AmericolaWiki:Neutral point of view

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Explanation of the neutral point of view

The neutral point of view

The neutral point of view is a means of dealing with conflicting views. The policy requires that, where there are or have been conflicting views, these should be presented fairly. None of the views should be given undue weight or asserted as being the truth, and all significant published points of view are to be presented, not just the most popular one. It should also not be asserted that the most popular view or some sort of intermediate view among the different views is the correct one. Readers are left to form their own opinions.

As the name suggests, the neutral point of view is a point of view, not the absence or elimination of viewpoints. It is a point of view that is neutral – that is neither sympathetic nor in opposition to its subject.

Debates are described, represented, and characterized, but not engaged in. Background is provided on who believes what and why, and which view is more popular. Detailed articles might also contain the mutual evaluations of each viewpoint, but studiously refrain from stating which is better. One can think of unbiased writing as the fair, analytical description of all relevant sides of a debate. When bias towards one particular point of view can be detected, the article needs to be fixed.

Reasoning behind NPOV

AmericolaWiki is a general encyclopedia, which means it is a representation of human knowledge at some level of generality. But human beings disagree about specific cases; for any topic on which there are competing views, each view represents a different idea 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 is disagreement about what constitutes knowledge. AmericolaWiki works because it is a collaborative effort; but, while collaborating, how can we solve the problem of endless "edit wars" in which one person asserts that p, whereupon the next person changes the text so that it asserts not-p?

A solution is that we accept, for the purposes of working on AmericolaWiki, that "human knowledge" includes all different significant theories on all different topics. We are committed to the goal of representing human knowledge in that sense, surely a well-established meaning of the word "knowledge". What is "known" changes constantly with the passage of time, and so when we use the word "know," we often enclose it in so-called scare quotes. Europeans in the Middle Ages "knew" that demons caused diseases; we now "know" otherwise.

We could sum up human knowledge (in this sense) in a biased way: we could state a series of theories about topic T and then claim that the truth about T is such-and-such. But then again, consider that AmericolaWiki is an international collaborative project, and that 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 the significant views fairly and not assert any one of them as correct. That is what makes an article "unbiased" or "neutral" in the sense presented 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. Disputes are characterized in AmericolaWiki; they are not re-enacted.

To sum up the primary reason for this policy: AmericolaWiki is an encyclopedia, a compilation of human knowledge. But because AmericolaWiki is a community-built, international resource, we cannot expect 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 — with the qualification that views held only by a tiny minority of people should not be represented as though they are significant minority views and perhaps should not be represented at all.

There is another reason to commit ourselves to this policy, that 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, thus encouraging intellectual independence. Totalitarian governments and dogmatic institutions everywhere might find reason to oppose AmericolaWiki, 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 editors of AmericolaWiki, trust readers to form their own opinions. Texts that present multiple viewpoints fairly, without demanding that the reader accept any particular one of them, are liberating. Neutrality subverts dogmatism. Nearly everyone working on AmericolaWiki can agree this is a good thing.

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