Neutral point of view

From dKosopedia

Technically, a neutral point of view is any statement of the form "A says B about C", or easily expanded to that form with reference to the sources of the claims or assertions made. It is the standard point of view used at the Wikipedia, and has led to the GFDL corpus namespace conventions there - widely copied even at sympathetic point of view forums like Wikinfo.org.

The fantasy that all of human knowledge can be reduced to this neutral view is a very common one, and probably arises from the same philosophy that gave us neoclassical economics and the belief that everything is just a transaction: contractarian ideals. Jim Wales of Wikipedia seems to be of this view, and he's taken it a long way, but, we aren't trying to go down that road at the dkosopedia itself. However, we recognize the value of that work. Therefore take the following view: neutrality is as deep as the article title, no more:

The neutral point of view naming conventions are easy to understand, and they should be slavishly copied at dkosopedia itself, simply because:

no one participating here has time to reinvent ONE MILLION ARTICLE NAMES
memorizing the correct article names already in use makes it very easy to find the relevant material on other large public wikis and political wikis
adopting and encouraging neutral conventions makes it much more likely that non-neutral Republican point of view conventions will not catch on, as the alliances with neutrals, moderates, foreigners and others will be encouraged

Although articles at dkosopedia itself are from a Democratic/progressive/left/green/social justice view, examples of the benefit of NPOV for naming the articles (not for all content) are easy to find. Among other things, it is easy to create automatic XML import of articles from Wikipedia as Wikinfo.org has, or, automatic translation based on the links to foreign language versions of the article that are explicitly added to Wikipedia pages.

The most reasonable objection to neutral point of view conventions is that they don't correspond to the actual statements of views coming from real military and political players such as George W. Bush, Osama bin Laden, Al Franken, Condoleeza Rice, Hamas, Benjamin Netanyahu, etc.. For these more combative and rhetorical sorts, neutrality isn't very neutral.

But, it is possible to take any even extreme and insane position simply by specifying that it is only a position, and not something necessarily endorsed by all who participate, using a position:namespace for them, e.g.:

Both of these positions are charitably described as simple "bullshit". But then so are many other positions taken by Jihadis or Republicans, e.g.:

By having a position:namespace to hold all this "stuff", but also to hold rational and reasonable positions like:

it is possible to remain neutral in naming while still debating the unreasonable people and positions that are, ultimately, American politics as usual.

Retrieved from "http://localhost../../../n/e/u/Neutral_point_of_view.html"

This page was last modified 22:47, 11 October 2005 by dKosopedia user Anonymous troll. Content is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.