Correct me if I am wrong and forgive the ultra-condensation, are you proposing a type of rationalist wikipedia where instead of NPOV we would have an RPOV (rational point of view) policy? It does sound very interesting.
I didn’t realize that Wikipedia was so timely in collecting and organizing information for current events.
Looking through the main page for the swine flu, my first impression is that wikipedia already does a good job of collecting and organizing information with user input. My second impression is that the discussion would benefit from threading and user scoring (karma). The RPOV would help throughout, especially in repressing PPOV (Political Points Of View) and encouraging some rigorous (science, math) analysis.
NPOV has regularly been criticised as a weak point because it gravitates towards consensus rather than evaluation of arguments, so there might be value in an alternative approach. And working out the algorithms/processes for determining RPOV would be an interesting challenge in itself.
NPOV does not stand for “No point of view.” Nor does it mean “balance between competing points of view.” Check out this and this. NPOV requires that Wikipedia take the view of an uninvolved observer, and it is supplemented by verifiability, which requires that Wikipedia take an empirical, secondary point of view that credits established academia.
So content disputes are usually settled by evaluating claims as true or false through verification. Those who continue to object to a claim once it has been established do not have to be included in a consensus. That is why Wikipedia is able to assert the truth of the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, and the moon landings.
I don’t think I said anything about ‘no’ point of view. I just claimed that the current policy of wikipedia is to reach for general consensus rather than the truth-seeking standards of this community. You could probably find a few examples of topics where the beliefs held here are not mirrored in the correcponding wikipedia page. This would seem to indicate that the two communities have different reasoning mechanisms. The examples you mentioned belong in the overlap between the two, simply because consensus on these matches the rational viewpoint, despite vocal oposition. However I can think of other articles where there would be quite significant difference (think of the list of topics in the comments here for instance.
Wikipedia doesn’t do research, which determining what is right as opposed to popular is a specific example of; the rest of the world does. Wikipedia only organizes the world’s conclusions. If the world is somewhat insane, Wikipedia follows suit. The two activities are largely unrelated: if there to arise an organization that is successful in telling truth from crust, and it gains good reputation, the world may change its consensus position, and Wikipedia will improve as a side effect.
Correct me if I am wrong and forgive the ultra-condensation, are you proposing a type of rationalist wikipedia where instead of NPOV we would have an RPOV (rational point of view) policy? It does sound very interesting.
That’s a good condensation.
I didn’t realize that Wikipedia was so timely in collecting and organizing information for current events.
Looking through the main page for the swine flu, my first impression is that wikipedia already does a good job of collecting and organizing information with user input. My second impression is that the discussion would benefit from threading and user scoring (karma). The RPOV would help throughout, especially in repressing PPOV (Political Points Of View) and encouraging some rigorous (science, math) analysis.
NPOV has regularly been criticised as a weak point because it gravitates towards consensus rather than evaluation of arguments, so there might be value in an alternative approach. And working out the algorithms/processes for determining RPOV would be an interesting challenge in itself.
NPOV does not stand for “No point of view.” Nor does it mean “balance between competing points of view.” Check out this and this. NPOV requires that Wikipedia take the view of an uninvolved observer, and it is supplemented by verifiability, which requires that Wikipedia take an empirical, secondary point of view that credits established academia.
So content disputes are usually settled by evaluating claims as true or false through verification. Those who continue to object to a claim once it has been established do not have to be included in a consensus. That is why Wikipedia is able to assert the truth of the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, and the moon landings.
I don’t think I said anything about ‘no’ point of view. I just claimed that the current policy of wikipedia is to reach for general consensus rather than the truth-seeking standards of this community. You could probably find a few examples of topics where the beliefs held here are not mirrored in the correcponding wikipedia page. This would seem to indicate that the two communities have different reasoning mechanisms. The examples you mentioned belong in the overlap between the two, simply because consensus on these matches the rational viewpoint, despite vocal oposition. However I can think of other articles where there would be quite significant difference (think of the list of topics in the comments here for instance.
Wikipedia doesn’t do research, which determining what is right as opposed to popular is a specific example of; the rest of the world does. Wikipedia only organizes the world’s conclusions. If the world is somewhat insane, Wikipedia follows suit. The two activities are largely unrelated: if there to arise an organization that is successful in telling truth from crust, and it gains good reputation, the world may change its consensus position, and Wikipedia will improve as a side effect.