Africa Growth Pilot/Online self-paced course/Module 3/Encyclopedic prose is fair and accurate

Be encyclopedic. The first and most simple principle is to *avoid stating opinions as facts*. We've just seen an example of this, right? That Pelé is the greatest is an opinion. Wikipedia's Voice should never, ever state something that is essentially an opinion as a fact, right? Wikipedia's Voice, when not quoting anything, should always be reserved for factual information. Remember the beginning of the entry about Nigeria? Just facts. Just facts about Nigeria. Lots of people have all kinds of opinions about Nigeria. They don't belong in text written in Wikipedia's Voice.

Now, if we want to bring significant opinions, relevant opinions or assessments of the article's topic -- of the person or the place or the thing that this is about -- we *can* bring it in the article, but as we saw in the Pelé example, only with attribution -- meaning who said this, according to whom is this opinion the case -- and an accurate citation -- where can we see for a fact that this person does indeed have this opinion. Okay? Attribution and citation. You need both of those if you want to include a *relevant* opinion. And of course the opinion should be relevant. The fact that, say, your little brother thinks that, say, Beyoncé is the best, is *irrelevant*.

When we cite sources, we sometimes might cite sources that themselves include bias. For example, a lot of government sources, national sources, such as the Ministry of Education or the government's own publications, could include some bias, some national bias, that other countries may take issue with.

This is more relevant when there are hostilities. For example, you can imagine that many statements made by Pakistan will not be agreed to by Indians, right? Because those countries have hostilities and disagreements about territories, etc. So the fact that a source is generally reliable does not mean it won't have any bias at all. We *can* cite such a source, but we should at least *present* that source without bias. So again, *how we frame* a source that we bring matters a whole lot!

Framing is, for example, saying something like: "According to the Government of Pakistan, so and so...", right? When we say "according to the Government of Pakistan", we are framing whatever follows as a point of view that is held by the Government of Pakistan and not necessarily by the encyclopedia. It is also telling the reader this may or may not be true. This is a point of view that we're sharing with you. It is a fact that it is the point of view of the Government of Pakistan. But whether you judge it to be truth or not is up to you. That's what it means to be encyclopedic, even when dealing with biased sources.