This is an original essay by long-time Wikipedian Ed Poor
POV pushing is not permitted on Wikimedia servers. The purpose of the Wikipedia project is to create an unbiased and comprehensive encyclopedia which makes the world's knowledge freely available to all people.
It is often necessary to examine a topic from more than one perspective. This is especially so with controversial topics, such as politics, morality, and religion.
But many people come to Wikipedia unaware of its neutrality policy (Wikipedia:NPOV) or simply do not wish to abide by it. They routinely and deliberately seek to evade, circumvent and undermine this policy by creating and editing articles so that they show only one point of view.
Probably the reason they do this is that they believe that a neutral comparison of the views they advocate will look bad in comparison with opposing views. And the best way to win an argument is to prevent the other side from getting any time to make their argument. Failing that, just make them look bad (ad hominem) or distort their views.
A major failing of Wikipedia all along has been the haphazard or lackadaisacal enforcement of the neutrality policy. The result is that a climate exists where it is easier for POV pushers to win, than for the rest of the community to stop them.
No solution to this problem is known at this time, but see Wikipedia:Writing for the enemy.
External links
- current version at Wikipedia - redirects to Wikipedia:NPOV dispute