The press concentrate on the wiki method and editability as the most
amazing thing about Wikipedia.
But I think NPOV is possibly a more important innovation. Other
sources aim to explain the view they hold or to be authoritative; NPOV
describes the views and has whatever authority that confers.
I'm sorely lacking in snappy quotes, though. I ask your assistance:
Explain NPOV in a sentence.
Two sentences if you have to. But we need something that's not only
accurate and complete, but shows it's obviously the right thing once
explained.
This is what I said in an email interview a few months ago. Note it's
horribly long-winded because I couldn't think of a short way to put
it. Your suggestions are most welcomed.
"One of the keys to Wikipedia's success in my mind is the Neutral Point
of View. I think this is actually our 'secret sauce.' Rather than
advocate something or hold it to be the Truth (capital T), it tries to
describe views of the truth per their relevance. This is an editorial
judgement call, and perfect neutrality is of course an unachievable
goal, but I do think it provides a good editorial compass for us. And
neutral-point-of-view writing on subjects seems to be drastically
rare. That's something Wikipedia does that no-one else in fact has as
a key goal. One of my specialist subjects is Scientology (I am
apparently what passes for an expert critic) and there's nearly no
neutral writing on the subject outside Wikipedia - critical sites are
detailed but really impassioned, Church sites are low-key but miss
lots of stuff the critics consider important; the coverage in
Wikipedia, by writing neutrally with high-quality and verifiable
references, is often very good. It's far from perfect, but it's an
interesting thing we do, other than the wiki work method, that is
actually *new*. NPOV is basically how 20,000 active editors with
wildly divergent views can keep from being at each others' throats.
(Most of the time ;-)"
- d.