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