[WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content

Sat Mar 26 23:42:09 UTC 2005

slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:

>Tom Haws takes the view that NPOV means articles must reflect popular
>opinion, not scholarly opinion. For several weeks, Tom has been
>arguing that the introduction of the article [[Human]] must reflect
>religious beliefs (that e.g. human beings have souls and were created
>in the image of God), and not simply biological and anthropological
>ones (that we are bipedal primates who engage in extensive tool use
>and live in complex societies). While no editor on that page disputes
>that religious views be discussed in the article, a number of us do
>argue that these views have no place in the introduction.
>  
>
I don't see why it wouldn't be appropriate to mention these in the 
introduction.  To a vast majority of the world's population, including a 
number of its philosophers who have specifically considered the 
question, the main distinguishing feature of humans is not "bipedal 
primates who engage in extensive tool use and live in complex 
societies", any more than "have two ears" or "have fingernails" are 
their main distinguishing features.

If we were discussing an article specifically on the biological species 
[[Homo sapiens]], I could see that viewpoint, but the article on 
[[human]] must encompass, both in the body and the introduction, much 
more than merely the biological definition of the species.

-Mark