[Wikipedia-l] Re: MT and pro-Catholic bias

Wed Oct 22 08:55:24 UTC 2003

On 21 Oct 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:

> In spite of repeated charges to this effect, there has never been any
> substantial NPOV criticism of the Mother Teresa article.

That depends on what you call NPOV. It is well known that the POV of a
newspaper is as much clear in _what_ it writes about as in _how_ it writes
about those. And to spend more of the article about criticism on Mother
Theresa than on the facts of her life and positive statements together is
extremely POV.

> Instead, some
> people have argued that 20K of criticism should be split away to a
> separate page. Fred argues that a splitup needs to be enforced to retain
> the "aura of holiness" around MT and that not doing so is "mean spirited".
> It's funny how this kind of pro-Catholic bias is considered acceptable by
> many.

No, I do not find it acceptable. That's clearly POV. Now satisfied?

> All I want is for MT to be treated like any other person on Wikipedia.

The current article is clearly NOT doing that. Wikipedia is now spending
more room on the criticism about Mother Theresa than that about Adolf Hitler,
in an otherwise much shorter article.

> It is not our duty, moral or otherwise, to uphold any kind of fiction to
> avoid disturbing our readers. We may use some articles from them, but
> Wikipedia does not use the same editorial policies as the Catholic
> Encyclopedia. Our policy is NPOV, and that policy is applicable to all
> people, places and things.

And that is what this is all about. NPOV. Apparently your NPOV is not my
NPOV, nor that of several others here. Let's talk about that. Which NPOV
are we taking?

Andre Engels