[WikiEN-l] Misunderstanding NPOV

Thu Dec 16 07:35:02 UTC 2004

Shane King wrote

> Charles Matthews wrote:
> > Hah!  You are trying to win an argument by appealing to the authority of
> > Wikipedia, with something inserted a few days ago which doesn't look
very
> > reliable to me (author can't do "its" and "it's", bad sign, as well as
this
> > being point six out of five).  I hope at least it wasn't inserted by
you.

> a) I'm not trying to "win" an argument, I'm trying to further my
> understanding of this policy. Frankly I'd be very happy to "lose" and be
>   shown NPOV actually says what people seem to think it says.

Well, I think your take on NPOV is all wrong (from what I can tell by your
postings here). Ideal NPOV is about not being to 'reverse engineer' the POV
held by the author.  It is not the same as a notion of 'balance', 'equal
time', any of those things.

> b) I noted the irony of it already
>
> c) Accusations of sock puppetry are pretty serious, and you have
> absolutely no reason to believe whoever added that info is me. Since
> you've obviously already checked the edit history (where my name is not
> present), I can only take this as such an accusation. I request you
> withdraw your accusation and [[Wikipedia:Assume good faith]] in the
future.

No, I _don't_ believe you _were_ User:Layman adding 'point six out of five'
there.

I'd have thought that the edits of someone who (a) can't count and (b) has
problems with basic English grammar would count as prima facie not very
authoritative.  It just happened that the edit of 9 December was making a
point somewhat similar to some of the things you were saying here.  I
thought it was a good illustration of the discussion.

Charles