Erik Moeller wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
>I know there was some discussion about NPOV and
textbooks awhile back,
>but I really should make clear that I think that discussion wound up
>with a definitive answer: under the Wikimedia Foundation, everything
>we do is required to be NPOV.
I believe the consensus was that textbooks should be
written from the
"POV" of experts on the subject in question.
Back in the early days, mav was pushing for DPOV "discipline POV".
But even he agreed that NPOV, together with focussed content, was sufficient.
To be sure, I haven't been paying good attention recently,
so perhaps some other consensus was reached a while later.
But I for one would oppose and "expert POV" even more than DPOV --
since the latter is (IMO) merely a different name for NPOV + focus,
while EPOV favours the opinions of certain /people/ or others, a bad idea.
So, for example, a textbook
about evolution would not include a Kansas-style disclaimer because the
creationism POV is largely irrelevant among experts on evolution. It might
include a short segment about the controversy, but would probably tend to
end with something like "There is virtually universal agreement among
biologists that .."
That is a perfectly NPOV statement anyway, so what's the problem?
Wikibooks could, in my opinion, be somewhat more
expert-centric than pure
NPOV would allow. In case of controversies, we should try to decide
whether this is a legitimate controversy among experts on the subject, or
whether we are dealing with "crackpot" theories which have no place in
serious textbooks. On Wikipedia, we would always try to include the
opposite POV, if only as a link to a separate page. On Wikibooks, we may
sometimes have to decide to remove it entirely.
This is determined by the /focus/ of a textbook on specific content.
For example, a book on Einstein's theory of gravitation (general relativity)
need not mention the quite respectable -- but also decidedly minority --
Dicke-Brans-Jordan theory of gravitation, much less any random crackpottery.
At best, a GR text could compare GR to DBJ in a section on experimental tests;
but even there, only experimentally tested crackpot theories (that is, none)
will be able to slip in. (I switch to physics for my own familiarity.)
Still, when the evolution textbook makes passing mention of creationism,
it can link to the Wikipedia article on that topic, or that controversy.
In this way, we avoid the "bias of inclusion", since Wikipedia covers all.
It is because Wikipedia does this that Wikibooks can have focussed content
without allowing any bias to come in. Thus, NPOV + limited scope.
-- Toby