Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view

Instructing the reader

I feel pretty confident we ourselves as editors shouldn't be calling out attention to logical fallacies or incongruities, nor specifically instructing readers to notice any such things (e.g. literally saying in an article, "This cited claim by [subject of article] should be evaluated by the reader while considering this other cited claim from earlier in the article"). That's the editor inappropriately injecting themselves into the prose, right? We state the facts, cite the sources, and allow readers to determine the meaning behind such mismatches of cited facts. Does that track? — Fourthords | =Λ= | 01:04, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

That would be WP:SYNTH (synthesis of two claims) unless there is a source that makes the connection. Sennalen (talk) 02:10, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

SYNTH! That's what I was trying to think of, yes! Not a part of that policy I've had to reach for often. Thanks so much! — Fourthords | =Λ= | 02:29, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, we should avoid that, but it can be appropriate if there is something that is frequently misunderstood by non-English readers. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:21, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Or even by English speakers. The List of common misconceptions is long. However, the example above goes well beyond what is reasonable. "He said X (quick definition of X) on Monday" is usually okay. "He said X on Monday and Y on Tuesday" might be okay. "Most cancer can be prevented through lifestyle changes, but you should decide whether that's true after you read the paragraph in the lead that says most cancer can't be prevented through lifestyle changes" is not okay. That's a sign that an editor doesn't know about the {{contradictory inline}} tag. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:52, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Giving "equal validity" can create a false balance

For Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#Giving "equal validity" can create a false balance

"Keep in mind that neutrality is not the average between bollocks and reality. In science, any compromise between a correct statement and an incorrect statement is an incorrect statement. We do not post erroneous statements here without contextualizing why they are wrong. Wikipedia becomes a source of disinformation if we fail to do that."

The first two sentences are from User:JzG.

Since this has been deleted by an editor who generally opposes everything I do here, I'd like to see what others think. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:34, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

As a core content policy page, that language is a bit too curt and off the cuff as official policy language. It immediately moves to dismiss anyone that comes to a discussion in good faith with a fringe viewpoint as unwanted. (granted the fraction of editors coming with this type of argument in good faith in comparison to those coming with bad faith is very small, but we still don't want to dismiss them like that). What's already in the false balance section is sufficient for policy. What's suggested is far better at a guideline or essay (say, perhaps WP:YESBIAS). Masem (t) 04:59, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't think it's necessary to include this particular text in this policy.

Also, it's very science-specific, and most of our articles aren't about science. You can make the mistake of giving equal validity to unequal views in non-science subjects without producing any sort of disinformation. Consider "Most scholars believe the French play is about the recently concluded war, but some Soviet writers interpreted it as a metaphor for class struggle." You don't want to treat the views as being equal in popularity, because they're not, but if you did, the result wouldn't be incorrect statements or disinformation; the result would, at most, be the reader thinking the minority viewpoint was a bigger deal than it actually is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:17, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, we want to give due weight where it is due. I agree that not everything is cut-and-dried science right/wrong stuff, yet we do have many subjects outside of science where false/fact is an issue, so maybe tweak this? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 07:19, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

yet we do have many subjects outside of science where false/fact is an issue Agree

If language is a bit too curt and off the cuff as official policy language then should be change not removed. I think idea is good and false balance is a problem in lot of articles. YESBIAS page is good but so is short version because most editors dont read every page Softlem (talk) 11:45, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Softlem is right: if people think it's too curt, then change the wording, don't remove the text, because right now a subset of people in the world appear to believe that they are entitled to their own facts. Guy (help! - typo?) 13:58, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

• I just see very little value in it compared to what is existing in the section. Yes it is poorly written and that could be improved but that does not mean it belongs in this policy page. As other and myself have suggested, such rhetoric is better off in an essay. It also promotes a misinformed view that life is binary and it simply is not. As an aside, statements like an editor who generally opposes everything I do here are not helpful, don't personalize content disputes. PackMecEng (talk) 14:27, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

It "promotes" no such thing. It's okay to address one side of an issue. Some things really are binary. We just disagree on things like whether Trump really lost the 2020 election and whether Trump and his campaign really did cooperate with Russian interference in the U.S. elections. There should be no doubt in any editor's mind about those things. The evidence is incontrovertible. With all the evidence we have, those are now, and nearly always have been, binary matters for those who had the evidence we have here as editors. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:20, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

The issue tends to be on topics where there is yet no confirmed "correct" answer but WP editors have decided that their view which may be shared by popular media must be the "correct" one, and thus write that as fact and push any other possible view out as fringe. There are things that do not fall into a clear binary distinction between correct and incorrect (the current debate around the situation in Gaza a prime example), but the suggested wording suggests that all such debates fall into this. I know that "in science..." predicates this sentence, implying this should only hold for scientific topics, but the implications are written to apply across the board.

If we want to say that we do not try to equate wacky claims of pseudoscience against established theories (such as "some say the earth is round while others say the earth is flat." Then absolutely let's focus on the issue of promoting scientific disinformation. But in other areas like politics, there a lot more grey area that we should be careful in trying state things as black and white. The suggested text pushes the black and white approach with considering nuances. Masem (t) 19:02, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Actually, no, I think the worst examples are on subjects where there is a correct answer, and one, deeply entrenched, side, really doesn't like it. Look at the length and ferocity of disputes over climate change, which is objectively happening. Guy (help! - typo?) 16:24, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Climate change is obviously an area that there is clear scientific agreement it is happening and attributable to human progress (all as fact), so when we have someone trying to promote a view that dismisses climate change and/or the human impact of that, we clearly should not give that equal validity. That's the same as the flat earth case. We should be treating any theory that dismisses climate change and its human origin as pseudoscience.

On the other hand, the origin of the COVID virus is yet well known, and while the prevailing scientific consensus is a natural origin, that is not yet treated as fact, so we should be careful in writing to treat the natural origin as "fact" and dismissing the lab leak theory as pseudoscience. Of course, there's a lot less support of the lab origin theory, and so treating both of these as "equal" is still wrong. Masem (t) 17:39, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

The possibility of a lab leak is a complex case, because there is a minority scientific view that a lab leak was the possibile origine of COVID and a much larger and more widely reported conspiracy thoery that the original of COVID was a lab leak. One should be given as a minority opinion in the scientific literature, and the other handled as any other conspiracy theory. The disconnect Wikipedia's articles can sometimes have is not showing the minority view, because the loudest voices calling for inclusion want to add conspiracy theory ideas as being equal to the majority scientific consensus of zoonotic origin. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:59, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Thats not entirely correct. The more widely reported conspiracy theories are that it was an intentional release and/or the result of biological engineering/bioweapons programs, I think you're getting those confused with the lab leak theories (even if there is some overlap in the biological engineering/bioweapons program conspiracy theories). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:27, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

These lots of Soros fund the lab and China covered up a release (not saying they wouldn't, but that they have is baseless) nonsense going on out there. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:50, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

There's also a whole series of conspiracies propagated by the Chinese government that it was a release/leak from American military facilities and that the whole idea of a Chinese origin is an American coverup. So much baseless nonsense thats its almost impossible for any one person to keep track of it all. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:16, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

That was my point the conspiracy theories visibility far outweighs any actual minority view. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:33, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Is that true though? Its true within the larger COVID space, but with the lab leak space its the scientific minority view which appears to have more coverage. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:42, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

It could be that we're each just describing our own observation bias, something we won't be able to clarify in this discussion. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:42, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Very true, someone who spent most of their time reading the scientific literature would come away with one observation and someone who spent most of their time reading the fringe literature would come away with another. Perhaps this is why our Skeptic faction consistently over-emphasizes the fringe and de-emphasizes the scientific while most editors barely even notice the fringe. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:06, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

As someone who isn't a Skeptic I would refer that statement back to my comment about observation bias. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:14, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

• If anything it isn't strong enough, giving equal validity almost always results in a false balance because very very rarely do two sides actually have equal weight. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:27, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

  Agreed, rarely should two viewpoints be given equal weight, but that is already covered in the section. PackMecEng (talk) 17:46, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

As a sidebar, to flatly state that a statement is correct or incorrect means that it has a single explicit meaning and that that in that context it is clearly known to be (always) true or (always) false. Such statements are extremely rare. In reality, most statements have vagueness, variable meanings, spin, leave impressions of meaning etc.. For example, what exactly is the meaning of the above "Trump and his campaign really did cooperate with Russian interference in the U.S. elections." North8000 (talk) 18:34, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Right. Who counts as "his campaign"? What counts as "cooperation", and how does one differentiate that from things like "benefited from"? What's the difference between "interference" and other related things, like "influence"?

But while acknowledging that sometimes statements are vague or could be interpreted in somewhat different ways, we also don't want to push editors into "if it's not plagiarism, it's original research". I saw an editor recently going through some sources and claiming that the sources didn't truly support the sentence because there weren't soundbite-sized quotations that support the exact words in a sentence, even though we all know that it's true, we all know that the (multiple) cited sources were actually saying/meaning what's written in the article, and we all know that we have an entire article about the subject of that sentence. But, hey: if you can't find a source containing a quotable sentence that says the same thing, in almost exactly the same words, then some of us can and will try to wikilawyer that information out of the articles. It wasn't really "his campaign", since most of the work wasn't campaign employees; they didn't really "cooperate" so much as "coordinated with"; it wasn't really "interference" so much as "exploration of social media"... WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:25, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

The answer to that is in the Mueller report. He welcomed offers of assistance, and gave internal polling data to the GRU. But it's not a particularly useful example.

Unfortunately, to quote Isa Blagden, "If a lie is only printed often enough, it becomes a quasi-truth, and if such a truth is repeated often enough, it becomes an article of belief, a dogma, and men will die for it".

We have the unenviable task of holding back the hordes of people who will die for lies ranging from the age of the Earth to who won the election in 2020. Virtually everything now has been turned into an article of faith, by cynical bastards who know that people don't understand climate change, but if you tell them it goes against God, they will pick up their AR-15 and march on whatever passes for Fort Sumter in the culture war. Probably CNN head office. Guy (help! - typo?) 16:22, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

So my point is that most statements are are imprecise and thus have multiple possible meanings. Calling it categorically "true" or "false" based on one's preferred selection of one of those meanings is itself flawed, and a common POV warrior tactic. North8000 (talk) 22:14, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

This is why in text attribution is so vital. When dealing with topics that are “conspiracy theory adjacent”, a proper balance can be best achieved by including who says what. Blueboar (talk) 14:59, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

What I've long argued for in most cases. Unless we are talking about a clearly established fact like the earth being round or the existence of global warming, there is rarely harm in adding attribution to a statement that can be taken as contentious. Masem (t) 15:02, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes. But also to not place much value on somebody's evaluation of multiple meaning statement. Here's a real wiki-world example (with the name changed) I think that science says that (vaguely speaking) that masks reduce the spread of covid. Which means that sometimes they stop it and sometimes they don't. So now John Smith says "masks don't prevent the spread of covid." . This can have these meanings:

1. "Prevent" means "always stops it". Then, according to science, this John's statement would be true / accurate
2. "Don't prevent" means never prevents the transmission. This is a false statement and against science.

Now a WP:RS publication which is a political opponent of John Smith that wants to make him look bad says that John Smith has made a statement contrary to science. Their basis / defense for this was based on presuming the #2 meaning. North8000 (talk) 15:21, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Research conflict of interest

Assume an editor has performed research that has been verified and published. Would it be considered a violation of neutrality to add the results of their research to a page? This is just a hypothetical, but I'm curious to know. Gloryreaper (talk) 17:15, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

WP:SELFCITE. Jclemens (talk) 04:24, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Oops, sorry! I didn't see that. Thanks! Gloryreaper (talk) 13:14, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Paragraph "Due and undue weight" versus "Balance"

The paragraph "Due and undue weight" begins with this sentence:

Neutrality requires that mainspace articles [...] represent all significant viewpoints [...] by reliable sources in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources.

The paragraph "Balance" states that:

Neutrality assigns weight to viewpoints in proportion to their prominence in reliable sources. 

Isn't this quite the same and shouldn't these paragraphs maybe be merged?

KaiKemmann (talk) 23:44, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

It could be, but a little repetition doesn't hurt, especially when it's such an important rule as WP:NPOV. Professor Penguino (talk) 03:59, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

AIUI the goals for DUE vs BALANCE is this:

• DUE: Here is a summary of the views sources hold about Chris Controversial, who is supported by many supporters and criticized by many critics.
• BALANCE: Here are some basic biographical facts that we stick in all articles about people, such as the fact that Chris was doubtless born to some parents at some point in time, and probably went to school somewhere before doing whatever it was that made Chris notable. Note, too, that editors omitted the whole drama about the neighbor's lawsuit over whether the fence encroached two inches too far into the neighbor's property (despite having two years of detailed coverage of the various claims and dueling lawsuits in certain sources), because editors decided that it's basically unrelated to the reason Chris is notable and probably would have happened to whoever was living next door to that neighbor.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:31, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

The WP:BALASP paragraph of BALANCE says:

An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject. For example, a description of isolated events, quotes, criticisms, or news reports related to one subject may be verifiable and impartial, but still disproportionate to their overall significance to the article topic. This is a concern especially for recent events that may be in the news.

I wonder if copyediting this to remove the "weight" language (as underlined) would make the distinction clearer. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:12, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

I haven't thought about this enough, but I'm currently thinking that it might open with something like Just like an article should not give undue weight to a viewpoint or opinion about the subject, it should also not overemphasize minor aspects of its subject.

We could give contrasting examples like "Every article should provide basic contextual information (e.g., for a biography, the time period in which a person lived; for a novel, a brief summary of the plot), but articles should not delve into details about relatively unimportant facts (e.g., a blow-by-blow description of a minor incident in that person's life; a long list of favorite quotations from a book)". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:26, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

I think we need both. While BALANCE is based on DUE, DUE itself does not rely on BALANCE, particularly when we're talking inclusion of material that has no counterpoint or the like. For example, WP:TRIVIA is fundamentally based on DUE (we don't include trivia unless it has due coverage in RSes), but not BALANCE. Also, I think BALANCE is necessary to distinguish that when there are multiple points of view that could be included per DUE, that BALANCE then is applied to make sure the viewpoints are weighed based on what are in RSes. And that's where talking about the false balance needs to be discussed. --Masem (t) 17:38, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

So BALANCE might be represented as:

• Balance of included viewpoints
• Balance of non-viewpoint information
• Avoiding false balance

WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:45, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 February 2024

Please change the text "non-negotiable" at front of the This policy is [...] to "non-negotiable". Making the bold text red draws the user's attention to the fact that this policy cannot be overridden. 95.141.97.245 (talk) 18:22, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit semi-protected}} template. M.Bitton (talk) 18:33, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

🤓👆 109.166.138.161 (talk) 13:24, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

nerd alert 🔔 🤓 95.141.97.245 (talk) 15:09, 2 March 2024 (UTC)