Wikibooks talk:Neutral point of view

I think the NOV policy needs some discussion for wikibooks project.

We may agree that wikibooks should not a place to produce a book that asserts some specific position or view, though I am not completely sure.

Should we say, for example, there should not be a book about environmental conservation (or gun control or birth control) that asserts that conservation is important? (The more NPOV way of referring to that is "many (including, A, B) think that conservation is important because of ..., though there are some criticisms, most notably by C that ...."

In case of encyclopedia, there is a solution - we can sometimes split an article into many articles, and explain different points of views in length.

If we were to implement this kind of solution, we might want to develop multiple "modules" or components of books along with multiple table of contents (each of which take different sets of modules to create a book from one particular POV).

Feel free to copy this to mailing list or elsewhere. Tomos 22:54, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)
 * I agree that NPOV will have to apply differently here than Wikipedia. Since the project is still nascent, the best bet is to just go with it and, hopefully, a consensus will develop over time -- since most of our regulars are likely also Wikipedians, I think this will be a relatively easy process.  The conservation textbook you mentioned is a good example; it would be silly to interrupt every point with an explanation of why not everyone believes it.  The same would apply to descriptions of evolution, the Big Bang, etc.  We can assume a particular POV on the part of the reader in these cases, and should probably include an introduction or preface that explains why we are ignoring the fact that not everyone believes the same way on these issues. TUF-KAT 18:00, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

My opinion is that NPOV is not really at home here. Textbooks and other learning materials at times are written, and NEED to be written, from a "non-neutral" point of view. --Karl Wick 21:51, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * I'm pretty new here, but I strongly belive that NPOV is not appropriate for Wikibooks. I think that there is, perhaps, some questionable sort of "objectivity" that something like an Encyclopedia can strive for, but I do not think this the case with a book. Limiting ourselves to books that meet an-NPOV standard would limit ourselves to books that sound an aweful lot like encyclopedias. Wikibooks seems to be about something beyond that.


 * Furthermore, since Wikibooks is trying to create textbooks or books that could be used for learning, in a project like Wikiversity, etc., I think it is important to recognize that "objective" truth is a POV that tends to privilege the status-quo. Like the above example, if you are writing a book on environmental conservation, I believe it would not only be "silly" to strive for NPOV, I believe it would be counter-productive. As a history student, I believe that every narrative has an implicit subjectivity, (or POV). Any narrative that is constructed, for instance history, anthropology, sociology, etc., comes from a point of view and has political implications. The notion of "objectivity" and "objective truth" for instance in Anthroplogy, has been used to blind people from the significance of privileged white male anthropologists observing other cultures. (And Anthropology, with its claim to "objective truth," has played a vital role in the construction of scientific racism.)


 * I'm sorry if I'm trailing off here... I just feel strongly that recognizing subjectivity as opposed to hiding from it is a more fruitful approach to something such as Wikibooks. Fokion 23:36, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

If there is a need to have something written from an non-NPOV, then that need should (will?) be clearly noted in the text itself. The real question of NPOV is what does 'neutral' really mean? That should be clearly defined in the policy. My initial idea is that if something exists to be talked about factually, there is something in empirical reality that can be cited, and ought to be cited. Conclusions and opinions based on that empirical concepts should be built logically. If there are any countering opinions (or significant counter theories) they should be explained as if they were subject to the same rules. --Neal Delfeld 18:24, 11 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I think a problem here is that the idea of talking "factually" and "empirical reality" may work well with something like computer science or mathematics, but not so well with history or social theory. History, for instance, is not made of concrete facts, one stacking upon another. NPOV may work better with the "hard" sciences, but in the humanities or social sciences there is no such thing.Fokion 00:16, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

POV in textbooks
I think our history, geography and Chinese history textbooks are almost certainly biased. Especially history. You know, the 'the ancient Egyptians were great architects' or 'Alexander the Great was a great ruler'. For the ancient Egyptians they even gave the wrong fact because they followed Herodotus' version. But to the smaller ones. Like 'the Spartans are a warlike people'. Most people agree that, don't we? By modern standards they are pretty warlike. But is that still an opinion, an opinion to the eyes of us modern people? And one more thing: Athenians built many open-air theatres. What defines many? There could be theatres on every corner of Planet Drama. :)

By the way, I think the emoticon should be removed. It makes our policy here look much more casual. Policies and guidelines can joke, sure, WP does that all the time, but not include non-standard ways of expressing. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 23:56, 18 June 2010 (UTC)


 * They say that history is written by the victorious. Of particular note to your thoughts is Can history be truly NPOV?. – Adrignola talk 03:22, 10 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Ha. I have to agree. Chinese history, for example, is written from a Confucian point of view. Kayau (talk &#124; email &#124; contribs) 03:32, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Compared with Wikipedia our NPOV policy is much more casual. I think Wikipedia expects their articles to be written neutral from the beginning while Wikibooks accepts that neutrality is a process that takes time. Wikipedia's expectations are reflected in that its policy defines what it means for articles to be neutral and how to achieve neutrality while Wikibooks relies on the scope of each book to affect what it means to be neutral and how neutrality is achieved which is reflected by the more general and less specific approach used in Wikibooks' policy.
 * If you believe the statements above that you quoted are a problem, be bold and fix them. "Anthropologists like Blah and Blah considered the ancient Egyptians to be great architects" or "During his time people considered Alexander the Great to be a great ruler, hence the name" to give two possible fixes. For the smaller ones you could even do "Compared with modern standards the Spartans are a warlike people" or "Today the Spartans are considered warlike people." --dark lama  13:08, 10 October 2010 (UTC)