hand Wikipedia is a better wikipedia than any of the other efforts from the encyclopedic publishers to encounter the challenge. I wonder what the opinions are at this English section about the Norwegian case? --Xact (talk) 03:09, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Neutrality versus Objectivity

This question is regarding a peculiar discussion at Wikipedia:Norway. In Norwegian we have the word for both 'neutral' (nøytral) and objective (objektiv), still the Objective is preferred for Neutral in the translation. I intuit this as pertaining to a policy, which challenges the original neutrality policy of wikipedia. Also neutrality has a political colour, so to say, in Norway, cause this is traditionally associated with the Swedish political mainstream ideal. This may be a cause for the situation in Norway.. Nevertheless I find the Norwegian translation of this pillar very problematic. Objectivity is quite another ideal from neutral point of view. Objectivity is far more conservative in relation to established order and authority, than what is neutrality. The neutral is a possible ground within a process, wheras objectivity relates to an hypothetical end-product. The Wikipedia will never result in a publishable encyclopedia (an object). It will constantly be in a dynamic process. Wikipedians should not, I think, regard Wikipedia as inferior to an Encyclopedia. It will stay as something else, and it will continune to influence the way we (including the academic community) are thinking in terms of methodology. Theory is a practice in this new paradigm. Wikipedia is far ahead of the encyclopedias in disclosing this binarism (Theory & Practice). Still I'm somehow afraid of the conflict on Wikipedia:Norway. I hope it is not symptomatic. There's obvious efforts to sort of tame Wikipedia in regard of its seminal influence. I think it is an strategic error to present Wikipedia as the free encyclopedia, cause it signals an upper limit in reference to the very much better, but not so cheap encyclopedias like Encyclopedia Britannica. On the other hand Wikipedia is a better wikipedia than any of the other efforts from the encyclopedic publishers to encounter the challenge. I wonder what the opinions are at this English section about the Norwegian case? --Xact (talk) 03:06, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Hierarchy of the five pillars?

The article says that "Neutral point of view" is one of Wikipedia's three core content policies. Thus it states that these three are somewhat of greater importance than the two other pillars. Is this correct? --Xact (talk) 02:07, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

No... Don't mix up the five pillars and the three core content polices... they are different things that serve different purposes.

The five pillars are:

1. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia,
2. Wikipedia has a neutral point of view,
3. Wikipedia is free content that anyone can edit and distribute,
4. Wikipedians should interact in a respectful and civil manner, and
5. Wikipedia does not have firm rules..

These pillars are statements of philosophical principal, not policy statements ... however, three of the five have been codified into policy statements ... (#1 and #3 don't have related policy pages). #2 (NPOV) is the only one that has been codified into content policy. (#4 has been codified into a core behavior policy - WP:CIVIL, and #5 has been codified into WP:IAR, which is is arguably in a category by itself.) However, as philosophical principals, all of these five are equal.

The core content polices are:

1. WP:Neutral point of view,
2. WP:Verifiability and
3. WP:No original research

Of these policies, Only WP:NPOV explicitly ties to a pillar (although WP:V is linked to in the explanation of the NPOV pillar), but that does not mean that the other two are of lesser importance than NPOV. And the fact that we call these three the "core" content polices does not mean that they "trump" other content policies (or guidelines)... The goal is that all our policies and guidelines (whether content or behavioral) should be followed at the same time. One does not "trump" any of the others.Blueboar (talk) 04:03, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

An important NPOV discussion was centralized at WP:MEDRS, linked below

Note: It was suggested to post notice at WP:Fringe about the following important discussion taking place, copied in part to this WP:NPOV talk page section.

A subtle question came up at talk:Acupunture here[6]. An alternative medicine journal with an authoritative sounding name was quoted in the acupuncture article in a way that misleads readers about "medical" conclusions in a way which meets MEDRS, but is not in the "spirit" of MEDRS -

"The American Academy of Medical Acupuncture (2004) states: 'In the United States, acupuncture has its greatest success and acceptance in the treatment of musculoskeletal pain.' "[7]

This sentence is techincally true, but it leaves an ordinary reader with the impression that a national "medical" academy has concluded acupuncture is successful in general, and has its "greatest" success in treating pain. That is how I read it, until I investigated and found that the AAMA is a POV pushing organization that is not peer reviewed by independent medical practitioners. This seems to be an end run around MEDRS prohibitions about using alternative medicine journals as RS for medical conclusions. Does anyone have a suggested fix of MEDRS to handle this subtle problem of "misleading by quoting medical conclusions by alternative organizations that have assumed titles of authority "? Note: the following was copied from WP talk:RS. PPdd (talk) 17:11, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

If you are thinking of adding this to WP:MEDRS, this discussion should take place at WP:MEDRS. Not here. Blueboar (talk) 13:05, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I put it here (WP:RS) because it is about "alternative science journals" in general, in addition to alternative medicine journals. ~

Fair enough... Well, from a purely RS standpoint, I would agree with the statement.

As a further thought, when you get around to discussing it at MEDRS (and I expect your proposal will require some discussion) I would suggest leaving a note at both WT:FRINGE and WT:NPOV, pointing to that centralized discussion. The issue relates to multiple policies and guidelines, and a full discussion now, ending in a broad consensus now will help prevent potential conflicts later. Blueboar (talk) 14:58, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree on cenralizing the discussion. I also agree that this will be a major decision for modifying WP:RS or WP:MEDRS (or WP:Fringe or WP:NPOV), since it will affect a huge number of edit war-prone articles (and likely stop a huge number of edit wars and interminable and multi-repeated talk page debates. I got accused of "canvassing" last time I posted a vote on a related topic at relevant talk pages, but I fully agree with the need for multiple notifications, and a centralized discussion. PPdd (talk) 17:11, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Note:The above block was copied from WP:RS to centralize the discussion. PPdd (talk) 17:11, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Please commet at the centralized discussion location at MEDRS here[8]. PPdd (talk) 17:21, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Just a note... the above was cut and pasted from WT:IRS... and my comments are taken a bit out of context (not a biggie)... This is definitely an issue that relates to NPOV, so I do encourage those who contribute to this page to drop over to the centralized discussion at MEDRS. Blueboar (talk) 18:17, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

What happened to the WP:FRINGS/PS page?

On March 8th, I added the following text to the Talk:Astrology page:

Having the mention of "pseudoscience" in the lead section would violate WP:FRINGS/PS. "While pseudoscience may in some cases be significant to an article, it should not obfuscate the description or prominence of the mainstream views." No one is suggesting the claim of pseudoscience is not significant in this article on astrology, but that claim should not be the main focus or the lead-in to the article, which would be an "obfuscation." To dismiss astrology in such a way, before presenting the available falsifiable, positive findings in astrology, which have stood for more than 20 years is an "obfuscation." To dismiss astrology outright at the beginning is detrimental to the scientists who are seeking funding to examine astrology and resolve the issues. Because critics stake their claim entirely on scientific studies, this is also an obfuscation of their own interests. Mention of pseudoscience should be confined to the Science section and should be edited for NPOV.

And again on the same day:

Further collaboration to v.2 is invited, though care must be taken that the pseudoscience claim, and similar tone, does not overwhelm or "obfuscate" the mainstream thrust of the article, in violation of WP:FRINGS/PS. The main thrust should be the revitalization of astrology and its leading place in New Age thinking. Astrologers are keen observers of social, economic, political, and spiritual change and they sustain a lively discourse in history, philosophy, psychology, human relationships, health, science, and the transformation of cultural beliefs. As editors, we must allow the Astrology article to accurately reflect the rightful place of astrology in history, culture, and in New Age thinking, and this includes all recent contributions made on behalf of its own historical and scientific research.

Suddenly, this entire WP:FRINGS/PS policy page disappeared and my links to it were broken. The part I quoted from this policy is now part of WP:PSCI, and the wording has been changed to read:

"While pseudoscience may in some cases be significant to an article, it should not obfuscate the description of the mainstream views of the scientific community."

That doesn't even make any sense! I cannot even track any history of this change. What on earth is going on? Apagogeron (talk) 22:15, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I think you are just spelling it wrong... WP:FRINGE/PS works fine. Blueboar (talk) 23:34, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Blueboar. I've fixed the links and they're good now. I don't know if that was my mistake or someone tampered with them. Apagogeron (talk) 19:34, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Holocaust

"This also applies to other fringe subjects, for instance, forms of historical revisionism that are considered by more reliable sources to either lack evidence or actively ignore evidence, such as Holocaust denial," I think you are making a mistake here. What evidence do Holocaust Revisionists actively ignore and yes what forensic, physical evidence do orthodox Holocaust teachers provide? --41.19.78.193 (talk) 12:40, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

This isn't the place to debate Holocaust denial. Consensus is strong that this statement is not a mistake, and policy in Wikipedia is governed by consensus. Blueboar (talk) 13:19, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

majority viewpoint

Can we specify that editors can identify a majority viewpoint even if commonly accepted reference texts don't make that wording explicit? After the sentence: "Keep in mind that, in determining proper weight, we consider a viewpoint's prevalence in reliable sources, not its prevalence among Wikipedia editors or the general public" I would add, "The viewpoint supported in commonly accepted reference texts can be taken as the majority viewpoint even when it is not explicitly identified as such."

I do a lot of editing on pages where editors hold deeply felt minority views (Jesus, evolutionary psychology). Naturally, the last thing they want to do is acknowledge that a majority view contradicts their own views. I repeatedly refer editors to this policy statement, but with little luck:

"If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts"

A common rejoinder is that if the commonly accepted reference text doesn't say explicitly that a view is in the majority, then it's not. It's a nice distraction because, of course, reference texts are more likely to say "X is the case" than to say, "according to the majority viewpoint, X is the case." In addition, this false requirement (that the majority viewpoint be called out explicitly) reverses the logic in question. If Encyclopedia Britannica says that "most researchers think emotion are evolved adaptations," they're acknowledging some uncertainty, whereas if they just say "male hormones masculinize a fetus's brain," they're implying practical unanimity. But for the people who insist that no viewpoint can be called the majority unless that's explicit in the sources, the second statement can't be taken as a majority viewpoint, even if readily found in commonly accepted reference texts.

POV editors naturally resist attempts to identify a majority viewpoint, so anything we can do to make the majority viewpoint easier to identify would help the more contentious articles. Leadwind (talk) 15:06, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

That is a VERY bad idea because it will cause endless disputes and basically completely circumvents our NOR policy. If something is a majority viewpoint it is not a problem to find reliable sources that states so unequivocally. Your comparison also doesn't hold because the situations in which it is relevant to identify a majority viewpoint is when there has been discussion but it has been resolved in favor for one viewpoint. E.g. "Previously it was thought the earth is flat, now we know it isn't" is a fine statement of a change in majority opinion, but for that to work it really has to be a question where there is no longer any active discussion in the field. That is not the case with the POV you are trying to depict as the new majority opinion - the jury is still out and you have to be blind not to recognize that. Also please include yourself in the category of POV editors - you have been crusading in favor of your own misunderstood take of Evolutionary Psychology over multiple pages for the past several weeks. ·Maunus·ƛ· 15:48, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Re: "...a question where there is no longer any active discussion in the field." I would amend that to "...where there is no longer any widespread discussion..." We want to avoid the argument that because one or two proponents rant about their pet fringe theory on the internet, that qualifies as an "active" discussion. Blueboar (talk) 17:02, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

The proposal is unclear, but seems inadvisable given that there have been attempts at Evolutionary psychology to insert text like "with critics accusing it of supporting unfair or immoral policies" using an Encyclopedia Britannica article titled "social behaviour, animal" (i.e. a generic article that happens to mention the topic in one section). The existing policies are fine. Johnuniq (talk) 22:17, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

That is not actually the issue - Critics are accusing it of supporting unfair or immoral policies and there is sufficient reliable sources to back that statement up. What leadwind wants to include is a statement that it "is the majority opinion that hypotheses Evolutionary Psychology are testable" and he want s to base this on one psychology text book that says "it is difficult but not impossible to test ideas about evolutionary origins of psychological traits" and cites that claim to books by prominent proponents of EP. But yes, the policy is fine.·Maunus·ƛ· 22:43, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Johnuniq and Maunus are both opposed to the Encyclopedia Britannica article, but for opposite reasons. Johnuniq doesn't want to say that critics accuse EP of racism and sexism (even though they clearly do), and Maunus doesn't want to say that EP hypotheses have been successfully tested (even though they clearly have been). In my bid to be neutral, I'm trying to cover both criticisms and successes, so naturally I'm getting resistance from both sides. (Touchy topic, you think?) In any event, my issue is a more general one. Let me try again, and maybe more people without a vesting interest in a particular page's disputes might like to chime in.

If a commonly accepted reference text says "X is the case," is that a stronger or a weaker statement of the majority viewpoint than if the same text said, "According to most researchers, X is the case"? The people who want to hold commonly accepted reference texts at bay will say that the first version ("X is the case") is weaker, and that we can't use such a statement to identify the majority viewpoint. I'd like the policy to make it explicit that the majority viewpoint is what commonly accepted reference texts state, either as fact (without conditions) or as a majority viewpoint. Leadwind (talk) 15:26, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

I would certainly agree that when multiple commonly accepted reference texts all say essentially the same thing, we can assume that they are presenting the majority view. But I hesitate to say that we can determine the majority view by looking at what one commonly accepted reference text says. At best, we might be able to determine that the something represents a majority view (as opposed to the majority view) Blueboar (talk) 16:28, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

WP:NPOV needs work, but I think that this particular proposal is designed for one particular type of situation (i.e. where an accurate answer exists, but science is not yet sure what it is, and where input is driven by political goals rather than the scientific uncertainty) which could have unintended consequences for others. North8000 (talk) 20:04, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Editors have problems understanding this policy on religion pages more often than on science pages. The problem pops up everywhere there are editors who are emotionally committed to a minority viewpoint. And I'm not asking for any change in policy, just a clarification. Currently, there is no policy that says, "You can't name a viewpoint as the majority viewpoint unless the commonly accepted reference texts specifically say it's the majority viewpoint." But editors who hate the majority viewpoint make that very argument. All I'm suggesting is that we clarify what the policy already is, that viewpoints stated as facts in commonly accepted reference texts can be taken as majority viewpoints. If Encyclopedia Britannica says Jesus was Jewish, then on the "Jesus was Hindu" page we can say "According to the majority viewpoint, Jesus was Jewish," even if EB doesn't use the phrase "according to the majority viewpoint." Leadwind (talk) 15:53, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

If the EB was the only standard reference to say "Jesus was Jewish" (it isn't, but if it was), then we could not say "the majority viewpoint is that Jesus was Jewish". We would have to be more specific and say "According to the EB, Jesus was Jewish" or "The EB contends that Jesus was Jewish" or something like that. For us to say that X is the majority view, we need more than one source to say it. Blueboar (talk) 16:06, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

" If something is a majority viewpoint it is not a problem to find reliable sources that states so unequivocally.(·Maunus·ƛ·)"

I see a serious problem here, because if you find the statement in some reliable sources that starts with "It is generally accepted that ...", someone can argue that this is a viewpoint of some concrete scholar, and there is no proof that this his viewpoint on what is commonly accepted is a majority view. In other words, if some reliable source states what majority viewpoint is, we still need a proof that this sources expresses a majority viewpoint. Unfortunately, that is not an idle sophism, I faced this problem in practice, when, e.g. the references to EB were ignored because other sources, which stated the opposite, were deemed more mainstream.
In connection to that, I propose to discuss a possibility to clarify how can we use search engines like google scholar to identify the majority viewpoint. By writing that I do not propose to do original research, however, if we have a number of reliable sources that, e.g. use different terminology for the same phenomenon, the question sometimes appears which terminology should be used as a primary one. That is needed, for example, to choose proper article or section name, article structure, etc. If alternative viewpoint exist, it is seems reasonable to use google scholar, which searches only within scientific and scholarly articles, to identify, what terminology is more frequently used by scientists and scholars, and to build articles accordingly. In my opinion, that should be explained in the policy or guidelines, because many users simply do not understand the value of google scholar, jstor isiknowledge, or similar search engine and confuse them with google or books.google (which look in all sources, both reliable and non-reliable).
In summary, I suggest to describe in the policy how gscholar and jstor can be used to identify mainstream views, terminology, etc., for defining the proper articles' structure.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:28, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

No. Policy accepts statements from suitably qualified experts or suitably reliable secondary sources. Per WP:REDFLAG, if an expert asserts something that appears to contradict other experts (I mean contradict, not something like "in my view such-and-such is a better interpretation") then that single source should not be relied on. However, for example, we accept a statement from an authoritative biologist who says that "it is generally accepted that [some statement about biology]". Johnuniq (talk) 05:01, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, let's consider the following situation. I have some reliable source (for instance, the article of some reputable scholar published in some good peer-reviewed journal) that contains the claim that summarises the views of others and comes to some general conclusion. However, another author expressed somewhat different views, which were derived by him from what other sources say. Based on that, we need to make a decision about the proper article's title (or the article's structure, section name, the way the facts and opinions should be represented, etc). Obviously, we need to use the most common terminology. How to decide, which of two viewpoints should be taken as a base, and which should be presented as an alternative POV?--Paul Siebert (talk) 13:56, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

If we have two sources of equal reliability that each say that their view is the majority view then it is unlikely that either of them is in fact a majority view, and we are likely dealing with something close to a balanced disagreement (or they are talking about majorities of different fields (e.g. a majority of forensic anthropologists accept race as a biological category - but the majority of the larger profession of physical anthropologists of which Forensic anthropologists are part do not)). IN any case if we have such conflicting statements it is out of the question to simply say x is the majority view, and the only way to write neutrally would be to attribute the view to the authors and try to interpret which majority each of them is talking about.·Maunus·ƛ· 14:08, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)My question was somewhat different. I do not speak about statements we add to the article. Obviously, they should be based on what reliable sources say, and, if two equally reliable sources say different things, the statement must take into account both opinions. However, what I am asking is how the decision about the article's structure should be made if, according to several sources the article's titles, or the article's structure should be different? For example, let's consider a hypothetic dispute over the title of the Gyromagnetic ratio article. Since this ratio in actuality is the ratio of the magnetic dipole moment to its angular momentum, it is natural to call it magnetogyric ratio ("magnetic" is in a numerator and "gyric" in the denominator). In actuality, both names are used. However, since google scholar gives :

• 34,500 results for "gyromagnetic ratio" [9], and only
• 5,280 results for "magnetogyric ratio" [10],

the current title of the article (which mentions the alternative term in the lede) correctly reflects the mainstream views.

In my opinion, such procedure should be documented in the policy or guidelines, because sometimes the disputes over proper article names, article structure, and other changes of content that are not directly attributed to some single source are long and exhausting, and frequently lead to an impasse. It is also important to clearly describe the difference between google and similar generic search engines, which search within all sources, both reliable and not, and gscholar, entrez, scifinder, jstor, isiknowledge and similar scientific and scholarly databases, because some users do not understand the difference.--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:46, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

PS Interestingly, the dispute over "gyromagnetic vs magnetogyric" took place in actuality[11]. I believe, had the policy clearly said about the usage of gscholar, this dispute would be much easier to resolve.--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:56, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

• Comment This suggestion for a policy change stems I believe from a discussion on the Communist terrorism talk page. PS is of the opinion that as authors use different terms to describe the same groups (or objects one would presume) then all these differing names ought be in an article. He is of the opinion that as some terrorist groups have been described as left wing, euro terrorists, fighting communist organizations and so on that this is an alternative viewpoint. I am of the opinion that an alternate view of these groups would be they are not communist, or terrorist and that how differing authors terminology is not in fact a viewpoint, just a label. If we are to follow PS proposed change to it`s ultimate conclusion then the article on women will need to include also known as birds, chicks, babes, ho`s, and so on. The same with Ocean, also known as the briny, davey jones locker, the big pond and so on. Tentontunic (talk) 14:18, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

There are specific complications with ue laden labels such as "terrorist" that mean that "majority viewpoint" doesn't apply. My statement was meant to apply to situations where there is a scientific disagreement about how to define something, not a political one (the difference being that even if there is a majority in country x that all christians are terrorists that does mean that wikipedia can state that as a fact - but if there is a majority in zoology that the Moa is extinct but a few scholars say it may not be then we can safely say that the Moa is considered extinct).·Maunus·ƛ· 14:35, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

To a certain extent, once a view is expressed independently in a reasonable number of reliable sources, it is then not so "frince" or "minority" as to be dismissed out of hand. If one wishes to assert that another view is overwhelmingly held by independent sources, but no independent source so claims, the it is likly that such a view is not in a such a majority as to make the other view "fringe" or "minority." I think this is the gist of current policy and guidelines. Moreover, people who assert a view is "fringe" or "extreme minority" are fully obligated to find independent reliable sources making that specific claim. Does this comport with what others feel the policies and guidelines dictate? By the way, articles do not have neat rules for "structure" on Wikipedia. Most consist of material on a fairly broad topic, and contain material terein where reliable sources exist for statements abou the Wikipedia topic. Wikipedia does not require topics to be book titles whatsoever. Collect (talk) 14:48, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with your notion that to asserty something as fringe a reliabel source must claim it to be so, that leads to the WP:CHEESE dilemma. If reliable sources overwhelmingly agree that theory x is generally accepted then we can call a theory that is in direct opposition to theory X fringe. We cannot expect to have reliable sources make lists of all fringe theories.·Maunus·ƛ· 16:15, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Independently of how many opinion some WP article includes, its structure is supposed to be well defined, logically consistent, and based on what majority of reliable sources say. My proposal has a relation to that. Do you have any comments on this my proposal?--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:19, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

If an rs says "It is generally accepted that...." then we take it as factual. Writers may also state what is generally accepted as a fact. When a term is is a neologism, writers will state that, e.g., by saying "what x calls...." RS may get their facts wrong, and accepted opinion may change, but that is the advantage of using academic sources. Errors are generally addressed in subsequent literature. Where we run into difficulty is where editors create articles by putting an adjective and a noun together, then use Google to find sources for their phrase. Typically different writers will use the phrase differently. So we have cases where editors combine terms such as neo, traditional, social, liberal, communist, left-wing, genocide, terrorism, nationalism, conservatism, populism, etc. to create an article. Sometimes there is a recognized meaning for a unique combination of terms, e.g., neoliberalism. Often there is not, in which case the article should be deleted or disambiguated. The problem I see is not with the policy, but that in some cases it is not followed. TFD (talk) 15:55, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

• Comment @Paul Siebert's: All this request does from a practical standpoint is look to install a system which can then, frankly, be gamed by both sides of an issue, leading further away from meaningful discussion of content. I am an involved editor at Communist terrorism. IMHO, the crux of the issue is that I disagree with Paul Siebert's editorial contentions which presuppose that a particular Google search for some term is even relevant to the discussion. At best this is barking up the wrong tree, at worst, it is seeking to institutionalize a numbers game which one can then use to "support" a contention where the very contention and the manner it may be related to an Internet search are fundamentally flawed.

  @TFD: The very notion that an adjective and modifier are inappropriately combined ("lexeme") regarding Communist terrorism is fundamentally flawed. That is no more consistent or inconsistent than High carbohydrate diet—individual, group, regime, or governmental acts informed by a religious, political, or scientific ideology. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 17:22, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

• Not here. NPOV already has a general section that headers as well as article structure must be neutral. WP:MOSNAME and WP:MOSHEAD give some guidance on this in particular. WP:GOOGLE emphasizes the caution about using searches in general. And WP:CREEP pretty much ensures we won't put such a formalized metric into policy. Use the sources, use common sense, describe debates, remain neutral. Otherwise, have an RfC and talk it over. Ocaasi ^c 19:42, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

MOSNAME and MOSHEAD require that the decision about the article name be made by consensus, but nothing is said how concretely this consensus should be achieved. Of course, in most cases redundant detailing creates more problems that opportunities, however, not in this case. Regarding WP:GOOGLE, this guide devotes just one statement to gscholar

"Google Scholar works well for fields that (1) are paper-oriented and (2) have an online presence in all (or nearly all) respected venues. Most papers written by computer scientists will show up, but for less technologically current fields, representation in Google Scholar is less reliable. Even the journal Science only puts articles online back to 1996. Thus, Google Scholar should rarely be used as proof of non-notability."

which is not sourced and seems to reflect the viewpoint of few individuals. It is in direct contradiction with what reliable sources tell about gscholar, e.g.:

1. Maslov, S., & Redner, S. (2008). Promise and pitfalls of extending Google’s PageRank algorithm to citation networks. Journal of Neuroscience, 28, 11103–11105, analysed the PageRank algorithm and found that this, as well as popular commercial search engines provide an adequate information about popularity of some concrete source, although they warn that that does not automatically reflect the real scientific contribution of concrete publication. Taking into account that WP is supposed to reflect majority views, "popularity" is what we need.

2. Jan van Aalst. (2010) Using Google Scholar to Estimate the Impact of Journal Articles in Education. EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER 39: 387. Although he points at some limitations of Gscholar, he concludes that the latter is a good complement for ISI Thompson-Reuter:

"For English language education and educational technology it was not possible to predict ISI impact factors from Google Scholar data, but the data revealed important aspects of scholarship in those subfields: the significance of publications in books and book chapters for English language education and that of conference papers for educational technology. Researchers no longer need to rely on anecdotal evidence to argue that such publications are important in their subfields but can support their arguments with empirical evidence. This was not possible before Google Scholar due to the lack of data for non-ISI publications."

3. Harzing, A.W.K. & Wal, R. van der (2008). Google Scholar as a new source for citation analysis?, Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 62-71:

"Because of its broader range of data sources, the use of GS generally results in more comprehensive citation coverage in the area of management and international business. The use of GS particularly benefits academics publishing in sources that are not (well) covered in ISI. Among these are books, conference papers, non-US journals, and in general journals in the field of strategy and international business. The 3 alternative GS-based metrics showed strong correlations with the traditional JIF. As such, they provide academics and universities committed to JIFs with a good alternative for journals that are not ISI-indexed. However, we argue that these metrics provide additional advantages over the JIF and that the free availability of GS allows for a democratization of citation analysis as it provides every academic access to citation data regardless of their institution’s financial means."

These and similar sources demonstrate that the potential of google.scholar is significantly underestimated by the Wikipedia community, and that it should be used more widely as a tool to resolve neutrality issues.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:02, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Paul, good research there. Two general points: 1) We shouldn't be rewriting policy to handle any particular dispute, just in case there is a background here I'm partly unaware of. 2) This kind of detailed instruction, at the very least given the current uncertainty of such methods, would never be hard-coded into NPOV itself. It sounds like you should start with a user WP:ESSAY, explaining the background, research basis, potential uses, and proposed methods for such an approach. Then you could bring it to Village Pump Proposals and see if others like the idea. It sounds like ultimately this would wind up at WP:MOSNAME rather than here at NPOV, since although NPOV deals with headers and names in a 'big' sense, that kind of detailed analysis and procedure is best left (if at all) on guidelines, help pages, and in essays. Ocaasi ^c 18:03, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Re 1. I do not keep in mind some concrete dispute, what I know is that the disputes about proper name, proper terminology, proper article's structure happen from time to time in different areas, and it would be useful to have some more or less neutral way to resolve them.

Re 2. I propose no detailed instruction. The main idea I am trying to convey is that scientific and scholarly search engines, which search within reliable sources only (for example, it was been estimated that only 8.5% of sources analysed by gscholar are the articles in non-peer-reviewed journals), provide a good overview of what terminology is generally accepted in majority reliable sources. In addition, such a search is verifiable, so everyone can analyse the key phrase, and, in the case if any doubts exist about its adequacy, point at any mistakes or omissions there.

Thank you for pointing my attention at WP:GOOGLE, something definitely must be fixed there, because it looks obsolete. To bring my proposal to VPP is also a good idea. thanks.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:20, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Redirect

I'm not sure the redirect to WP:Opinion belongs at the top of our most central policy page. Would a See Also link be sufficient? Are that many people getting lost looking for the essay? If it's that useful, shouldn't we incorporate it into the policy? Ocaasi ^c 10:50, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Or maybe at least reverse the order of the two hatnotes, so it comes after the links to the noticeboards? --Tryptofish (talk) 17:06, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Where do you draw the line?

All done, wrong page

Or is there one? Admittedly this is at its heart a content dispute which I have been in up to my ears. But I have resigned myself to step back - at least for now. And admittedly there has been plenty of vitriol spewing from this fountain in all directions for some time now. But I am over that for the most part, and looking for lessons learned. Still. There is one thing that is bothering me, and I hope some other people can take an objective look at this and tell me straight up whether what I am looking at is considered acceptable on Wikipedia. I would really like some opinions from other people on this so I can take this forward with me as I move on, hopefully to do something constructive around here. Here is a statement I make to a group working on cleaning up a mess left by another editor. And, yes, in spite of the fact I have aggravated a good many of these folks about how things are being handled, there really is a mess which needs to be cleaned up. As the discussion progresses, conversation turns to an idea I have for improving the diversity of our editing population. At this point, one editor drops their opinion of diversity on me, and it strikes me as so outrageous I just wonder how a person with these attitudes can be allowed to edit Islamic, or any non-western, articles. Have I been living a sheltered life up to this point? Is it just me, or is this remark somewhere over the top? Or is there a top? Please put in your two cents, and tell me what you think. Good bad, otherwise. I would really like to know. If you have some criticism for me as well, that's fine too - as long as you also address my question. Seriously, this sort of thing just doesn't belong anywhere out here, much less on any portal dealing with primarily non-western subject matter, as far as I am concerned. Thanks in advance for your time. Aquib (talk) 00:17, 13 April 2011 (UTC) The comment you reference about diversity was an inflammatory way of expressing a common criticism of multiculturalism, that it leads to relativism. Implicit in your criticism of the other editor is that he found your point of view to be unsupported by the sources. Try and separate the content issue from the civility issue. I think the civility issue was borderline; it certainly wasn't tactful, but it also wasn't directed at you--rather a general critique--crudely phrased. Your best bet would be to let him know how that kind of language can come across, as if editors from the respective cultures discussed in articles are not welcome there. I believe what the other editor meant is that editors from respective cultures discussed in articles are not welcome to their own version of the truth. It's important that you make the case that your perspective is not merely 'multicultural' but supported by sources, and that his perspective is not necessarily neutral. This is a common response to the 'critique of multiculturalism', that the dominant single-cultural view has its own bias--intentional, inadvertent, systemic, or otherwise. Of course, that requires having some sources which do back up your point of view. No editor deserves special treatment because of their personal background, but editors who know a subject area in a local or intimate way can often help explain concepts with much more intuition and familiarity than others. That ability can also make it more difficult to see one's own bias. At the same time, the other editor appeared so predisposed against views from 'other cultures' that his attitude might prevent him from looking at sources which don't confirm his opinion. Without getting into the specific content issue, that's what I can say. You might bring this up at WP:WQA to get some opinions on that kind of commentary, or at Jimbo's talk page for more views. There's a lot of interest in the community about being open to new editors and editors less commonly represented among our ranks. Still, inclusiveness is no excuse for being wrong, so double-check your position before exposing it to more scrutiny. Ocaasi c 01:08, 13 April 2011 (UTC) Thank you for taking the time to share some very useful insights. Regards -Aquib (talk) 01:15, 13 April 2011 (UTC) @ Aquib, while I've not gone into the detail of the case, the Jagged_85 issue seems to be centred on verifiability. Jagged_85 was making claims and citing sources which did not support those claims. Better sources are needed, high quality sources that explicitly discuss the issues concerned, and articles should accurately describe the findings of these sources, giving them due weight. Ignoring these basics undermines rather than supports the case that "multiculturalism" might want presented. Wikipedia:Systemic bias discusses the problem of under-representation of demographic groups, but the answer is not to lower standards for minority claims. Finally, you've put a lot of effort into presenting long arguments for inclusion of Muslim claims to science, WP:TLDR kicks in. More effort on finding good sources and writing new article content on that basis would be appreciated more than trying to preserve the Jagged heritage. . . dave souza, talk 07:16, 13 April 2011 (UTC) This has nothing to do with NPOV and should not be here William M. Connolley (talk) 11:24, 13 April 2011 (UTC) There's a connection in that Aquib seems to want undue weight to be given to poorly sourced claims of Muslim inventiveness, apparently in the name of cultural diversity. Aquib appears to misunderstand the central NPOV requirement that proportionate coverage is given to all significant views that have been published by reliable sources, which does not permit synthesised or novel unpublshed views or override the need for reliable third party sources. That's my reading of the long discussion at the Jagged RFC talk page. As you imply, it does look like forum shopping, so maybe shouldn't be here. . . dave souza, talk 17:08, 13 April 2011 (UTC) Poissonally, I think the connection is too thin for it to be raised here. Aquib is just, yet again, forum shopping. BTW I've cut my indentation level back down - I wasn't responding to your comment, I was responding to the entire thread. Which really ought to he hatted as irrelevant, IMO William M. Connolley (talk) 17:17, 13 April 2011 (UTC) Ok, have changed my own indentation to clarify that. Agree that no clear connection to improving this policy's been shown, and while respondents have tried to be helpful the complaints are offtopic. Have already drawn Aguib's attention to the need to avoid forum shopping, if there are no constructive and specific proposals for policy improvement then this should be hatted pretty soon. . . dave souza, talk 17:36, 13 April 2011 (UTC) I see we have two editors, Dave and WMC, attempting to suppress discussions of editor bias on Wikipedia. I will take this as an endorsement of the editor's position, on the subject of diversity on Wikipedia, about which I originally came to inquire. -Aquib (talk) 19:31, 13 April 2011 (UTC) Help, help, I'm being suppressed!!! Still offtopic, you seem to be inquiring in the wrong place. If you've no proposals for improving this policy, then hatting this section will be appropriate. . . dave souza, talk 20:10, 13 April 2011 (UTC) Dave, I find your reply uncivil. Mock me if you will, but take care you are not seen as mocking my question. It will be read; I leave it for others to judge its propriety. And it will be asked again. As for my suggestions; those in due course. For any who are genuinely interested, the broad outline can be found by diligently following the first discussion link I provided in my original post. -Aquib (talk) 20:26, 13 April 2011 (UTC) Are you mocking my cultural references? Examined your discussion with due diligence, in amongst all your complaining you state your "top priority, which is to develop a set of templates" rendering spellings to suit alternative cultural systems. That appears to have nothing to do with NPOV, it's a WP:MOS issue aimed at giving alternative non-standard English versions on demand. If you're unwilling to state your proposals up front, your verbosity looks simply disruptive. . . . dave souza, talk 20:47, 13 April 2011 (UTC) Now we see the violence inherent in the system William M. Connolley (talk) 22:05, 13 April 2011 (UTC) Seriously? A youtube link? Hahaha -Aquib (talk) 22:19, 13 April 2011 (UTC) I can see now I am on the wrong talk page. I originally got to Talk:Neutral Point of View from Neutral Point of View:FAQ. When I posted there I realized the page hadn't been updated in 6 months, so I jumped over here to post my question instead. Looks like I belong on an NPOV noticeboard if I should choose to pursue this. However, one person here was kind enough to offer me some objective observations on my actual question. So, with apologies to those of patience and good faith, I will be on my way. -Aquib (talk) 22:19, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

WP:UNDUE issue at Chris Brown (American singer)

Opinions are needed on this matter. Earlier, I reverted to the previous formatting, per my reasoning at Talk:Chris Brown (American singer)#section 1.4 needs to be reWritten : 2008–09: Graffiti album and domestic violence case. Splitting up the sections to where his domestic violence case is highlighted is a sure case of WP:UNDUE. There is no valid reason to highlight the section by making it its own section and separating it from his career efforts at that time, especially since it (the domestic violence case) affected those efforts. It makes more sense to keep all that information there in one place. This is also how biographies of living people are typically done -- avoiding Criticism or Controversy sections by themselves. They especially follow chronological order. If the Michael Jackson article (which is featured) can combine controversy with career happenings without any problems, then I do not see why this article cannot as well. Flyer22 (talk) 05:26, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

As I was reminded above, this question belongs on Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard so suggest moving it there. See the banner at the top of this page. . . dave souza, talk 06:53, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Flaw in NPOV definition

• Neutrality assigns weight to viewpoints in proportion to their prominence.

We should not assign weight to POVs. We should simply describe them. Part of the description of a viewpoint is a summary of what it is, or what its implications are, but another part is who accepts the viewpoint.

A truly neutral article would not assign weight to an idea, but merely point out how many people believe in it and how many people oppose it.

For example, one poll showed that 5% of scientists disagree with evolution. This does not mean we need to assign 5% of the Evolution article to opposing POV.

Another example is the shape of the earth. We all agree that no matter how much space we give to the idea that the earth is flat, this in no way undermines the modern view that the earth is spherical (ball shaped).

How do we do this? How can we describe a minority point of view, in enough detail so that our readers understand what it is and why its adherents believe(d) it, without "giving it undue weight"? The answer to this question is crucial to Wikipedia's reputation, not only as a free encyclopedia, but as a reliable one. --Uncle Ed (talk) 16:30, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

First: describing how many people believe in it is assigning weight. Secondly: currently the most detrimental process to wikipedia is the process by which minority viewpoints lobby to get disproportionate coverage to mainstream ones. What that accomplishes is not "to give our readers enough detal to understand it and understand why its inherents believe it", but rather a basic skewing of wikipedia to be the encyclopedia of fringe beliefs and incredible ideas. UNDUE is a crucial policy for enabling wikipedia to stay an encyclopedia and not a freak show. If anything WP:UNDUE should be more strictly enforced. Also it is a HUGE mistake to think that the aim of describing a pov is to give readers enough information to understand why adherents hold them. That would amount to turning wikipedia into a place were proponents of any weird view could be given free space to proselytize (as you know most religions believe that once you truly understand their views you are compelled to believe it) - that is not an encyclopedia. All views should be described neutrally, and given weight in accordance with their prominence. I would advocate that prominence should only be considered within academia, but I know that would not fly so I shall refrain from proposing it.·Maunus·ƛ· 16:39, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, but I don't agree with the notion that describing how many people believe in it is assigning weight. I gave two counter-examples. What do you think of these?

Also, I agree with you that we should not encourage the process by which Wikipedia might become an encyclopedia of fringe beliefs and incredible ideas. If not enough people believe in an idea, then it is too extremely "minority" and should be ignored completely. But if a large number of people believe it, then don't you think it merits an article?

Moreover, describing an incredible idea does not make it credible. Returning to one of my examples, we have a 12,000 word article on the Flat Earth idea. Yet there is nothing in the article which promotes view that the Earth's shape is a flat plane or disk. The article describes the idea itself, says who believed in it (and who didn't). We have an article on Holocaust denial. Is there any way in which our article on this topic amounts to free space to proselytize it? --Uncle Ed (talk) 17:03, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

You get the argument backwards - you are arguing to change policy and I am arguing to keep it as is. You cannot use the fact that we have an article on holocaust denial to show me that your idea makes sense, because that article is written in accordance with the current NPOV policy which includes WP:UNDUE. We have UNDUE inorder to enable us to have articles about fringy topics without turning wikipedia into fringe central. We can have an article on holocaust denial because the article assigns weight to the mainstream view that holocaust denial is a form of revisionist history writing that is aligned with nazism itself. If we were to implement your idea that would change and we would have to spend time trying to explain what kinds of reasoning lead people to adopt holocaust denial as their particular point of view, that would amount to proselytizing for holocaust denial. Similarly we can only have an article about Flat Eearth theory because it assigns weight to the pro-flat earth viewpoint relatively to the mainstream viewpoint. If we had a 80,000kb article about flat earth theory where only 1000kbs described the mainstream view on the shape of the earth that would be an NPOV problem - because the minstream viewpoint would dissappear in the sheer mass of pro-flat earth arguments. ·Maunus·ƛ· 17:58, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

<sigh...> Allow me to point out that this peculiar notion of 'weight' has no counterpart in actual scholarship. When a scholar talks about a topic, s/he presents the viewpoints of people and groups who are recognized as being significant voices in the topic, and handles them with a kind of clinical objectivity that obviates all these worries about 'beliefs' and 'prominence' and 'POVs'. Weight is a Wikipedia-only rubric that's useful as a rule-of-thumb but absolutely idiotic as a rule-of-law. Don't get carried away with it.

In my opinion, Wikipedia is not ever supposed to be normative. In other words, we do not allow editors to determine what the 'normal', 'typical', or 'correct' viewpoint is for content and impose that on the encyclopedia. This clearly goes for fringe viewpoints, which we do not allow editors to set up as truths. But it also applies to 'the mainstream' viewpoint, such that editors touting the mainstream should not be allowed to dominate other viewpoints to the detriment of the encyclopedia. We have to work with the paradox - that odd ideas need to be contained so that the project doesn't fall into fringe advocacy, and that odd ideas need to be treated fairly so that the project doesn't become an oppressive 'tyranny of the mainstream' form of propaganda. ok? --Ludwigs2 18:58, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Normal scholarship is argumentative and therefore not expected to be neutral - encyclopedia writing is not normal scholarship.·Maunus·ƛ· 00:25, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Also it is incorrect that there is no such notion of weight - if you write an article and make it appear as if a certain viewpoint has more clout than it actually has you will be criticized. It is a very commonly occurring criticism that scholars ignore parts of the literature that they should have engaged with, especially if that literature is commonly held to be important or if it contradicts particular conclusions made in the paper. There most certainly is an expectation in scholarship that authors are able to distinguish between commonly held viewpoints and novel or minority ideas and that this distinction influences how the argument is made.·Maunus·ƛ· 00:30, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

You have a peculiar view of scholarship. Scholarship is deliberative, not argumentative. Scholars invariably try to take the broad and long view on topics they right about, and to the extent that they argue for a particular point it is a point which encompasses and builds on previous points made in the literature. Scholars are not perfect, but you will never find a scholar who makes a statement like Johnuniq made (at 01:06, 13 April, below) - deliberately divisive and demeaning of a point of view, clearly political in nature - not because a scholar would be criticized by fellow scholars for making such a claim, but because a scholar would be embarrassed to say something so senselessly narrow-minded and aggressive. --Ludwigs2 17:40, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

The mere presence of material influences and assigns weight. NPOV misses the boat because much of it is structured to balance situations where there is material which directly weighs in on opposing sides of a question. In reality, this is a less common form of POV'ing. The mere presence of prejudicial material is the much more common form of POV'ing, and wp:npov only gives that a couple of very weak sentences. North8000 (talk) 19:21, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Maunus has explained the situation well. Only the POV pushers would benefit if NPOV and WP:ONEWAY were relaxed, and articles would degrade as every nutcase speculation was added. Johnuniq (talk) 01:06, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

I think Uncle Ed may have confused prominence, the standard in use, with popularity. It may be true that most people believe that the Sun orbits the Earth, but those who believe it do not publish papers or write books about that belief. We judge prominence based on reliable secondary or tertiary sources, not polling data.   Will Beback  talk  17:51, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

(unindent) Having always had great respect for Will Beback, I'd like to call his attention to the following addition I made:

However, if there are a significant number of people who disagree with the scholarly mainstream, an article on the minority view, its proponents, and their relationship with the mainstream, as in:

• Flat Earth
• Moon landing conspiracy theories
• Holocaust denial

You see, it may not always be easy for Wikipedia contributors to determine the prominence of a view. But the view may be of enough interest to our readers to merit inclusion, even if (like Flat Earth) it has hardly a couple of hundred adherents worldwide.

These article are careful not to give these fringe (or minority) views undue weight, since they cite numerous sources to determine how widely held the views are; and these articles clearly state that these ideas are far beyond the mainstream (mere trickles, in some cases, stagnant pools in others). --Uncle Ed (talk) 17:02, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Regrettably, not an improvement, so I've undone it. Your opening sentence says "however, if...." but then doesn't say what if. The answer is already fully covered in Weight itself: "In articles specifically about a minority viewpoint, such views may receive more attention and space. However, these pages should still make appropriate reference to the majority viewpoint wherever relevant and must not represent content strictly from the perspective of the minority view." And so forth. Further, it was added to the GEVAL section which seems to have been somewhat eroded by previous modifications. My preference would be to return this to an earlier and clearer version, confirming that articles should not show small minority or fringe views as though they have "equal validity" with clear majority views. . . dave souza, talk 17:34, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I understand. --Uncle Ed (talk) 17:51, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

NPOV and WikiProjects

What do you think: Does the full text of a WikiProject page need to be written from a neutral point of view? Or it just doesn't represent encyclopedia content? Is the answer to this question obvious? --Föld-lét (talk) 20:48, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

I've recently seen a new WikiProject where this issue arose. It seems to me that the key issue is that article space is what needs to be NPOV, but if the page for a project is POV, then there is a valid concern that the project may be pushing POV content on pages. As such, it makes sense to change the project page to comply with NPOV, as being desirable, while making sure that articles within the project's scope are NPOV is necessary. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:13, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Could you give us an example of a problematic (ie non-neutral) WikiProject page?

There is a general consensus that non-article pages are not required to follow our article content policies, so my initial take would be that WikiProject pages are not required to be neutral. It's the articles that fall under the WikiProject that need to be neutral. Blueboar (talk) 12:21, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

What I was thinking of was the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Conservatism/About us. The wording that led to the POV concerns discussed there has since been corrected. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:34, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Neutral or Secular

Are the articles supposed to Neutral POV or Secular POV? 75.210.240.242 (talk) 20:04, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Neutral. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:07, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree... with the caveat that "Neutral POV" includes not giving undue weight to minority opinions. Blueboar (talk) 20:53, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually they are supposed to be balanced POV - any single "point of view" is pretty much going to be non-neutral. Collect (talk) 21:32, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

No, they are not supposed to be "balanced POV" - or at least that is a phrase that is very easily misinterpreted. The neutral point of view is achieved by describing all significant points of view with their proper weight, not by balancing opposing points of view as if they had equal validity. See Flat Earth Society. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:38, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Just as a reference, I think this question comes from a side conversation I had at Wikipedia:Wikiquette_alerts#Would_this_be_a_violation_of_AGF.3F. --Ludwigs2 21:39, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

So, secular is a POV. If the articles are supposed to have a balanced POV then why is the article called Neutral POV? And, whose POV determines what is the proper weight other POVs are given? 75.210.3.55 (talk) 00:23, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

NPOV is a convenient misnomer. it's not an actual point of view, but rather an effort to give all relevant points of view a decent representation with respect to how much weight they carry in real world contexts. The point is to avoid imposing a POV on a topic to the extent that's possible. --Ludwigs2 01:34, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

The IP has a common misunderstanding: Actually, it's neutrality relative to the reliable sources, which are primairily secular and scientific/scholarly/expert. So, because of the scholarly bias, we have a secular bias. See the non-policy essay WP:MAINSTREAM. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 03:28, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

So.. The only reliable sources are secular sources. And, Balanced/Neutral POV is weighted only between secular sources. And since secular is a POV (per above) then WP inherently expounds a biased POV. And therefore, the page WP:NPOV is a facade. Thanks for clearing that up. 69.99.188.7 (talk) 06:22, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

It sounds to me like we may be giving the question a more detailed analysis than was being asked for. I have a feeling that the real purpose was simply to be able to say: see, Wikipedia with their supposed NPOV are just biased against religion, and to feel reassured that one's stereotype has been reinforced. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:31, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

The question is incorrectly stated. Only a secular viewpoint meets NOR, NPOV and V criteria simultaneously: religious texts do not contain answers on most questions, so most writings which are based on religious viewpoint should inevitably contain synthesis of religious sources, so they do not meet NOR criteria; religious viewpoint consider itself as the only true viewpoint, and it rejects secular views and the views of other religions, so it does not meet NPOV criteria; and, finally religious texts are not reliable sources for everything by the dogmas of their own religion (but not for the religion itself: thus, the history of Christianity began as a Jewish sect in the eastern Mediterranean in the mid-1st century, not as a result of crucifixion of Christ, as Gospels say), so the religious POV do not meet verifiability criteria. Therefore, all articles are supposed to be neutral, and that is the only guaranty of the article's neutrality.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:50, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I think it was incorrectly stated for the purposes of a serious examination, but it was correctly stated for the purpose for which it was asked. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:54, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

A secular POV cannot also be a NPOV. That is a logical impossibility because it is by definition a POV, i.e. secular. A neutral or balanced POV article must include other POVs or it cannot be a balanced POV. Topics which have no relationship to religious POVs need not include religious POVs. A religious text need not contain answers for most or all questions, only answers for that with which it is concerned. Topics which are about or impact religious things must include religious POVs balanced with secular POVs. But, only secular sources are reliable sources, so it is impossible for there to be balanced POV. The result is a biased gloss. What could be a more serious accusation? Is WP a serious encyclopedia, or is it just a facade and proselytizer for a single belief system? 69.99.163.209 (talk) 01:29, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Obviously, it can, because the secular views is the only way to present the events objectively. For example, the secular viewpoint of the origin of the Universe is: "According to the present-days scientific views, the Universe emerged as a result of Big Bang more than 14 billion years ago. Different religions provide alternative explanations of the origin of the Universe, including it creation by God, who simultaneously created the time and the space (in Christianity), etc." In other words, the secular viewpoint includes the religious viewpoint, although only as an example of religious beliefs, whereas most religious views directly contradict to the secular views (and to each other) and directly reject them.--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:08, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Hold on a second folks... a lot depends on the specific article topic we are talking about. For example, we would not favor a "scientific" viewpoint over theological viewpoints in articles about the nature of God. Blueboar (talk) 02:57, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

However, the example of the opposite is hard to provide. The only exceptions are, probably, the articles devoted to purely theological subjects, although the secular viewpoint is present even there.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:39, 30 April 2011 (UTC)