Attempts at NPOV will never cause more than heated arguments at worst for any topic in WP except for one area - biographies of living people. Therefore it seems to me that the statement "we do NPOV everywhere without exception" may warrant re-examination. You could have pretty much any policy in place (even "every article must begin with the words, <subject> is a paedophile") and you wouldn't get sued, and you wouldn't cause any major harm (except possibly to students doing last minute revision for an exam on Queen Victoria) - except for biographies of living people. What I'm getting at is that saying "NPOV works everywhere else, it must work here" is not self evident. We must be really, really sure that both the ideal of NPOV and its actual implementation in wikipedia by real-life, fallible editors, actually work for living bios, now that wikipedia is becoming big enough and famous enough to actually matter to the Seigenthalers of the world. Steve

On 12/19/05, David Gerard &lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I haven't looked at the proposal for a few hours so I don't know what it currently says, but when I wrote it, I was aiming for "empathetic point of view," not sympathetic. But I take your point about NPOV, David. I tried to make it clear that NPOV applies to biographies as much as to any other type of article. But I'd like to add that it may be misleading to say that NPOV is the number one policy on the site. And please don't everyone throw up your hands in horror. The NPOV and NOR policies work together, but if one of them has to be prioritized, I would argue that it's NOR. For example, supposing a well-known nun and aid worker dies. All she had ever done was help people in developing countries and we have countless newspaper articles about that. Let's suppose we can't find a single word of criticism about her, and let's further suppose she worked independently and not for any of the usual aid agencies that are often criticized. Because lots of editors focus on the centrality of NPOV, they feel they have to include a criticism from somewhere, anywhere, and you end up with an article that reads like this: "Jane Doe (born 1938) was a Roman Catholic nun and aid worker, described by the New York Times as 'the embodiment of Christ on earth.' The Roman Catholic church has been heavily criticized for the willingness of its followers to interfere in the affairs of the developing world, according to Militant Magazine." It may be a form of NPOV, but it's poor writing and a violation of NOR, because it's putting together a synthesis of published material in a novel way in order to build a case. Based on examples like this, I argue that, although NPOV and NOR are inseparable, when push comes to shove, NOR is actually prioritized. Or perhaps more accurately, NPOV is interpreted in a way that prioritizes NOR. We publish only what other reputable/credible publications have published (NOR) and we try to reflect the same mix of positive and negative published material (NPOV), but in so doing, we must be careful to stick closely to the parameters of the subject matter (NOR) and not attempt to build a case of our own (NOR). Sarah