[WikiEN-l] Re: Announcing a policy proposal

Mon May 16 20:06:18 UTC 2005

I am new to this; so I may misunderstand, or I may be restating things
which have already been said.

The various documents and policies appear to indicate that NPOV is
primarily a matter of presenting facts in a fair and unbiased manner.
When there are differing viewpoints or opinions as to what are the
facts of a subject, then NPOV would require that these viewpoints be
presented in a fair and unbiased manner, without undue emphasis -- or
undue lack of emphasis -- being given to one or more of those
viewpoints.

However, in this case, we are not dealing with fact, viewpoint, or
opinion. We are simply dealing with *nomenclature*. While the names of
things may well reflect cultural or other bias, it is also true that
through long, common usage they lose much (if not all) of the
connotations they may have once had.

Does NPOV require that we reject the name of the month of June,
because it is based on the name of a Roman goddess?

It is likely that the overwhelming majority of people consider "BC"
and "AD" as simply labels -- giving little (if any) more thought to
their religious context than they give to the label "June".

It is possible that rejecting a commonly held and accepted
nomenclature in favor of one which many would perceive as being
artificially neutral could be considered as the violation of NPOV.

It is questionable whether the goals of the Wikipedia project would be
well served by taking it out of the mainstream and toward what many
would see as an "elitist" stance.

Good luck,
Bill