[Foundation-l] Wikiversity

Tue Aug 15 18:48:36 UTC 2006

--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> NPOV does apply to Wikiversity, but of course
> context matters in how we 
> understand and apply it.
> 
> For example, a course which is highly biased and
> pushing some POV should 
> be fixed, as we would quite
> properly consider it to be broken.
> 
> But of course, as Cormac points out, some of what
> Wikiversity is going 
> to be about is explorations of
> research, etc.  As Amgine put it, even here NPOV
> applies, but it applies 
> in a way that makes sense for this
> type of content.
> 
> The danger of saying too quickly "NPOV does not
> apply" is that we would 
> thereby open the door to lunatics
> (and there are lunatics!) trying to push extremely
> biased courses.  We 
> can do better than that.
> 
> --Jimbo
> 

I think everyone is not quite on the same page here. 
Although neutrality is going to be an important aspect
of Wikiversity.  WP:NPOV is not going to be the policy
in use there.  Mainly this is becuse Wikiversity is
not writiing encyclopedia articles.  Bias will take a
subtley different form on that project.  Just like
bias rears its' head on Wikisource in the form of
altered texts.  I do not believe it was something
people thought of early on at Wikisource, but it is
certainly what has transpired.  I am just trying to
guess as to how bias will try and work its way into
Wikiversity.  It may not be possible, we might have to
wait and find out when it happens.  WP:NPOV is about
how to counteract bias on WP.  I do not believe anyone
is suggesting counteracting bias at WV is not of the
utmost importance, just that WV will have approach it
in a unique way.

Birgitte SB

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