User:Ed Poor/neutrality

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Achieving neutrality when writing about a controversial topic
The following is an amalgam of NPOV and my own preferences. I leave it to the reader to sort it out, if they feel that what I want differs from community-formed policy at Wikipedia.

When a dominant group issues a statement on a controversial topic, we should indicate how many people are in the group, how they became part of the group, and how many other people support or oppose this group's point of view.

For example, the Bush Cabinet contains a dozen or so politicians, led by George W. Bush (elected in the 2004 US presidential election. He appointed (or kept on) members of the cabinet, some or all of whom were approved by the US Congress. On any given policy issue, public opinion polls indicate how many Americans support the administration position; news stories often indicate disagreement within the Cabinet!

The IPCC has made statements on the global warming theory, although Wikipedia has not (as of my last reading) clarified how its members are appointed or by what process they settle on a statement. To its credit, the article includes criticisms of each IPCC report, although the intro no longer refers to these.

Our volunteer contributors on the Evolution series of articles (divided into over 90 pages on the science alone!) are extremely reluctant to permit any mention of how little support the biologists have among the lay public (i.e., non-scientists). It seems to disturb them terribly that anyone might learn that 45% of Americans reject evolution outright and that another 37% question the "unplanned, unguided" aspect. They don't even want any discussion of whether this 37% "accepts evolution" or not.

They call any free, open, documented mention of this controversy "POV pushing". I guess what they mean is that to provide any evidence that THEY have been POV pushing is anathema to them. And the most effective strategy for covering up a crime has always been to accuse the investigator of the same type of crime.

This is what the world's leading intellectual, Noam Chomsky, does - all the time - under the guise of "we can only change ourselves", a rather flimsy excuse which nonetheless convinces the masses. In other words, a double standard is justified on the grounds that bad people outside of our sphere of influence, so it's pointless to criticize them at all. The dishonesty here is obvious, if you think about a moment: public opinion is influenced by how much praise or criticism is directed at various targets. People tend to assume that it's all deserved. If all the criticism is directed toward one target, it's easy for most people to leap to the conclusion that this target is the "bad guy", the "worst one", and that all the others are just fine and dandy.

A neutral encyclopediea therefore, is not really non-partisan in an absolute sense. By providing a balance of views - by exercising and conforming to NPOV - it will actually be taking sides against the POV pushers. The partisans who push various dominant points of view will actually be on the opposing end of a battle between NPOV and Their POV. (To them, it looks like POV-pushing, but it's really POV-toppling. Wikipedia's balance of views undermines their campaign to push their point of view.)

This is an unfinished draft.