Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view/Archive 62

Due vs Undue Weight: Clarifying Question

I have two questions regarding this I wish to clear up:

1) What if we are in a situation where say, a small group of people exists, such as several tribes, and the views about them are by their nature more common then their views about themselves. Would be giving weight to their descriptions and first hand accounts of themselves be giving them undue weight?

2) If in an article scholarly consensus and political consensus are in dispute. To where does the weight go or should both be given weight? AevumNova (talk) 22:21, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Those are very interesting questions... Two clarifying questions if I may (ironic I know)... First, when you say "their views about themselves" do you mean as expressed by their own academics and media outlets or do you mean more generally. Second, by political consensus do you mean the mainstream media consensus or something else entirely? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 23:03, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

I meant by their own academics and by mainstream media consesnsus. AevumNova (talk) 23:04, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

The answer then in both cases is that both should be given weight, how much weight relative to other views is going to be different in each context. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 23:10, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Let me adapt an example from an old sci-fi book:

• The isolated inhabitants of ______ say that they originated independently in their home territory, and the recently discovered existence of other humans is proof of Convergent evolution on a grand scale.
• The scholars from another place say that all the humans originated in one place and spread to many places; some of the resulting populations became isolated and forgot, over generations, that their ancestors had traveled there.

Our usual approach is to provide information on both. We tend to give primacy to the scholarly story (when/if one story can be called "scholarly" and the other story can be called "folk"), but we tell both of them, preferably in a way that is recognizable as true and non-insulting to the people who hold each story. For example, we might write that "The _____ people traditionally believed themselves to be the only humans in the world, and that they originated de novo in the ____ islands in the prehistoric period. After chancing upon a neighboring group during the test of a powerful new sailboat design, the _____ government assembled its scholars in a conference, and they concluded that other humans were unrelated to them, and that other humans likely similarly originated de novo in their respective places. Outside scholars, however, say that genetic studies indicate that the ____ people are descended from the ancient seafaring race of Ur-islanders and speculate about the area being settled by survivors of a shipwreck."

What we wouldn't do is write something like "The ____ people hold primitive beliefs" or "They are wrong".

Does that help at all? WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:44, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

It mostly does! Part of the assumption of the allegory I'd like to change for clarification. .

It mostly does! Part of the assumption of the allegory I'd like to change for clarification.

Say the group from the other place colonized the other group. And the other group has it's own scholars that disagreed with the more numerous scholars of the other place.

How would that impact how the article would be written, if any? AevumNova (talk) 07:48, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

We try not to base disagreements between scholars on the population of the place. Imagine, e.g., someone saying that there are 20x people in China and India vs France, and therefore, if the subject is studied in all three of these countries, the French scholars only get 2.5% of the space in the article. That would be obviously silly, right?

Instead, you'd want to present all the sides as being their sides, with a fair description for each. That might take the form of "Chinese scholars say... French scholars say... Indian scholars say..." in an article. (I'm assuming the various sides align with nationality here, but you could equally write other names: "Freudians say... Post-modernists say... Feminists say... Epidemiologists say... Drug manufacturers say...".)

Sometimes scholars mostly agree, and you can come up with "an answer", even if there is a minority POV (e.g., SARS-CoV-2 probably didn't come from a lab leak, even though some scientists think a lab leak is a plausible explanation). In other cases, the article probably shouldn't suggest any particular conclusions (Which Indigenous nations have the single best claim to each part of the Great Plains? Is individual wealth the correct measurement for social equality?).

This may not be relevant, but another thing that might be worth knowing is that, in a few instances, certain groups of scholars have verifiably poor reputations or obvious conflicts of interest. For example, we generally avoid publications by Chinese researchers about Traditional Chinese medicine, because the publications (at least, the ones that make it into the journals) invariably prove that TCM works for anything and everything. Scholarly publications from the USSR had similar problems in some areas. I assume editors these days are shunning, or at least being cautious with, both Russian claims about Ukraine and Ukrainian claims about Russia. If you needed to write about two warring countries, you might prefer sources from any country except those two. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:19, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Understandable!

Understandable and very helpful!

While 3rd party sources would be highly useful for American Indian articles in particular, unfortunately the vast majority of research is done by the colonizers and colonized in this instance. But the other points are extremely helpful! AevumNova (talk) 16:22, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Revert claiming undue

Not sure if I should create a new thread or not, but since it's the same general topic (but not issue)... can someone possibly opine on this? (Revert claims it's undue, but how when it's context and a reliable source...) 92.21.87.105 (talk) 23:14, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

"Controversial subjects" revamp

I think we could resolve some of the problems mentioned in the previous section by zooming out, taking a broader view of the topic, and then revamping the whole section. Mashing several topics under one heading often creates problems, so let's stop doing it.

Here's the current situation:

Controversial subjects (Shortcut: WP:SNPOV)

1. Fringe theories and pseudoscience (Shortcuts: WP:PSCI WP:PSEUDOSCIENCE WP:FRINGESUBJECTS)
2. Religion (Shortcut: WP:RNPOV)

Considerations:

1. Why the shortcut "SNPOV"? Why not CSNPOV? What's the "S" stand for?
2. Are there really only three controversial topics? Of course not. AP2 proves we should include "Politics" here.
3. A typical rule of thumb in many societies (to avoid unpleasant arguments in groups) is to not discuss controversial topics like politics, religion, money (economics), and sexuality.
4. Therefore, why aren't we covering all of them in our "Controversial topics" section? We should include the others.
5. To avoid disputes, we should keep each item in its own section and not blend them, as is currently done in the "Fringe theories and pseudoscience" section.

Accordingly, we should revise and develop the "Controversial subjects" section so it looks something like this (in alphabetical order):

Controversial subjects (Shortcuts: WP:CSNPOV / WP:SNPOV)

1. Fringe theories (Shortcuts: WP:FNPOV / WP:FRNPOV / WP:FRINGESUBJECTS)
2. Economics/Money (Shortcuts: WP:ENPOV / WP:ECONNPOV / WP:MNPOV / WP:MONPOV
3. Fact vs Opinion (Shortcuts: WP:FONPOV)
4. History (Shortcuts: WP:HPOV / WP:HIPOV)
5. Legal disputes (Shortcuts: WP:LNPOV )
6. Politics (Shortcuts: WP:POLNPOV
7. Pseudoscience (Shortcuts: WP:PSNPOV / WP:PSCI / WP:PSEUDOSCIENCE
8. Religion (Shortcuts: WP:RNPOV / WP:RELNPOV
9. Sexuality (Shortcuts: WP:SNPOV / WP:SEXNPOV

More thoughts:

1. Obviously, each Wikipedia would have to work out their own versions of this, as "controversiality" varies greatly from culture to culture.
2. Each section should include a prose sentence linking perennial examples of the most controversial articles.
3. Because the amount of controversy varies so greatly, the size of sections can vary a lot, and that's okay.
4. We could choose to order the sections alphabetically or according to controversiality (right there we risk a nasty debate). Therefore, I favor alphabetical to avoid that debate.

What think ye? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:33, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

The basic idea is simple : a point of view should have the same importance in the article as it has in the sources and unless it is considered a fact it should be attributed. It is the same principle that applies in all these cases, fringe theories, etc. The question is what sources should be used and how these sources can be used to determine the importance of a point of view and when it can be reasonably accepted as a fact (that do not need attribution). Trying to answer that question in advance at a general level for special cases, would require that we consult the relevant community at large in each case and it would only be valid temporarily and could always be contested, because these things change. My point is that we need to accept that there is a need to trust the collective intelligence in the application of the basic principle in each case. Dominic Mayers (talk) 19:57, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Dominic, that makes sense, but I think you dropped your comment in the wrong section. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:59, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

It applies to both sections, but I would not go as far as removing the sections for the special cases (pseudoscience, fringe theories, religions) that are already considered, because they seem to match what the community at large currently accept. It still applies to these cases, because would the community starts to thing differently about science or religion, they would become obsolete and we would have to go back to the basic principle. However, doing the same for politics, etc. seems a big task and it is not worth it. Dominic Mayers (talk) 20:09, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

??? I have not proposed removing any sections. On the contrary. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 20:33, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

I know. I argued that creating a section for each case is a lot of work and not worth it, but added that I would not go as far as removing the existing sections. Here is a way to see what I mean, but I am not sure it will help. I try anyway. If NPOV existed at the time of the Roman empire, it would have been understood . In fact, at that time, Tacites stated

    Nos consensum auctorum secuturi, quae diversa prodiderint, sub nominibus ipsorum trademus.

    (We will follow the consensus opinion of the authors, and where those opinions differ, we will report them under each individual's name.)

        — Tacite. Annales XIII, 20.

which is very close to the principle of attribution of NPOV. The core of NPOV makes sense irrespective of any value attributed to science, religions, etc. It would also have been accepted as reasonable in the middle ages. In contrast, if the section on religion existed in the middle ages, its authors would have been sentenced to be burned alive. My point is that NPOV should stick to the core that makes sense and is acceptable irrespective of any belief or science. We can make an exception for science as a whole and religions, but creating special sections for politics, etc. is going too far. Dominic Mayers (talk) 21:35, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

"Perhaps the easiest way to make your writing more encyclopedic, is to write about what people believe, rather than what is so. If this strikes you as somehow subjectivist or collectivist or imperialist, then ask me about it, because I think that you are just mistaken. What people believe is a matter of objective fact, and we can present that quite easily from the neutral point of view." -- Jimbo Wales

When it comes to NPOV, there are general principles that apply to all topics. Those principles can be stated, as they apply to controversial topics, at the beginning of the section. Then in each subsection, we can provide more topic-specific information, especially to earlier discussions and decisions, such as ArbCom, WP:NPOV/N, etc.

I am not proposing this format be instituted immediately. We can take each one, stick our heads together here on the talk page, and each contribute whatever ideas and resources we can find. That way we gradually build the format so it's more logical. We know there are more than just three controversial topics. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 21:46, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

The content of each section could vary quite a bit. Some sections may only contain links to pertinent ArbCom decisions and other discussions. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 20:40, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

I like this general idea, but what would actually be in the new sections? The section on pseudoscience/fringe and the section on religion give relevant advice as to what needs to happen to maintain NPOV in those topics. I can see that reasonably easily in politics, for example, but it's a harder thing to quantify in sexuality or economics or law.

Also, if we split out fringe and pseudoscience, pseudoscience should be a subcategory of fringe rather than a whole separate section. Pseudoscience is a kind of fringe topic, not a wholly separate thing. Loki (talk) 20:41, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

I fully agree that pseudoscience is a subcategory of fringe, and not the other way around. The discussion above seemed to blend the issues and some comments got it the other way around. Treating them separately resolves any problems. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 20:48, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Yeah I agree with that. Loki (talk) 20:55, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

As an addendum, let me suggest some general outlines for some of these:

• Law: If at all possible, cite reliable secondary sources rather than the primary legal documents composed by the parties. If relying such documents is necessary, do not use primary legal documents from only one side and not the other.
• Politics: Similar to law, try to cite reliable and neutral secondary sources. WP:BIASED sources can still be useful for facts but are often less useful for analysis of those facts. Avoid citing campaign materials or other political primary sources directly.
• Sexuality: Some sexuality topics also border medicine, and in those cases WP:MEDRS applies. BLP concerns are often especially relevant here: don't cite the sexuality or gender identity of a living person to anything but the most reliable of sources. Be aware of the overall consensus of the sources and don't rely on any single source: especially in this area, some sources that might appear reliable to an outside observer are actually strongly against the consensus of experts like WPATH or the APA.

Loki (talk) 20:55, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

• The original problem being addressed was not the policy itself, but that users didn't read it (and were misled by shortcut names). This kind of major rewrite is really trying to boil the ocean, and plays all 12 tones of the drama scale. I'm out of here! Bon courage (talk) 20:46, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Note that we are keeping the content of the existing sections. My proposal just adds more sections that we can slowly develop, one at a time. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 21:50, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

I understood this and I believe that others understood it as well. I (and I believe some others as well) think that adding other sections is going too far. I don't believe that it would really help. There are two cases. The first case is that the content of a special section is the consensus. In that case, the special section does not do much, because it is already the consensus. The second case is that it is not the consensus. In that case, we must go back to the basic and general principle and the special section should be ignored. What is useful are examples of non controversial decisions that illustrate the basic principle, but only a few simple examples are sufficient. After that, we need to trust the collective intelligence. Dominic Mayers (talk) 22:05, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I see what you mean. I may tend to be too "all-inclusive" "cover all bases", a "box for everything". Feel free to ignore. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 22:34, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

I will reply in the next section in which you try to implement whatever idea you have. Dominic Mayers (talk) 23:46, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

• I like the approach of more specific subsectioning. In particular, the separation of Fringe from Pseudoscience, where Fringe could be focused on mentioning things in discussion avoiding UNDUE weight, and Pseudoscience could be focused on being clear to include the scientific rejection. That would allow for handling things like actual scientific debates or things like claims that Pope John Paul I was murdered, or that the Apollo Moon landings were faked on a simple Fringe WP:WEIGHT basis. Though I think making a specific Pseudoscience section has a hurdle of folks just seem to like throwing a vague pejorative even if the topic is not science or the word "pseudoscience" is not WP:V supported, and anything that says when an article should/should not use the phrase or category may run afoul of that liking. (I'm currently in a TALK about that at Nazi eugenics - me saying that nothing in the article mentions pseudoscience and really should be clear that The Holocaust was odious social programs and corrupt politics, not lead off as if it's about science.) Cheers Markbassett (talk) 14:32, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

  There's really no need for anybody to invoke pseudoscience to bring NPOV's requirements for mainstream context into play, as that requirement is for all WP:FRINGESUBJECTS not just the pseudoscience subset. I have no intention of editing the article, but there is an awful lot of pseudoscience in Nazi ideology (see for example.[1]), so I would expect WP's article to mention that. Bon courage (talk) 15:04, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

  User:Bon courage Actually that book seems to support going the other way. That scholarly collection seems to not use that term at all nor have such content, as I believe most do not. (Maybe because eugenics was scientifically accepted in the 20's by anthropologists, geneticists, and biologists -- and there is just a lot to say in other areas about the history and politics, about exploiting the meme of blood purity for power and justification rather than anything of science.) When one looks at the Amazon 'Look inside' of the book, the index has no listing for 'pseudoscience' -- and table of contents shows the parts are more about racist ideology and ethnic nationalism. It's apparently not about faking of science, certainly not to being a large amount of the content, and I think partly as serious works typically just do not use vague pejoratives. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 18:04, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

  The Holocaust was the result of racial pseudoscience. The whole racial delineation of society which was the basis of the odious social programs and corrupt politics was pseudoscientific. You got that one 100% wrong. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:48, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

  User:Horse Eye's Back Please show the WP:V where you got that it was "the result of pseudoscience", preferably show that such WP:V is common among scholars and/or major enough factor to deserve WP:WEIGHT of mention. Basically, I think the general view is only the later part you said "odious social programs and corrupt politics". I do not think scholars view the choices made as fundamentally motivated by science, nor that the historians view eugenics as being at all fringe in the 20s or that the Holocaust is mostly about faking scientific studies. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 18:22, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

  Nobody said that it was fundamentally motivated by science, Nazi racial theories ("The Nazi Party adopted and developed several pseudoscientific racial classifications as part of its ideology (Nazism) in order to justify the genocide of groups of people which it deemed racially inferior.") were clearly and plainly pseudoscientific. If you need sources you can find them there. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:58, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

• What is the history of separating Fringe and Pseudoscience out from Religion? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:49, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

  Well... It looks like they weren't "separated", so much as they were considered completely separate issues with completely separate sets of problems, and were never treated as being the same subjects, or even related. Pseudoscience (=a major problem at the time; the main reason WP:NOR was created) appears in the earliest versions that have any content beyond a copy of an e-mail message sent by Jimmy Wales (example from 2001), but religion wasn't even mentioned in the policy until the middle of 2004.

  I sometimes feel like the current disputes around religious subjects have a whiff of disbelief from some of our nonreligious filter-bubbled Wikipedians that 85% of the world could actually subscribe to any religion and more than 60% say that it is important to them, even though that's what the reliable sources say. There's a bit of "but believing in a sky fairy is so obviously fringe (from my own POV)..." behind some of the comments that of course it seems like these would be one and the same subject. But back then, the concerns were less about staking out the English Wikipedia's incredulity about about creeds, and more about wanting to treat religion as a historical subject – the key question not being "Does this alleged immaterial being matter?" but instead being "What shall we write in the article when the official organizational story differs from the historian's story? Do we say 'It is an ancient religion whose key texts were discovered by the revered founder' or do we say 'As far as historians can tell, Fred Founder made the whole thing up while on holiday in 1884'? Is the first thing in the Bible/Torah a narrative, a myth, or a story? And what shall we do about people who keep adding the first bit of Genesis to articles about science and evolution?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:51, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

• Part of the problem is that controversial topics can overlap. As an example… say we wish to cover a politician’s stance on subsidies for green technology. He makes a speech in which he states that he thinks climate change is overstated. Would covering this speech fall under the NPOV rules for “politics” or those for “pseudoscience”? It’s really both… so what if those rules disagree? Blueboar (talk) 18:32, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

  Do they though? A statement about the degree of climate change is in the realm of science, so scientific sources apply. One WP:PROFRINGE gambit often tried is to take such material into the realms of politics (claiming, for example, that statements about vaccine efficacy are 'political'). This is easily resisted since source-wise, the strongest sourcing (scholarly, peer-reviewed, secondary, etc.) will be science-oriented in such cases and so squish the political stuff in WSJ (or whatever). Bon courage (talk) 18:44, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

  And the next editor will come along and say, with equal justice, that a statement about a politician's beliefs is in the realm of politics, so BLP sources apply.

  This is a perennial problem. If Paul Politician rejects the mainstream scientific POV, then we should neither present him as agreeing with the scientific POV, or as the current scientific POV being wrong (assuming it's a stable, widely agreed upon POV, and not, e.g., a temporary or uncertain POV, like global cooling in 1965 or mask efficacy in April 2020). I don't think that prescribing a simplistic "my subject trumps your subject" rule is the solution. I think we need to tell editors to use their brains to find a way to describe the situation that is not wrong in any of the particulars (e.g., does not assign a pro-science POV to a politician who made an anti-science statement) and also does not produce a false impression overall. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:02, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Question about Due Weight

Idk if this has been talked about before, but I find it a bit confusing how in the section on Due Weight it says this:

If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small minority, it does not belong on Wikipedia, regardless of whether it is true, or you can prove it, except perhaps in some ancillary article.

Isn't the point of Wikipedia to record information as accurately as possible? I under why it says that views of minorities shouldn't be treated the same as consensus since conspiracy theorists and various other groups exist. However, why say regardless of wether it is true, isn't that just biased in favour of the majority which isn't necessarily always true? I just genuinely can't think of a reason why having that as an example would be a good idea. EldritchEmpress (talk) 23:09, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

The quote comes from here, where it says: "... except perhaps in some ancilliary article. Wikipedia is not the place for original research." So, WP:OR explains the part about "regardless of whether ... you can prove it". For the rest, I recommend looking at WP:FRINGE. fgnievinski (talk) 05:20, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

mhm I see, I still think that it's a little confusing on its own and might lead to some misaplication. Could it be maybe changed to: "Regardless of wether a point is true, if original research is your only source, it does not belong on Wikipedia."? I feel like that's a little bit more direct. EldritchEmpress (talk) 05:35, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

your proposal leaves out the part about fringe theories. fgnievinski (talk) 00:52, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Then how about: "Regardless of wether a point can be proven, if it isn't credible, it does not belong on Wikipedia."? Since the problem with fringe theories isn't that they're not widely accepted. It's the fact that most of the time they're unproven or lacking good evidence for the claims they make, hence they can't be given the same credence as mainstream ones. EldritchEmpress (talk) 10:04, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Can you give an example of information that is current excluded under WP:DUE but you believe should be included? BilledMammal (talk) 13:04, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't necessarily have one, I'm mostly here because someone cited Due Weight as a reason for why a definition shouldn't be changed. To me it came off as misinterpreting the meaning of what Due Weight is since while the definition I was proposing may not be widely held by most people it is a more accurate one. Hence I say the wording could be confusing for some people.

The definition in question is for the word Lesbian and you can see the current talkpage about it here.

To most people Asexuality is mutually exclusive with being gay, lesbian and bi even though if that logic was followed to its logical conclusion asexuals can't be straight either. It is a commonly held misconception, because of that I think the emphasis should be made on the accuracy of information and not the fact that it's widely held. EldritchEmpress (talk) 14:08, 11 August 2023 (UTC)