Help talk:Introduction to policies and guidelines/1

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The display of this page (content section) on IE8 is overlapping the icons on the left and the text that follows them, so some of the text is covered by the icons. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 05:29, 2 October 2012 (UTC) make sure to love me — Preceding unsigned comment added by X x x baby x x x (talk • contribs) 05:43, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

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Starting introduction
Policies and Guidelines

Editing
Referencing
Images
Tables

Editing
Referencing
Images
Tables

Talk pages
Navigating Wikipedia
Manual of Style
Conclusion

I've formatted this using the {{intro to}} template to keep formatting consistent and centrally controlled with the other Help:introduction to pages. I've a few suggestions for other updates and improvements:

• Conduct is a bit wordy. Maybe there's a way to cut down wordcount by 20%?
• Are the nutshells necessary for such short paves? Could they just be lead sentences?
• Somehow "policies and guidelines" feels really dry and may reduce readers. Perhaps there are other main titles that are less intimidating like "Principles" or even "content and conduct" or something?

What do other people think? T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 11:53, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

NPOV is not necessairly objective

Neutral point-of-view (or NPOV) means content is written objectively and without bias, merely presenting the facts and notable viewpoints of others.

WP:NPOV page avoids any use of the word objective. Actually, the only use is to respond to the misunderstanding where NPOV might be thought of as a state of objectivity.

Let's find a better way to present such an important part of future Wikipedians orientation to WP. Calexit (talk) 23:26, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Changing username

Nice to be here and I believe l will be meeting some other members of the community for a nice time of sharing different ideas and experiences. Chekwubeokeke (talk) 17:48, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

My username is chekwubeokeke but I will to change my username to Chineduokeke I don’t know if it is possible? Chekwubeokeke (talk) 17:51, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

@Chekwubeokeke: it's unfortunately not that easy. You're looking for Wikipedia:Changing username, but you need to read the instructions carefully. Sdkb (talk) 18:04, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Are Trump's lies unprecedented in American political history?

Is it really true that "Donald Trump made many false or misleading statements during his campaign and presidency, to a degree unprecedented in American politics"? (This is presented as a neutral factual statement in the POV quiz.)

Certainly, respected media sources have documented many falsehoods. But did Trump equivocate to an extent which is *unprecedented* in American politics?

For example, biographies of Thomas Jefferson have recounted that he would push false claims and conspiracy theories to strategic advantage, either directly or through proxies. So how strong is the evidence to assert that Trump's mendacity is without precedent in American political history? Is there really a consensus on this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lionmarble (talk • contribs)

@Lionmarble: There's been a lot of discussion about that at Talk:Donald Trump (see the current consensus list there). The quiz here just follows the result there, so if you want to question that result, Trump's talk page would be the place to do it. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:45, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Wouldn't it preferable to include some sort of stat for "to a degree unprecedented in American politics", otherwise wouldn't it present a similar problem as with calling the Yankees one of the greatest teams of all times - where the model example includes stats for teams won and how it's 3x more than any other team. Swil999 (talk) 01:32, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Reordering and tweaking of these examples

I think some of these examples should be reordered and/or tweaked. Mainly, I feel as though the examples focus a bit too much on turns of phrase. It feels closer to a MOS:WTW quiz rather than a WP:NPOV quiz. I think the examples such as on Michael Phelps or the Holocaust are the clearer and cleaner ways of getting the idea across. Considering that this page is meant for beginners, and that some people learn by example, I think it's a good idea to make the examples more intuitive (without compromising on coverage of the WP:NPOV idea). Perhaps it would even be a good idea to split the page into two columns, with a bad phrasing on the left column and a WP:NPOV-compliant phrasing in the right column.

Examples I think should be emphasized/moved up/expanded/added:

• Michael Phelps. Honestly I think this one should be moved to first. It's a very clear and direct way of getting across the idea that WP:NPOV isn't just about saying what's verifiably true, it's about a neutral presentation of that information. WP:DUE is one of the more common applications of WP:NPOV, we should spend way more than one example on it (ironically, it isn't getting WP:DUE weight)
• Scientific fact. Vaccines is the current one, but I think one on flat earth might be a good idea too. For example, consider something like Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While many people think that the Earth is spherical, more and more people are coming to agree that the Earth is actually flat. and then something like Not neutral. This is an example of false balance. This sentence is true (modern flat Earth beliefs are indeed growing), but this phrasing is highly misleading as it leads the reader to think that there is substantive disagreement about the shape of the Earth. In reality, reliable sources have an overwhelming consensus on the shape of the Earth, to the point where the spherical Earth perspective is treated by Wikipedia as fact, and the flat Earth perspective is considered WP:FRINGE, meaning it need not be mentioned.
• Historical fact. The Holocaust is a fine one. It's a very sensitive subject which has upsides and downsides, an easy alternative might be moon landing denial, but I don't feel strongly.
• Fringe in general. The Holocaust or flat earth are some examples, but it might be a good idea to consider other cases where a fringe belief should not be mentioned at all, outside of pseudoscience.
• Cats. It's a good example of how we talk about movies through the voice of critics. Might be good to include a contrasting bad example of how not to.

Examples I think should be deemphasized/moved lower/merged/tweaked:

• Facebook. Not much wrong with it, I just don't think it teaches the reader anything. It too could be improved if it demonstrated a constrasting example of an incorrect phrasing, though.
• Trump. I'm not sure it does a good job of demonstrating what it tries to (its answer says, even when it differs from a view held by a large portion of the general public). I think there could be better examples of "counterintuitive truths" that get the idea across without the political baggage and connotations of Trump, we could just take something from list of common misconceptions.
• Yankees and Shakespeare. For the average reader, is one of the greatest probably reads about the same as is widely considered to be one of the greatest. These examples should definitely be merged, that would get across this slightly unintuitive difference in phrasing.
• Mao and Diana. cruel disregard and tragic are similar to the Yankees and Shakespeare example, but the quiz suggests that instead of saying it in "critic voice" or "widely considered voice", the sentence should just be rephrased. One might ask: why can we say that Shakespeare is widely considered one of the greatest but not that Diana's death was widely considered to be tragic. It would be better to make clear if/when/why it's appropriate and WP:NPOV to use the abstraction of "widely considered".

But before I do anything I'm curious to hear others' thoughts on this! Leijurv (talk) 23:26, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

I completely agree with your statements and found most of the examples far below the standards we should strive for. Nielsen Lasse (talk) 06:31, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 27 January 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) echidnaLives - talk - edits 22:39, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

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Help:Introduction to policies and guidelines/1 → Help:Introduction to policies and guidelines – I see no reason to have a /1 for the first page rather than just placing it on the basepage. The /1 page should of course be redirected. --Trialpears (talk) 12:04, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. There are technical aspects that would require us to increase complexity considerably if we did this (which I can go into if you're curious). But more to the point, we want to encourage readers to go through all the pages, not just the first one, and putting /1 in the title helps establish from the start that there's more to read beyond this. Also, if this page was just at the proposed title, all the pages after it would be considered subpages of it, which wouldn't be correct taxonomy. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 15:27, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Note: Help Project has been notified of this discussion. ASUKITE 16:10, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose - it does seem that the /1 makes the progression of help pages a bit more obvious, as well as what Sdkb noted above as far as incorrect taxonomy. Was going to re-list this but I'll hold off as it seems fairly straightforward. ASUKITE 16:12, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.