User:Chameleon/NPOV

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[edit] My take on NPOV

NPOV is a pragmatic policy. Its primary aim is to allow people of differing views to come together and collaborate in a way that creates high-quality, balanced articles. Not everyone sees this the same way. There are two main extremes: a) those who don't care about NPOV at all and will do anything to skew the project towards their often crazy views; b) those who elevate NPOV to near-religious status, and make the error of considering it to be an end in itself rather than a means to creating an outstanding encyclopaedia.

I disagree with both attitudes, and think that a position in between the two makes sense. It seems to me that the first attitude is rather politically incorrect on Wikipedia, and therefore I don't need to criticise it. Everyone accepts that it is wrong. Instead, let's talk about the second attitude. Examples of it include:

Wikipedia is ruled by several loose cliques (sometimes hyperbolically referred to as "the Cabal") and sub-cliques. For example, whenever certain users wish to push their pro-Israel POV on a given article, they write to users who they know will step in and give an illusion of community support for their edits. Ideally, nobody would ever do this, but it is unfortunately necessary in order to counter the efforts of others. If, for example, a editor brings in several fellow racists to deliberately skew an article, Wikipedians interested in improving rather than worsening the project may be forced to write to each other to bring in support.

This is a regretable trend, but sensible Wikipedians can do very little about it. I myself have had to write messages on people's talk pages asking them to take a look at an article. One difference between people acting in good faith and those acting in bad faith is the language used in such messages. Someone acting in bad faith knows they are doing so, and will therefore avoid honest language such as "please come and revert article X to the good version, because I have already done so three times"; they will instead say something like "please take a look at article X". Of course, only a fool could read such a message and really think that it is an invitation to have a look at the article because it's a good riveting read. It is crystal clear that both messages have the same objective, but a dishonest person knows instinctively how to phrase such messages. Moreover, if even those messages were banned, they would just resort to sending them via private e-mail or chat.

A person acting in good faith runs the risk of being honest about why he is asking someone to have a look at an article, and it does not occur to an honest person to send messages privately, because he knows he is doing nothing underhand, and therefore cannot imagine that anyone else could interpret his actions negatively. This is a monumental error. I myself have been bemused by being accused of "gaming the 3RR rule" for my occasional use of a support request, whilst witnessing users whose main tactic is gaming the 3RR rule get away with zero criticism simply by using dishonest language.

In conclusion, sensible Wikipedians who edit in good faith, and whose minds are not tainted by bizarre, hateful ideologies, need to adopt these tactics. We have to face up to the fact that a couple of right-wingers can only revert an article a total of six times before violating the three-revert rule. Ten good users each committed to reverting just once can easily overcome this and more. By working together, we can stamp out certain instances of POV-pushing.

For example, User:Racist edits an article so that it includes a long rants claiming that black people are scum. User:Chamaeleon changes it to a short, referenced summary of that belief. User:Racist reverts to the racist version a further two times, and User:Chamaeleon reverts to the NPOV version a further two times. User:Bigot steps in to make more reverts. User:Chamaeleon calls on the community, and a few neutral/progressive people come in and revert the racist cabal. With any luck, one of the racists goes one revert over the 3RR and gets himself blocked. We've won — i.e. Wikipedia is better (our aim), rather than worse (their aim).

Simultaneously of course, there are efforts on the talk page to reason with them. This scenarios assumes that this doesn't work.

Let me say that again, because some people skip lines: it goes without saying that the main way to resolve a dispute is by discussing it. This is a last resort.

In conclusion, in the absence of the possibility of eliminating all Wikipedia cliques, I suggest that the next best thing would be to balance out the existing cliques with a clique whose defining characteristic is that they want to make this project better. Call me crazy, but that is why I'm here. Yes, that's right: I'm not here to uphold "wiki" principles (what sort of sad geek would have that as a principle?); I'm not here to worship policy (adherence is one thing; worship, another); I'm not here to skew articles so that groups I belong to are only positively represented (I could make a mile-long list of people like that). I'm here to make an outstanding encyclopaedia. Who wants to join me?

I believe that having a certain POV (in the literal sense of a point of view, not the derogatory Wikipedia sense of "desire to skew things to one's point of view") actually helps people edit in a good way, an NPOV way and an encyclopaedic way. I know that this is Wiki-heresy, but hear me out.

For example, take one user who believes the world is flat, and another who believes it is round. I would personally trust the round-earther more with the task of writing in a sensible, neutral fashion about geography, astronomy and the like. Wouldn't anyone? Similarly, I would expect rabid racists to be rather bad editors on topics such as ethnicity, immigration, and minority languages. I would prefer an anti-racist. Now, this doesn't mean that a round-earther or anti-racist is immune to bad writing or representing only one point of view. Far from it. A round-earther might be too dismissive of the flat-earth view, and not fairly represent it as a perfectly rational view back in the times before certain scientific discoveries. An anti-racist might censor statistics showing a lower average intelligence for an ethnic group, out of the wishful thinking that says that if we are all equal, then we must all be the same. But the fact remains that I would still trust the round-earther and the anti-racist more than the flat-earther and the neo-Nazi. Some people are just wrong and some people are just right. Yes, again that is heresy, but it actually reflects a far deeper understanding of NPOV than that of people who blithely claims that all points of view are equally valid.

If you understand everything I have just written, you may be wondering what other opinions I have apart from the Earth being round and racism being bad. Well, here are some "biases":

  • Bad stuff: racism, inequality, profits before people, religion, obscurantism, environmental damage, deception, bad faith, homelessness, slavery, irrational behaviour, fascism, etc.
  • Good stuff: liberty, knowledge, truth, solidarity, mutual aid, reason, equality, free expression, accuracy, respect, science used for the common good, reason, etc.

As most people, I actually can't really imagine having other views. I mean, how could anyone be against freedom and reason? Anyway, it's not that Wikipedia must push the idea that fascism is bad etc, but rather that such conclusions will inevitably be arrived at by people reading accurate, truthful, information-packed, sensible-written, unskewed articles. We don't need to say "Hitler was a very bad man", "inequality needs to be fought", "religion is really stupid"; such conclusions come naturally from factual articles. The main danger to be avoided is POV-pushers coming along and removing facts because they don't like them (e.g. Holocaust deniers messing up our WWII coverage) or flooding articles with weird accusations (e.g. David Icke followers including conspiracy theories about reptilian beings in random articles, or David Horowitz followers messing up our coverage of Jewish American scholar Noam Chomsky with accusations that he hates Jews, or Americans, or scholars, or whatever this month's wacky theory is.

So, what is to be done? If you are struggling for a factual, NPOV article, just let me know, and I'll step into the debate. And if you see me in a similar situation, please also lend a hand. Simple as that.