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Category:Criticism of organizations

Based on Category:Criticism of organizations, some very large organizations tend to attract significant criticism, to the point that a WP:SUBPOV fork (with a summary in the main article) becomes inevitable. Would it be possible for WP:NPOV to include additional guidance on this limiting case for acceptable "Criticism of X" articles, please? fgnievinski (talk) 04:49, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

@Fgnievinski, what additional detail would have practical value for you? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:33, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: WP:SPINOFF and WP:CORG could get a nod in WP:NPOVVIEW, as in:
Certain organizations may be involved in significant controversy and criticism, to the point of interfering with the article readability and navigation; in those cases, a spinoff sub-article may be justified.
It'd seem necessary considering WP:NPOV warns so much against "Criticism of..." articles, that it may be surprising so many instances in Category:Criticism of organizations are even admissible. fgnievinski (talk) 06:05, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
SPINOFF is already linked. How often do you encounter disputes about this? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:25, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
Not a lot, but my expectation is if someone ever proposed to spin off a "Criticism of.." subarticle, they'd be slammed with NPOV. fgnievinski (talk) 01:08, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
Well, they might, and having glanced at Criticism of Christianity (guessing it would be one of the better developed subjects) to see how these work, I'm thinking that they might have a point. That one leads with a long section on Criticism of the Bible, which seems to have a lot more in common with Literary criticism than with Wikipedia:Criticism. The Timeline of Shakespeare criticism contains no similar subjects (e.g., the discrepancies between quarto and folio, or the difficulties of translation), and I'm not sure that "Sometimes people translate badly" is a valid criticism of a religion anyway.
But if this doesn't come up often, and if it usually shouldn't happen, then maybe saying that it would (rarely?) be acceptable would be a little pointless and a bit WP:CREEPY. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:39, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
I've always felt that these are WP:POVFORKs. A neutral spinoff would be "Reception of organizations". Some of the worst offenders might have been cleaned up, but there are a probably still a few problem articles. Shooterwalker (talk) 23:27, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
That was my impression too, until I got to know Category:Criticism of organizations. The question now is: should WP:NPOV reflect the practice in that category or should that category be blown up? fgnievinski (talk) 23:45, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
A lot of the category seems to be about something other than organizations. Discrimination in dance, for example, is in the category, and I don't think that "a global industry" is exactly "an organization". WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:40, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
I'm afraid that's an outlier, based on all the other pages in that category. Or take Category:Criticisms of companies: even excluding all the redirects, there are dozens of articles titled "Criticism of X", despite all the admonition in NPOV. fgnievinski (talk) 23:11, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
Sure, but there are others. Consider Category:Criticism of law enforcement, which includes (only):
There isn't a single organization in that category, and there are only a few in the lone subcat. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:11, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
Proportionally there's plenty of genuine cases in Category:Criticisms of companies, especially towards very large companies, to warrant mentioning this special case in NPOV, I'd say. fgnievinski (talk) 03:41, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
I share the concern, although I feel it's slightly broader. I've seen, in addition to criticism articles, entire sections, which could equally be positive (company history) or negative (criticism), written solely from shallow coverage of facts (which would often be "a company announced" or "company critics announced") in the news sources. Such sections/articles often don't use a single source discussing the matter (criticism or history) holistically. As a result, the balance is determined based on how much verifiable criticism or praise can be found instead of relying on secondary sources.
There's already WP:ASPECT and WP:PRIMARY, that'd in theory solve this. In practice, some consider any mainstream news source to be WP:SECONDARY for any fact mentioned (not sure if there's a guideline or wording in policy that leads people to assume this?), which leads to large sections being written from these sources, which then become spin-offs instead of being trimmed once they're too big to be kept in the main article. PaulT2022 (talk) 12:49, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
You can point people at WP:PRIMARYNEWS, but the fundamental problem is that humans are involved, and they will, consciously or not, bend the rules or expand the categories until they get the outcome they want. You see this clearly in software-related behavior ("Oh, uploading an image requires me to promise that I'll give my firstborn to Rumpelstiltskin? Okay, sure, as long as this stupid software will upload my image, then I'll click that button"), but it appears everywhere. This particularly comes up with notability. The categories of primary and secondary are somewhat overlapping, and sources can be WP:PRIMARYINPART. A keep-voting editor, having been told that secondary sources are required if a subject is challenged at AFD, will declare that the sources are definitely secondary; a delete-voting editor, having been told the same thing, will declare that the sources are definitely primary.
Most of them are working backwards from the desired end result: Having editing thousands of articles, I know this one is/isn't the kind of thing that Wikipedia usually contains, and therefore I will say and do whatever is necessary to get the Correct™ Result.
Additionally, historically, the WP:PSTS section of WP:NOR (which fundamentally has nothing to do with NOR) said that secondary sources were secondhand. Wikipedia:Secondary does not mean secondhand, but some of the older editors will remember this lie-to-children statement, and they will unwittingly teach the error to the newer editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:02, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for these insights and the link to the PRIMARYNEWS - very useful! PaulT2022 (talk) 16:04, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
Seems like more a quibble with the page names than the category, even if the page is called "Evaluation of X" or "Responses to X" its still going to be in that category. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:03, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
It feels like a small thing to me, but it's possible that a different name would encourage better results. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:24, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
I completely agree with you about the names, I also think it would encourage better results. Some of these like Criticism of the National Health Service (England) really do feel like POV forks. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:31, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
Evaluation of? Views about? Perception of?
I understand that the NHS is struggling (now/this decade), but an article that traced what people thought of it over time would be a more valuable contribution than just "Last week, everything was bad". WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:52, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
I generally prefer "reception of" Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:34, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
  • We have a long-term, deep problem of "vilification" throughout the work, in that editors, typically sharing the same view as popular mainstream media, will look to write about any negative aspect about that topic because, in their eyes, they can justify making the topic look bad because there is sourcing to support it. This is human nature, and all editors have the potential to do that. (Same with topics where there is a lot of praise given to a topic, but this is typically far less a problem). Criticism articles should be based on secondary sources identifying the criticism (such as in Criticism of Christianity or Criticism of capitalism). When we break these off for companies without this type of secondary sourcing, it amounts to original research. Often editors for these mix in actual lawsuits, and that could itself be a fair spinoff (eg Litigation involving Apple Inc.), but otherwise actual criticism that is repeated in multiple sources should be likely contained in the article about the company before spinning it off. --Masem (t) 21:07, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
    If you have a reliable source, it doesn't amount to original research. The definition of original research is "material...for which no reliable, published source exists". It is illogical to say that "there is sourcing to support it...it amounts to [material...for which no reliable, published source exists]".
    You can try a phrase like "violating Wikipedia's basic principles" when someone adds content with a reliable source, but don't call sourced information original research. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:45, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Achieving neutrality tweak

@Thinker78: I think the "only" should stay ([1]) - it encourages editors to err on the side of caution when removing the work of editors (on the basis of WP:NPOV), and to do so only with good reason. The sentence builds on the advice in the rest of the paragraph which encourages editors to rewrite or balance material instead of removing it. Without the "only" by contrast, the sentence reads more like an invitation to remove material, and the former phrase "only when you have a good reason", which is extremely cautionary, loses that sense. Everyone normally thinks they have a good reason, but caution is definitely required when using that to justify the removal of content. Re: your prior summary ([2]), BLP guidance is its own creature and the bar for removal is lower for reasons we all know. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:49, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

@Iskandar323 The former phrase is not merely "only when you have a good reason", which would actually be a good phrasing that would have nothing to do with my concern. The actual former phrase is, "Remove material only when you have a good reason to believe it misinforms or misleads readers in ways that cannot be addressed by rewriting the passage."
It is much more specific in a way that negates other guidelines and policies about removing information. For example, if there is unsourced information that I don't know whether it misinforms or not, then according to the phrase I should not remove it, because I don't believe it misinforms or misleads. Problem is I cannot know if it misinforms or misleads, because it is unsourced.
That's why I think the word "only" in this case is not helpful and conflicts with other policies and guidelines. "Only" is not merely an invitation, it is an absolute that you should only do something and not something else. Therefore, it seems to instruct in only following this guidance, when actually other guidance may have more latitude in removing information. Which is why I removed it. Thinker78 (talk) 21:35, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
@Thinker78: I would agree that it might negate other guidelines if it referred to unsourced information, but the paragraph begins by explicitly stating: "Generally, do not remove sourced information... - making it clear in my mind that it is sourced content this is under discussion (as an underlying assumption). If you think that is not clear then that seems like an even bigger problem with the statements and I would suggest adding sourced or even reliably sourced in, so that it would read as: "Remove reliably sourced material only when... - that would presumably be more explicit. Surely the only reason to have a sentence at the end of the paragraph reiterating the caution of the first is that the intent is to strongly dissuade the use of the guideline as an improper excuse for deletion? Iskandar323 (talk) 09:01, 9 November 2022 (UTC)
@Iskandar323, text in Wikipedia guidance is not perfect. Sometimes only a part of a paragraph is changed and other things that made sense before are left hanging. In addition, in the relevant paragraph it is not clear whether the intent is only to talk about biased sources or if the "remove only" sentence can be applied to all information.
As you can see from my original edit, I interpreted the latter sentence to apply to all information. This is evidence that many other editors can also interpret the sentence as I did. Taking away the "only" makes it not be in conflict with other guidance elsewhere. Although for your concern, it would be better maybe to add "In this case," to the beginning of it.
We would have, "In this case, remove material only when you have a good reason to believe it misinforms [...]" This way it connects better to the beginning of the paragraph, is more specific, provides more clarity, doesn't conflict with other guidance that I know of, and reduces the chances of other interpretations. Thinker78 (talk) 00:16, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
"In this case" seems to be a good clarification. I think repeating what "this case" refers to (such as "Remove biased material only...". or "Remove reliably sourced material for achieving balance", or some other form like these) would make it even clearer. Unless the restriction to remove is supposed to apply more broadly than the first sentence implies by design.
On a related note, I wonder if moving Biased information can usually be balanced with material cited to other sources to produce a more neutral perspective, so such problems should be fixed when possible through the normal editing process. to the end of the paragraph or even a footnote, swapping it with the last sentence, would make it sound better, as this sentence explains why the guidance says what it says, rather than dictates the policy directly. PaulT2022 (talk) 22:52, 14 November 2022 (UTC)
@PaulT2022 oh oh. You threw a wrench into the issue. Lol. Thinker78 (talk) 23:36, 15 November 2022 (UTC)
 Implemented[3] @Iskandar323, @PaulT2022 Any questions or comments feel free to continue this discussion. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 00:12, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
I think this edit is very unclear, because "in this case" is separated from the case in question by two intervening sentences.
Honestly, I'd prefer the original state of the page. I think that version was clearer as to the intent, and it's this version that feels like it's referring to removing material as part of the normal editing process since that's what's immediately precedes "in this case". Loki (talk) 01:05, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
Proposal:

Generally, do not remove sourced information from the encyclopedia solely because it seems biased. In this case, remove material only when you have a good reason to believe it misinforms or misleads readers in ways that cannot be addressed by rewriting the passage. Biased information can usually be balanced with material cited to other sources to produce a more neutral perspective, so such problems should be fixed when possible through the normal editing process. The sections below offer specific guidance on common problems.

(Note: Check page history of this talk page to compare changes with current wording. Original formatting omitted just for clarity, but it is intended to be retained.) Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 01:47, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
I'd prefer replacing "In this case" with "Instead". And maybe add a "sourced" between "remove" and "material" if clarity is a concern. Loki (talk) 20:58, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
Concur with Loki. "Instead" would be better, or possibly being specific such as "remove such material for achieving neutrality only when you..." / "remove reliably sourced biased material for achieving neutrality only when you..." PaulT2022 (talk) 21:02, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

There are several problems with the proposed "tweak". First, policy should be descriptive not imperative so we must not be writing "instructions" for people. Secondly, the wording suggests there is only one circumstance in which material should be removed (misleading, etc.). But there are loads of reasons to remove content otherwise, not least: child protection, legal problems, copyrights, etc. (N.B. The existing text is also awful). Bon courage (talk) 06:43, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I think removing the paragraph as Bon courage did here was a good idea. It has so many problems. I agree with them that we should generally not be spelling out each step someone can and can't take in a content policy page. The page should focus on the content in the article, not editor behaviour in getting there. A complete rewrite preserving nothing of the previous content would entirely satisfy NPOV. WP:PRESERVE is part of Wikipedia:Editing policy and suffers perhaps from WP:UPPERCASE where people think "WP:PRESERVE" is all about taking baby steps and retaining material but in fact says "If you think an article needs to be rewritten or changed substantially, go ahead and do so".
The claim in the deleted text "Biased information can usually be balanced with material cited to other sources to produce a more neutral perspective" is simply not true and also feeds into the myth that balance is the way to solve NPOV. Whether it is in medicine, where we don't balance our "biased" Western evidence based medicine approach with Gwyneth's latest health fad, or in politics where a hate-group's article doesn't get balanced with nice things about them. To be honest, I think the word "balance" is so problematic, we should remove it from this policy page. Our section on "Balance" just spends half its time saying, "no we don't really want balance, because that's 'false balance'". Balance is simply an inappropriate metaphor.
If we do think there is good advice for editors in how to deal with existing biased material and work the article towards being unbiased, then it probably belongs in Wikipedia:Editing policy, but to be honest, many times editors complain about the article being biased, what they mean is it doesn't reflect their bias. -- Colin°Talk 08:34, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
I agree that policy are not like algorithms that can be applied without considering the context. If a policy would contain a phrase such as do X when Y, it means that Y, X or both require a context to be understood. Also, each of the core content policy must be applied in the light of other core content policies and common sense. Therefore, even the idea of a section of the policy that would clarify what exactly should be done is kind of wrong. The policy should be kept simple and to a minimum and illustrated with uncontroversial examples. The rest is determined in practice given the actual contexte in the light of the other core content policies and common sense. Dominic Mayers (talk) 09:02, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
+1 ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:24, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
I have reverted Bon courage’s edit, because I don’t think this works. The para deleted is more general than the para amended, which is only about views. Perhaps some other amendment might be appropriate. Sweet6970 (talk) 12:54, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
We could leave it like it is (crap). But just to note, this unheaded opening paragraph is meant to be a summary of the following headed paragraphs, but instead it's a bizarre oddly-specific riff on adding and removing content based on editors having a "reason". Seriously, every editor thinks they have a good reason when the remove content - and sometimes the worse an editor they are, the stronger that belief! Bon courage (talk) 14:12, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
I support your revert, they either don't seem to have realized what they'd done or they're attempting to put a personal POV over consensus. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:06, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
Hmm, that response calls the intelligence, competence and good faith of multiple editors into question. Without addressing the issue at all. Classic. Bon courage (talk) 16:29, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
Its not a plural they its a singular they. It also clearly addresses the issue of whether or not the revert is supported. We're getting there, but your proposed solution ain't it boo. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:43, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
I'm afraid I don't understand either Sweet6970's rational for reverting nor Horse Eye's Black, which seems to be be a personal attack rather than a comment on the actual policy text. The addition of "only" is contentious and should be removed again unless there is consensus for it. But the whole mindset of this paragraph is wrongheaded and misplaced. Can you explain, with examples perhaps, why "generally" NPOV is achieved by adding sourced material to achieve "balance". For example, we often see editors chuck negative things they found in the news into articles about subjects they dislike. WP:NOTNEWS is our policy way of discussing whether those things are unencyclopedic cruft or not. The text here seems to suggest we have to keep this hate-crap and just have to find love-crap to counter it.
Wikipedia:Editing policy already has a section discussing how and when to keep and improve text and how and when to remove it. Editors should take this paragraph over to that policy talk page and argue for something there. -- Colin°Talk 16:47, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
The version reverted to does not contain the word "only" it is "Generally, do not remove sourced information from the encyclopedia solely because it seems biased. Instead, try to rewrite the passage or section to achieve a more neutral tone. Biased information can usually be balanced with material cited to other sources to produce a more neutral perspective, so such problems should be fixed when possible through the normal editing process. Remove material when you have a good reason to believe it misinforms or misleads readers in ways that cannot be addressed by rewriting the passage. The sections below offer specific guidance on common problems." Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:52, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
I'm with Horse Eye's Back here. This paragraph has been around for a long time. It has consensus, and for good reason: content really should not be removed willy-nilly. We also shouldn't be removing whole paragraphs from a policy page without an extremely good reason. Loki (talk) 18:41, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
But, lemme try to answer your point in detail:
This paragraph, unlike how you and BC have apparently interpreted it, is not about removing any content for any reason. It is about removing sourced content to restore NPOV. It should indeed be rare that we have to do this, because what is NPOV is fundamentally based on what the sources say. The rare times I've seen it happen are because one reliable source is absolutely outnumbered by many others to such an extent that even mentioning their claim would be WP:UNDUE.
You seem to be talking about BLPs mainly, which are covered by WP:BLP, which has many reasons to remove sourced information that this paragraph doesn't apply to. Absent any of those reasons, if a reliable source says something about an article subject, we should include that information. That is NPOV by itself; if there is no counter information in reliable sources, we don't need to search for it, and in fact trying to do so is WP:FALSEBALANCE. Loki (talk) 19:02, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
I like @Bon courage's thinking of making wider changes to the less-than-perfect paragraph, but I don't think simply deleting it is the answer.
@Colin has a good point about balance. I witnessed the opposite happening with the same result: in the imaginary article about medicine, all mentions of Western medicine can be removed for achieving balance by editors who are dedicated enough, claiming that because 10 reliable sources reported "latest health fad", "unbalanced" mentions of a Western medical textbook should be removed. This doesn't happen with medical articles because of WP:MEDRS, and doesn't happen in articles with multiple editors, but I've witnessed it in niche articles with 2-6 active editors: something gets deleted "for achieving NPOV", followed by "no-consensus/ONUS" calls, resulting in the balance being determined by the editor(s) who drops the stick last.
I do believe that NPOV should not be phrased in a way that allows to use it in a manipulative way I described above. I don't think WP:PRESERVE alone deals with it as NPOV is generally seen as having higher priority. If there's a way to phrase NPOV to be less prescriptive about but still be clear that it cannot be abused by following its letter but not the spirit, I'd support it. PaulT2022 (talk) 21:07, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I'd also like to ditch the "do not remove sourced material solely because it seems biased" "Sourced" implies that being sourced gives it special status regarding retention. Everything in Wikipedia needs to be either sourced or source-able. Also we should not be categorically ruling out the possibility of removing material because it is biased. But I agree that a change in a core policy can't be done willy nilly. North8000 (talk) 19:18, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I read it from the other side, as green lighting the removal of unsourced material solely because it seems biased. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:33, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
Okay, since some editors believe there are "algorithmic orders" to be followed in "Achieving NPOV" let's at least give this hanging section that title. Personally, I think this is not ideal but let's see where consensus gets us ... Bon courage (talk) 20:08, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
Which editors would those be? I don't see anyone saying that, I can't find the quote. Is it in another section? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:12, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
The sooner we can crystallise what the problem is, the better everyone will be in a position to deal with it. Now: nobody thinks this paragraph in question (at the top of the "Achieving neutrality") is actually good, right? Let's clear this up first ... Bon courage (talk) 20:18, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
What editor is the quote from? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:19, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
what "quote"? Bon courage (talk) 20:21, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
"since some editors believe there are "algorithmic orders" to be followed..." Which editors and where is the quote from? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:23, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
The unnamed many implying " algorithms that can be applied " as referred-to upthread, of course. Bon courage (talk) 20:26, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
The editor that quote is from appears to actually say the exact opposite in context "I agree that policy are not like algorithms that can be applied without considering the context." Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:28, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, which was the reason to support removal of the para. Bon courage (talk) 03:33, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
Yes, so, back to the original question. There are clearly editors that believe that other editors believe there are algorithmic orders. But which editors actually believe, directly, that policy is algorithmic orders to be followed? Because so far the only people to say anything about algorithms are talking about their opponents, not themselves. Loki (talk) 03:51, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
Nobody's talking about "opponents". Colin's thought was "the page should focus on the content in the article, not editor behaviour in getting there." Dominic Mayers "agreed that policy are not like algorithms". This is an identified problem with the paragraph in question which contains instructions like "try to rewrite ...", "do not remove ... because ...", and "remove material when ...". If you boil it down, here's the pseudocode for what that para is saying:
Switch (content “seems biased”)
case (have good reason to think misleading) : remove it
case (default) : retain AND try to rewrite using other sources
That this is the topmost thing in a section called "achieving neutrality" is bizarre in the extreme, in my view. Bon courage (talk) 06:28, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
I understand that's how you're reading it, and why you object to it. But I don't, and I don't think that most readers would either. It's no more algorithmic than anything else on the page, all of which is instructions for how to edit Wikipedia properly, right? You could write "the pseudocode for" any policy page, but in the context of the rest of the policies and guidelines that's clearly not how things work.
Like, there are guidelines that are waaaaaay more algorithmic than this one. The WP:MOS comes to mind immediately, seeing as it literally is a list of very precise instructions that you are ordinarily supposed to follow exactly. But "it's too algorithmic" is not a criticism that it gets, and part of that is why not is that it exists in the context where one of the pillars of Wikipedia is WP:IAR, and the guideline template at the top of the page explicitly says there it should be treated with common sense and there may occasionally be exceptions. Loki (talk) 13:11, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
This is not a MOS or a guidelines, but (supposedly) a core and non-negotiable policy. Several experienced editors notice this paragraph's script-like nature, but you "don't think that most readers would". Got it. Bon courage (talk) 13:56, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
As far as I can tell only Colin has mentioned scripts, who are the other editors? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 14:54, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
scripts, algorithms - see above. Bon courage (talk) 14:57, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
So you said that they mentioned scripts but they actually mentioned algorithms? Why the misleading characterization of the arguments presented by other editors? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:13, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
scripts and algorithms are synonymous (also how-tos, instructions, etc.) in my book. Bon courage (talk) 15:16, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
Fascinating, might I suggest then that you pick one and stick to it? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:22, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
My comment regarding a policy not being an algorithm only meant that we must expect that the policy will need to be understood in view of the context. The context is fixed in the case of an algorithm: a mathematical structure, a computer language, etc., but it's not like that in the case of a policy. Trying to compensate for this fact by adding more text to the policy, often only makes it biased toward the contexts that we have in mind at the time of writing. Dominic Mayers (talk) 14:58, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
I think the paragraph in question is good. It's no worse than any other paragraph in this policy. I don't think it needs to be changed. Loki (talk) 20:31, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
I took you to be sarcastic but if thats a real question, yes I consider the paragraph in question to be good. Good =/= perfect, there's always room for consensus bases improvement but there's nothing egregiously wrong with it. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:35, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
You assumed bad faith. Right. Bon courage (talk) 20:36, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
Sarcasm, hyperbole, etc aren't bad faith they're legitimate rhetorical devices which are commonly used across wikipedia. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:37, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
You think it's legitimate to make sarcastic edits to core policy pages? This is an increasingly bizarre exchange. I can assure you: I am trying to clarify things straight & in good faith. It is clear, anyway, what text you you think is good from your repeated reversions. It's not good. Bon courage (talk) 20:43, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
This is a wikipedia talk page, you will find sarcasm, hyperbole, etc all the way to the top... ANI... Arbcon... Everywhere, its not a big deal and its not bad faith. You say it wasn't sarcastic, I believe you. Can we move on? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:53, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
HEB isn't saying that removing the paragraph is sarcastic, they're saying that your assertion that nobody thinks the paragraph was good sounded sarcastic (I'd say "hyperbolic"), because it was obviously false. Nobody's saying that you think the paragraph is good. Loki (talk) 20:57, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
"Sourced" implies that being sourced gives it special status regarding retention - doesn't it though? I assumed the "sourced" was to simply say that NPOV provisions for striving to keep while editing for balance don't apply to material that's being deleted for failing WP:BURDEN. PaulT2022 (talk) 20:45, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
It sure does give it special status relative to unsourced material, in that while unsourced material may be kept (but can also be removed based solely on any editor thinking it's sufficiently implausible), it's assumed that sourced material will be kept unless there's a good reason to remove it. Loki (talk) 20:54, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
  • Okay, this needs to close now. What we have is obviously shit, but some editors love it (for whatever reasons), so it's not going to change as the result of a simple Talk page discussion, Suggest that if any editor wants to propose improvement they can progress towards an RfC, otherwise we can stay with the shit text and everybody can ignore it as they always did (personally, fine by me). As you were. Bon courage (talk) 20:59, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
    FWIW, you are perfectly within your rights to start an RFC here. And in fact, that's normally the preferred solution for dealing with disagreements on the talk page. Loki (talk) 03:19, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
    In my humble opinion, I don't think for now that an RFC would be useful. The thread just exploded within the last 24 hours and discussions generally run for a week.[a] An RFC could just make it much longer, complicated, and probably equally divisive.[b] My suggestion is to keep discussing because there are a few editors involved, it's not just 2 or 3. Let's try to seek compromise to reach consensus. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 03:33, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
    A bigger issue here is that "Achieving neutrality" is the wrong title/concept for a policy page. It puts the whole thing on a footing of "this is what to do" rather than "this is what neutrality is". From this, stems the problems above. Bon courage (talk) 06:16, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
    I agree completely with that paragraph. A content policy page should be indeed be describing "this is what neutrality is". How editors get there is for an editing behaviour policy/guideline, of which we have several. There are no end of ways to "get there", including blowing it up and starting again, and NPOV really shouldn't be getting into those details. The current ideas of how to get there are naive and arguments that they are longstanding just show that people have been ignoring / not-gaining from this paragraph for a long time. Most people manage to edit Wikipedia just fine without reading hardly any of the instructions.
    Wrt algorithmic, yes the text is obviously algorithmic and I've seen over many years on Wikipedia and Commons that there are some editors who it seems can't get out of bed and brush their teeth in the morning without a script to guide them. So we end up with instructions appearing here and there that were someone's bright idea at the time but don't really stand up to scrutiny as reflecting actual editing practice or solving general problems. We get arguments that if those instructions are removed then suddenly editors will feel instructed to do the opposite. But I'm not sure why anyone would look to NPOV for guidance on "how to edit", so if we need instructions, and we don't as much as some think, they belong somewhere else.
    But right now I see the talk page is argumentative, hostile, defensive and closed minded, so I don't think it is worth continuing this discussion in that spirit. -- Colin°Talk 08:25, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
    It's not as if we don't have WP:NPOVT. But the "how-to" mindset of that seems to have seeped into the policy here. Bon courage (talk) 08:31, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
  • I would support removing the paragraph in question, and I'd appreciate a ping if someone starts an RfC. Most good-faith but poor content is better improved by addition than removal, but it's not sensible to endorse keeping biased content in situations where no one is able to improve it. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:44, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
  • Should delete as a stain on and contradiction of the parent section. In most cases articles should assert the view of the best respected and most authoritative reliable sources and inform the reader of any notable contrary views and explain their context. What in the hell does balancing the bias in sources based on the weight of the opinion even mean anyway? It seems in practice to mostly result in a bunch of talk page argument trying to include junk content. fiveby(zero) 17:26, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
  • I would be strenuously opposed to any version that includes the wording only when... or words to that effect. That goes wildly beyond WP:PRESERVE (which is far more cautiously-worded, with language like "consider"; and it omits a ton of reasons to omit something that are listed under WP:CANTFIX (such as redundancy or triviality.) I feel that people are already too quick to invoke PRESERVE; while I'm not a fan of the maximalist interpretations of WP:ONUS, which is sort of the opposing guideline, this push to expand PRESERVE has the same problems in the other direction. The implication here is that someone can add something new to an article and, if it gets removed, demand that it be restored as long as it can't be shown that the addition misinforms or misleads readers. That's absurd - we need policies that encourage people to actually discuss context-specific reasons for additions, revisions, changes, and removals that can lead to compromise, not people wielding policies like WP:ONUS and WP:PRESERVE as blunt weapons to argue that they win by default. That means that their language should be cautious and advisory, and avoid any language that could come across as saying "you can only remove things from Wikipedia for these reasons, fullstop." --Aquillion (talk) 03:56, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
  • I'm with Aquillion on this one, for the most part. There are some elements in that opening paragraph worth retaining, but anything speaking in a more absolute tone should be removed or rephrased. Language like "consider" (as Aquillion points out) is far more appropriate than "do not", "try", and especially "remove only when". Other phrases like "a good reason" is completely subjective and will definitely mean something different to each editor. This is just spitballing and not necessarily a proposal, but this is how I'd rewrite the opening paragraph:
    Generally, statements that seem biased may exist in the encyclopedia when properly sourced. If a more neutral tone is desired, consider rewriting the passage or section instead of removal. Biased information can usually be balanced with additional material from other sources to achieve a more neutral perspective. The sections below offer additional guidance on how to address common issues.
--GoneIn60 (talk) 18:37, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

RfC question; let's get the ball rolling

So for the RfC shall the proposal be simply to remove the paragraph at issue, or does some compensatory text/phrase also need to be proposed for elsewhere to make up for anything that might be lost? Bon courage (talk) 15:54, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

  • So, no response here and the attempt to remove this has met with two WP:DRNC-unhelpful reversals. So I think a RfC should propose three options: (a) No change; (b) delete the para; (c) move the para to WP:NPOVT. Okay? Bon courage (talk) 15:42, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
    That would be the smart next move instead of continuing this long term edit war. If someone reverts you, you should not keep reverting, you need to come to the talk page and figure it out. PackMecEng (talk) 18:12, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
    As one of the people who reverted you, I'd support an RFC on this. I'm not sure where I'd come down on it, but I don't see enough consensus established here to remove the paragraph without further discussion. Pecopteris (talk) 19:45, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
Since it came up in the pre-RFC discussion, I think we should include an option that softens the language or blunts all the imperatives. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 20:04, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
Good idea! I'll draft something soon. Bon courage (talk) 15:41, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Fact and opinions in cases of net hatred

In cases such as pedophilia. Genocide or hateful and harmful actions should they not be reported even briefly in the begining of said persons page , i.e "jimmy Savile" the notorious sex offender , when googled the begining caption someone who isnt aware could mistake him for a well beloved tv icon , i understand the point of fact that he was knighted and such however as he did such crimes , he should be known first by them and tv icon second , take ted Kaczynski a.k.a"the unibomber" , he is known primarily as the domestic terrorist who killed at least 3 Americans in his terror , however someone like "jimmy savile" is stated not as those irreprehensible actions primarily but as "sir James who was well known for his eccentric behaviour and charity work" all be it yes paraphrasing however when googled the first impression is no mention until you click into his wiki or some other site , even to just label him as "DJ". Isn't that a little immoral ??? , (hope that isn't to hard to follow my logic there , and I'm fully aware of the wiki neutral tone policy however he's an awful man and it logically should be more forward stating that) 83.98.55.170 (talk) 10:20, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I don't follow your logic. I think that's the reason your comment has not received a response. Can you restate your argument in a different way? Philomathes2357 (talk) 20:58, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Politicians "oppose" vs "support"

I've noticed over the years, with another prominent example today, that many current politicians article suffer a lack of neutrality that historic politicians do not - as editor's opinions on touchstone matters relevant to today creep into their editing. It seems endemic enough to consider actually including a reference to the problem on the main style-guide. This is the issue of framing politician (frequently in their opening lede) as "they oppose X, Y and Z", and their political rivals say "they support X, Y and Z".

Essentially if you have two bills put before Latvian congress, one calls for chocolate to be the national ice cream flavour, the other calls for vanilla...Wikipedia has a tendency to label "Senator Vanags supports Chocolate" and "Senator Eglitas opposes Chocolate"...instead of more neutrally labeling it in the form of what is supported rather than its anti-thesis being opposed.

On historic article we don't tend to see this, we can say "Jefferson Davis supported the continuation of slavery" instead of saying "Jefferson Davis opposed ongoing efforts to end slavery". To phrase it in terms of what was supported seems more neutral. Similarly we properly say William Carpenter advocated for a Flat-Earth theory", instead of using the opposite less neutral phrasing "Carpenter opposed the spherical earth".

So you end up with the quandry on contemporary political articles, where the bias creeps in where people's positive support for X is instead labelled as opposition to Y. Virginia Courtsesan (talk) 16:16, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

In principle, I think you are making a good suggestion, but in practice, sometimes people really are more "opposed to chocolate" (which can be such a disappointing flavor for ice cream) than they are actually "supportive of vanilla". (Or maybe that's just in the US, and politicians elsewhere normally put forward positive platforms, instead of focusing on how wrong everyone else is?) WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:45, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
The chocolate/vanilla example, where there are two options but they are not necessarily opposite positions, I think it is right to not try to show that support for vanilla necessarily means opposition to chocolate.
However, we have cases where the options on the table are either in favor of X, or in opposition of X, and there's no other alternative to X. The best example of this is related to abortion and abortion rights. Most of the sources we have use "support abortion" or "oppose abortion", with the language of "pro-life"/"pro-abortion" having waned significantly. In this case, we really should follow what the reliable sources say, which may not appear to be neutral, but is neutral to how the matters are being discussed. Masem (t) 14:36, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
In some cases, especially including language used by politicians, we really shouldn't follow the language that the reliable sources say, precisely because what the sources would violate Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#Impartial tone. We have to balance neutral tone ("abortion", not "killing babies") with accuracy (politicians are more likely to support "a legal right to abortion" than "abortions" per se). WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:51, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
I think there is a deeper problem where the political positions section turns into a WP:QUOTEFARM. While I can appreciate wanting to hold a politician to their words, there's a strange thing that happens when you start pulling out partial quotes from random campaign appearances. In my opinion, a political opinion is more than a statement made on the campaign trail. It's a pattern of action. I'd want to distinguish things said at a campaign stop versus something tangible. Shooterwalker (talk) 23:31, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Anti-subjectivity bias

This sourced statement was removed from Cinnamon Roll Day a while ago. The edit summary is "Subjective statement removed. People just really like cinnamon rolls."

I mention this here because I've been thinking this year about subjectivity in Wikipedia articles. We need to include subjective information, and we need to write in as objective a way as we can. We've traditionally expressed this as Wikipedia:A simple formulation: Assert facts, including facts about opinions.

This case has reminded me again that we (probably not just editors, but everyone on the internet) are bad at identifying what subjective really means. In this case, the editor removed a sourced, objective fact (an expert said something), claiming that it was subjective, while providing a personal belief ("People just really like cinnamon rolls") as the justification for making the change.

If you see similar examples (good or bad), please consider sharing them with me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:08, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Indeed. It's a disturbing trend, and not limited to Wikipedia. In the era of social media, we create our own feed funnels and thereby our own realities. How NPOV and other policy should address this is by not compromising on reliability of sources. Andre🚐 05:09, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
Yes, editors, and people in general, are horrendously awful at distinguishing between fact and opinion delineating between objective and subjective claims. I've been thinking that an essay aiding editors in this endeavor would be useful. What say you, @WhatamIdoing? We've found ourselves on opposite sides of a couple of debates, but I think we've both, from our differing POVs, identified the same problem here. Philomathes2357 (talk) 00:13, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
I think it might help. If anything in User:WhatamIdoing/Subjectivity in Wikipedia articles would be useful to you, please feel free to take it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:09, 22 October 2023 (UTC)


Paragraph "Due and undue weight" versus "Balance"

The paragraph "Due and undue weight" begins with this sentence: 

Neutrality requires that mainspace articles [...] represent all significant viewpoints [...] by reliable sources in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources.

The paragraph "Balance" states that: 

Neutrality assigns weight to viewpoints in proportion to their prominence in reliable sources.

Isn't this quite the same and shouldn't these paragraphs maybe be merged?

KaiKemmann (talk) 23:44, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

It could be, but a little repetition doesn't hurt, especially when it's such an important rule as WP:NPOV. Professor Penguino (talk) 03:59, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
AIUI the goals for DUE vs BALANCE is this:
  • DUE: Here is a summary of the views sources hold about Chris Controversial, who is supported by many supporters and criticized by many critics.
  • BALANCE: Here are some basic biographical facts that we stick in all articles about people, such as the fact that Chris was doubtless born to some parents at some point in time, and probably went to school somewhere before doing whatever it was that made Chris notable. Note, too, that editors omitted the whole drama about the neighbor's lawsuit over whether the fence encroached two inches too far into the neighbor's property (despite having two years of detailed coverage of the various claims and dueling lawsuits in certain sources), because editors decided that it's basically unrelated to the reason Chris is notable and probably would have happened to whoever was living next door to that neighbor.
WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:31, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
The WP:BALASP paragraph of BALANCE says:
An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject. For example, a description of isolated events, quotes, criticisms, or news reports related to one subject may be verifiable and impartial, but still disproportionate to their overall significance to the article topic. This is a concern especially for recent events that may be in the news.
I wonder if copyediting this to remove the "weight" language (as underlined) would make the distinction clearer. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:12, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
I haven't thought about this enough, but I'm currently thinking that it might open with something like Just like an article should not give undue weight to a viewpoint or opinion about the subject, it should also not overemphasize minor aspects of its subject.
We could give contrasting examples like "Every article should provide basic contextual information (e.g., for a biography, the time period in which a person lived; for a novel, a brief summary of the plot), but articles should not delve into details about relatively unimportant facts (e.g., a blow-by-blow description of a minor incident in that person's life; a long list of favorite quotations from a book)". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:26, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
I think we need both. While BALANCE is based on DUE, DUE itself does not rely on BALANCE, particularly when we're talking inclusion of material that has no counterpoint or the like. For example, WP:TRIVIA is fundamentally based on DUE (we don't include trivia unless it has due coverage in RSes), but not BALANCE. Also, I think BALANCE is necessary to distinguish that when there are multiple points of view that could be included per DUE, that BALANCE then is applied to make sure the viewpoints are weighed based on what are in RSes. And that's where talking about the false balance needs to be discussed. --Masem (t) 17:38, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
So BALANCE might be represented as:
  • Balance of included viewpoints
  • Balance of non-viewpoint information
  • Avoiding false balance
WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:45, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
Just a thought on this topic, I know many editors, myself included, often cite DUE/UNDUE when we should be citing BALANCE and it's subtopics. Would it be worth including a comment in UNDUE to that extent? Basically trying to note that UNDUE is often used by editors when things like BALASP would be the correct pointer. Any thoughts on the idea? Springee (talk) 13:01, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
Yes, though overall I think the whole thing needs to be re-written to make the distinction clearer. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:44, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
I know this discussion has died down but I'm hoping to add some thoughts on a few hours. Springee (talk) 14:00, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
It's just a detail but if wording details are being discussed then I'll remind that the wording "by reliable sources" was a bold addition which didn't clearly have consensus at the time, see thread Due weight only assigned between contrasting views in RS. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 18:49, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for that link. The question that change seems to resolve is something like 'If most people in the world believe in ghosts, then we should assign weight to the viewpoint that ghosts really exist "in proportion to its prominence"'. A majority of what humans believe is not the same as a prominent viewpoint among reliable sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:18, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
No, because this is in WP:BALANCE not WP:BALASP and it says viewpoints i.e. opinions. Thus if it was a topic about which most published sources say X then that's prominent regardless whether most Wikipedia editors think Y. In fact the added word is merely adding confusion because reliability, i.e. whether a source says X, is a straightforward matter of looking at the cite to see whether the source says it, not evaluating it. It's pretty well always true but the addition can mislead people into thinking it has something to do with whether the source should be believed, we're only talking about whether it can be believed that the source said it. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 01:05, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
@Springee, do you remember what you wanted to say a month ago?
I don't think that a viewpoint is necessarily an opinion. Imagine that we are at different ends of a river. I throw something in the river. I am upstream and view the river as "taking it away". You watch the same thing and from your point of view, the river is "bringing it towards". We're saying the same thing, and we're both factually correct, even though we see the same thing from different (geographical) viewpoints. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:23, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
Sadly I don't recall. I think it might have been that the WEIGHT section, if you squint, could be taken to overlap with BALASP. I think it would come down to what is a "viewpoint". Take the example of sources discussing a fictional book or movie. Various sources might say the meaning of the story is X, Y or Z. Each of those are a viewpoint and we would give promenance/length to each based on their weight in RS. If there were yet another interpretation, "Q", that was only discussed in one, low quality source, then WEIGHT says we should consider leaving it out ("Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all,"). So WEIGHT can be cited when removing something from an article. But consider if in that same article about the book, we add a claim that, "This story features a rare Buick sedan." While true (hey, this is my hypothetical), it's a trivial fact. Since it isn't a "viewpoint" my read is someone would be wrong to say "UNDUE" while removing this trivial fact. I feel like WEIGHT and BALANCE could be merged into a single section. This would mean that people who cited "UNDUE" in the past, wouldn't have the meaning of what they cited removed/changed. It would remove the sometimes pedantic argument that "UNDUE" must be with respect to viewpoints rather than inclusive of cases where something is not significant to the overall topic but also isn't technically a viewpoint. Springee (talk) 11:56, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
I think some re-organization would help, and perhaps a little clarity on the terms. For example, I think that a good encyclopedic article will include:
  • viewpoints: e.g., the Moon as an object vs the Moon as an artistic inspiration vs the Moon as a practical calendar
  • basic description: e.g., the Moon orbits the Earth, it can sometimes be seen in the sky, it's smaller than the Earth, it doesn't have an atmosphere
For the first, you need to balance things (e.g., do good sources talk more about lunar calendars or more about art?) but for the second, you something that's so basic that the sources merely mention it in passing might well be important to include in the article. We don't need sources to harp on the importance of someone's birthdate to justify including the birthdate; saying when and where a person was born is normal encyclopedic content and is automatically justified. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:41, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

The intent of this section is good. And it somewhat works if applied within it's intended context which is where there are opposing views. (although, even in that area, it's getting a bit outdated, written more for the Walter Cronkite era vs the current journalism landscape.) It's too game-able and problematic if applied outside of that context. It hints at good-editor decisions for other content (regarding non-useful trivia) but is more often abused than used when applied in those areas. Someday it could use a tune-up. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 21:05, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

In this light, I've long thought that we need to also address dueness as applied to the time factor if sources, on that we should give more due considerations written well after the aspects of the topic have wound down compared to those written at the time of the to pic's heyday. This would favor more thought out journalism (research, analysis, etc) than opinions spurred from the heat of the moment. — Masem (t) 21:20, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Taking a stance

When a wikipedia article takes a stance, how is that not a violation of neutrality?

For instance, the trump article was clearly written by a democrat; the flat earth page clearly written by someone who does not believe in it.

Right or wrong, why does wikipedia take a stance? 71.247.12.176 (talk) 20:32, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Have you read the policy? Wikipedia does not “take a stance”… our articles reflect what is said in reliable sources, in proportion to their DUE WEIGHT. Blueboar (talk) 20:47, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
But isnt it problematic that the political affiliation of the authors can be so reliably perceived by reading the article?
(The abortion article, trump article, etc., were undeniably written by democrats).
Is the notion that, because the majority of reliable resources are left leaning, it is permissible for the articles to reflect such a slant? 71.247.12.176 (talk) 21:05, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
You are repeatedly violating WP:AGF. You have no idea as to the political affiliations of editors and their motivations. O3000, Ret. (talk) 21:45, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
I am saying that, from the reader's perspective, the article reveals the author's leaning. If that is an "insult" to the authors, it is only because they arent doing a good job writing the articles. And it IS problematic for this site. Even if the authors were somehow conservative, the left leaning slant is still there and a major problem for the site's reputation. 71.247.12.176 (talk) 21:53, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
For example, here is a sentence from abortion page:
"Legal abortions performed in the developed world are among the safest procedures in medicine."
If you asked someone to guess the political affiliation of the author of that sentence, what do you think they would say? And if it is so obviously left leaning, why is that not considered a problem? 71.247.12.176 (talk) 22:00, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
What exactly are you suggesting? That Wikipedia should suppress facts when they don't agree with someone's politics? MrOllie (talk) 22:30, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
A style of writing in which the reader cannot decipher the authors ideology.
So that sentence, id say:
"Evidence has shown abortion as an operation has a very low fatality rate (x in 10000) for the mother. Opponents of abortion have argued that the fetus itself is a living human being, and its loss of life should be accounted for."
"Long term health effects for the mother are rare. Some such issues are (bla bla bla) occuring x in 10000 times, etc."
If i read such an article, i would know both viewpoints, and what they believe. I would not be able to tell where the author stands on the issue.
As it currently stands, you can call me "uncivil" all you want, but the article is undeniably written by someone on the left. Whether they intended for this bias to show or not, I can't say, but the bias is undeniably there. Linking me to other "behavioral" wikis will not change that. 71.247.12.176 (talk) 22:44, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

IP71.247, it is often true that the Facts Have a Well-Known Liberal Bias. In that case, it would be wise to change one's bias to be a liberal one. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 22:32, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Yet, somehow, i was able to reword the sentence into one that had no bias, while still only stating facts. 71.247.12.176 (talk) 22:49, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
False balance as you presented above leads to more bias, not 'no bias'. MrOllie (talk) 23:06, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
"No bias" was certainly an overstatement, although i would argue it has less bias, and by a pretty sizable amount. 71.247.12.176 (talk) 23:10, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
Abortion is a highly contentious issue, and while the majority of americans are pro choice, the article i shared gives far too little voice to the pro life population. That entire section, about health effects of abortion, reads like a press release in favor of abortion and pro choice politics. 71.247.12.176 (talk) 23:13, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
The only thing this policy is concerned with is whether the statement represents what the published reliable sources say. That means:
  • If high-quality reliable sources usually say something like "Abortion is one of the safest medical procedures for the pregnant woman, and the most fatal medical procedure for the baby" – then the Wikipedia article should say something like that, too.
  • If high-quality reliable sources usually say something like "Abortion is one of the safest procedures in medicine" – then the Wikipedia article should say something like that, too.
The high-quality medical sources (e.g., medical school textbooks) that are currently on the market sound like the second example. The Wikipedia article should match the sources; it appears that it does.
The path forward for change is to get the high-quality sources to change. The Wikipedia article will change when the sources change. By the way, if someone were to decide to dedicate themselves to lobbying the sources so that Wikipedia can "correctly" reflect those sources in the article, I'd suggest that advocating first that they stop using the word fetus to describe abortions (most abortions involve embryos), and that American publishers more clearly reject the idea that miscarriages are basically abortions. That language was considered outdated in the 1980s. (I specify American publishers, because the British ones figured out the difference between involuntary pregnancy loss and intentional abortion decades ago.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:21, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
But what about fair balance? Even if the reliable sources "usually" say something, why is there no voice to the rest?
Even liberal outlets will concede at least a third of the country (please read that twice) holds the belief that the embryo, fetus, whatever you want to call it, is a human with a right to life. Does that minority of 30% deserve no mention (as it has no mention in that entire section) merely because they are not "usual"?
The notion that an abortion, or many abortions on the same woman, will have no long term impact on a woman (as the article gives absolutely no voice to this whatsoever except in the one section where it basically spins it as myth-making) defies basic common sense. 71.247.12.176 (talk) 23:34, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
That's roughly how many people believe in astrology, too, but our articles on celestial bodies aren't going to include the astrologer's perspective, because Wikipedia follows what high quality, reliable sources have to say, not opinion polling. MrOllie (talk) 23:38, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
Everyone is biased in some way, by relying on what reliable sources say Wikipedia tries to overcome the bias of its editors. So if reliable sources don't mention something it isn't mentioned here, and if those sources state something isn't true Wikipedia states the same. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:52, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
71.247, I must have been unclear. When I wrote "The only thing this policy is concerned with is whether the statement represents what the published reliable sources say", I meant that the only thing that matters is what the WP:Published Wikipedia:Reliable sources say. Note that "published reliable sources" is not the same as "actual human beings".
In the case of medical subjects, it matters what a medical textbook like Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine or what a review article (NB: not the same as any peer reviewed article) in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology says. It does not matter at all what the general public believes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:29, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
But reliable resources ABSOLUTELY mention what I said (that morally the fetus/embryo is a human life, and that there are some complications in long term health of women who get abortion, especially many abortions.) However, it is not what they "usually" say and apparently that is sufficient reason to ignore them altogether.
But what if the consensus of reliable sources is wrong? (As is so often the case in humsn society). In such a case, wikipedia would not merely be advocating a falsehood; it would also be suppressing the truth.
You say it is based on a 'fair balance' of viewpoints, yet amazingly you justify a population of 33% receiving 0% voice. (Which is exactly what happened in abortion and trump pages) 2600:1017:B8BC:60:853C:C3DE:6E2D:800B (talk) 00:29, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
Also, the human population view is very relevant here. The question of human life in embryo / fetus is a moral question, not a scientific one. The science makes no claim for the moral question (although some try to claim it does) 2600:1017:B8BC:60:853C:C3DE:6E2D:800B (talk) 00:32, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
If the consensus of reliable sources is wrong, Wikipedia will be as well. Using reliable sources is the only means we have to determine what is 'right' or 'wrong' anyway. MrOllie (talk) 00:33, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
Why does Wikipedia need to be wrong? It can be avoided. If they advocate 70% of article to source A (which is wrong) and 30% to source B (which is right), but make no claim about which is right, then they are not wrong. In such a scenario, at least the reader has a chance to align with source B. And what's more, he can do so without wikipedia, in its editorial bias, trying to persuade him that source A is correct merely because it has a majority. (Indeed, the reader already knows that). 2600:1017:B8BC:60:853C:C3DE:6E2D:800B (talk) 00:43, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
No, as I just said, we're not going to devote 30% of astronomy articles to astrology, or what have you. Opinion polling is not a viable means to decide which facts are correct. MrOllie (talk) 00:48, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
Of course, nothing i have said implies such a thing. 2600:1017:B8BC:60:853C:C3DE:6E2D:800B (talk) 00:55, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
What you are seeking is neutrality not NPOV. Wikipedia is not neutral, instead it has (as best as can be managed) no point of view of its own. It's simply restates what is available from reliable sources. If those sources don't match what you may consider to be neutrality then neither will Wikipedia. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 01:21, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
Quoting the page itself --
"All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic."
The conservative views are being dismissed (not given lesser weight - but dismissed altogether) because they are not the "consensus". 71.247.12.176 (talk) 02:24, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
The Abortion in the United States goes into great detail of both Liberal and Conservative views around abortion in the US. The Abortion page is about the procedure and so deals with the medical opinions.
Also as a note the Conservatives in my country support abortion, US perspectives are not universal (which is why it's dealt with in a separate article). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 10:56, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
I see that this discussion has mostly fizzled out, but I want to add a couple of thoughts.
I understand why IP71.247 objects to the phrase "Legal abortions performed in the developed world are among the safest procedures in medicine."
I also understand why many editors have reacted scornfully to his statements.
While the above sentence about abortion is factually true, and supported by RS, it is also obviously biased and problematic. The bias is introduced by the word "safest". The notion of "safety" in this sentence is nested within a presupposition: the unborn child is not a being whose safety is worth caring about.
Some people agree with that presupposition. Others disagree.
Think about it this way:
  • example 1: "legal abortions performed in the developed world are among the safest procedures in medicine"
If you accept the implicit moral presupposition, then the statement is technically true, and unobjectionable.
But to someone who rejects that moral presupposition, the statement feels similar to something like
  • example 2: "having intercourse with prepubescent girls is safer than having intercourse with grown women, because they are much less likely to become pregnant"
That's absolutely horrifying, disgusting, and something that only a monster would actually say and mean. But it's also technically true, and unobjectionable, if you accept the implicit presupposition that a prepubescent girl is not a being whose safety is worth caring about.
If you recoiled in horror when you read that second example, then you know how IP, many in the English-speaking world, and probably a majority of humans worldwide, feel when they read the first example.
It seems like the problem here is twofold: Wikipedia's demographics, and the selection of RS.
I presume that there are many reliable sources, such as scholarly journals about philosophy and ethics, that engage with ethical debates surrounding abortion.
Most Wikipedians simply don't seek them out or include them, because they agree with the implicit moral presupposition that an unborn child is not a being whose safety is worth caring about, and thus don't see an issue with the sentence about abortion being "safe".
That is how POV is introduced, even while the offending editors sincerely feel, in good faith, that they are "just summarizing what the reliable sources say".
That's not an issue with RS, it's an issue with Wikipedia's demographics not being representative of humanity, and therefore selectively seeking out some RS while not even thinking to include other RS.
The solution is more sources, from a wider swath of scholarly disciplines.
I encourage IP, or anyone else who agrees with them, to find sources like that, and then start figuring out how to use them. If they are incorporated into encyclopedic treatments of abortion, that would be a very good thing. Philomathes2357 (talk) 04:17, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
Morality though is cultural, which is why I suggested the Abortion in the United States article. The general Abortion article should follow the medical sources. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 06:07, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
Pardon me if I'm misinterpreting you, but it seems that you are insinuating that abortion is only considered a moral issue in the United States. That is simply not the case.
It does not make sense to limit an article simply entitled "abortion" would not deal with the topic in every facet that is covered by RS. If it should "only follow medical sources", as you propose, then the article should be entitled "Medical aspects of the abortion debate". Philomathes2357 (talk) 06:19, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
No I didn't suggesting that in the slightest, and there are such articles for others countries, I suggested the US article as that was clearly relevant to the OP.
It makes very good sense to limit the main abortion article to just the medical details, to include all the different moral and philosophical views in one article just isn't practical. While including just a limited set of those views wouldn't be NPOV. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 10:14, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
Philosophical aspects of the abortion debate would also be appropriate. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 06:16, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
The main Abortion article should indeed focus on the medical aspects… however, it does need to at least mention the political, philosophical, religious aspects… if only to include links to articles that delve into those aspects in more depth. Blueboar (talk) 12:12, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
Bias like this is why I'm sometimes embarrassed to be a Wikipedia editor. As a leftist (not that it should matter), it's like we straight up ignore that NPOV exists. "It would be wise to change one's bias to be a liberal one"?? Really? How do we let this fly at all? The culture of Wikipedia is so left-leaning it's ridiculous. Dialmayo 11:15, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Taking "Legal abortions performed in the developed world are among the safest procedures in medicine." to try to analyze. The prima facie statement, even though a judgement call on on the criteria "among the safest" is highly supportable and probably sky-is-blue. But the placement of it into the article (unless it's in a section that is really only about safety) is tilting the article towards a pro-abortion stance. Deciding which neutral facts to put in, exclude, emphasize or de-emphasize is the most common form of POV. WP:weight is supposed to provide guidance on this but is unusable for actual implementation, gets applied out of it's original "balancing" intent, and has become badly out of date (in certain arenas) in the post-journalism post-Walter Cronkite era. And becomes more problematic when interacting with other wiki-mechanisms such as blanket deprecation of sources or selective use of wp:burden. So is the lack of acknowledgement that (context specific) degree-of-relevance is a valid consideration on inclusion/exclusion decisions. BTW I am pro-choice so this comment is from a structural standpoint, not my own POV. North8000 (talk) 13:01, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

People HAVE TO be identfed by their chosen pronouns, abortion keeps being classified as healthcare and women's rights plus one editor here said that an editor wanted things merely because their politics don't agree with how abortion articles are handled (not very charitable). Then another one repeats the tiresome, smug boilerplate that facts have a liberal bias (I would agree if reality had a brain to be biased with but that's evidence of how the Americans have butchered the word liberal, you can be a leftist without being socially liberal). This puts it beyond any reasonable doubt that the handling of NPOV on here is like something out of Yes Minister; either people don't know what a policy is, the policy isn't actually a policy or the polciy is there so people can say there's a policy but there's no actual will to implement it. 2001:BB6:7A98:2358:A84E:3498:8583:9B19 (talk) 18:10, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
Or option 3: We are following the policy, but your understanding of it does not match the rest of the Wikipedia community. MrOllie (talk) 18:16, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
@North8000 Interesting analysis. Especially this:
"WP:weight is supposed to provide guidance on this but is unusable for actual implementation, gets applied out of it's original "balancing" intent, and has become badly out of date (in certain arenas) in the post-journalism post-Walter Cronkite era."
Could you say more? Philomathes2357 (talk) 05:29, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the inquiry. IMO due to it's impact, wide range of uses, problems which it has is the most complex few sentences in all Wikipedias policies and guidelines to try to discuss....would probably need a small book instead of this post. But here are a few final sentences from some of those chapters:

As a preface, one always need to take into account that the uses of policies and guidelines can be divided two categories:

  1. Provide guidance to someone to help them determine the best outcome
  2. Used by someone (e.g. including the kinder gentler meaning of wikilawyering) to cause an outcome that they already decided that they want. Whether it's a POV warrior, weaponization or something milder.

Another preface is that policy /guideline content can be put into two groups. General (vague) guidance (which is ignorable in any dispute) and others that have some type of (supposedly or actual) implementable mechanics.

So a few of those final sentences would be:

  1. "in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources." is impossible to actually execute. It would require finding all relevant sources on the planet and then doing an analysis. So it's always somebody finding some sources that support their objective, wikilawyering to deprecate the one that the other guy found and then "invoking" this section. On an additional note, in those situations this un-usuable process determines what goes into / gets excluded from the article rather than good editing decisions.
  2. Regarding "general media" areas, this was written during the journalism / Walter Cronkite era, which has largely passed. Where general media could be relied on for many things (non-advocacy, research and resultant depth of coverage) which no longer exist in most of general media.
  3. Interaction with with other Wikipedia areas (WP:Reliable Source being defined by certain trappings other than actual reliability, and the mechanism to broadly deprecate sources based on a political vote) so that that weight follows that more limited wiki club rather than what's actually in the general media. So, flawed as "general media" is to determine weight, we're not even following that.
  4. I think that this provision was intended to deal with "balancing" situations but is now being used to exclude content in non-balancing situations. For example, if there highly is enclyclopedic information which is too routine to be covered by secondary sources, wikilawyers use this provision to exclude that material.

Sincerely, — Preceding unsigned comment added by North8000 (talk • contribs) 15:48, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

My view on categorization of policies/guidelines is that the categories of wikipedians are more important. You can try to improve policies and guidelines as must as you want, they will never be better than the people that use them. Conversely, very little is needed with reasonable people. This being said, I feel the spirit of Wp:weight is fine and it was added in 2005 for good reasons. But, you are right about point 1. My version of it is that weight is relative to some background knowledge that needs to be shared. No agreement on anything is possible without some shared background knowledge. This leads to your point 3. Yes, that background knowledge is never totally shared. It can appear as the view of "a more limited wiki club". Yet, the notion of reliable source is unavoidable, because it is nothing else than a tentative to concretize that required shared background knowledge. Dominic Mayers (talk) 16:07, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
WP:RS Starts with/in wp:ver it's def for the purposes of wp:ver. The trappings criteria are intended to (and do) some vetting. And the blanket deprecations are based on politics but also on reliability with respect to wp:ver, so overall the deprecation is ostensibly and actually for wp:Ver type purposes. The problem is using the same criteria established for wp:ver purposes for wp:weight. For example, if the world's most popular newspaper gets blanket deprecated for wp:ver purposes criteria, they are also excluded for wp:weight considerations. North8000 (talk) 18:05, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
By "world's most popular newspaper" do you mean Daily Mail online? By "excluded for wp:weight considerations" do you mean the phrase "in reliable sources" matters? For one place where those words were added in September 2022, I opposed in thread Due weight only assigned between contrasting views in RS, still do. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 19:27, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
No I didn't have any in mind, I meant it to be hypothetical. North8000 (talk) 13:29, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
@North8000:, reliability must be about the factual content of the source whereas the weight must be about the POV content of reliable sources. The problem that you see is that people give no weight to popular sources arguing that they are not reliable, but they actually mean the POV content is dubious, which is different. You can recognize those who do that mistake, because they will often argue that a "reliable" source must be neutral, not have a POV, etc, which is against NPOV, because, at the end, it means they reject a POV, because it is a POV. If they were really using reliability in terms of factual content, you would agree. For example, a source that is not reliable for its factual content would say "Biden said X", when he actually said "not X". You would say, of course, it makes no sense to use that source, because it cannot be trusted for its factual content. The problem is also that the distinction between factual and pov content start to be not so clear in some cases. Of course, it is also possible that some people will actually mean the source is not reliable (for its factual content) only to discredit it, but there is nothing we can do about that, except hoping they are a small minority. Dominic Mayers (talk) 01:10, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
I don't think that finding the balance requires finding all relevant sources on the planet and then doing an analysis. Unless the field is wildly divergent, a decent sample is enough. You don't need to read a thousand books on the same subject if the first ten are all saying the same thing. There are some subjects that require specific kinds of work (e.g., when writing about military history, it's helpful to check sources written by all the belligerents, not just the English language sources, or the ones written by the victors), but the law of diminishing marginal return applies in this area, and at some point, even if you do find a source that has a different POV, you already know that this POV will fall into the "tiny minority" camp and therefore should be excluded per this policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:32, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: There you go again, going based on the intended use of the policy!  :-). Of course you are right in that context. But, a tweaked repeating from above, you are correct (only) under #1 below:
  1. When it's being used to provide provide guidance to ....help them determine the best outcome
  2. Used by someone (e.g. including the kinder gentler meaning of wikilawyering) to cause an outcome that they already decided that they want.
But for #2, IMO it is not doable. Let's assume that there are 1,000 sources in the world on the topic in dispute. Anybody can find a bunch that weigh in on their side. Under #2, how could the determination be made? North8000 (talk) 13:41, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
I think I agree wrt your #4, but I think BALASP ought to cover that. Every biography should place the subject in historical context (place and time), even if there aren't sources saying that it's really incredibly important that Ronald Reagan was born on February 6, 1911 and not on February 5th or 7th (which, given his wife's interest in astrology, there may well be such sources for him, but they will generally be considered questionable sources here). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:54, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Breaking the section for convenience

@North8000:, I find this discussion hard to follow. In particular, I am trying to make sense of "balancing" situations vs "non balancing" situations. It is as if you were saying that WP:weight does not always apply. I assume that you have a valid issue in mind, but it has to be expressed in a way that accepts the universal applicability of WP:weight, given that it is a part of a non negotiable policy. Let me consider your example: enclyclopedic information which is too routine to be covered by secondary sources, wikilawyers use this provision to exclude that material. I have to guess that the provision is in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources. Based on that guess, my understanding of your concern is that we use secondary and reliable sources to evaluate the weight and this eliminates some content. I claim that the issue is not WP:weight, but the way the concepts of secondary and reliable sources are ambiguously defined. The original version of WP:weight did not mention reliable or secondary sources and that specific issue could not arise.[1] I will start with reliable sources. It's a pernicious issue, because, in one hand, we cannot refute that reliable sources must be used—who would say that unreliable sources are OK to use. Yet, on another hand, it's possible to reject a lot of sources using that provision depending on the meaning of "reliable sources". Don't you agree that the problem is in the different concepts of "reliable sources"? This is what I tried to discuss in my comment above, which was ignored. It's the same thing for "secondary sources": it has a meaning that corresponds to a very reasonable rule (we need sources to analyse old documents, etc.), but it can be given a more general meaning that is problematic. Dominic Mayers (talk) 23:52, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Notes

  1. ^ The difficulty of covering all sources is a different problem, which I do not discuss here, except to quickly say that the problem is not the number of sources, but the difficulty in having a shared understanding of a subject. There is little to say about it, except that people need to read the sources and discuss.

Delimitation in first paragraph

Currently, we have a one-sentence first paragraph, that briefly explains what NPOV "is":

  • "All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic."

We need a delimitation to complete it, one that explains what NPOV "is not", so I added one:

  • "At Wikipedia, "neutral" does not mean "no POV" or that we treat differing POV as "equally valid", because doing so would create a false balance."

My edit summary was:

  • "It is important to provide a delimitation immediately. This will prevent a large portion of the misunderstandings about NPOV."

That was quickly, and expectedly, reverted by Dominic Mayers, with a very nice edit summary, which I appreciate very much:

  • "The intention is not bad, but the formulation might be confusing. In a very important way, neutrality means that Wikipedia takes no POV: it does not support any POV. It only describes them by putting them in perspective, providing the arguments without taking side, etc."

I wholeheartedly agree with the gist of that edit summary, but we do explain that quite well in the body. Do we also need to explain that in the first paragraph? Alternatively should we explain that lower down in the lead?

I don't see Dominic's explanation as a good reason to not include the delimitation I provided. It completes the first paragraph. It is the yin to the yang. It is just as important to say what something "is not" as to explain what it "is".

Since the objection ("confusing") focused on "no POV", would leaving that part out work better?:

  • "At Wikipedia, "neutral" does not mean that we treat differing POV as "equally valid", because doing so would create a false balance."

What think ye? Can this be improved so it's acceptable? We need to plug the hole that allows so many misunderstandings and objections. It will save us a lot of time. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:18, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

I think your intent is valid. We certainly have a POV on flat earth ideas for example. However, I think introducing false balance so quickly might be confusing. NPOV is governed by a a number of restrictions/related editorial issues. False balance is one. Impartial tone is another as is BLP restrictions. For that matter we also need to use encylopedic tone. Even if every source calls Gunner's Mate First Class Phillip Asshole an asshole, we should probably defer to encyclopedic tone and refer to him as something other than asshole. Springee (talk) 19:02, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
Certainly all valid points, but my addition is more of a meta-delimitation that does not impinge on any of the valid things you mention. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:32, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
Springee's point is exactly the second point that I had in mind: proportion is only one aspect of NPOV. Valjean, the issue is not that your point contradicts the other points. You are right that it does not contradict the other points. The issue is that it gives the impression that proportion is the central point and it is not. In fact, if there was a change to make in that first sentence, it would be in the other direction: putting more emphasis on these other points. As an aside, a response to Springee, I feel these extreme examples such as "flat earth" do not give justice to the concept: we never write "The earth is flat round" or the "sky is blue" by itself anyway in an article. They do not illustrate in any way real cases. Usually, view points that deserve to be mentioned are real view points that need sources, etc. and should not be stated in Wikipedia's voice. Dominic Mayers (talk) 21:57, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
I just want to make one quibble… no we do NOT have a POV on whether the Earth is flat, round or egg shaped. The reason we don’t mention flat earth theories in our article on Earth is that these ideas are so Fringe that to mention them in that context would be out of proportion and give them UNDUE significance. Similarly, within our article on Flat earth, where it is appropriate to outline the idea, there are certain sub-theories that are sooo fringe, that it is out of proportion to even mention them in THAT article (fringe of the fringe). Blueboar (talk) 01:26, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
Of course, there is that also. But, I still come back to my point. I am responding to those who criticize the requirement to put points of view in perspective using examples such as "The earth is round". They argue that it would be strange to say "According to ... , the earth is round". My response is that these trivial statements are not realistic examples of points of view in article. We do not mention the trivial statement "The earth is round" by itself. It can be included in what we write, but that's the point: we usually write something more meaningful such as "The ancient Greeks knew already that the earth was round" or the "The earth diameter is XXX" or "The observations X, Y, Z corroborate that the earth is spherical". Therefore, trivialities are not good examples to argue that we do not need to present points of view in perspective. On the contrary, if anything, they illustrate that we must add content around simple points of view, such as arguments, etc. to put them in perspective as required by neutrality in Wikipedia. Yes, the opposite, statements that are weird and accepted by very few people can be useful to discuss neutrality, as pointed out by Blueboar. Dominic Mayers (talk) 01:50, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
I'm not sure why "proportion" is being mentioned, as that is not my concern in this thread. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 15:29, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

My main concern is to make plain to readers that here, "neutral" does not mean what it means elsewhere. How can we do that? The word "neutral" in the NPOV policy is frequently misunderstood by new editors, visitors, and outside critics. To paraphrase Inigo Montoya, "It does not mean what they think it means." They think it means that articles must not contain any form of bias, hence their efforts to remove content and sources they perceive as "not neutral". They do not understand "neutral" in the Wikipedia sense of the word, and think NPOV means content should have "No Point Of View", when nothing could be further from the truth. NPOV does not mean neutral or neutered content, nor does it mean that there should be a false balance between opposing points of view.

NPOV means neutral editing, not neutral content. We do not document exclusively neutral facts or opinions; we write about facts and opinions neutrally. The "Neutral" in NPOV refers to an editorial attitude and mindset; it is not a true "point of view".

  • "All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others." (Douglas Adams), so they must not be given equal weight.
  • "Wikipedia:Neutral point of view means neutrally reflecting what the sources say. It does not mean that the article has to be "neutral"."[4] (Muboshgu).

How can we sum up these points to immediately clarify how we mean "neutral" here? We start with saying "neutral", but then fail to say we don't really mean "neutral" (in the ordinary sense). We need to say that. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 15:29, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Actually, "neutral" in Wikipedia means what it often means elsewhere. In particular, Jimmy Wales uses it in the following quote with the usual meaning of not taking side:

A general purpose encyclopedia is a collection of synthesized knowledge presented from a neutral point of view. To whatever extent possible, encyclopedic writing should steer clear of taking any particular stance other than the stance of the neutral point of view.

— Jimmy Wales, 2001 statement
What you have in mind is that "neutral point of view" refers to the point of view taken by the encyclopedia, not a point of view taken by a source. Though we do not reject a non neutral source and can describe its non neutral point of view, it remains that we do not adopt it or present it without putting it in perspective. In that sense, we can say that we do not adopt any point of view in the sources. We can only adopt the neutral encyclopedic point of view, just as requested by Jimmy Wales above. Now, let me explain how this is tricky. When it is a scientific fact or a very well established journalistic fact, it is implicit that we present the point of view of reliable sources. It will be strange to always explicitly remind the readers that this is not Wikipedia's point of view, but the point of view of reliable sources. It is often sufficient to cite the journal and the context makes it clear that Wikipedia only presents the point of view of sources in a neutral manner, in full respect of Jimmy Wales previous description of NPOV, which, as he said many times, is not negotiable. Dominic Mayers (talk) 16:43, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
Many unfamiliar with Wikipedia take neutral to mean absolute neutrality, regardless of reliable sourcing. Meaning that Wikipedia should show all points of view equally, and be equal handed to all of them. This isn't what the NPOV policy or Jimmy Wales mean. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:24, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
This brings us back to a particular meaning of NPOV: no false balance. Again, this is only one aspect of NPOV. Clarifying this aspect in the first sentence can create confusion by creating the false impression that it is the central aspect: it is not.
Dominic Mayers (talk) 17:29, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
This is true but how do we help stop the timesink of this specific issue. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:35, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Added while the previous reply was written: The most damaging confusion by the unfamiliar is not
  • between no false balance vs false balance, as you suggest, but
  • between no false balance vs neutrality in the sense of not taking side and taking, instead, an encyclopedic neutral perspective.
Dominic Mayers (talk) 17:48, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
@ActivelyDisinterested:, there are many ways such as writing an essay and they must have been applied. I don't think changing the first sentence is the best way, because of reasons already given. Dominic Mayers (talk) 17:59, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
My point was that the discussion seems to have drifted from the point (the sentence was changed to address a common issue) to one about the general nature of NPOV. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:01, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
Yes, but that drift was very much needed, because that is the first sentence of the most important content policy. Dominic Mayers (talk) 18:03, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
The focus of this thread is not about the myriad aspects of NPOV, but about how we use the word "neutral", IOW not about balance, proportion, and the myriad other aspects of NPOV. Please stick to that, rather than getting us out into other areas of the whole NPOV topic. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:09, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Dominic, we largely agree, but are placing emphasis on (at least) two different things.

The first is about editorial behavior and bias. Editors are not supposed to take sides, other than carrying out how policy prioritizes RS. RS always get more weight than unreliable sources, so Wikipedia's editors do take the side of RS (when there is no significant disagreement among RS). We don't treat all sources as of equal weight.

The second is about biased soures and content. NPOV expressly allows the use of biased sources (very few RS are unbiased), which produces biased article content. The content should reveal the bias of its sources, but not the bias of its editors. All article bias comes from its sources. Editors are not allowed to censor or neuter the bias found in what RS say. That would be improper editorial interference. We are supposed to neutrally present what biased sources say, without "getting in the way".

So "neutral" applies mostly to editorial behavior and mindset, not to sources or content. If RS tend to take one side of an issue, then the article will show, and appear to take, that side. That's perfectly proper. It is only editorial bias we don't want in articles.

A frequent problem is when readers and editors assume bad faith and accuse other editors of including their bias, when in fact the bias comes from the sources they have used. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:04, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

What you wrote suggests that editorial work cannot change the point of view expressed by the source. That is not true. Consider the point of view of a sect that believes the "earth is flat". Certainly, "the earth is flat", which is the point of view of the sect, is not at all the same point of view as "The sect X believes the earth is flat". Therefore, the editorial point of view can and often must be different from the point of view of the source. It is very important to understand that neutrality requires personal work by the editors. NPOV says "editors must provide context for this point of view by indicating how prevalent the position is and whether it is held by a majority or minority" and that is often very different from the point of view in the source. What is required is that the fact that a source has said something must be verifiable, but this does not mean at all that the editorial work cannot, by putting it in perspective, essentially presents the opposite through the facts, counter arguments in other sources, etc. This applies even to the view point of a majority of sources. It is not because it is the point of view of a majority of sources that Wikipedia must somehow present that point of view as the truth. Dominic Mayers (talk) 18:17, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
Again, you're getting off-topic, even though we largely agree. "change the point of view expressed by the source" is an odd wording. No, we do not do that, rather we document it and place it in the context of what mainstream RS say about it. Now let's get back on-topic. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:23, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
I did not meant that we can falsely represent what the source says. I meant that the neutral point of view expressed in the article is not the point of view of the source. The required editorial perspective is, on the contrary, perfectly on-topic. The issue you want to address cannot be addressed without first addressing that more fundamental issue. Dominic Mayers (talk) 19:57, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
  • How could this policy be changed to help new users understand that NPOV doesn't mean treating all sides equally, without any other considerations? As this is a common misunderstanding and timesink. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:43, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
    You present it as if the meaning of "not treating all sides equally" is clear. It is not. Remember, the key and original meaning of NPOV is "not taking side". (edit conflict): Therefore, "not treating sides equally" could be understood to mean the opposite of NPOV. In a way, we must treat the sides equally and let the facts speak for themselves. Dominic Mayers (talk) 18:47, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
    The question of how to make easier to understand for new users is still the same, regardless of the exact phrasing. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:53, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
    What you fail to see is that particular point cannot properly be addressed in isolation. Therefore, the correct goal must be "how to make the central points of NPOV easier to understand". I believe that was the central concern expressed right at the start of that discussion and it is still valid. Dominic Mayers (talk) 19:05, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
    Ok including your point, how do we make it easier for new users to understand NPOV? Because new users viewing bias in Wikipedia's sources as Wikipedia's bias is common. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:32, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
    Sometimes, these new users might be right, because there is a lack of editorial perspective in the article, so that a source's bias becomes the article's bias. That is why your issue cannot be properly addressed without first addressing the issue of a proper understanding of the importance of an editorial perspective. This other issue should be discussed first, because it is more basic. It is the central point first expressed by the founders and said many times to be non negotiable by Jimmy Wales. Dominic Mayers (talk) 19:49, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
    But in a non-theoretical sense, the common misunderstanding is one of bias in sources being considered Wikipedia's bias. There are many ways it can be misinterpreted, but this is a specific issue. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:26, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
    The only way to overcome source bias is to examine other sources of comparable reliability. Blueboar (talk) 20:39, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
    Sorry that's not the point I'm trying to make. In a situation where all reliable sources agree on a common fact, the overused example of the world being a globe for instance, a new user argues that stating that fact is biased (rather than the bias of reliable sources) and Wikipedia isn't being neutral. They commonly refer to this policy in doing so.
    Generally this isn't in areas where there is disagreement from reliable sources, so other sources don't come into play. Where that would come into play wouldn't be a timesink, but a valid discussion of article balance. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:54, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
    Again, right from the start, I pointed out that taking these extreme examples such as "the earth is round" fails to give justice to the importance of taking a neutral perspective. If you want apparent exceptions to this requirement, there are better ones, such as the mention of the presence of a drawing of the boat "SS Normandie" in "Tintin in America" in List of boats in The Adventures of Tintin. Indeed, there is no need and it will be strange to say explicitly "According to ..., the boat ...". They are not really exceptions, because the perspective is implicit: we know that it is the POV of reliable sources on Tintin, thus we know essentially every thing there is to know about the context. In all cases, that perspective is needed so that it is a neutral encyclopedic POV. If there is a serious doubt or ambiguity about that perspective or context, it should be made explicit. Dominic Mayers (talk) 22:34, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
    It is a poor example, but again you comment doesn't contains anything on how to help new editors with a common misconception. This is not about cases where there is any ambiguity, so there is nothing to be made explicit. As per the last sentence of my previous comment, if there was any ambiguity then it would be a normal discussion about balance in an article not the timesink issue at hand. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 22:52, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
    I have already replied to that: there is no way to properly address the common misconception you have in mind without first addressing any misunderstanding regarding the need for a neutral encyclopedic point of view in the sense of not taking side, but presenting the context. Again, I agree with Blueboard that the other sources are the most important aspect of that context. I will not pursue that discussion further, because I am only repeating myself. Dominic Mayers (talk) 22:59, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
    I'm obviously failing to make what I mean clear as you reply isn't related to my point. In the case of no other reliable sources supporting a point of view there can be no other reliable sources supporting that point of view. If there were other sources then it wouldn't be situation that is an issue. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:07, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
    Maybe an example:
    "zebra is pink" refers to the mostly basic conceptualised framing of the idea, not the language used in Wikipedia.
    Wikipedia states the idea "zebra is pink".
    All reliable sources state "zebra is pink".
    No reliable sources state anything other than "zebra is pink".
    A new editor argues "zebra is pink" is Wikipedia being biased and point to this policy.
    How can such new editor be helped in their understanding? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:27, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
    @Blueboar:, I agree with you about the need to consider other sources, but the foundation to do it properly is the neutral encyclopedic point of view and this does not come at all automatically just because you consider other sources. But, I agree, the converse is also true: these other sources are the most important aspect of a neutral encyclopedic point of view. Dominic Mayers (talk) 22:52, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

The following was an attempt of mine to explain some issues to a newbie.

At Wikipedia, "neutral" does not mean what you think it means. It really doesn't. It is not a middle position. It is not a position without bias. At Wikipedia, "neutral" means alignment with RS, including their biases.

"Neutral" in NPOV does not mean "neutral" in the common sense of the word. It does not mean without bias from sources, only without bias from editors. NPOV does not require that sources or content be without bias or be neutral.

Editors should remain neutral by not removing the bias found in RS. We should document it and not whitewash it. That means the article will then read like biased content, and that's as it should be, as long as the bias is from sources and not from editors. The article about a person who is dishonest will give the impression that the person is dishonest because the weight of RS say so, and that is a very proper bias. Anything else would be dishonest. Wikipedia does not support dishonesty or whitewash it.

Editors are "neutral" when they are centered right under the point where most RS congregate, regardless of whether that is to the left or right of center. We do not "move" or "balance" content to the center to keep an article "neutral". That would be editorial, non-neutral, interference in what RS say. Maybe you should read my essay about this: NPOV means neutral editing, not neutral content. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:36, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

It is pointless for me to argue further, because you keep repeating that you only want to "explain" that NPOV does not mean no bias, because bias in sources should naturally appear somehow in the article and that this can be understood without going into other considerations. You keep saying that I am off-topic when I do, but my point is exactly that it is confusing to make any statement of this kind without first explaining what is the neutral (encyclopedic) point of view, as originally described by the founders and declared non negotiable several times by Jimmy Wales. Dominic Mayers (talk) 02:08, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
Sorry Dominic Mayers, but reading this and your hatted comment I think you're assuming that NPOV somehow trumps V. Sources in the climate change article are not "filtered", they are subject to the requirements laid out in in WP:V. Wikipedia shouldn't be using 'neutral (encyclopedic) point of view' to introduce views not supported by reliable sources. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 02:16, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
No, I do not assume that at all. I obviously consider them as complementary. Filtering (using other policies or guidelines) is not presented as negative and this is clear from what I wrote. This is going way too far. Dominic Mayers (talk) 02:20, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
Sorry if I misunderstood, could you give an example of a source you believe has been "filtered" or how the climate change article could be modifed? It could help me to understand what you mean by 'neutral encyclopedic point of view'. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 02:26, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
There is something way more important that you misunderstood: I put the part that you wish to discuss in a collapsed area and it would have been appropriate to respect that in placing your questions within the same area. Now, you create confusion about my intention again in suggesting that I criticized or wanted to change Climate change. I said nothing of the sort. On the contrary, I used it as an example how to solve a problem regarding bias without conflicting with NPOV. I added that this solution, which worked for climate change, cannot always be applied. Now, please stop. I am really not interested in pursuing this discussion further, especially now that I have been so much misinterpreted. stop
Pointless argument given the unquestioned assumption that understanding the foundation of NPOV is not needed to discuss bias
Neutral does not mean what you say it means. It means that the editors must add personal work that might result in a point of view that is not at all the point of view of any source, not even the point of view of the sources that represent the majority. NPOV might appear as "whitewashing", but that is exactly what taking a perspective means. Of course, it cannot be done by the editors pushing their own point of view, but it can and it must be done by the editors presenting a factual context. For example, if it was not for a filtering of sources specific to the domain, the NPOV rule would require that we state both the climate-sceptic view and the other climate view with their arguments, etc. letting the arguments speak for themselves, but without extending too much on the climate-sceptic side, except in a dedicated article. That is not at all the point of view of the majority of the climate scientists, because they, on the contrary, highly object that we present the arguments of the minority in a way that relativise their view: they reject that the debate is even scientific. Yet, that is exactly what neutral means. The problem is avoided by filtering the sources that explain the skeptical arguments, most likely for the best, but that has nothing to do with neutrality: it is another principle that is at work here. This explains why filtering sources is so important. Without it, NPOV requires that we present all the points of view that are pertinent and their arguments and any useful context such as who said what and their credentials, without taking side, and let the readers decide. When you do that, you adopt the neutral encyclopedic point of view, which is not the point of view of any source, not even of the majority. To schematize, the point of view of a source is like "the earth is flat" whereas the neutral encyclopedic point of view is more like "this sect believes the earth is flat", which is not the same point of view at all. This also applies to a view of a majority when it gets relativized by the view of a minority (which has not occurred at all in Climate change, because sources were filtered). Filtering sources is not always adequate or possible and this is often a source of polemic, because the majority does not want to be relativized even a little bit by a minority. The majority will have more weight, but an understanding of the neutral encyclopedic point of view is absolutely necessary to properly understand the issue. Dominic Mayers (talk) 01:18, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
Note added after the misleading responses outside the collapsed area: Climate change is an example that illustrates how difficult it can be for any one to see his point of view being relativized by some factual perspective, as required by NPOV. Climate change was perfect to illustrate that difficulty: the vast majority would refuse relativisation in the case of climate change and that is why the example is good. Of course, we need some imagination to see how that same attitude is wrong when the point of view of the minority is actually supported by reliable sources. Yet, I think it was best to rely on the imagination of people, because picking real cases would have created even more polemic unrelated to the point being made. Again, the point being made is that NPOV does not mean at all that one must accept to present the POV of a majority even if it is unpleasant. This is almost the opposite of neutrality, because, as illustrated here, the required perspective can make the neutral point of view very much different from any point of view in sources. Dominic Mayers (talk) 12:19, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Second note added: This is a repetition: a response already given to the point that I am off-topic. It was often said that I am off-topic, because I consider cases that are not pertinent for that thread. A case given as pertinent is "zebra is pink", which illustrates a completely fictive problem. My response is that we are discussing the first sentence of the most important content policy and I don't see why we should limit the discussions to limited fictive scenarios. Dominic Mayers (talk) 12:54, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

After reading what's in that hatted box, my eyes glazed over and my mind went numb. What the heck did I just read? It sounds like OR is being recommended. Maybe I have misunderstood. I get the feeling that we have very different understandings of our mission here. Jimbo said our job was to document the sum total of human knowledge, with the caveat that we only use RS. Fine.

I get the feeling you think we are supposed to try to create our idea of the ideal article about a topic, as would be the normal job in an ordinary book or encyclopedia. But here our job is to document what RS say about the topic. In doing that, we try to organize the content into a somewhat coherent article. The jobs are slightly different, especially for controversial topics. RS are the prime mover here, in fact the most important factor. All else, even NPOV, serves only to explain how we are to handle those RS. We write nothing and know nothing but what RS say. They are analogous to what science calls "evidence", and we "follow the evidence" and are to be the servants of RS. They rule us. We do not add to or subtract from what they say. We do not engage in OR, whitewashing, censorship, neutering, neutralizing, removing bias, performing improper synthesis, etc.

We remain neutral by faithfully reproducing and documenting what RS say, including their biases. Sources are rarely free from bias (those without bias are pretty boring), and facts are frequently not "in the center", IOW they are not neutral. Facts are often on one side or the other. We document that. We do not "move" stuff toward the neutral middle position. We read what RS say, then document that, letting the chips fall where they may. We also document opinions about facts and opinions about lies, deceptions, conspiracy theories, etc. We are to faithfully and neutrally explain those opinions, and faithfully attribute the content to the source, and, when appropriate, faithfully provide exact quotations for BLP and sensitive stuff that would be degraded if we tried to paraphrase it. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 05:33, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

I haven't read this to the end. It is perhaps a genuine honest misunderstanding, because, well, you simply misunderstand something, but it is not interesting to me. In fact it is unpleasant. This should be inside the collapsed area. I will not reply outside the area. Please stop stop. OK, I decided to read until the end. I agree with a lot of it, but wrong inside some good is still wrong, perhaps even worst. Your feeling about me, etc. are still misguided. Again, please stop stop. Dominic Mayers (talk) 09:31, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Not claiming to have the big answers, but in certain areas (e.g. US politics) Wikipedia rules and mechanisms do not implement the real world meaning of "in proportion to coverage in reliable sources" and often do the opposite. In those cases "reliable sources" is a smaller wiki-club of sources that have certain trappings, who haven't been deprecated by losing a wiki popularity contest, and where there is no criteria for the objectivity and expertise of the source. It would be good to start placing more emphasis on the objectivity and expertise of the source in the context of where it was invoked. Also to recognize editor judgement in selecting encyclopedic and informative content. North8000 (talk) 19:49, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps what we want to communicate is "This means Wikipedia will inevitably reflect the biases of reliable sources."
(For bonus points, we could define 'reliable sources'. My primary suggestion for that definition is "A reliable source is a published document which experienced editors will accept as adequate support for a given piece of content in a Wikipedia article.") WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:37, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
It is inevitable that editors will choose sources and this is formalized in the WP:RS guidelines. I think it is best to keep things modular. We can refer to these guidelines, but we must not bring them here. We should not bring the up and down of our current practises and guidelines in that fundamental policy. In case you have not noticed, the sentence that you suggest, "Wikipedia will inevitably reflect the biases of reliable sources", is completely wrong if you remove "reliable". This is not a policy about reliable sources. Dominic Mayers (talk) 07:12, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
This is the policy that requires Wikipedia articles to reflect the biases of reliable sources – the Earth is not flat, humours do not need to be rectified, astrology is bunk, etc. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:49, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
No this is not what this policy taking separately, by itself, requires or explains. "Reliable sources" and "verifiability" are mentioned once at the beginning in the lede lead, because this policy should not be understood without considering the other content policies and then, in the same spirit, "reliable sources" is mentioned several times later in the context of explaining the basic principles of that policy. Anyone can read the policy and see that I am not inventing anything. If it is what you meant, then we agree and this is well explained right at the beginning. I appreciate that you wish to make a point that is implied by this policy + WP:RS, but, please, I am begging you, do not bring confusion about the fundamentals of that policy to achieve that purpose. (See the subsection "Some historical perspective is needed".) Dominic Mayers (talk) 08:34, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
The definition of "neutral" is "representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic". In other words, if the reliable sources are "biased" (in the opinion of any given person), then the Wikipedia article must be exactly as biased as the sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:45, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
(edit conflict) @North8000:, given the big difficulty I had to understand your point in the next section, I am delighted and surprised that what you wrote here actually makes sense. I understand that you suggest that the emphasis should be more on the criteria used to select sources in view of the context. My understanding of this point is that, though it affects the final result, it is complementary to NPOV. I don't see much attention given to this in the current NPOV formulation. The importance of this is acknowledged right from the start in the first sentence: that have been published by reliable sources on a topic (emphasis is mine), but it is not further developed in the policy itself. My view is that it is best to keep things modular as it currently is and to develop that other point elsewhere, but that does not mean we cannot make the connection with that other point clearer, as a way to clarify the distinction between the RS guidelines and this more fundamental NPOV policy. Dominic Mayers (talk) 06:37, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Some historical perspective is needed

Here is the beginning of the statement of the NPOV policy as it was in 2001 and also in 2003 and later:

A general purpose encyclopedia is a collection of synthesized knowledge presented from a neutral point of view. To whatever extent possible, encyclopedic writing should steer clear of taking any particular stance other than the stance of the neutral point of view.

The neutral point of view attempts to present ideas and facts in such a fashion that both supporters and opponents can agree. Of course, 100% agreement is not possible; there are ideologues in the world who will not concede to any presentation other than a forceful statement of their own point of view. We can only seek a type of writing that is agreeable to essentially rational people who may differ on particular points.

Some examples may help to drive home the point I am trying to make.

1. An encyclopedic article should not argue that corporations are criminals, even if the author believes it to be so. It should instead present the fact that some people believe it, and what their reasons are, and then as well it should present what the other side says.

2. An encyclopedia article should not argue that laissez-faire capitalism is the best social system. (I happen to believe this, by the way.) It should instead present the arguments of the advocates of that point of view, and the arguments of the people who disagree with that point of view.

Perhaps the easiest way to make your writing more encyclopedic, is to write about what people believe, rather than what is so.

This was repeatedly said non negotiable by Jimmy Wales (in 2003 and many times later). The concern expressed in that discussion entire section and which led to the wanted addition in the policy is not new and it resulted to an addition to the policy in 2005, while its fundamentals remained the same. The section added in 2005 referred to a point made by Jimmy Wales in 2003 in which clearly Jimmy Wales expresses the same concern that is being expressed here (though he did not mention "reliable sources"). In response to someone wanting to push his "new for-the-layman proof", he wrote:

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

If your viewpoint is held by a significant scientific minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents, and the article should certainly address the controversy without taking sides.

If your viewpoint is held by an extremely small minority, then _whether it's true or not, whether you can prove it or not_, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia, except perhaps in some ancilliary article. Wikipedia is not the place for original research.

Note that he was still referring to "not taking sides", which is the first and central point of NPOV, which was made before that concern was even expressed (see the first citation above). That meaning of "not taking sides", in other words of "NPOV", never changed and is still valid today. Please, I am begging you, do not change it, just because you want to address this concern, because this is the NPOV that is not negotiable. I should add that I don't know whether Jimmy Wales changed his mind and I am curious to know it. In any case, there is a kind of contract that has been established between Wikipedia and the community that contributed to it. Wikipedia has been built under that agreement and it should be respected and it cannot be changed by 10 or even 20 people pushing their view in a talk page. Dominic Mayers (talk) 10:36, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Jimmy Wales on not taking sides on holistic medicine:

Wikipedia's policies ... are exactly spot-on and correct. If you can get your work published in respectable scientific journals – that is to say, if you can produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments, then Wikipedia will cover it appropriately.
What we won't do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of "true scientific discourse". It isn't.

Yes. We are biased. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:22, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
I already pointed out that Jimmy Wales shared the same concern that is being expressed here. So, you are not adding anything to what I have already written. I am not denying the pertinence of that concern. This is not the issue here. Dominic Mayers (talk) 11:27, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
Again I'm confused the reason for the addition that started this discussion is exactly this issue. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:30, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
I meant that I understand the concern and I share it: the issue is not my appreciation of that concern. And, yes, obviously, that concern was the reason for the added sentence. I certainly understood that. My point is that, even though the concern is valid, we should not change the fundamentals of NPOV to address it. These fundamentals are important and they play an important role in Wikipedia. Dominic Mayers (talk) 11:39, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
Besides, if Wikipedia's policies ... are exactly spot-on and correct why do you want to change them? It's not me that want to change them (though I wish we had a better example than "The sky is blue"). Dominic Mayers (talk) 11:55, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
I don't particularly feel a need to change the policy, but I assume the problem (it's an old one) is that Wikipedia:Nobody reads the directions, so people say things like "This article isn't neutral. Jimmy said that NPOV is non-negotiable! How dare you violate the neutrality policy by treating this FRINGE theory as anything other than exactly equal to mainstream views!"
Because, of course, complying with this policy means reflecting the viewpoints of reliable sources, which is not the same as having no viewpoint whatsoever. Climate change reflects the POV that it's happening and caused by humans. Homeopathy reflects the POV that these 'treatments' are ineffective. The Holocaust reflects the POV that it actually happened. While editors shouldn't put their own personal POVs into articles, the articles are meant to reflect the sources' POV(s). WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:52, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
All very true. But just noting that these examples are from just one category / fraction of where NPOV comes up....they are (vaguely speaking) about situations where alternate viewpoints clearly conflict with objective reality. North8000 (talk) 12:27, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
Exactly ! Well, just a small quibble: The "objective reality" in most of these examples must be seen through "reliable sources"−it's not like "the sky is blue", but that's the point of the next section, which I personally consider important. Dominic Mayers (talk) 14:57, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
I think I can give you some examples that are unrelated to objective reality. For example, economists believe that market efficiency matters more than fairness; consumers believe the opposite. Economists write the high-quality sources, so when our economics articles are biased towards valuing efficiency over fairness, that bias is what we call neutral. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:54, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
No, it's not NPOV. It's only what we call proportion or no false balance, a consequence of a point added to NPOV in 2005 for good reasons (see above), but it's clearly not NPOV. BTW, it was said clearly by the person who started it that this discussion is not about proportion and, in that context, we discussed these "objective reality" examples. Now, because these examples do not work to make the point, we are back to proportion. We are repeating ourselves. The main point was made right at the start. Dominic Mayers (talk) 00:26, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
"Neutral" is defined in the first sentence of the policy as what happens when an article is "representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic"
  • Ergo, if reliable sources favor market efficiency over fairness, and the article does the same, then the article is neutral.
  • Ergo, if reliable sources favor market efficiency over fairness, and the article gives a different impression (e.g., I insert my editorial bias in favor of fairness), then the article is not neutral.
This feels to me like the sort of simple logic exercise that you'd give a student – "neutral is to proportionate representation as economics article is to preferring market efficiency over fairness" – so I'm not sure why anyone would disagree, or what they think NPOV means, if it doesn't mean getting the proportions right. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:25, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
If you say that it is properly defined, then there is nothing to discuss. If you want to change the policy, I refuse to make this depends on a discussion between only the few editors that are interested to follow this very long repetitive discussion. Dominic Mayers (talk) 10:57, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
In fact, I do say that when the opening sentence of a policy contains the words "a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means...", that this policy is providing an actual, proper definition of what it means for an article to be neutral. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:57, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
The first section Explanation is there to explain what NPOV is. I feel there is some kind of mismatch between the lede lead, especially its first sentence, and that first section. I expressed this concern right at the start of that very long discussion. However, because an already long and complex process with many edits over many years led to that first sentence, I do not want to pursue this. I am happy that we agree to keep the lede lead as it is, for the time being. Dominic Mayers (talk) 22:18, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

The sky is blue

Discussion close with many people in favour of "The sky is blue" despite arguments against it
Summary
Main argument in favour: "The sky is blue" is something obviously true, even without sources, etc. It is "a metaphor for a widely uncontested statement". This captures well the essence of "facts" in the rule "Avoid stating facts as opinions."

Main argument against it: Being obviously true fails totally to capture the essence of "facts" in the rule "Avoid stating facts as opinions". Instead, the rule is about the trust we have in facts that come from experts in a domain. For example, the rule applies as well to the statement "The Normandie is depicted twice in Tintin comics." It is not at all in itself obviously true, but we have no reason not to trust the experts. We should avoid doubting experts in reliable sources for no reason: that is the essence of the rule. If we have some reason to doubt the statement or the attribution is interesting for some other reason, then the attribution is fine.

Dominic Mayers (talk) 02:06, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't think "the sky is blue" is, by itself, a good example of anything. Some articles might explain why the sky is blue and thus indirectly state that the sky is blue, but that is different from the point of view "the sky is blue" by itself. I don't think we can find a source that presents that point of view by itself. Nobody will want to present that point of view by itself in a Wikipedia article either. And, if someone would want to do that, I feel I will be justified to ask for a source, not to verify the truth of that point of view, but to justify its pertinence as a stand alone point of view. One might counter argue that the idea is only to have a simple example to explain a principle, but there are many practical simple examples that can be used to explain the same principle without the drawbacks of "the sky is blue". Here is one that comes to my mind, because I recently read List of boats in The Adventures of Tintin, but better simpler examples could easily be found. The example is " The Normandie is depicted twice in Tintin comics." There is no "According to ... " before and it is not needed, because it is implicit that it is the POV of reliable sources on Tintin. Adding "According to ..." will not add any important information. It will not help put the statement in a better perspective. This example has the further advantage that it distinguishes between the need for verifiability and the need to avoid presenting a POV as a fact: the need for verifiability is still applicable in this example as usual, only the need to avoid presenting a POV as a fact is not applicable. This is good, because only the latter is the concern of NPOV. Dominic Mayers (talk) 16:00, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

In Wikipedia "Sky is blue" is widely understood as a term / metaphor for a widely uncontested statement. (so we stay out of the weeds of discussing nightime sky etc.) The only place it's mentioned in this policy is to say to not to add wording that implies that an uncontested statement is contested. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 17:01, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
Actually, it is used to illustrate avoid stating facts as opinions, which applies also to facts that are not a priori obvious and require reliable sources. So, "the sky is blue" gives the false impression that we refer to facts that do not even require sources, which is a completely different thing, not to mention that it does not illustrate anything realistic. This is important because anything like that, which is not centered on the point to be made, is an open door to misuse the policy. There is also that it goes against a key aspect of neutrality, which is that we want to be more informative, give the arguments, etc, so be more interesting, not less, and "the sky is blue" is completely the opposite of that. Dominic Mayers (talk) 17:26, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
Slight quibble - “the sky is blue” is used as an example of a fact that has so MANY reliable sources that support it, that actually citing one of those sources is pointless. It is so easy to verify and so unlikely to be challenged that we don’t bother. Another example is “The capitol city of France is Paris”. Blueboar (talk) 17:46, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
Yes, we can say that many sources support it, but yet I challenge you to find a single source that presents that point of view by itself. You will find sources that explain why the sky is blue, etc. but that is different. In any case, a way more important issue is that so much support in sources is not even a requirement for the point being made. For example, "The Normandie is depicted twice in Tintin comics." has very few sources and yet it should not be presented as the point of view of X or Y or Z. Dominic Mayers (talk) 18:35, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
IMO it has the brief narrow place in this policy that I described, not the broad range of concepts and situations that you are commenting on. North8000 (talk) 18:22, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
@North8000:, but I am simply referring to the title Avoid stating facts as opinions. of the small paragraph in which it is used. You mean, perhaps, that the specific phrase has switched to another consideration, but that would be a problem with that small paragraph. Dominic Mayers (talk) 18:38, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
The title is brief and thus interpret-able much more broadly than the specific content. And the specific content is what uses the "sky is blue" term. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 19:14, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
But even the next sentence goes back to the rule that is broadly expressed in that brief title: "no need for specific attribution for the assertion", which has nothing to do with an extreme support in many sources. Even a fact that is not a priori obvious, such as "The Normandie is depicted twice in Tintin comics", do not need to be attributed. So, I don't get your point. The use of "the sky is blue" is really not respecting the whole point of the small paragraph and it has also the other drawbacks that I mentioned. In particular, it is the opposite of a point of view with an added context to provide a perspective. It is just not a content that we will find by itself in an article. Why not use a concrete practical example? What is the problem? Dominic Mayers (talk) 20:33, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
I am taking a structural view of the tiny use that this term has in this policy and saying that it's a term (not an example) in that context and that the usage here is not problematic. You are having broader conversations and not understanding my narrow structural one for what it is. North8000 (talk) 22:01, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
I admit that you lost me here. Of course, I am considering the full sentence "the sky is blue" as an example, not as a term. This is sad. There is no discussion possible, if we do not agree that "the sky is blue" is a full sentence used as an example that does not need attribution. Dominic Mayers (talk) 00:12, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
I know that I'm being abstract-structural so maybe we shouldn't worry about it. But the two possibilities are 1. "An unquestioned synonym/metaphor for "something that everybody agrees is a true". 2. A description of an example statement. I'm seeing it as #1, you are seeing it as #2. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 02:01, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
It's both, and the advantage of using "The sky is blue" is that it requires no knowledge of science, sources, history, etc. It applies to all human beings, regardless of education or lack of same. It's the perfect example of "something that everybody agrees is true". All it requires is eyes and an understanding of the meanings of "sky" and "blue". Even the most uninformed cannibal in the jungles of Borneo will agree that "The sky is blue." Choice of another term/example would probably only work with a subset of people, not all people. "The sky is blue" has universal validity. I can't think of a better example/term than "The sky is blue", so there is no need to change anything here. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 05:51, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
You miss the point that people will see that it is a statement that is true for every body, etc., just as you say, and this is the problem, because they might think that is a requirement for the rule and that's not true at all. If it was only that, I could live with it, because it is a typical problem with many simple examples that are used to illustrate a point. It's worst than that, because it is also, as I repeated many times, not a realistic example at all. No source nor any Wikipedia article will state "the sky is blue" by itself. If you present an unrealistic example not at all connected to the reality in Wikipedia and in sources, it helps people to misuse the rule. I can see people pushing their own personal "obvious" truth and say "no we don't need to attribute it, using that example: we do not attribute the "sky is blue". They will argue that the extreme case "the sky is blue" is there to illustrate their particular statement. The general point is that going too far in one direction to support a case does not really help that case. With realistic concrete examples of what the rule really means, it is less easy to misuse it. Dominic Mayers (talk) 16:43, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
"The sky is blue" is a useful stand-in for knowledge—about which there is no reasonable doubt—that we can expect the vast majority of readership to hold. "The Normandie is depicted twice in Tintin comics" would not serve as well as such a stand-in. In the context of this subsection of the policy, it would be a neutrality problem to see "According to FactsAboutTheSky.com, the sky is blue", whereas "According to FactsAboutTintin.com, the Normandie is depicted twice in Tintin comics" would be fine. I wouldn't object to a shift to something like "The capital of France is Paris" as an example, but I'm not seeing any issue with the status quo. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 19:47, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
I understand what is the purpose of "the sky is blue" and yes attributing that kind of statements is weird, but my point is that this example is going too far because it will also never appear as a point of view by itself in sources or in a Wikipedia article; no source or article will say "the sky is blue" by itself. The statement "The capital of France is paris" is much better. The reason why I dislike these uninteresting and not informative examples is that they illustrate the opposite of NPOV, which requires that we add context, arguments, etc. on points of view. But, OK, I cannot argue so much against "Paris is the capital of France", because it is a practical and realistic example. I also understand that it is clearer that we must avoid attribution in that case than in the case of "the Normandie is depicted twice in Tintin comics". It fails to express that we must avoid attribution in the case of much less known facts as well, which is a point in favour of "the Normandie ..."[1], but that is typical of examples: they can not cover every thing. Dominic Mayers (talk) 22:08, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Does this stem from the frequent confusion between attribution referring to WP:INTEXT attribution, e.g. "according to XYZ, ..." versus attribution using citations for verifiability? Otherwise, I'm not sure I understand what is the suggested improvement.—Bagumba (talk) 01:21, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

There is a link, because if you make that confusion, you cannot appreciate the point being made. The discussion above just builds up to having a better example to illustrate the small paragraph avoid stating facts as opinions, which is about attribution. Currently, we use "The sky is blue" as an example and there is the proposal "Paris is the capital of France", which I support. I hate "the sky is blue", because it is not realistic at all. No source nor any Wikipedia article will state by itself "the sky is blue". It is much better to use a practical and realistic example. I would even support "the Normandie is depicted twice in Tintin comics". It has the advantage to bring out that we should even avoid attributing such a simple facts. It does not appear so bad at first, but some people could question the purpose of that explicit attribution and it would be a serious problem if we started to attribute these simple facts too often. In contrast, "the sky is blue" totally fails to bring out the broad applicability of the rule. Regarding that confusion, indeed "the Normandie is depicted twice in Tintin comics" requires a source, whereas "the sky is blue", if it was ever stated by itself, would not. But, as you say, this is unrelated. If anything, the example "the Normandie ..." can help remove that confusion. Dominic Mayers (talk) 08:05, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Notes

  1. ^ I believe that we should avoid attribution in the case of "the Normandie is depicted twice in Tintin comics" as well: some people could question the purpose of that attribution. Besides, it would make no sense to start attributing all facts of this kind. Therefore, that statement cover cases that are not covered by "Paris is the capital of France"

Of course, reopen this discussion if you are in favour of and have arguments for something else than "the sky is blue" as an example in the small paragraph avoid stating facts as opinions. Otherwise, it is the status quo. I added a summary inside for those interested. Dominic Mayers (talk) 17:26, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Without further arguing for or against any example, I wish to make a connection between this section and the previous one. The idea of the rule "Avoid stating facts as opinions" is very much in line with the concern expressed in the previous section. It says that, we should not doubt or relativise as mere opinions the facts established by reliable sources. These facts do not have to be obviously true like "the sky is blue". For example, establishing "the usefulness of vaccines" required studies. The personal experience of one individual and what he can learn by looking at his family and friends is certainly not sufficient to conclude that it is obviously true. It is only because of the scientific studies in reliable sources that we do not doubt or relativise the purpose of vaccines. Therefore, this rule is all about reliable sources, just as in the example "the Normandie is depicted twice in Tintin comics". Dominic Mayers (talk) 12:30, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

"Editorial perspective"

Dominic Mayers, you keep mentioning "perspective" above, and to keep from further getting off-topic there, I've created this new thread where we can discuss what you consider the proper "editorial perspective". This is an important topic, and very relevant to this page. A good discussion can help all of us to refine our understandings of NPOV. I don't know anyone who fully understands NPOV. It's complicated! Just like the Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, we are always modifying and improving this policy. It was never complete or perfect from the beginning.

Here are a few pull quotes of your comments above:

  1. "the requirement to put points of view in perspective using examples"
  2. "to put them in perspective as required by neutrality in Wikipedia"
  3. "an encyclopedic neutral perspective"
  4. "a proper understanding of the importance of an editorial perspective"
  5. "NPOV might appear as "whitewashing", but that is exactly what taking a perspective means."
  6. "Again, the point being made is that NPOV does not mean at all that one must accept to present the POV of a majority even if it is unpleasant. This is almost the opposite of neutrality, because, as illustrated here, the required perspective can make the neutral point of view very much different from any point of view in sources."
  7. "Filtering sources is not always adequate or possible and this is often a source of polemic, because the majority does not want to be relativized even a little bit by a minority. The majority will have more weight, but an understanding of the neutral encyclopedic point of view is absolutely necessary to properly understand the issue."

Please elaborate on what you mean by "perspective", "filtering sources", "relativized", "neutral encyclopedic point of view", and use the numbers when relevant.

Your comments do not convince me that you can do this without sometimes using OR and SYNTHESIS. My view is that we are not supposed to use our "perspective" when it differs from what RS say and the bias they reveal, especially the majority of RS. We should not be using our perspective to pull RS over to our POV/bias about what is the neutral, totally unbiased, center. Instead, we should move our POV over to where RS stand. That is the proper bias to adopt as neutral editing because it is the bias of most RS.

To illustrate the proper "editorial neutrality" attitude we must adopt, let's use Trump's rich history of lying, specifically his Big Lie of a stolen election. Then we must determine where most of the RS stand on the matter. Note that any position other than "neutral" is a left-wing or right-wing biased position. (The truth is rarely "neutral", and not all bias is bad.)

True <-- 1 <-- 2 <-- 3 <-- 4 <-- 5 <-- Neutral --> 6 --> 7 --> 8 --> 9 --> 10 --> False

They all gather right over at 10, a correctly biased determination that his claims are indeed massively false. You'll find very few reliable sources saying he's telling the truth about election integrity and the elections, and those RS are not the factual ones, just prominent right-wing ones, like Fox News. Yet, many people and editors feel we should be "neutral" and "follow NPOV" by writing our content about this subject by taking the neutral, middle, position, IOW present a false balance.

That's not the proper application of NPOV. Instead, editors should move their POV to where the majority of RS are gathered, over at 10. The truth is that he's lying, and any editor who says otherwise reveals their inexcusable ignorance. We should faithfully describe the biased position of the RS all the way over there at 10. That is the neutral way to describe the topic. Anything else makes Wikipedia a party to supporting his lies and deceiving readers.

There are a number of topics that are very clearly documented and factually clarified: Climate change, Vaccine misinformation, False or misleading statements by Donald Trump, Trump's "Big Lie" of a stolen election, Russian interference in the 2016 election, etc. Experienced editors who reveal their doubts about these topics are revealing their inexcusable ignorance, fringe views, and dependence on unreliable sources. They are incompetent to edit these topics because they reveal they are unable to vet the quality of sources. They believe the lies from their unreliable sources, and they bring that attitude here. It corrupts all they do and say, and they waste a lot of time on talk pages.

You seem to be advocating that we put an editorial "perspective finger" on the scale of balance, thus creating a false balance that tips the balance away from what the majority of RS say. We should not use our perspective to move things so they are more "pleasant". Editors should keep their own "unpleasant" feelings (about having to move their own misguided opinions to a new position in line with what RS say) to themselves and do the unpleasant task of faithfully documenting POV they formerly did not believe.

Even if an editor foolishly refuses to bring their own POV into line with the evidence/RS, they should at least maintain "editorial neutrality" by not allowing their false POV to affect their editing. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:27, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

I am not sure this is the place for such a discussion. Once we have something precise to propose, we can come back here. I will try a bit to have such a discussion with you and we will see how it goes. I propose that we do it in the talk page of the essay Wikipedia:NPOV means neutral editing, not neutral content, because it seems that it is also what you wish to discuss. If you move your comment from here to this talk page, I will discuss there. Otherwise, I will only say that you misinterpret me and this is not pleasant and will not add anything to that. Dominic Mayers (talk) 17:45, 6 May 2024 (UTC)


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