Wikipedia's “Neutral Point of View”: Settling Conflict through Ambiguity

Abstract

This article discusses how one of the most important Wikipedia policies, the "neutral point of view" (NPOV), is appropriated and interpreted by the participants in the Wikipedia project. By analyzing a set of constitutive documents for the Wikipedian universe, including discussion about NPOV, the authors conclude that ambiguity is at the heart of the policy process on Wikipedia. The overarching conclusion is that ambiguity on Wikipedia is not extraneous, but a central ingredient of this wiki project's policymaking. Ambiguity naturally develops from the pluralist and nonhierarchic values of the culture that brought Wikipedia to life, and this conclusion requires that we reconsider the nature of "neutrality" practiced on Wikipedia.

"ItU+0027s Incompatible with the Views of the Community about Themselves and Their Defining Characteristics": Norms and Knowledge Production within the Transgender Wikipedia Page

“…This finding supports research by Matei and Dobrescu (2010), which argues that ambiguity colors editorial decision-making given the subjectivity of individual knowledge. Further similarities to their findings are present in our observation that WP norms are appropriated to support such subjectivity.…”

“…We thus intend to complete further research that examines additional Talk page content for other WP pages to support our findings. Specifically, these findings indicate that individuals employ informal norms when making sense of information for collaborative knowledge production, which confirms both previous WP research (Matei & Dobrescu, 2010), as well as Library and Information Science (LIS) research, which contends that individuals appeal to the body, mind, heart, and soul when making sense of information (Dervin, 1998;Godbold, 2013). However, expressions of informal norms need to be couched within a WP norm before the information in question can be codified within the Transgender topic page.…”

Has OpenStreetMap a role in Digital Earth applications?

“…This committee makes decisions on disputes which have arisen and where there are no clear community consensus on an issue. This arbitration is necessary in the absence of strict peer-review structures because as Matei and Dobrescu (2010) remarks that once Wikipedia "abandoned the peerreview component and became a free-for-all collaborative space" it became "an instant success".…”

“…Any OSM contributor can edit and update the spatial data (or annotation information) supplied by any other OSM contributor. Matei and Dobrescu (2010) explains that while philosophically akin with, although not completely similar to, the opensource software movement, Wikipedia and OSM rely on the wiki publishing paradigm. Wikis are Web-based collective and non-hierarchical publication systems with Web-based editing interfaces which allow any Internet visitor to add, delete, and publish content.…”

Computer-supported collaborative accounts of major depression: Digital rhetoric on Quora and Wikipedia

“…Wikipedia editorial policies put a large weight on properly using and referencing sources, favoring scientific sources and other reputable materials. The encyclopaedic voice is expected to represent controversies according to their public visibility and significance, while keeping an unified style and a balanced perspective -the so-called Neutral Point of View [15], [16].…”