[WikiEN-l] Israeli-Palestinian neutrality

Thu Jul 31 05:54:51 UTC 2003

Toby Bartels wrote:

>That's why interpreting NPOV as the middle ground is a big mistake.
>On articles such as these, it may be that we can /never/
>simply state anything as fact, if even basic facts are disputed.
>If everything in an article says ?X said Y about Z.?,
>then (assuming that it's undisputed that X did say that)
>partisans are unlikely to view the article as truly biased.
>(They may view it as unacceptable wishy-washy, but that's different.)
>OTOH, if /we/ say something about Z, then add ?But X said Y instead.?,
>then this can easily be viewed as biased against X.
>  
>
In doing this though, we really can't afford to be wishy-washy on 
absolutely *everything* if we hope to still be useful at all as an 
encyclopedia.  For example, we shouldn't have to preface every physics 
article with "is claimed by many/most physicists" to appease the fringe 
people, or to preface the Holocaust discussions with "is claimed by 
those who think the Holocaust happened" to appease the Holocaust 
deniers, and so on.

-Mark