[WikiEN-l] NPOV majorities/minorities

Thu May 11 02:04:06 UTC 2006

On 5/10/06, Cheney Shill <halliburton_shill at yahoo.com> wrote:
> jf_wikipedia at mac.com wrote:
>
>     On May 10, 2006, at 10:18 AM, Cheney Shill wrote:
>     > Basically, it's an argument that you can apply policy however the
>     > current majority of an article sees fit.
>
>     My understanding is different. Editor's consensus cannot be used to
>     bypass policy
>
>     See:
>
>     "NPOV is one of Wikipedia's three content-guiding policy pages. The
>     other two are Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original
>     research. Jointly, these policies determine the type and quality of
>     material that is acceptable in the main namespace. Because the three
>     policies are complementary, they should not be interpreted in
>     isolation from one other, and editors should therefore try to
>     familiarize themselves with all three. The three policies are also
>     non-negotiable and cannot be superseded by any other guidelines or by
>     editors' consensus."
>
>     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NPOV
>
>     I am missing something?
>
> No, except that we agree completely.  I'm not, nor have I ever argued, that consensus should bypass policy.  I'm simply repeating the claim made by Fastfission and the majority of admins and users I've had contact with while editing that consensus is more important than policy.  Fastfission seemed to be paraphrasing the beginning of the consensus guideline that says "Wikipedia works by building consensus." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Consensus  I'm not sure when that was put in or if it was snuck in at some point, but given what the rest of the guideline states, not to mention policies, it's definitely taken out of context.  Maybe the fix is simply removing that sentence.  This view seems so prevalent, however, it probably wouldn't be taken seriously unless Jimmy himself emailed every admin with an attached photo of a clue bat.
>
> Anyway, I'm open to suggestions on how to solve it.~~~~Pro-Lick

Content policies have far less leeway than other policies.

Jay.