NPOV and credibility (was Re: [WikiEN-l] Original research)

Thu Dec 9 20:00:04 UTC 2004

Shane King wrote:
> But your comparison there is hardly fair: you've picked a (potentially) 
> hard theory to judge but an easy source to judge. There are plenty of 
> other sources that aren't clear cut, there are plenty of theories that 
> are clear cut.

Yes, but my example is the usual case.

> If judging the credibility of a source is so easy, why are there still 
> millions of people who think FOX News really is "fair and balanced"? ;)

And why do even more people trust Dan Rather?

Anyway, I hope that the average Wikipedian has greater media
competence than the average viewer of the evening news.

> It seems to me from this single mention that credibility doesn't matter. 
> If it's not credible, we report on others saying so and leave it at 
> that, we don't make the judgement ourselves.

And we also report *that* it is not credible, for example by saying
things like "This theory is rejected by virtually all mainstream
scientists."

> The idea of whether those people are credible is not even mentioned
> and is hence a non-issue by the NPOV policy. Instead of credibility,
> we're asked to judge popularity instead (minority/majority
> views). That may not have been your intention when developing the
> NPOV policy, but that's how it stands now. I urge you to clarify it
> if it's not how it should be.

Not popularity!  Popularity is seldom very helpful in clarifying
credibility.

> Which is still biasing towards "credibility", and hence not compatible 
> with the NPOV as written. I quote: "The neutral point of view policy 
> states that one should write articles without bias, representing ALL 
> views fairly" (my emphasis on the ALL). I fail to see how shunting some 
> views to seperate articles and not others counts as "fair".

Really?  I don't really see the problem.  It isn't "shunting" -- done
properly it's just good writing.

--Jimbo

-- 
"La nèfle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org