User talk:Frescard/guidelines

Common Issues

NPOV

NPOV does not necessarily mean just one opinion or no opinion at all. That approach might work in non-controversial subjects. But when we are dealing with issues with contradicting opinions, and where it is impossible to find a position that both parties will agree on, the rule is to let both sides have their say: "The neutral point of view is a means of dealing with conflicting views. The policy requires that, where there are or have been conflicting views, these should be presented fairly, but not asserted. All significant published points of view are presented, not just the most popular one. It should not be asserted that the most popular view or some sort of intermediate view among the different views is the correct one. Readers are left to form their own opinions."

Unless a way is found to represent both sides of an issue in a Wikipedia article there will only be endless edit wars about what should or should not be included in it. This serves nobody, and therefore the policy is to let both sides speak, and have their position represented in the article.

I know, this is sometimes hard to accept with viewpoints that might be the opposite of your own, but it's one of the cornerstones of Wikipedia's policy, and the only way to make it work...

And, even though it's a bit long, here are two very valuable paragraphs from the NPOV guidelines that do a very good job at explaining the underlying philosophy:

To sum up the primary reason for this policy: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, a compilation of human knowledge. But because Wikipedia is a community-built, international resource, we cannot expect collaborators to agree in all cases, or even in many cases, on what constitutes knowledge in a strict sense. We can, therefore, adopt the looser sense of "human knowledge" according to which a wide variety of conflicting theories constitute what we call "knowledge." We should, both individually and collectively, make an effort to present these conflicting views fairly, without advocating any one of them, with the qualification that views held only by a tiny minority of people should not be represented as though they are significant minority views, and perhaps should not be represented at all.

There is another reason to commit ourselves to this policy. Namely, when it is clear to readers that we do not expect them to adopt any particular opinion, this leaves them free to make up their minds for themselves, thus encouraging intellectual independence. Totalitarian governments and dogmatic institutions everywhere might find reason to be opposed to Wikipedia, if we succeed in adhering to our non-bias policy: the presentation of many competing theories on a wide variety of subjects suggests that we, the editors of Wikipedia, trust readers' competence to form their own opinions. Texts that present multiple viewpoints fairly, without demanding that the reader accept any one of them, are liberating. Neutrality subverts dogmatism, and nearly everyone working on Wikipedia can agree this is a good thing. --Frescard

Weasel Words

Weasel words give the illusion of impartial statements, where in reality, they are just a rhetorical tool:
For example, "Montreal is the nicest city in the world," is a biased or normative statement. Application of a weasel word can give the illusion of neutral point of view: "Some people say Montreal is the nicest city in the world."

Although this is an improvement, since it no longer states the opinion as fact, it remains uninformative:

• Who says that? You?
• When did they say it? now?
• How many people think that? Just how many is "some"? "most"??
• What kind of people think that? Where are they?
• What kind of bias might they have?
• Why is this of any significance?

Links

Only insert links to articles that have immediate relevance to the current article.
This might be an unusual term, a biography of a relevant person, or articles that give further background information to the issue at hand.
Don't link to another article, just because an article on that particular word exists (i.e. An article on elephants might contain the sentence "Elephants have rather large ears". It would be pointless to link to the ears article, as it wouldn't have any further information on elephant ears in particular.)
The general rule of thumb: If in doubt, then leave it out...