Wikipedia talk:Be neutral in form
Criticism of "criticism of"[edit]
I'm concerned that this section will do more harm than good. There are plenty of "Criticism of..." pages that have gone through AfD and been kept, often by strong consensus. The treatment here seems to suggest that there is some sort of community consensus against such pages, but that is false. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:23, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- We would avoid a lot of POV issues raised in these articles if they were framed in context with praise. I'm not in favor of deleting them. (Edit: a quick survey of the top search results on "Criticism of..." AFDs shows it's hit or miss. Many are deleted. Many are kept. Many are merged at AFD or subsequently merged later. I think that's compatible with what I'm saying here, which is that "criticism of..." articles are often the subject of neutrality disputes, and that they don't need to be deleted, but it often helps to merge them with a proper context.) Would it help to make that clearer in the essay? Dzlife (talk) 20:22, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- I guess it would help to make it clearer that there is no consensus against having such pages, only against having them in ways that are POV or COATRACK. But I still envision this essay leading to tons of unhelpful arguments along the lines of: "Delete this criticism page, because WP:Be neutral in form says that criticism pages are bad." "No, that's just an essay, not policy." "I don't care. It still says that they're bad." --Tryptofish (talk) 20:33, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
- Ya... I don't like how sometimes essays are misused as policy. That's a bigger issue though. If I wanted to write a guideline of what I think most people would accept, I would stay away from this issue. This essay is unashamedly trying to elevate the level of discourse to make articles more neutral. I don't think deletion is the way to achieve that. I made some changes to the essay that I hope you'll appreciate. Dzlife (talk) 13:52, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks. I think it was a good step, although I believe that the essay/policy confusion will remain a problem. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:39, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- Ya... I don't like how sometimes essays are misused as policy. That's a bigger issue though. If I wanted to write a guideline of what I think most people would accept, I would stay away from this issue. This essay is unashamedly trying to elevate the level of discourse to make articles more neutral. I don't think deletion is the way to achieve that. I made some changes to the essay that I hope you'll appreciate. Dzlife (talk) 13:52, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
- I guess it would help to make it clearer that there is no consensus against having such pages, only against having them in ways that are POV or COATRACK. But I still envision this essay leading to tons of unhelpful arguments along the lines of: "Delete this criticism page, because WP:Be neutral in form says that criticism pages are bad." "No, that's just an essay, not policy." "I don't care. It still says that they're bad." --Tryptofish (talk) 20:33, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
Duplicate?[edit]
Is there a need for 2 essays on neutrality? Any reason why this cant be merged into Wikipedia:Neutral point of view?--RadioFan (talk) 16:57, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
- There's a lot of essays about neutrality. But this is the only one (to my knowledge) that focuses on neutral form. Most others talk about how to make a statement in a neutral way. This talks about how articles are formed in ways that might contribute to neutrality problems. It's almost like the difference between phenotype and genotype. As to merging it into policy, I would like this essay to become a guideline or influence policy one day. I don't expect that to happen soon. Dzlife (talk) 18:48, 26 September 2011 (UTC)