Over Wikipedia en neutraliteit

[Hein van Meeteren]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Het gemier met van den Muijzenberg boeit me niet zo, maar wel het
concept van wikipedia.
Wikipedia is een concept van open meeschrijven, in een "community", aan
een internet-encyclopedie.
Juist de openheid maakt zo'n medium kwetsbaar voor "bias" en misbruik.
Dat verwijt ik EvdM.
Daarom, vooral voor hem, maar ook ter leeringh ende vermaeck van
anderen, een Engesle tekst over de neutraliteit van wikipedia-artikelen:

--citaat---


    Introduction

The *neutral point of view policy* states that one should write articles
without bias </wiki/Bias>, representing all views fairly.

The *neutral point of view policy* is easily misunderstood. The policy
doesn't assume that it's possible to write an article from just a single
unbiased, "objective" point of view. The policy says that we should
/fairly represent/ all sides of a dispute </wiki/Dispute>, and not make
an article state, imply, or insinuate that any one side is correct.

It is crucial that Wikipedians </wiki/Wikipedian> work together to make
articles unbiased. This comprises one of the great merits of Wikipedia.

Writing unbiased text is an art that requires practice.

Contributors who have mastered the art of NPOV are invited to help
develop the neutrality tutorial </wiki/Wikipedia:NPOV_tutorial>.

[edit
</w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view&action=edit&section=2>]


      The basic concept of neutrality

At Wikipedia, we use the terms "unbiased" and "neutral point of view" in
a precise way that is different from the common understanding:

    Articles without bias /describe/ debates fairly rather than
    /advocating/ any side of the debate. Since all articles are edited
    by people, this is difficult, as people are inherently biased.

[edit
</w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view&action=edit&section=3>]


        The original formulation of NPOV

    /The neutral point of view attempts to present ideas </wiki/Ideas>
    and facts </wiki/Facts> in such a fashion that both supporters and
    opponents can agree. Of course, 100% agreement is not possible;
    there are ideologues in the world who will not concede to any
    presentation other than a forceful statement of their own point of
    view. We can only seek a type of writing that is agreeable to
    essentially rational people who may differ on particular points./

    [...]

    /Perhaps the easiest way to make your writing more encyclopedic, is
    to write about what people believe, rather than what is so. If this
    strikes you as somehow subjectivist or collectivist or imperialist,
    then ask me about it, because I think that you are just mistaken.
    What people believe is a matter of objective fact, and we can
    present that quite easily from the neutral point of view./ -- Jimbo
    Wales </wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales>, Wikipedia founder

[edit
</w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view&action=edit&section=4>]


      Why should Wikipedia be unbiased?

Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia, which means it is a representation
of human knowledge at some level of generality. But we (humans) disagree
about specific cases; for any topic on which there are competing views,
each view represents a different theory of what the truth is, and
insofar as that view contradicts other views, its adherents believe that
the other views are /false/ and therefore not /knowledge/. Where there
is disagreement about what is true, there's disagreement about what
constitutes knowledge. Wikipedia works because it's a collaborative
effort; but, whilst collaborating, how can we solve the problem of
endless "edit wars </wiki/Edit_war>" in which one person asserts that
/p,/ whereupon the next person changes the text so that it asserts that
/not-p/?

A solution is that we accept, for purposes of working on Wikipedia, that
"human knowledge" includes /all different/ significant theories on all
different topics. So we're committed to the goal of representing human
knowledge in /that/ sense. Something like this is surely a
well-established sense of the word "knowledge"; in this sense, what is
"known" changes constantly with the passage of time, and when we use the
word "know" in the sense, we often use so-called scare quotes
</wiki/Quotation_mark#Emphasis_and_ironic_quotes>. In the Middle Ages,
we "knew" that demons caused diseases. We now "know" otherwise.

We could sum up human knowledge (in this sense) in a biased way: we'd
state a series of theories about topic T, and then claim that the truth
about T is such-and-such. But again, consider that Wikipedia is an
international, collaborative project. Nearly every view on every subject
will be found among our authors and readers. To avoid endless edit wars,
we can agree to present each of these views fairly, and not assert any
one of them as correct. That is what makes an article "unbiased" or
"neutral" in the sense we are presenting here. To write from a neutral
point of view, one presents controversial views without asserting them;
to do /that,/ it generally suffices to present competing views in a way
that is more or less acceptable to their adherents, and also to
/attribute/ the views to their adherents.

To sum up the primary reason for this policy: Wikipedia is an
encyclopedia, a compilation of human knowledge </wiki/Knowledge>. But
since Wikipedia is a community-built, international resource, we surely
cannot expect our collaborators to agree in all cases, or even in many
cases, on what constitutes knowledge in a strict sense. We can,
therefore, adopt the looser sense of "human knowledge" according to
which a wide variety of conflicting theories constitute what we call
"knowledge." We should, both individually and collectively, make an
effort to present these conflicting views fairly, without advocating any
one of them.

There is another reason to commit ourselves to this policy. Namely, when
it is clear to readers that we do not expect them to adopt any
particular opinion, this leaves them free to make up their minds for
themselves, and thus to encourage in them /intellectual independence/.
Totalitarian governments and dogmatic institutions everywhere might find
reason to be opposed to Wikipedia, if we succeed in adhering to our
non-bias policy: the presentation of many competing theories on a wide
variety of subjects suggests that we, the creators of Wikipedia, trust
readers' competence to form their own opinions themselves. Texts that
present multiple viewpoints fairly, without demanding that the reader
accept any one of them, are liberating. Neutrality subverts dogmatism,
and nearly everyone working on Wikipedia can agree this is a good thing.

[edit
</w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view&action=edit&section=5>]


    What is the neutral point of view?

What we mean isn't obvious, and is easily misunderstood.

There are many other possible valid understandings of what "unbiased,"
"neutral," etc. mean. The notion of "unbiased writing" that informs
Wikipedia's policy is "presenting conflicting views without asserting
them." This needs further clarification, as follows.

First, and most importantly, consider what it means to say that unbiased
writing presents conflicting views without asserting them. Unbiased
writing does not /present only/ the most popular view; it does not
/assert/ the most popular view as being correct after presenting all
views; it does not assert that some sort of intermediate view among the
different views is the correct one. Presenting all points of view says,
more or less, that /p/-ists believe that /p,/ and /q/-ists believe that
/q,/ and that's where the debate stands at present. Ideally, presenting
all points of view also gives a great deal of background on who believes
that /p/ and /q/ and why, and which view is more popular (being careful
not to associate /popularity/ with /correctness/). Detailed articles
might also contain the mutual evaluations of the /p/-ists and the
/q/-ists, allowing each side to give its "best shot" at the other, but
studiously refraining from saying who won the exchange.

A point here bears elaboration. We said that the neutral point of view
is not, contrary to the seeming implication of the phrase, some actual
/point of view/ that is "neutral," or "intermediate," among the
different positions. That represents a particular understanding of what
"neutral point of view" means. The prevailing Wikipedia understanding is
that the neutral point of view is not a /point of view/ at all;
according to our understanding, when one writes neutrally, one is very
careful not to state (or imply or insinuate or subtly massage the reader
into believing) that /any particular view at all/ is correct.

Another point bears elaboration as well. Writing unbiasedly can be
conceived very well as /representing/ disputes, /characterizing/ them,
rather than engaging in them. One can think of unbiased writing as the
cold, fair, analytical description of debates. Of course, one might well
doubt that this can be done at all without somehow subtly implying or
insinuating that one position is correct. But experienced academics,
polemical writers, and rhetoricians are well-attuned to bias, both their
own and others', so that they can usually spot a description of a debate
that tends to favor one side. If they so choose, with some creativity,
they can usually remove that bias.

Now an important qualification. Articles that compare views need not
give minority views /as much/ or as detailed a description as more
popular views. We should not attempt to represent a dispute as if a view
held by only a small minority of people deserved as much attention as a
majority view. That may be misleading as to the shape of the dispute. If
we are to represent the dispute fairly, we should present competing
views in proportion to their representation among experts on the
subject, or among the concerned parties. None of this, however, is to
say that minority views cannot receive as much attention as we can
possibly give them on pages specifically devoted to those views. There
is no size limit to Wikipedia. But even on such pages, though a view is
spelled out possibly in great detail, we still make sure that the view
is not represented as /the truth./

Bias /per se/ need not be conscious. For example, beginners in a field
often fail to realize that what sounds like common sense is actually
biased in favor of one particular view. (So we not infrequently need an
expert in order to render the article entirely unbiased.) To take
another example, writers can, without intent, propagate "geographical"
bias, by for example describing a dispute /as it is conducted in one
country/ without knowing that the dispute is framed differently elsewhere.

---einde citaat---

**********
Dit bericht is verzonden via de informele D66 discussielijst (D66 at nic.surfnet.nl).
Aanmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SUBSCRIBE D66 uwvoornaam uwachternaam
Afmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SIGNOFF D66
Het on-line archief is te vinden op: http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/d66.html
**********