Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view

WP:NPOV

Due to NPOV editors, editing wikipedia, Nathuram Godse is a terrorist and Ajmal Kasab is a militant, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed is a militant, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi] is a leader. This is the reason I left Wikipedia. Yakub Memon is Indian citizen. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alpinesundra (talk • contribs) 12:30, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Neutrality is the opposite of the truth because it equates facts with lies.

@Jimbo Wales, My Name is Madness, and Goodposts: Neutrality means treating facts and lies equally. For example, every reasonable person knows that Bashar al-Assad is a dictator while in Wikipedia, we are forced to pretend that he is not. Due to Wikipedia's nonsensical neutral point of view policy, we are forced to refer to him as the president of Syria and not as the dictator of Syria. The fact is that he is a dictator and the lie is that he is "the president" which implies that he was elected democratically which is not true. Neutrality is not a valuable thing. 2600:1700:BBD0:8050:814C:8D5A:6663:2007 (talk) 22:47, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

IP: No, because we have WP:FALSEBALANCE. --Izno (talk) 00:33, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales, My Name is Madness, and Goodposts: The fact that you did not respond to my argument shows that you cannot defend your pro-neutrality position. Special:Contributions/2600:1700:BBD0:8050:C460:8B9:6388:8E71 (talk) 02:02, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

@2600:1700:BBD0:8050:C460:8B9:6388:8E71:I didn't reply because you didn't tag me and hence, I didn't know you wanted to involve me in a discussion. The view is not nonsensical. In the same breath as you could call a world leader a "dictator", one of their supporters could term them a "great leader". Wikipedia's job isn't to push an agenda. It doesn't support either side. It is supposed to only show objective facts, which are then left up to the reader to interpret. These facts can be good or bad and may lead to a reader being inclined to refer to a certain head of state as either a "dictator" or a "great leader", but that is not something you can write in an encyclopedia (you could cite someone calling the person a dictator, but not refer to that person as such in a news summary, for example). The word "dictator" is also very subjective. What defines a dictator, exactly? Could Trump be a dictator because of his recent emergency executive action? Is the Queen of the United Kingdom a dictator, for she was not elected? What about the Prince of Liechtenstein, who holds significant political power and is also not elected? Is the Pope a dictator, after all, while he is elected, the Vatican functions as an absolute monarchy. Where do you draw the line? Fundamentally - it's not up to you. You can't decide who is a dictator and who isn't. You can only present the facts objectively and leave the reader to form his own ideas as to wether or not a certain figure is good or bad. Best regards, Goodposts (talk) 10:26, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

@2600:1700:BBD0:8050:C460:8B9:6388:8E71: For posterity, it may do well to mention a very important and useful word here. Ostensibly. In the example given, intuition as to whether or not the mentioned person is "a ruler with total power over a country, typically one who has obtained control by force." is entirely irrelevant. Wikipedia is responsible to document the things we know for sure, things like "X Group of people said he is a dictator" and the reasons why, along with some form of evidence that the instance being cite is a reliable representation of X Group. If you do so feel motivated as to catalouge the injustices this supposed dictator in a purely academic and neutral manner, providing relevant information for others to develop a well founded perspective of their own, which is based on truth, you're welcome to do so. What you are not welcome to, however, is to say or do anything on any articles, which itself asserts a claim. Please, provide all the relevant examples and accessory citations needed to document the claims of others, and feel free to work on the articles and portions you feel passionately about, but if you can't understand the difference between "Maintaining Objectivity" and "Equating truth to lies" perhaps Wikipedia isn't the foundation for you Azeranth (talk) 10:04, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Policy on Demonstration of Falsehood or Formal Fallacy

When providing details on various opinions and debates, both past and present, is it beyond the scope of NPOV to enumerate or explain, detail, or discuss the particularities and structures of the arguments? Specifically how any particular line of argumentation encounter logical failings, is discounted by evidence, or falls to some point of subjective arbitration.

I am well aware that saying "This is wrong because, and therefore..." is horribly outside of NPOV, but there seems something of a grey area in the middle, talking about the legitimate failings of formal logic or insufficient, inadequate, or contrary evidence used to develop a claim. To what extent is it appropriate to provide explicit description of an argument, as a purely academic endeavor, and to what minimum is it negligent on the part of the editor to not bother including such analysis of the argument's premises and structure.

Personally, I would think that it would be less than due diligence not to provide objective detailing, bordering on deliberation as to why any particular line of reasoning may be ill founded (not the claim itself), but I would like to know a bit more of the community consensus on this one going forward, as it certainly is a question I ask myself anytime I go near a mildly controversial article.

Azeranth (talk) 09:52, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

• This is where our NPOV policy intersects with our WP:No original research (NOR) policy. We (as editors) should not conduct an analysis of an argument and reach a conclusion as to the arguments truth or falsehood... doing so would be “original” to WP. However, if others (reliable sources outside of Wikipedia) have conducted such an analysis, we can mention that anslysis. So, we can not say “X is false, because...”. Instead, we need to say “According to Critic Y,this is false, because...” (and then cite where Critic Y says it). Blueboar (talk) 12:14, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
  • I suppose I just find it a little different or extraneous to arbitrate on the following:
  • Imagine you had a source, which provided a generic rule, let's call it the "Puppy Dog's Rule" and it describes a format of deduction needed to make an assertion. Some reliable source provides "if X, then Y" and then I have a second source which asserts "X" but does not explicitly state "and therefore Y"
  • Is it beyond the realm of NOR to say "Source A says something is X, and thus according to source B, therefore Y" even though source A doesn't make the leap, and source B doesn't explicitly mention the thing the example case talked about i Source A. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Azeranth (talk • contribs) 06:27, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

But in your example, you do not know that source B arrived at its conclusion because of what source A discovered. Source A might say that puppy dogs wag their tails a lot, and source B might say that puppy dogs can damage their tails. But neither source is saying that because puppy dogs wag their tails a lot, their tails get damaged. The two facts may or may not be associative, causation or in any way related other than in your own mind. Where I personally find Wikipedia wanting is that if someone outside of Wikipedia made such a relationship regardless of foundation it may then be quoted on Wikipedia as though it were true. Varybit (talk) 15:13, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

RfC on restructuring the Michael Jackson article with respect to child sexual abuse allegations

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Talk:Michael Jackson#Request for comments on restructuring the article. A permalink for it is here. Restructuring has been suggested in light of the recent Leaving Neverland documentary. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 13:10, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Request for comment: proper labeling for controversial naming

With declining hard copy sales and increasing dependence on sponsor revenue, I believe many publishers are more conscientious to avoiding friction with sponsors and their industry. Often times, euphemism and double spoken labels are sometimes used for political correctness or from editorial and author bias. If the purpose of reference isn't for conveying the position presented by the source, should the word loading transfer into prose?

1.) homeless, houseless, vagrants, transients: For example, double spoken phrase like "members of the houseless community" have been gaining popularity in my local government's publications. I prefer to use the term "transients" as it is not dependent on houseless vs homeless semantics. It is a term commonly used in formal documents as well.

2.) People who apply graffiti: Graffiti vandal vs graffiti artist. News outlets regularly use both for those who apply graffiti. Both labels are controversial due to the perception by audience on if the product is art or vandalism and if there was permission. So I feel that more appropriate label is not too frequently used but a conveniently short "graffitists" or "graffiti practitioner"(have seen used in social science and criminology related publications) and avoid both the "graffiti artist" and "graffiti vandal" labeling in general.

Thoughts?Graywalls (talk) 13:01, 13 March 2019 (UTC)