I don't know. Sometimes expanding upon a policy or making clear how it
applies in certain cases can be clarifying. I find the current NPOV
FAQ section to be very helpful in discussing NPOV with people new to
it.
An alternative approach is to consider policy somewhat analogous to
case law. Without stating that all decisions are prescriptive towards
future decisions (I doubt anyone wants to pretend that Wikipedia
decision-making is anywhere near as pretentious about its universality
as the US court system pretends to be, though isn't), having a list of
"here's one issue that was relatively important, and here's how it was
satisfied to most people's satisfaction" might serve as a way of
defusing future conflicts.
There's an obvious appeal to having simple policies, but in many cases
that leads to a reinvention of the wheel many times over and some very
bitter disputes. Somewhere on a level near "guideline" could
potentially exist something like "here's how we thought about this
previously, this may or may not be applicable in the future" which
doesn't exist for the sheer purpose of shutting down discussion. (But
maybe in the end that's what policy is about anyhow, on some level.)
FF
On 8/27/06, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 27/08/06, Stephen Streater
<sbstreater(a)mac.com> wrote:
I agree the main NPOV article is the best place
to start (though I
couldn't resist the temptation to fix a couple of things anyway).
Otherwise we'll need separate sections for NPOV in animations,
diagrams, photographs, videos, B/W film, ...
And it'll need regular pruning per [[m:instruction creep]] - it's a
very bad place to blur the distinction between the policy and the
guidelines on implementing that policy. The policy is simple and hard
to argue, but some people unfortunately appear to consider they can
weasel past it if they add enough rubbish to the guidelines. Not that
I've seen it repeatedly.
- d.
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