Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view

I tend to disagree with what your definition of NPOV is

This means that people should write the things that almost everyone agrees about, and not the things that people disagree and argue about.

This is not what NPOV is to my opinion. Or at least this is not what NPOV is on the two wikipedias I work on. I agree there are some statements, which are so widely rejected (such as earth is flat) that we should avoid saying in an article that the Earth is flat. But what you advocate is the majority point of view.

NPOV is above all a way along which we agree to write articles together, with honesty, in a balanced way, by taking into account all facts and all opinions (and of course, giving to each ot them the weight that is relevant to its degre of realism). And all this without giving a moral position on it. It is about being fair with all representations, all opinions. Certainly not by not adding things people disagree about ! We would find ourselves with basically nothing in the project if we were doing this. NPOV is not even giving the "medium", the "average" position, as "average" is necessarily positionning an opinion within a scale of acceptance.

In short, it is just about being fair, so that everyone, every reader, can agree with the content. This means that people should write about everything. For all topics were a controverse exist, the opinion should be attributed. Not hidden under the carpet.

Incidentally, welcome and glad you are here :-) — This unsigned comment was added by Anthere (talk • contribs) 11:33, 22 October 2003.

I agree. NPOV is writing about both sides, not about writing about neither side, just because there are 2 sides. -- Tango

"NPOV is above all a way along which we agree to write articles together, with honesty, in a balanced way, by taking into account all facts and all opinions (and of course, giving to each ot them the weight that is relevant to its degre of realism). And all this without giving a moral position on it. It is about being fair with all representations, all opinions. Certainly not by not adding things people disagree about !" I agree with you. I didn't say it in a good way. I should say, when we write something that many people don't agree with, we shouldn't write, "X is true" or "X is not true", but "Group A thinks X is true" or "Here are the reasons why some people think X is not true." -- RJ208153.user.veloxzone.com.br

I don't like the "main point of the article" references. Consider the article on Religion, the main point of that article is clearly going to be something not everyone agrees on. The bits that everyone does agree on are pretty irrelevent, really. As long as both sides of the arguement are put foward in an unbiased way it doesn't matter if they are the main point, or not. -- Tango

OK, agreed, but don't you think that the consensus (like all religions agreeing on "there is more to life than we see in daily living") ought to go first, so that the different opinions have some base to argue from? So it might not be the "main point" but the "starting point"? — This unsigned comment was added by hlfx29-185.ns.sympatico.ca (talk • contribs) 17:20, 22 October 2003.

There are certainly some cases where you are right. Probably a lot of cases, but i think there are also cases where you are wrong. Problem is, i can't think of an example... Generally, i am thinking about articles *about* a contraversy, where you really want to start by outlining what the 2 opinions are, rather than what they agree on. I think as long as the words "both sides" and "non-biased" appear in the policy, it will work fine. I don't think there is any need to be specific/restictive. -- Tango

This policy still needs work, particularly simplification of the top section. If it is an official policy here (I don't think that is debated by anyone), let's put a template at the top that says so, once we've figured out exactly how it should be worded. --Cromwellt|talk 09:29, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm looking through the Simple English Wikipedia and I see what I consider a lot of bias or inaccurate information(by means of extreme oversimplification). Simplicity shouldn't mean that it should provide inaccurate information, but many articles look like they lack NPOV. An example would be the Socrates article. 67.187.96.141 22:37, 26 July 2006 (UTC)