Neutral point of view/draft
The following is a draft of text to put on point of view. (I propose to move the present text to some page such as Neutral point of view--old text.
It's very important that you give your feedback on this. I have tried to state this in such a way that mentions and does justice to what various people have written about the policy, but I probably haven't raised all the objections that need to be raised. Will you please, therefore, help make sure that this represents your understanding of the neutrality policy, or that your objections to it, if you have any, are fairly characterized? --Larry_Sanger
Introduction: the basic concept of neutrality and why Wikipedia must be unbiased
Wikipedia has a policy that articles are to be "unbiased," or written from a "neutral point of view." We're using these terms in a very precise way--a way that one might not understand, or be able to guess at, from the very first. It is extremely important not to assume that your understanding of what "neutral" means is, necessarily or even probably, what we (on Wikipedia, articulated in this policy page) mean by it. If you want to know what we mean by it, you'll probably have to read this page rather carefully.
Basically (but inexactly), we can say that to write without bias, or from the neutral point of view, is to write so that articles do not express controversial points of view, but, where there is any significant controversy, the different viewpoints in the controversy are each described fairly. Essentially, to write articles in an unbiased way is to attempt to characterize debates rather than to make the articles take a definite stand on the debated issue. So an unbiased article about controversial topic T "goes meta," in that, rather than attempting to state what the truth about T is, it attempts to state, fairly, the various different views about T.
We'll try to clarify and defend this policy in more depth below, but first, let's try to get clear on why Wikipedia should have such a policy at all.
Wikipedia is first and foremost a general encyclopedia, and a general encyclopedia is a representation of the sum total of human knowledge, at some level of generality. But what really is "human knowledge"? Without first attempting to give a definition, we can acknowledge that there is considerable disagreement about cases; on any topic about which there are competing theories, each theory represents a different view of what the truth is, and to the extent to which it contradicts other theories, its adherents believe that the other views are false, and therefore not knowledge (on any account of knowledge according to which what is known must be, at least, true).
There are many people, with a wide range of opinions on many different topics, who are working on Wikipedia articles. We need do no more than observe this, than to see that we are faced with a problem: there is disagreement about what is true, and thus what constitutes knowledge, in any particular controversy. Given that Wikipedia is a collaborative effort, how can we solve the problem of endless "edit wars" in which one person asserts that p, whereupon the next person changes the text so that it asserts that not-p?
We could do far worse than to accept, for purposes of working on Wikipedia, that "human knowledge" includes all different (significant, published) theories on all different topics are parts of human knowledge. So we're committed to the goal of representing human knowledge in that sense. This is, to be sure, something like this is well-established sense of the word "knowledge," a sense in which what is "known" has changed considerably over the years.
One can, of course, try to sum up human knowledge (in this sense) in a very biased way: one presents a series of theories about T, and then says that the truth about T is such-and-such. But again, we must consider the fact that Wikipedia is collaborative--and not just collaborative, but international. So it is practically guaranteed that, particularly as we grow larger, nearly every significant view on every significant subject will eventually be found among our authors and readership. Again, in order to avoid the problem of endless edit wars--and indeed, for the liberating reason of allowing people to make up their minds for themselves--we should agree to present each of these views fairly, and not make our articles assert any one of them as correct. That is what we mean by making articles "unbiased" or "neutral": to write from a neutral point of view, one presents controversial views without asserting them; and to do that it generally suffices to present the view in a way that is more or less acceptable to its adherents, and also to attribute the view to its adherents.
To sum up. Wikipedia has a nonbias policy for the following reason. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, a summation of human knowledge. But since Wikipedia is a community-built, international resource, we surely cannot expect our collaborators to agree in all cases, or even in many cases, on what constitutes human knowledge in a strict sense. We should, therefore, adopt the looser sense of "human knowledge" according to which a wide variety of conflicting theories constitute what we call "human knowledge." But again, since Wikipedia is a community-built, international resource, we must make an effort to present these conflicting theories fairly, without advocating any one of them.
There is another, independent reason to commit ourselves to the goal of presenting different viewpoints fairly and without bias. Namely, when it is clear to readers that we do not expect them to adopt any opinion in particular, this is conducive to our readers' feeling free to make up their own minds for themselves, and thus to encourage in them a positive virtue, namely, intellectual independence. So totalitarian governments and dogmatic institutions everywhere have reason to be opposed to Wikipedia, if we succeed in adhering to our nonbias policy: the presentation of many competing theories on a wide variety of subjects suggests that, as far as we, the creators of Wikipedia, are concerned, we trust readers' competence to form their own opinions by themselves. Texts that present the merits of multiple viewpoints fairly, without demanding that the reader accept any one of them, are liberating. Neutrality subverts dogmatism. This is something that nearly everyone working on Wikipedia can agree is a good thing.
What is the neutral point of view? What we mean by "unbiased" and "neutral"
Actually, if this is understood correctly, one need say little more about what "unbiased writing" means than "presenting controversial views without asserting them." Unfortunately, this is rarely understood correctly. So we offer the following clarifications with the hope that it will clear away the many possible misunderstandings of what unbiased writing, or writing from a neutral point fo view, amounts to.
First, and most importantly, consider what it means to say that unbiased writing presents controversial views without asserting them. Unbiased writing does not present only the most popular view; it does not assert the most popular view as being correct after presenting all views; it does not assert that some sort of intermediate view among the different views is the correct one (as if the intermediate view were "the neutral point of view"). Unbiased writing says, more or less, that p-ists believe that p, and q-ists believe that q, and that's where the debate stands at present. Ideally, unbiased writing also gives a great deal of background on who believes that p and why, and who believes that q and why, and which view is more popular (being careful, here, not to word the statement so as to imply that the view's popularity implies that it is correct). Detailed articles might also contain the mutual evaluations of the p-ists and the q-ists, allowing each side to give its "best shot" at the other, but studiously refraining from saying who won the exchange. Indeed, it seems pretty obvious that if we can detect bias, we can, if we are creative, remove it as well.
A point made in the latter paragraph bears some elaboration. We said that the neutral point of view is not, contrary to the seeming implication of the phrase, some actual point of view on a controversial issue that is "neutral," or "intermediate," among the different positions. That represents a gross misunderstanding of what "neutral point of view" means. Properly speaking, the neutral point of view is not a point of view at all, because when one writes neutrally, or without bias, one is very careful not to state (or imply or insinuate or carefully but subtly massage the reader into believing) that any particular view at all is correct.
Another point stated above bears elaboration as well. Writing unbiasedly can be conceived very well as representing disputes, characterizing them, rather than engaging in them. One can think of unbiased writing as the cold, fair, analytical description of debates. Of course, one might well doubt that this can be done at all without somehow subtly implying or insinuating that one position is correct. But experienced polemical writers and rhetoricians are extremely well-attuned to bias, so that they can, usually, quite easily spot a characterization of a debate that tends to favor one side over another.
There is an important qualification that we typically add when representing the nonbias policy, namely, that we are not under an obligation to give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views. We should not attempt to represent a dispute as if a view held by only a small minority of people deserved as much attention as a very popular view. If we are to represent the dispute fairly, indeed, we should in most if not all cases give attention to various competing views in proportion to their representation in our readership--which is international (if we're properly ambitious, it is equivalent to all of humanity). That would actually be misleading as to the actual shape of the dispute. None of this, however, is to say that minority views cannot receive as much attention as we can possibly give them on pages specifically devoted to those views. But even on such pages, though the content of a view is spelled out possibly in great detail, we try nonetheless to ensure that the view is not represented as correct.
Bias need not be conscious or particularly partisan to constitute bias. For example, beginners in a field often fail to realize that what sounds like uncontroversial common sense is actually biased in favor of one controversial view in a field. (In this sense, it not infrequently requires an expert on a subject in order to render the article about the subject entirely unbiased.) To take another example, writers can, without intending it, propagate "geographical" bias, by for example describing a dispute as it is conducted in the United States (or some other country), without realizing that the dispute is framed quite differently elsewhere.
That this policy isn't philosophically contentious; it's consistent with relativism. Alternative formulation: what "fact" and "opinion" mean: present only "facts," not opinions; but permit facts about opinions! More subtle and difficult: maintaining a neutral tone. Characterizing opinions of people's artistic and other work That neutrality requires expertise: inaccuracy is often due to inadequate information and can easily be construed as bias. (Some people are biased without knowing it.)
Objections and clarifications
What follows is a list of common objections, or questions, regarding Wikipedia's nonbias policy, followed by replies.
There's no such thing as objectivity. Everybody with any philosophical sophistication knows that. So how can we take the "neutrality" policy seriously? Neutrality, lack of bias, isn't possible.
This, which is probably the most common objection to the neutrality policy, what is probably the most common misunderstanding of the policy (which, by the way, was drafted originally for Nupedia by a philosopher): that it says something controversial about the possibility of objectivity. It does not. In particular, the policy does not say that there is a "view from nowhere" (in Thomas Nagel's phrase), such that articles written from that point of view are consequently objectively true. That isn't the policy! The policy is simply that we should do our best to characterize disputes rather than engage in them. To say this is not to say anything contentious, from a philosophical point of view; indeed, this is something that philosophers are doing all the time, even strongly relativist philosophers. (They are virtually required to be able to first characterize their opponents' views fairly, in order to avoid being accused of setting up straw men to knock down.)
If there's anything possibly contentious about the policy, along these lines, it is the implication that it is possible to characterize disputes fairly, so that all the major participants will be able to look at the resulting text, agreeing that their views are presented sympathetically and as completely as possible (within the context of the discussion). It is an empirical question, not a philosophical one, whether this is possible; and that such a thing is indeed possible is evident simply by observing that such texts are being written daily by the most capable encyclopedists, textbook writers, and journalists.
How are we to write articles about pseudoscientific topics, about which majority scientific opinion is that the pseudoscientific opinion is not credible and doesn't even really deserve serious mention?
If we're going to represent the sum total of "human knowledge"--of what we believe we know, essentially--then we must concede that we will be describing views repugnant to us without asserting that they are false. Things are not, however, as bad as that sounds. The task before us is not to describe disputes fairly, on some bogus view of fairness that would have us describe pseudoscience as if were on a par with science; rather, the task is to represent the majority (scientific) view as the majority view and the minority (sometimes pseudoscientific) view as the minority view, and, moreover, to explain how scientists have received pseudoscientific theories. This is all in the purview of the task of describing a dispute fairly.
There is a minority of Wikipedians who feel so strongly about this problem, however, that they believe Wikipedia should adopt a "scientific point of view" rather than a "neutral point of view." What these people have failed to establish, however, is that there is really a need for such a policy, given that the scientists' view of pseudoscience can be clearly, fully, and fairly explained to those who might be misled by pseudoscience.
What about views that are morally offensive to most Westerners, such as racism, sexism, and Holocaust denial, that some people actually have? Surely we are not to be neutral about them?
We can, certainly, include long discussions that present and discuss our moral repugnance to such things; in doing so, we can maintain a healthy, consistent support for the neutral point of view while saying virtually all that we feel needs to be said on the topics. Other reasonable people will be able to make up their own minds and, being reasonable, surely come around to our view. Those who harbor racism, sexism, etc., will surely not be convinced to change their views based on a biased article, which only puts them on the defensive; on the other hand, if we make a concerted effort to apply our nonbias policy consistently, we might give those with morally repugnant beliefs insight that will change those views.
Wikipedia seems to have an Americo-centric point of view. Isn't this contrary to the neutral point of view?
Yes, it certainly is, and it has no defenders on Wikipedia. The presence of articles written from an exclusively United States point of view is merely a reflection of the fact that there are many Americans working on the project, which in turn is merely a reflection of the fact that the (English) project is being conducted in English and that so many Americans are online.
This is an ongoing problem that can be corrected by active collaboration from people outside of the U.S., of whom there are many.
The neutrality policy is used sometimes as an excuse to delete texts that are perceived as biased. Isn't this a problem?
In many cases, yes. Most of us, it seems, believe that the mere fact that some text is biased is not enough to delete it outright. If it contains perfectly valid information, the text should simply be edited accordingly, and certainly not deleted.
There's sometimes trouble determining whether some claim is true or useful, particularly when there are few people on board who know about the topic. In such a case, it's a good idea to raise objections on a talk page; if one has some reason to believe that the author of the biased material will not be induced to change it, we have sometimes taken to removing the text to the talk page itself (but certainly not deleting it entirely). But the latter should be done more or less as a last resort, never as a way of punishing people who have written biased text.
I agree with the nonbias policy but there are some here who seem completely, irremediably biased. I have to go around and clean up after them. What do I do?
This is a very difficult question.
Unless the case is really egregious, maybe the best thing is to call attention to the problem publicly, pointing the perpetrators to this page (but politely--one gets more flies with honey) and asking others to help. If the problem is really serious, Larry Sanger might be enlisted to beat the person over the head (so to speak) and, in the most recalcitrant cases, ask them to leave the project. There must surely be a point beyond which our very strong interest in being a completely open project are trumped by the interest the vast majority of our writers have, in being able to get work done without constantly having to fix the intrusions of people who do not respect our policy.
How can we avoid constant and endless warfare over neutrality issues?
Would that people asked this question more often. We should never debate about how Wikipedia should be biased. It shouldn't be biased at all.
The best way is to remember that we are all reasonably intelligent, articulate people here, or we wouldn't be working on this and caring so much about it. We have to make it our goal to understand each others' perspectives and to work hard to make sure that those other perspectives are fairly represented. When any dispute arises as to what the article "should" say or what is "true," we must not adopt an adversarial stance; we must do our best to step back and ask ourselves, "How can this dispute be fairly characterized?" This has to be asked repeatedly as each new controversial point is stated. It is not our job to edit Wikipedia so that it reflects our own idiosyncratic views and then defend those edits against all comers; it is our job to work together, mainly adding new content, but also, when necessary, coming to a compromise about how a controversy should be described, so that it is fair to all sides.
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