[Foundation-l] Wikiversity

Wed Aug 16 19:00:12 UTC 2006

On 8/16/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Cormac Lawler wrote:
> > The obvious question this raises is (as Elian has already asked):
> > "where do we draw the line?"
>
> I think this is the wrong way to look at the question.  The whole point
> of NPOV is that it is not about line drawing.  It is about a social
> approach to collaboration.  We draw the line at the point where we have
> consensus among virtually all reasonable people that the material is
> neutral.
>
> > We could orchestrate, for example, a policy that says "Wikiversity
> > will not host materials that endorse a particular world-view". But
> > then, we are excluding all religious material (and not all religious
> > material is bad). It could well be argued that much of what most
> > people consider to be appropriate educational material espouses a
> > particular world-view, such as that of free-market economics,
> > feminism, whatever.
>
> It could well be argued that this is one of the things which is deeply
> flawed about proprietary texts... the passing off of propaganda of
> whatever kind as being educational materials.
>
> > This is a difficult issue that we can't simply dismiss out of hand.
>
> Certainly, we do need to discuss it in detail.  But I think it would be
> a tragic mistake to dismiss NPOV out of hand based on arguments which
> fail to draw on our deep experience with how it works and what it means.
>
> --Jimbo

I think part of my reaction to the word "neutral" in this discussion
is due to the fact that I don't really know what it means :-). Joseph
Reagle, in fact, gave an interesting presentation on the word/concept
of "neutrality" at Wikimania (see:
<http://reagle.org/joseph/2005/06/neutrality.html>). This was, in
fact, straight after your insightful comment about NPOV being a "work
of art, which we fill with meaning" (I hope I've quoted you correctly
there). Both of these have brought me to a better understanding than
what we have at [[WP:NPOV]] - but still, I have my doubts :-)

You're right, of course - we deal with these complexities on a daily
basis - and we constantly strive to develop ways of going beyond
academic or political bottlenecks in areas which cause far more strife
outside than they ever will inside Wikipedia. And yes, we have a role
to play in educating the world about how to go about doing that. We
can create material on Wikiversity which does this - just as we have
done on Wikipedia - and that should obviously be our aim.

But I just can't get away from the fact (and, again, Birgitte has
pointed this out) that we are dealing with a model of education in
Wikiversity that is more than simply providing dynamic material. We
are also attempting to provide for a community of learners. While this
community learns, I think we need to be flexible enough to allow for
open and critical thinking - providing thought-provoking, sometimes
POV, material - and simply asking "what do you think?"

So, if there's a conclusion to this mail, it would be: I'm not arguing
for a simple dismissal about all we know and have learned about NPOV.
I'm simply saying that it will not _always_ be a useful policy to
impose throughout the process of learning. I'm yearning for a better
concept - or perhaps we simply have to invest NPOV with new meaning in
order to tailor it to Wikiversity's particular identity.

Cormac