User:Coppertwig/NPOV

This is a draft, and at best gives Coppertwig's opinions about NPOV; I may change it later.

The phrase neutral point of view (NPOV) can have various meanings. One is the meaning it has in the NPOV policy, which, to avoid ambiguity, I refer to here as Wikipedia voice NPOV (WV-NPOV). Another meaning is the neutral point of view taken by a mediator or other person who is recusing themself from forming or expressing a personal opinion on a matter; I'll call this Abstention NPOV (A-NPOV). A third type of neutral point of view which I will call Compromise NPOV (C-NPOV) means taking a position on a content dispute or other Wikipedian matter which is intermediate between the positions of two or more other points of view being expressed in a discussion.

Wikipedia Voice neutral-point-of-view

The Wikipedia voice neutral-point-of-view (WV-NPOV) is the POV taken by the narrator of all Wikipedia articles and is described in the neutral point of view policy. This is the point of view which accepts as fact those things which are not in serious dispute within the published literature. So a Wikipedia article can state, "Paris is the capital of France," and does not need to use a prose attribution such as "Hunter's Almanac lists Paris as the capital of France"; it simply asserts it as a fact. For all other statements, the WV-NPOV does not take a position that they are true or false, but merely states that a certain source has asserted the statements.

The WV-NPOV involves not only the assertion of statements with or without prose attribution, but also the relative weight or prominence given to different views. Even if something is stated only indirectly, stating it or devoting a significant amount of space or prominence to it in an article tends to lend it an air of legitimacy. The relative prominence given to each view by the WV-NPOV is allocated in such a way as to reflect the relative prominence in the reliable sources. The WV-NPOV is a point of view, one which gives more prominence to some views than to others. Views held by a tiny minority are not mentioned at all except in articles devoted to describing those views, such as Flat Earth.

In a sense, there is only one WV-NPOV. However, due to different interpretations of policy of of the application of policy to given situations, different people will have different opinions at times as to what exactly the WV-NPOV would say on a given issue or how it would say it. These POVs likely do not tend to differ as radically and in most cases can be reconciled fairly easily as compared to differing views on subject matter such as whether God exists or not, which are unlikely to be resolved in a Wikipedian content discussion. It's much easier to find a way to agree on how to say "this source says this and that source says that" than it would be to agree on whether to say "this is true" or "that is true".

So we can think of WV-NPOV as a single POV from which all Wikipedia articles are written, or we can think of it as a collection of many similar but not identical viewpoints which different Wikipedians assume when writing articles.

Abstention neutral-point-of-view

The Abstention neutral-point-of-view (A-NPOV) is not a point of view on the subject matter, but rather it is a point of view about something Wikipedians need to take action on, usually an article content issue such as whether a given sentence will be included in an article or not. The A-NPOV is, in a sense, not a point of view at all but an absence of point of view. It is the stance taken by someone who refuses to take a position on an issue. This is the point of view taken by mediators who do not express an opinion but discuss the opinions of the people whose disputes they are mediating. Someone is expressing an A-NPOV when they say things like "either version is fine with me" or "I've no opinion on the matter." Someone who is expected to show impartiality, such as a judge in a courtroom, will take an A-NPOV on matters related to a situation, and refrain from making explicit statements about personal views on those matters. Someone who is formally mediating will take an A-NPOV, called being "neutral".

I believe it's the A-NPOV which is meant at WP:WQA where it says "Please strive for neutrality and focus first on calming tempers where discussions have become heated."

When several editors are working on an article and a dispute arises among some of them, other editors might temporarily and informally take an A-NPOV and act as mediators to help them work out the problem. This can happen naturally without the parties explicitly thinking of themselves as being mediators or as being neutral.

Compromise neutral-point-of-view

The Compromise neutral-point-of-view (C-NPOV), like the A-NPOV, is in the domain of content disputes and other Wikipedian decisions. It is a point of view; or actually it is a collection of points of view, since there are many different situations in which compromises can take place and often multiple possibilities for what those compromises are. The C-NPOV can be considered to be a single POV which is a approach to situations that whenever one sees a disagreement one takes an intermediate position.

For example, suppose one editor insists that a section should be one paragraph long and another editor insists on three paragraphs, and each says their argument is based on policy and that the other person's argument is not properly based on policy. The obvious C-POV is to ask for two paragraphs, though there are other positions such as two short paragraphs, two long paragraphs, three short paragraphs, one long paragraph, etc. Someone stepping into a dispute and promoting such a solution is likely to be able to form a consensus version of the disputed article content. Someone taking a mediator-like role might make it in the form of a suggestion: "How about two paragraphs?" or they might look for reasons to make it exactly two paragraphs, and if they can honestly support such a position, they can argue, "actually, it should be exactly two paragraphs because ..." and again are likely to form a consensus with the other editors, who might or might not have formed a compromise between them without the intervention of someone with an intermediate POV. I call C-NPOV a neutral POV because it is at neither one extreme nor the other. If the POV is to merely suggest, rather than argue in favour of, the compromise version then it has an additional quality of neutrality, somewhat like the A-NPOV though not the same level of neutrality. A related concept is a stance of being ready to suggest compromises whenever disputes arise; this is essentially the same thing repeated in a series of situations and can also be referred to as a C-NPOV.

Respecting others' opinions

If we had to choose between articles that said e.g. "God exists" or "God doesn't exist", edit wars and content disputes would be far worse and we'd never agree. It's far, far easier to agree on an article that says something like "Author A says that God exists, while author B says that God does not exist". However, people with different points of view will still find things to disagree about: which one is mentioned first? Does the word "while" seem to downgrade one of the statements? Does one of them deserve greater weight based on its weight in the reliable sources?

Wikipedia is about getting along with people who have very different points of view: about subject matter, about what an NPOV article on a particular subject should look like, and about what exactly the proper procedures to be followed are.

It helps if editors make a paradigm shift from position A to position B:

• A: The situation is asymmetric: I'm right, and they're wrong.
• B: The situation is symmetric: I believe that I'm right and they're wrong, and they believe that they're right and I'm wrong.

I believe that to make this paradigm shift, one doesn't have to change one's views about the subject matter; and one doesn't have to change one's views about what a NPOV article should look like on a given subject; but one will tend to change one's views quite a lot about things like whether it was wrong for someone to make certain reverts to an article at certain times.

It's a matter of becoming more open-minded, more respectful of others' right to hold their opinions. It's a matter of "agreeing to disagree".

Neutral point of view in fringe articles

Articles on tiny-minority viewpoints are special cases in Wikipedia. In all other articles, different viewpoints are presented with prominence in proportion to their prominence in the reliable sources, and tiny minority viewpoints are not mentioned at all.

In the fringe articles, by contrast, the subject of the article is a tiny minority viewpoint itself and this viewpoint is mentioned and described. It has to be described, because it's the subject of the article. In the regular Wikipedia articles, the provision of a certain amount of space to a viewpoint tends to lend legitimacy to that viewpoint. In fringe articles, special care must be taken to ensure that the space given to the fringe viewpoint does not lend that viewpoint an undue degree of legitimacy. Techniques to avoid lending this undue degree of legitimacy include presenting critical quotes from mainstream scientists; a statement that there is an absence of scientific evidence; a statement that mainstream science rejects the theory. In combination, these work to decrease the chance that someone will get the impression that Wikipedia is implying that the theory is valid.

So what exactly is the Wikipedia voice for fringe articles? It is a voice which is no longer silent on the fringe theory but which strives to convey the same NPOV that is conveyed in other articles, in spite of having forgone that silence.

Previous misunderstandings

When the WV-NPOV leaves a minority viewpoint out of an article altogether, I confused this with the concept of assigning a zero probability to the viewpoint. Zero space in the article does not necessarily imply zero probability. So, when in the fringe articles the topic does get mentioned, it's probably not appropriate to use words such as "claim" which imply that the viewpoint is false. See Wikipedia talk:Words to avoid#"claim" in fringe articles.

In a fringe article, the fringe topic needs to be given a fair amount of space because that's what the article is about. The mainstream science perspective also needs some space. Personally, I don't like to see the fringe topic given less than half the space in the article devoted to that topic, unless there's a special reason such as very little encyclopedic information on the fringe topic being available, or a long, detailed explanation required in order to get across the mainstream science perspective. However, this preference for at least half of the space for the fringe topic has nothing to do with "undue weight" as defined in WP:NPOV, and I may have confused it with that in the past. Rather, it's a matter of relevance: the reader comes to Flat Earth expecting to read about a flat earth, so it wouldn't serve the reader to spend almost all the article talking about a round earth. Half or more of the space doesn't have to mean that the viewpoint is presented in a way which gives it legitimacy: techniques such as stating that the theory had been widely rejected can re-adjust the balance of legitimacy to the proper levels (i.e. very little weight for the fringe theory) while still giving considerable space to the fringe theory. Again, I may have confused this in the past.