[Foundation-l] Wikiversity

Tue Aug 15 08:14:08 UTC 2006

On 8/15/06, Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:
>
> On 14-Aug-06, at 4:35 PM, Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
>
> > James Hare wrote:
> >> A thing that should be pointed out...
> >>
> >> Don't worry about policies and guidelines, start working on things
> >> and let
> >> the policies come in later. I believe Jimbo posted something to
> >> this effect
> >> when Wikinews was new.
> >>
> >> However, things that SHOULD be noted include NPOV.
> >
> > I'm not sure if the concept of NPOV fits for a collaborative research
> > project. Maybe one of the project supporters can say something
> > about this.
> >
> > greetings,
> > elian
>
> That would be very interesting, since as I have been led to believe
> research is not a part of the project until they have developed at
> least minimal guidelines for approving it. NPOV is an element of good
> research, as is an ethics review board, and human subjects review
> board that is relevant.
>
> Amgine
>

I very much agree with what I think Elian was saying, in that I think
NPOV is a useless concept when applied to research. If we stick to the
concept of NPOV (in all its ambiguity and complexity) we get nowhere
in actually allowing someone to test and apply their learning about
the world in an academic context. NPOV works for an encyclopedia - it
will not work (or, at least, not the same way) for a place of
learning.

I don't know what kind of NPOV in research you were referring to,
Amgine - there is a whole range of complexity on doing and writing
research - and all academic research should be structured in a way
that does not compromise ethics, with a methodology that can be
justified, and be grounded in the appropriate literature (hopefully to
make some contribution to that literature). That's good research
practice - not NPOV. But yes, what we need to do, over the coming
months, is to create a framework and guidelines for good practice in
research, including ethical and methodological guidelines. That will
determine what kind of research will be hosted and what we are to do
with/about it.

Cormac