[WikiEN-l] Blue sky thinking around "neutral point of view"

Wed Jan 25 20:18:11 UTC 2006

> \Just some blue sky thinking:
>
>   Our neutral point of view policy has aroused a fair bit of  
> discussion at [[WP:NPOV]]
>   recently, and this has got me thinking:
>
>   We've all seen arguments where people keep arguing that this is  
> "POV" or someone
>   is being "POV" where in normal English we'd just call something  
> an "opinion" and
>   note that someone has an opinion on something. Indeed, the made- 
> up term POV
>   is bandied around usually to mean something along the lines of -  
> you are wrong,
>   I am right, and because it is a NPOV issue, the point is non- 
> negotiable, which isn't
>   a very good place to start from if the issue is to be resolved.  
> Plus far too many
>   people read NPOV as equating to "no point of view" as opposed to  
> the real requirement, which is to write from a neutral viewpoint.
>
>   My blue sky thinking (which I don't claim to be a panacea, just  
> an interesting thought) is why don't we rename the policy page  
> [[Wikipedia:Neutral viewpoint]] and make
>   the shortcut link to it [[WP:NEUVIEW]] (or [[WP:NEUTVIEW]]). It  
> goes without
>   saying that the underlying concept behind the policy would remain  
> completely
>   unchanged - just the name of the page would change - plus it  
> would enhance
>   people's perceptions that it is about requiring a neutral  
> viewpoint, rather than no
>   viewpoint, or neutrality more generally: it would help define the  
> policy in positive terms
>   and (and perhaps I'm going too far here:) ) may help stop content  
> disputes escalating
>   in scale and viciousness.

That might work. On the other hand, that might be about as effective  
as changing "Votes for Deletion" to "Articles for Deletion". Renaming  
things only serves to disguise problems in a quasi-Orwellian manner-- 
it doesn't really solve them.

-- 
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch