Would somebody (visiting WP wonks included) like to explain to me why AGF doesn't explicitly violate NPOV?

Seems to me one or the other has got to go.

I think BLP might break the logjam. That policy purports only to allow reliably-sourced information on living people. Presuming that Wikipedians are people (and not, say, dogs), any negative inferrences against a contributer would be OR, and against BLP.

Then again, that doesn't quite get us there. That policy would be AN (assume nothing) or DABF (don't assume bad faith). Good faith is indeed a NPOV violation.

Dontcha Know? —

They always claim the WaltWhitmanWeb Xception to yer old-φ∠∂ φuddy ∂uddy Aristotalitarian notions.

Jon

Assume good faith only applies to the behavior of Wikipedians. Neutral Point of View only applies to how you write articles.

If you want to win at Wikipedia, you have to know the rules, even if you do not have to follow them (there is a rule for that, too).

This is exactly right. "AGF" is a presumption of good faith accorded to one's fellow editors (and note that it is only a presumption, which can be overcome by evidence that a user is not acting in good faith, in general or on a given matter). "NPOV" is a policy that governs the content of the encyclopedia itself.

I expected better from this place than to bring up something so obvious as a 'conundrum' - seriously.

Question? Enigma? Anomaly? Paradox? Confoundment du jour? What was it you were looking for, Dorothy?

Well, this is the internet, so I am going to assume he was looking for tits. How he managed not to find them is the real conundrum.

Bzzzt. Except that the two (the attitudes of editors toward each other and hence each other's opinions, vs. the attitudes they hold to what becomes content, which is each others' views of the subjects) are completely inseparable in all real circumstances. Because in many places they are the same thing, no matter what you want to call them.

I have heard it argued that editors are not supposed to write their OWN opinions, but rather they write only the sourced opinions of OTHERS. But that is obviously wrong. The sourced opinions of others (not the editors of WP) is called a "library." Distilling the library down to Wikipedia involves having an opinon (ie, your own POV) as to what bits of it to put in, and how, and where. As you should well know if you're done substantive writing there. That opinion, and it is an opinion no matter what you call it, cannot be a neutral one, or else no writing would be done. Nor may one's opinion regarding another editor's opinions (writing) be neutral if any effective collaboration is to be done.

In no case does neutrality exist. The last refuse, er, refuge of the WP-defender is that "neutrality" isn't what is meant, even as regards content, but rather that a neutral summary of various non-neutral views must be attempted. But there's no getting away from the primary problem by moving to another level, for it's still the same problem at the meta-level. See above.

It's a very valid 'conundrum'. How can someone AGF, when the other editor is quite obviously POV-pushing. Many a good and learned editor has stumbled at this fence, didn't AGF, got admonished by the usual round of throllers and barnbots, and got themselves indeffed, or even banned. It can be quite a serious challenge for good editors, and an opportunity for the throllers to deliberate their usual dross. BTW, that's how I originally fell foul of that place, took on a cabal of POV-pushers, and didn't know how to "play the system" at the time.

Because Wikipedia has devolved into a role playing game where social influence is currency it is actually very useful to have conflicting rules. AGF (+5) pervails over IAR(+7) but not a NPOV(> +2). Pick up a FA easter egg and add (+9) to your avatar.

Obviously one never obtains a flawlessly neutral point of view. But it is not that hard to get a reasonably neutral article. It is not that hard to include information you do not agree with that you know is supported by various reputable people. Of course, this requires one to act in good faith. It is easy enough to know at least two people were shooting at Kennedy, but open with "The Warren Commission, which was the official investigation into the assassination, concluded that ... " and later move to " ... its finding have been questioned by later authors, but it remains the official and most widely believed (or not, as some phone surveyors) theory of the days events. Other theories include [[Crackpot theory #1]], [[Crackpot theory #2]] and [[The mob did it]]."

Reductio ad absurdem sure is fine, but it is not a practical argument on how to conduct your affairs.

Do unto yourself and your pals better than you would innocent people you choose to meddle with.

Quite simple; I often AGF that the moron concerned is unaware that their "truth" is not NPOV - and therefore they are not permitted to remove the other persons "truth" while underlining and bolding theirs...

Thems gets a warning. First.

NYB: the reason I think this is a sensible question is that AGF only applies to a particular kind of user conduct: labelling. I can believe that a user is a POV pusher, and I can even act to rapidly undo all their edits. AGF is not usually invoked against either of us until one of us calls the other a POV pusher, wikistalker, or whatever.

That's why I initially thought BLP was a sensible way to understand the rule. It's really a rule against certain expressions, not behavior.

There's nobody but us Koanheads on this Bus …

Where would a Koanhead head if a Koanhead could head anywhere?

To Koansass, of course!

Jon

Good point. The other contestants must follow the rules, including the ones that you make up and add to policy pages as you go along.

To be honest, people throwing around labels like 'troll' and 'pov-pusher' is one of the main reasons why the atmosphere on WP is so poisonous. If people would stick to commenting on content not contributor, this would improve things, but they don't. JzG is the worst at this, throwing labels around wildly and constantly.

If somebody is pushing POv, it can take some effort to balance it out in a way that isn't going to offend a lot of people, but it is doable in many cases. Of course, none of this applies to all the usual battlegrounds - those are the areas that will never be editable by anyone with good intentions: a weakness of the open format.

WP is more useful in these areas as a social experiment i than an encyclopedia...

Perhaps we're down to discussing a specific case, then. You chose the JFK assassination. Okay. It even goes with my avatar.

The two major government panels with access to all primary data (WC, HCSA) concluded that Oswald fired the two bullets that struck JFK. Two other commissions (Clark, Rockefeller) concluded that JFK was struck by only two bullets, both from above and behind, which would also implicate Oswald as the only person to shoot JFK. In addition, the HCSA (the last commission) concluded from dictabelt recorder evidence that a fourth shot was fired, which would constitute evidence of a second gunman, who necessarily missed JFK. However, later analysis of the dictabelt has provided multiple pieces of evidence that it is not, in fact, an aural record of the assassination, and thus this part of the HCSA conclusions are invalid. The HCSA has not reconvened since it issued the final report, and thus has not been able to comment on later analyses.

I could go on, but all of the above is synthetic. The farther I go, the more obviously biased it gets. But bias (gigantic bias) is impossible to avoid. I've already written the above so as to imply that it's hard to escape any other conclusion than that Oswald alone did it, since that's what everyone with all the evidence and experts has concluded.

As for what the LEAD paragraph the article contains now, it includes some of the above information, but not other parts of it. How does one decide what to include, and what not?

Now. Note that any declarative sentence I write (as compared to stuff I lift from other sources)asserts a POV (that's what declarative means), and since I wrote it, it's in some sense a synthetic one. Moreover, even picking and assembling declarative sentences other people write (even if it could be done seamlessly) still constitutes a fresh analysis. Such an analysis may not point to a specific POV, but it must necessarily argue toward some POV regarding available POVs. Again, there is no escape from synthesis, and the problems of epistemology.

Now, you can't get out of this by saying: "Oh, I never claimed it was perfect." It's not even CLOSE to perfect. It's going to be subject to valid criticism no matter what you do. Thus, it's much better to give up the idea that you're impartial, or that your results are anything close to impartial. Life is not impartial. The writing of history is not, and cannot be, impartial (even taken overall).

The JFK assassination article as it stands is not even close to impartial. I do not believe it can be made even close to impartial. The way to win this argument with me is to jump in and write it in such a way that it is, covering and summarizing (in proportion to their verifiabiliy and reliability) all "significant" other POVs. Then come back here and say "neaner, neaner, Milton. I proved you wrong by doing what you said could not be done."

Ready, set, go.

Policies themselves don't have to adhere to NPOV.

The view from the zoo:

Balete. Poor taste.

Do they have a breeding pair of Wikimedi Auks at the Zoo, or just that one?

Jon

That may be the simplest answer, although I defy you to find me that clearly stated anywhere.

Interestingly, I noted in the history of NPOV as a policy, there are many statements from Jimbo that it's "non-negociable." That doesn't fit too well with his self-declared status as mere mortal and ensurer of consensus.

Is "consensus" a policy?

Is "Jimbo says this is non-negotiable," a policy?

How do these two policies fit together?

I am sure that we all have different standards of appearance and deportment, and we all have had pictures taken of us that we may later regret. I fail to see how apparently mocking someone's physical appearance or choice of attire advances the substantive discussion that presumably is the goal of this thread.

...Which was what again? Assuming good faith? Reconciling that with trying to write articles from as neutral a point of view as possible? I forget.



This is an imperfect world. Most of us are able to deal with conflicting axioms and resolve competing desires for goodness. There are certain things that are intended to be pillars or foundations of the en:wp project, to the point that if you wanted a project that didn't have all of them, you're supposed to fork. Everything else is to be governed by practice and pragmatism. That's my understanding anyway, and trying to reconcile perfect principles in an imperfect world may well be a mugs game. Better to do the best we can and muddle through, aware that there may be edge cases that need correction, inconsistencies and the like.

We are none of us perfect. Except perhaps the Randites among us, and maybe not even them.

I suspect that a majority would endorse NPOV. "Neutral" is not something anyone wants to be on record opposing.

IAR, on the other hand, was actually demoted a couple of years back as not having consensus. Jimbo himself restored it to policy status as I recall.

Tell me how that one fits with NPOV or anything else. Yeah, I get that we're only supposed to ignore rules when they get in the way of building an encyclopedia, but NPOV purports to be a virtue of the encyclopedia we're building. If not NPOV, what principles of a good and just encyclopedia should trigger IAR?

NPOV on Wikipedia is a misnomer. What is meant by NPOV on Wikipedia is the POV of the majority of the editors. Hence there is no contradiction between AGF and NPOV. It would be expected that some editors would have a POV which is a minority POV.

Note it has been ruled that calling someone's edits as "POV" is uncivil. Hence, there is a contradiction between civility and NPOV.

"Majority Of The Editors" (MOTE) on Wikipedia is a misnomer, Gomer …

And so it goes, wikity-spit through the whole damn dicktionary …

Jon