User:Dominic Mayers/sandbox/Essay in progress

= Wikipedia neutrality requires inquiries: UNDUE alone is too simplistic = This essay considers how aiming to include all relevant information, the essential part of an inquiry-based editorial process,  helps to achieve the neutral point of view. In other words, the task is to show how not aiming to include relevant information (describing debates, providing arguments, attributing opinions, etc.) can be against the neutral point of view. The objective is to improve the NPOV policy by explaining better the inquiry-based  editorial process, which goes beyond the reactive editorial process that uses UNDUE, BALANCE, etc. only.

The neutral point of view outside Wikipedia
This section shows using concrete examples that outside Wikipedia "adopting the neutral point of view" or "not taking sides" is an inquiry-based process in contrast with a reactive process that is only an afterthought once we face the outcome.

The expression "not taking sides" is taken as a synonym of "adopting the neutral point of view", because there are books, series, movies, etc. with the title "Taking sides" and its negation, "not taking sides", is often used to describe proper ruling in court of law. The corresponding expression in other languages might not resonate as well with people. For example, there is no well known book in French with the title "Avoir un parti pris". The important is that concepts such as developing critical thinking, which are described in that section, are not specific to the English language.

We also consider the expression "due weight". because it is also used in Wikipedia to express a part of neutral point of view. The key point is that it refers to the level of attention given by a person to something. Though it is natural to expect that after having given due weight, the person will take the right decision, that is just the outcome of due weight, not what is meant by due weight. In the former case, the process is considered, whereas, in the latter case, only the outcome is considered. This distinction is important and will play a role in the next section.

Presenting views that are taking sides as a tool to develop critical thinking
McGraw-Hill says that each book in its series "Taking Sides" covers a controversial issue "in a debate-style forma designed to stimulate student interest and develop critical thinking skills". In each of these books, different clashing views are presented. In its review of one of the books, Taking Sides: Clashing views on African issues, Andrew Newsham wrote: Alison McCartney, professor of Political Science at Towson University, says "these books are sometimes criticized for only offering either/or answers".

The inquired-based part is the introduction of the protagonists by the editor. A reactive process would instead consider descriptions already provided or a lack of descriptions and evaluate if the descriptions or lack of them is impartial as an afterthought As we shall see, a Wikipedia editor has a different and much more important inquiry-based editorial process to do. Yet, the basic principle is the same. The important is the strategy adopted during the process. In this particular case, it is done "with respect and, by and large, with admirable impartiality".

Not taking sides in court of law
Hanna Panreck of Fox News wrote "'Courts work because people trust judges. Taking sides in this way erodes that trust,' Ponsor, a senior judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, continued, criticizing the Supreme Court." This extracts illustrates that not taking sides refers to the attitude of the judges. It is not about the final outcomes. This is clearer in the next extract.

The Nineteenth Judicial Circuit of Lake County Illinois says "A ruling by the judge does not mean he or she is taking sides." In this extract, it is clear that the details of the ruling is irrelevant, thus not taking sides is a quality of the proactive part of the process, the part that is independent of the final outcomes.

The lawyer Russell Alexander wrote : "Unfortunately, this is a misguided presumption:  As a broad legal  principle all judges  are duty-bound to remain impartial as between the  litigants that  appear before them.  So a judge cannot give the  appearance of taking  sides or actively advocating on one party’s behalf." This one is interesting, because even the appearance of taking sides is condemned.

Not taking sides is used to describe proper ruling by a judge in many other sources.

Taking sides as do activists or by taking into account personal principles
This subsection, unlike the two previous ones, is about the opposite of the neutral point of view, but as a good thing, at the least as a human thing. It's about being an activist or taking into account our own personal principles, even our emotions. Because it is often seen positively, it leads to  question whether Wikipedia should take sides.

Sherine Tadros, an Egyptian Coptic Christian, grew up comfortably in Britain after her parents prospered. She became an award-winning war correspondent and found fulfilment as an activist. The site GoodReads, in its review of her 2023 book "Taking Sides" wrote: "As a broadcast journalist for Sky News and Al Jazeera, Sherine Tadros was trained to tell only the facts, as dispassionately as possible. But how can you remain neutral when reporting from war zones, or witnessing brutal state repression?

The 2003 movie "Taking sides" directed by István Szabó is about americans taking sides against an alleged nasist in a court case. The synopsis of the movie says: "Maj. Steve Arnold (Harvey Keitel) is charged with making an example of Furtwangler due to his status as a high-profile cultural figure, and pulls no punches in questioning him about possible ties to the Hitler regime. However, as Arnold presses forward, his assumptions about Furtwangler don't necessarily hold up."

"Taking sides" by Gary Soto is a 1991 juvenile fiction telling the story of a Hispanic boy, Lincoln Mendoza, who moved to a white suburban neighborhood. His basketball team at his new school, in which rich and mostly white students are enrolled, faces his old team. The description of the publisher, Blackstone Audio, for the 1999 audio version says "How can Linc play his best when he's shooting against his former teammates? To find an answer, Linc will need to sort through a maze of emotions and some tricky moves on the court."

Due weight in social and environmental policies
Geoffrey Hammond, Director of the interdisciplinary International Centre for the Environment at the University of Bath, wrote a correspondence piece in Nature about the fact that "Carbon footprint" is not the correct expression, because "footprint" means it is measured in area units whereas what is meant by "Carbon footprint" is measured in weight unit. The title of his correspondence piece was "Time to give due weight to the ‘carbon footprint’ issue". He was, of course, playing with words: the expected result of giving due weight, in that case, is the use of "carbon weight" instead of "carbon footprint". But, putting asides this play with words, "give due weight" in the title means "give more attention".

Due weight in court of law
Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) says: "States Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child."

Including and rejecting information vs not taking sides and due weight in Wikipedia
Not taking sides has been a part of Wikipedia since its early times. Wikipedia editors are not activists and leave their personal principles and emotions aside. The important point about not taking sides is that it is about the editorial process, not about the space used by viewpoints in the article only. Presenting the facts, no matter how much space is attributed to these facts,  does not mean we are taking sides, just like a judge that applies the laws is not taking sides. Conversely, not presenting some facts could mean that we are taking sides. In a correct editorial process, we include the relevant information.

Rejecting information does not mean that we are taking sides
In 2003, because the "include-info" aspect of not taking sides or neutral point of view policy could be misinterpreted and misused to include theories supported only by an extremely small minority, perhaps even nonsense theories, such as the flat earth theory, the no original research (NOR) policy was added to complement it. In 2005, the section "Undue and due weight ...", which is based on the 2003 statement of the NOR policy, was added to the Neutral Point of View (NPOV) policy. Just like a judge is not taking sides when he applies the laws, Wikipedia is not taking sides when it applies the NOR policy.

Including information as a way of not taking sides
Not all informations are to be rejected using NOR. We can say "the Earth is shaped into an ellipsoid with a circumference of about 40,000 km". Not saying it or relativising it because some say the earth is flat would be taking sides. In that context, including that statement is a way of not taking sides

Due weight outside Wikipedia and not taking sides in Wikipedia
The due weight notion used outside Wikipedia, say in court of law, goes well along the not taking sides principle. It means that the editors must give due weight, i.e., the required attention, to all pertinent view points in sources. As in the case of not taking sides, it is as much about including information as it is about excluding information. A lesson to be learned from the analogy with a legal context is that editors must simply read the sources carefully, giving them all the necessary attention in order to determine the proper place of each point of view.

The second meaning of due weight inside Wikipedia and its significance
Of course, english editors understand the usual meaning of "give due weight" and if they read "give due weight to all view points in sources", they understand that they must give proper attention to them, but in Wikipedia there is an automatic extension of the meaning to the outcome in the article: the editors also understand that the space given to the view points in the article must  correspond to the importance of the view points in the sources. This is similar to what happened when Geoffrey Hammond played with the meaning of "weight" in his title (see above). In one meaning, the usual one, it refers to the attention given to the issue. In another meaning, it refers to the weight of carbon. In Wikipedia, the second meaning is the space given to the viewpoint in the article. However, Wikipedia is not playing with words, because the second meaning is dominant in the explanation of the policy, whereas the usual meaning, the attention given to the view points, is only there in the background. Undue weight in Wikipedia does not mean that too much importance has been given to the view point. It means that two much space was given to the view point in the article.

The dominance of the second meaning is highly significant. It makes a big difference, because the usual meaning refers to the attention given to view points in the editorial process, whereas the Wikipedia meaning refers to the final outcome in the article. In particular, because undue weight means too much space and due weight does not mean too little space, these expressions are only about rejection of information. In practice, in the text of the policy, these expressions say nothing about the editorial process, which, of course, is primarily about including information: the purpose of an encyclopedia is to provide information.

A focus on the inclusion of information
The reject-info principles are well known. They are the no original research (NOR) policy, the verifiability (V) policy, the reliable sources (RS) guidelines and the UNDUE rule (including BALANCE, etc.). We can add the requirement that what is included must be pertinent in its context, though this is implicit in the fact that the reliable sources depend on that context. These have been added between 2003 and 2006. There has been no attention on the include-info principle since 2003. Except for "attributing opinions", the include-info principle  "describing debates instead of engaging them"  has received little attention and in fact some examples and explanations have been removed.

Editors of Wikipedia are all interested in including information, because it is the goal of an encyclopedia. In that context, how is it that all the attention has been on rejecting info and on explaining how important this is for the neutral point of view ? Not that it is incorrect. Of course, in most cases, we want to reject theories that are held by an extremely small minority only. But how come there is not a similar interest in the include-info principle, which seems to be equally important ? The last question is considered in the next subsection.

Two factors affecting the balance between inclusion and rejection of information
This subsection examines two factors that affect our choices about whether or not to explain the inclusion or rejection of information in the NPOV text. One factor is the complexity of the addition or rejection process. In the case of rejection, it is simple: a statement is proposed for inclusion (or already seen in the article) and the editor uses NOR, V, RS or UNDUE (including BALANCE, etc.) to determine if it must be rejected. If the statement is not part of a normal understanding of sources of quality or if it violates UNDUE, it must be rejected. The correct way to add information is more complicated. To achieve the neutral point of view, it is not obvious what information needs to be added. The text of NPOV says or used to say that we should provide the arguments, explain what is at stake, etc., but doing this well in a neutral way is not easy. For example, providing factual information about a point of view can respect the neutral point of view, even if this additional information calls the point of view into question. Even the way to attribute opinions without taking sides is not obvious. Some have argued that explanations could be misinterpreted and used to include theories that have no place in Wikipedia. Explanations have been removed. Currently, we have almost no such explanations in the NPOV text. This last consideration was one of the motivations for writing this essay.

Complexity becomes a much more important factor when combined with another factor: the editor's goal. If the editor's goal is to include minority view points in Wikipedia, he will tend to like rules for inclusion and dislike rules for rejection. It will be the opposite for an editor that wish mainly to remove theories that have no place in Wikipedia. The viewpoints of a majority are not much affected by inclusion or rejection rules, so they are ignored in the current analysis. The goal of an editor should be balanced. One should not focalize on one aspect, rejection of unacceptable theories or inclusion of view points of minorities, and, as a result, see opposition between rejection and inclusion. One should see instead that inclusion and rejection of information are working together toward a same goal. In this way, a balanced explanation of the role of adding and rejecting information will make its way in the policy. It is possible that some editors, due to their situation in their personal lives and on Wikipedia, will always maintain as their sole objective to reject unacceptable theories, which is entirely laudable. Unfortunately, too absorbed in this sole objective, they will also oppose a rational approach in which all relevant points of view have their rightful place and are presented in a factual manner without omitting the information necessary for their proper understanding. This essay is addressed to rational editors.

The challenge
The issue we face is that the include-info principle "describing debates instead of engaging them" is not clearly explained. The "not taking sides" and the "due weight" principles are  too abstract and they are as much about rejecting info as they are about including info. The explanations must cover as many kinds of information as possible: attribution, arguments, historical context, what is at stake, etc. Adopting the neutral point of view may require thinking out of the box rather than simply deciding to include or reject a fixed statement.

The difficulty is not in finding examples to illustrate the role of adding different kinds of information. The difficulty is that the very goal, i.e., the problems to solve in Wikipedia, is not shared. Communication is easy, examples easily appreciated and understood, when the goal is shared. Unfortunately, Wikipedians have different domains of interest in Wikipedia and they have different viewpoints about what is valid knowledge in whatever  their domains of interest are. They see entirely different problems in what is going on in Wikipedia.

A difficulty often mentioned is that anybody can edit Wikipedia and, thus, we do not have the competence required to inquire in reliable sources. This suggests that less inquiries and thus a more simple editorial process, ideally restricted to the few best secondary sources on the subject is the best guaranty to avoid biases, which is referred to as POV pushing. This is a real serious issue, but, of course, a solution that is adapted to incompetency risk also to put off the competent editors that are interested in doing the best job, which requires inquiries followed by an editorial process to create a coherent article that combines often opposite viewpoints in a way that was never done before.

The challenge is to find an explanation of NPOV that unify the rational people who can possibly be unified: an explanation that considers, not only DUE, UNDUE, BALANCE, etc. on the final outcome, but also the different kinds of information that must be added in the editorial process.