Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view

BALANCE and majority rules

NPOV requires editors "describe, not engage disputes" between viewpoint holders, so long as viewpoints are not fringe or held by an "extremely small minority". I recently came across a discussion where a viewpoint was being put forth in a minority of reputable sources that contradicted a majority. Based on a reading of the above, it would appear that we should not engage the dispute and endorse the views of the majority in wikivoice, but instead describe the dispute and the viewpoints, "fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias".

Despite this, WP:BALANCE was cited as supporting "the idea that we should put in wikivoice labels that a majority of sources use". BALANCE indeed requires "describing both points of view" when reliable source "contradict one another and are relatively equal in prominence". How does this requirement that viewpoints should be relatively equal in prominence square with the above reading of not engaging debates in general, not only when they are relatively equal in prominence? Whonting (talk) 06:43, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

Since people will probably ask, this is the discussion: Talk:Missing_scientists_conspiracy_theory#Bias Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 06:48, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

Btw, is your point that Missing scientists conspiracy theory should not use conspiracy theory in title and wikivoice? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:05, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

I don't have an opinion on this particular dispute and don't have the interest to form one. My only point is that if, as described on the talk page, there is a dispute in reputable sources whether something is a conspiracy theory, the simple fact that more support one side doesn't mean their viewpoint should go in wikivoice. Whonting (talk) 07:09, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

, so long as viewpoints are not fringe covers conspiracy theories easily. Simonm223 (talk) 10:36, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

@Simonm223, can I ask you reread the comment you're responding to? Whonting (talk) 10:57, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

Yeah. A lot of it is around the question of whether the FBI is investigating a conspiracy theory or possible chicanery. But considering the current director of the FBI is a conspiracy theory podcaster... Simonm223 (talk) 12:35, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

Like one of the editors on the talk page described this as Three Body Problem-type allegations. Assuming they're accurate about these allegations... Well The Three-Body Problem is about an alien invasion. So I'd say we're firmly in conspiracy theory territory here. Simonm223 (talk) 12:42, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

I'm sure you're right. I don't care for the specifics, which is why I initially asked a general question and why the above comment was qualified with "if" this were a case of there being disagreement in reputable sources, would we defer to a majority or would we avoid engaging a dispute between adherants of a majority and a (non-tiny) minority. Whonting (talk) 12:47, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

Can you present any reliable sources that say there is an alien invasion targeting nuclear scientists? Simonm223 (talk) 12:52, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

Semantically speaking, a "conspiracy theory" is merely a theory that conspiracy is at play: "[a] hypothesis that posits conspiracy or collusion". Some conspiracy theories are actually quite plausible. Among those, a few are even probable. And some have even been proven true, such as MKUltra and the Tuskegee experiments.

The official Wikipedia policy is not to represent any one side as correct or incorrect, except where obviously so, such as the sky being blue, or, respectively, the Earth being flat. A view is no more or less correct because it is held by a majority or a minority; some issues are seriously contested and may never reach any kind of academic consensus. That said, for the sake of not legitimizing beliefs that aren't likely in the slightest, I wouldn't assign undue weight to just any theory out there. OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 20:28, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

If the bulk of high quality reliable sources assert that a certain view is a conspiracy theory or other aspect that falls under fringe theories, we should not be doubting those sources, and thus can express the majority view in wikivoice. These missing scientists seems like a prime example, where the claim some nefarious purpose to their disappearance is tajen but realiable sources as a conspiracy theory. As a counter ecple, the lab leak theory for COVID's origins is generally considered unlikely but not readily dismissed as fringe, so we describe both major origin theories with attribution, though explain most of the scientific body asserting the natural origin as the more likely route. Masem (t) 13:05, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

Thanks Masem. Would you say the lab leak theory is "relatively equal in prominence" with the theory that COVID arose from "natural zoonotic transmission from bats"? Whonting (talk) 13:08, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

wouldn't say it's equal, simply that as a scientific evaluation, most leading organizations and researchers acknowledge it is likely impossible to determine the actual origin so properly call out the difference in theories as more or less probable. As such it's more that WEIGHT still is applied giving more credence to the natural origin, but without dismissing the lab leak theory as FRINGE, so is consider a major viewpoint to be covered. Masem (t) 13:20, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

WP:BALANCE says "However, when reputable sources contradict one another and are relatively equal in prominence, describe both points of view and work for balance." Do you think the qualification of and are relatively equal in prominence is helpful? We should be describing viewpoints and working for balance regardless of whether the viewpoints are relatively equal in prominence (so long as the viewpoint is not fringe or otherwise held by a tiny minority), and making such a qualification can be read as saying we only need describe disputes when viewpoints are relatively equal in prominence. Whonting (talk) 13:26, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

I dont think the viewpoints need to be of equal prominence to make sure all are covered, but how much they are covered will factor in WEIGHT. But keep in mind the "reputable sources" aspect too. If we are only getting one viewpoint from less than high quality sources, while the high quality sources focus on another, the weaker sources likely won't be seen as equal prominence to include. Masem (t) 15:35, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

I wonder whether 'engaging in the debate' is unclear to some editors.

Describing differing views is not 'engaging in the debate'. 'Engaging in the debate' means trying to persuade the reader that one side is correct and the other side is wrong. A neutral article dispassionately informs the reader of the facts without engaging in persuasive rhetorical techniques. If the article summarizes the subject by presenting statements of facts (including plain statements of facts about opinions, e.g., "Alice Expert's favorite color is green") in plain English, and it does not contain appeals to reason, emotion, values, etc., then the article is not 'engaging in the debate'. Such an article is not engaging in the debate even if a reader might be more inclined to agree with one side or the other after reading it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:08, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

Such emotive writing would be engaging the debate, but if the COVID article wrote "COVID arose from natural zoonotic transmission from bats", even with later comment that "some scientists hold that it may have arisen from a lab leak, that would also be engaging the debate.

Do you see there being value in including the phrase "and are relatively equal in prominence"? Whonting (talk) 23:45, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

• I disagree that your COVID example is "engaging in the debate". "Engaging in the debate" sounds more like presenting a list of reasons why the reader ought to believe that COVID either arose from natural zoonotic transmission or as a consequence of scientific research. Merely stating that the main position as a fact, and then noting the existence of disagreement, is not engaging in the debate.
• The phrase "and are relatively equal in prominence" is not just valuable, but actually the critical point. We have multiple different scenarios to deal with here. They roughly work like this (simplified to just two "sides"):
  • One widely accepted, one minority view: "Universal literacy is the goal of most educational systems, and teachers around the world work to teach reading to all children, including children with dyslexia, deafness, blindness, intellectual disability, or other difficulties. However, some scholars have argued that, for a small number of children, educational resources should be directed away from reading and towards other forms of training or care. As Prof. I.M. Portant puts it, 'Yak herders have survived for thousands of years without first learning how to read, and there's every likelihood that they'll continue surviving even if they don't all spend eight years sitting in a classroom'."
  • Two equally prominent views: "Windows and Macs are both personal computing systems. Each has its champions, with Windows tending to be favored in the bookkeepers, and Macs tending to be favored by graphic designers."
  • One widely accepted view, with one tiny minority view: "Donald Trump lost the 2020 election for US president", except in articles about the tiny minority view, such as Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election and Big lie#2020 stolen election claims. In those articles, the overall presentation should sound more like "Donald Trump lost the 2020 election for US president, and a few people didn't believe the facts".
• The phrase "and are relatively equal in prominence" is important here because it's telling editors that the approach I've described under "Two equally prominent views" is the one that they should take in this case (and not the approaches described in the other two).

WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:12, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

I don't think we need to interpret what engaging the debate "sounds like" -- we have WP:SERIOUSLYCONTESTED making clear that if something is genuinely in dispute it should not be stated as fact but opinion, and we are also told "not to promote one particular point of view over another" - stating one view as fact unambiguously does this.

To your examples:

• One widely accepted, one minority view: This doesn't state any view as fact and thereby does not engage a dispute.
• Two equally prominent views: This doesn't describe any view as fact and thereby does not engage a dispute.
• One widely accepted view, with one tiny minority view: I said above that "engaging the debate" does not cover "tiny minorities". Moreover, I am not sure there is even a tiny minority of reputable sources making such claims.

Based on the examples you give, it sounds like we are in agreement as to how views of different proportions should be presented, but we disagree on whether "and are relatively equal in prominence" supports such constructions. For the first, why do you not think we are "describing both points of view and working for balance"? Whonting (talk) 02:30, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

When did I say that Wikipedia is not "describing both points of view and working for balance"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:00, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

This comes from WP:BALANCE: "However, when reputable sources contradict one another and are relatively equal in prominence, describe both points of view and work for balance." In the example you gave, the views were not relatively equal in prominence. Whonting (talk) 03:27, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

I gave three examples. Two of them are not supposed to be "relatively equal in prominence". The one that does (Macs vs Windows) is an example of two views being held with relatively equal prominence. (In case it's not clear, "equal market share" is not the same as "equal prominence". The general POV in reliable sources is not that one is the best, but that which one is the best depends on what you want to do with it.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:49, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

Do you read "work for balance" to mean "work to represent views with equal emphasis" or "proportionately, so as not to give undue weight"? Whonting (talk) 08:28, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

When the two views are basically equal (←the context for that sentence), then there's no difference between "work to represent views with equal emphasis" and "proportionately, so as not to give undue weight". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:35, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

I understand that when views are basically equal there is no difference between the two. Here is another way to read the text: WP:BALANCE describes an approach to editing: "describe both points of view and work for balance", a clarification of what that means in practice ("This involves describing the opposing views clearly, drawing on secondary or tertiary sources that describe the disagreement from a disinterested viewpoint.") and conditions that require such behaviour ("when reputable sources contradict one another and are relatively equal in prominence"). If such conditions are not met, "describing the opposing views clearly, drawing on secondary or tertiary sources that describe the disagreement from a disinterested viewpoint" is not required.

If this sounds academic or nitpicky, I only raise it because WP:BALANCE was cited as supporting "the idea that we should put in wikivoice labels that a majority of sources use", and because I see the notion that we should be deferring to a majority of reliable sources in various discussions. Whonting (talk) 04:41, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

A label is not exactly the same thing as a viewpoint.

We should usually but not always adopt the label/name used in a majority of English-language reliable sources. There are many complexities and nuances in making these choices. Here are two of them, by way of illustrating times when we should WP:Use our own words instead of mindlessly following a majority of reliable sources:

• If that label or name is now wrong, then we should use a name or label that is correct. For example, when a corporation changes its name, editors should not say "Oh, dear, we have to use the old name because a majority of reliable sources are from the years before the name change".
• If that label or name represents a viewpoint (e.g., freedom fighter vs terrorist or rebel), we should be careful about adopting that label, and we should generally make a note about the choice (e.g., "Critics say that Israel's response to Hamas killing and kidnapping well over 1000 people now amounts to genocide, but supporters say that destroying Hamas isn't the same thing as destroying the Palestinian people, so it's not actually genocide"). The main categories (and some common examples) for this are in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:09, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Those examples are good. I'll ask two questions and if the answers to either are no I'll leave this here:

1. Do you sometimes see editors express the sentiment that we should go with the majority view of sources when there is a dispute?
2. Do you believe it is believable that some editors would read WP:BALANCE in the way I describe above?

Whonting (talk) 04:48, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

1. Yes, of course. And sometimes they are correct (it's 'the measles vaccine', not the 'baby killing deathwish industrial waste disposal system'), and often the choice between options is not very important anyway (e.g., choosing between a Spanish spelling and a Dutch spelling, when no true English version exists; deciding whether to refer to Hillary Clinton as "Hillary" or as "Rodham Clinton" when you need to differentiate between her and her husband in a paragraph).
2. I find that a very large number of misconceptions about Wikipedia's policies are believable. Nobody reads the directions in the first place, and if they do, they tend to misunderstand it, misquote it, and twist it to support whatever it is that they wanted to do in the first place. We could literally have a rule that says "Don't let the pigeon drive the bus under any circumstance whatsoever this means you I really mean it this time I will block you from here to infinity!", and someone would turn up soon afterwards saying "but that means I can let the pigeon drive the bus over here, right?"

WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:37, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

• This is too contextual to answer in the abstract (beyond the very broad statements that you've already gotten.) Things that matter, and which even very experienced editors often disagree over, include:

• What qualifies as a reliable source in a topic area, and what the best reliable sources are.
• Whether some aspect is fringe.
• Whether the sources are relatively equal in prominence.

One other thing that I haven't seen mentioned above is that per WP:BESTSOURCES, "prominence", in Wikipedia terms, is not just about numbers but quality and expertise; if we have a lot of really high-quality sources on a topic, then we simply ignore clearly lower-quality sources, we don't weigh them by number or word-count or something. An overwhelming consensus among academic experts could trump a more divided or even utterly opposed reception among non-expert news media, opinion commentators, and so on. This is the case on topics such as the creation-evolution controversy, the efficacy of faith healing, the effectiveness of vaccines, global warming, the Shakespearean authorship controversy, and more; it is easy to find lower-quality news sources that both-sides these issues, but since the academic consensus is clear-cut we can state that consensus as fact in the article voice. If you looked at eg. more credulous news coverage by non-experts, you might say "but there's a bunch of people speculating that Shakespeare's plays were written by someone else! How can we state in the article voice that he was the author?" But the best sources - reputable historians specializing in that topic - basically unanimously agree that he wrote his plays. --Aquillion (talk) 16:08, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

These are all good considerations, particularly the point on BESTSOURCES. I have others, though I haven't raised them so as not to detract from the key point: the attitude that floats around Wikipedia sometimes, that we should be deferring to a majority of reliable sources is only true when that claim is not the subject of genuine dispute among reputable sources. Whonting (talk) 16:17, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

When there is a genuine dispute among reputable sources, then there are generally also reliable sources directly saying that there is a genuine dispute. When a large number of reliable sources say there is a genuine dispute, Wikipedia editors should defer to those reliable sources.

For example: How some popular drugs (e.g., GLP-1s and SSRIs) work is unknown. There is a genuine debate among reputable sources about whether this mechanism or that mechanism or some other mechanism is what's actually going on. A majority of reliable sources (including basically all secondary sources) simply state this outright. Editors should definitely be deferring to those reliable sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:43, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

related to academic sources, we should also avoid trying to prematurely assign what are the predominantly viewpoints to some event, and wait for longer term sources, like academics, to describe those from a higher level overview. Near term sources like newspapers and websites will often skew the perception of an event, so trying to judge what are majority or minority views in the short term can be problematic. That's where as an encyclopedia, if we are going to include those short term assessments, it is far better to write describing the differing viewpoints and maybe not necessary give weight to one or the other outside of FRINGE cases. Masem (t) 17:17, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

Right. So for example the question of what crashed to kick off the Roswell incident in 1947 is absolutely settled in serious academic sources (spolier: a balloon), even though it's a hot debate in trashier, even "prominent" sources (UFO books, newspapers, TV shows). In general one high-quality source trumps an infinity of lesser ones for knowledge. Same principle applies for whether Ivermectin treats COViD-19, various "lab leak" narratives, whether tylenol/vaccines cause autism, etc. etc. A frequent WP:PROFRINGE stance is to insist something is seriously contested when in the WP:BESTSOURCES it simply isn't. Bon courage (talk) 03:46, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

If I can take this off topic a bit, just as distinctions can be made between BESTSOURCES and non-BESTSOURCES, distinctions can be made between types of disputes; those over facts (Water is H2O), analysis (this happened because of Y), and normative disputes/disputes over opinion (knowledge should or shouldn't be free/beetroot tastes good).

One article may cover multiple disputes: one on an election between two parties has the dispute between two parties (party A advocated for more Y, saying it would bring prosperity, party B advocated for Z, saying it would quell the flow of bad thing) and the dispute in reputable sources over how to characterize the election (the election was characterized by misinformation / party B utilized crises effectively). Whonting (talk) 04:55, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

So long as Wikipedia maintains a focus on duly summarising the accepted knowledge published on a topic these distinctions, while they may exist, are moot for our purposes. Bon courage (talk) 05:06, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

I don't think so, such a focus tells us nothing about how articles should be framed or what should go in wikivoice vs be attributed. Here are two ways the lead of Elon Musk salute controversy could be written based on the body, both summarising accepted knowledge but in very different ways. Do you believe either one better adheres to commitments such as "describe the dispute" and WP:OPPONENT? Whonting (talk) 04:52, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

I would say the first one, as it appears to be the one neutrally based on reliable sources. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:37, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Both are based on reliable sources, why do you say the first is neutrally done so? It is framed around the interpretation that it was indeed a Nazi or fascist salute. The second states what the gesture was before describing how it was interpreted. It also discusses the substances of the positions. Whonting (talk) 11:43, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

You may need to show your workings, the current version sources can be found in the article. If you have sources for your version it would be helpful to show them.
I never said it's neutral, I said it neutrally based on reliable sources. The first would be my opinion, the second an observation on whether the content reflects the sources without editors inserting their own bias. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:54, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

I drew from the sources in the article, if there's a particular claim you would like cited inline lmk. To the rest, hopefully if you reread my comment you will see I was clumsily also saying neutral based on the sources. Whonting (talk) 12:38, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

It may be neutral to the sources, but that's where the tone also has to be reviewed. Rushing to call it being interpreted as a Nazi salute rather than explaining the gesture and then moving it to discuss how it was interpreted is how we should describe a controversy, since we're not predisposed to taking a side in the second version. This is a case where the number of voices that complained it seemed to be Nazi salute is the louder voice, both views (one that it was a Nazi salute, the other that it was just a gesture) are of equal prominence that we should not rush to take one side here.

This is common problem on WP nowadays that it may seem right to rush to call out the gesture as bad, as on average, WP editors and sources lean left, and see that as a problem, but we have to put aside our personal outrage to still keep to a neutral tone and approach on these articles, which can lead to misreading the proportion of sources and treating minority views as outright FRINGE-type arguments. Masem (t) 12:20, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks Masem. When you say "of equal prominence", I would think that more authorities/reputable sources espousing one would mean they are not of equal prominence? I did try in text to express the prominence of each view to that effect. Whonting (talk) 12:45, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

If sources don't handle it that way then that would be the editor introducing their own bias into the description. If sources are split on how it's described then both should used, rather than pushing on to prominence over the other. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:44, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Sources themselves are subject to bias which we have to make sure we work around to keep a neutral approach to our articles. I remember when this happened that several not-quite-top-tier reliable sources said straight out it was a nazi gesture. It should be obvious that we have no idea if it was an initial reference to a nazi gesture, and that's how our tone should reflect it, though still make sure the majority viewpoint, that most sources saw it as such rather than the explanation given by Musk and others. Masem (t) 16:30, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Clarification on NPOV/due weight for allegations and controversies

Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

If I may suggest, I would like to raise a possible clarification on NPOV and due weight for allegations and controversies.

NPOV asks us: "carefully and critically analyze a variety of of reliable sources" and present views: "fairly and proportionately" so content reflects the relative prominence of views in those sources. Policies like NPOV, NOTSOAP, PROMO, NOTSCANDAL all point in same direction. Meaning, it's not just "is this verifiable?" but also "how much weight does this carry"? in practice, something can pass the "it's in a reliable source" test, but not the weight test. For example, a claim in a single source can make its way into a wikipedia page even when there hasn't been much follow-up or wider coverage. This is especially relevant to serious allegations, where limited or one-off reporting without broader or continued coverage can give more weight than the sources support. It can look bigger on the page than in the wider world of sources.

We can see that we have clear guidance for promotional or advocacy content like WP:PROMO, which helps keep things from getting too heavy on the positive side. The flip side, how to handle lightly covered negative or controversial content relies more on general due weight rules. So, the question is: when something is verifiable but minimally covered with possibly no follow-up or wider lasting coverage or updates, how should we decide if it has enough prominence to include without giving undue weight?

One way might be to clarify this with something like this: "Allegations or controversial content is generally appropriate when supported by significant coverage in independent, reliable sources. Content based solely on isolated or limited reporting or single sourced one-off reporting, even if verifiable, may be excluded if its inclusion would give undue weight. The presence of a denial does not by itself establish due weight". This would help illustrate how due weight applies in a common edge case. If is notable enough for inclusion, it would have atleast a follow-up or an investigation or multiple sources with some in-depth reporting and this clarification will not impact inclusion of such content or any discussion around such content.

Curious what others think. Would something like this be useful, perhaps as an example within WP:UNDUE or WP:PROPORTION? NicoR8 (talk) 17:55, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

We have stronger protections for BLPs, which covers the vast majority of problematic, poorly-verified allegations. I think you're correct that for other topics, like companies, the rules are just due weight. I can imagine situations where this would be less than ideal. Generally editors use their common sense to reach reasonable outcomes, though, so I'd have to see evidence that this is a real and persistent problem before considering modifying policy. Toadspike [Talk] 19:54, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

@Toadspike Yea that makes sense and I suppose commonsense plays an important role and I saw BLP covers many of the more sensitive cases and that is what placed me in dilemma about this edge case in non-BLP situations like as you said companies or deceased people. For example, someone's claim might be attributed, but without much follow-up or wider coverage (Talk:Paul Crouch#Question about BLP Policy) it's veriifiable, yes, but how much weight it should carry isn't always obvious.

That's when things can get a little wobbly. Editors can look at similar content and land in different places (Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/Noticeboard#Ron_Wyatt per one editor " it seems to be in reasonable shape" and Special:Diff/1351575584 - per another editor "a bunch of unacceptable sources. Is there any secondary coverage of this" ), same ingredients, different pot. Another example Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/Noticeboard#Millsaps College article – section weight and neutrality is waiting for help since April 10 ( might not be quite related ), and would have helped if some NPOV/UNDUE clarification was available.

A small clarification or example(s) based on what policy already says, not a new rule, might help steady things in these edge cases. Just making the guidance a bit clearer so we don't end up going round in circles. Of course, like any policy, it would still rely on commonsense, but with a bit more consistency and some example-based thinking to guide it, so editors are a bit more aligned in how to apply the same due weight rules consistently. For the kind of cases you thinking, an example like that could help make the guidance clearer in practice. NicoR8 (talk) 11:58, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

I think that two types of examples could be useful to editors:

• Avoid "criticism" and "reaction" sections. The goal is for someone reading about the subject to get both pro- and anti- sentiments in the same place. Otherwise, some readers will see only the main section and not see the criticism, and other readers will skip to the criticism section and never see the supportive information. For example:
  • When writing about a creative work, business, or product, try to put all related things into the same section (e.g., ==Products== or ==Corporate history==): "In 2026, Big Business, Inc. produced a cheaper version of their popular widget, which was criticized for having lower quality." Don't put "In 2026, Big Business, Inc. produced a cheaper version of their popular widget" in the ==Product develompent== section and then have a separate ==Criticism== section that says "In 2026, a cheaper version of their main product was criticized for having lower quality".
  • When writing about an event or politics, try to put al related things in one section (e.g., ==Recommendations== or ==Campaign themes==): "This report recommended changing the initial requirements, which was criticized for excluding people and not following scientific standards." Don't put "This report recommended changing the initial requirements" in one section and then put "The report was criticized for excluding people and not following scientific standards" in a separate ==Reactions== statement. (If the reaction is perfunctory or generic (e.g., a politician offering Wikipedia:Thoughts and prayers after a disaster), then it should normally be omitted.)
• Only include criticism when it is significant or unexpected. For example:
  • Omit Captain Obvious, like "Demicans disagreed with Republocrats".
  • Try to write for your opponent, and especially to search for sources that support other viewpoints.
  • Think carefully about the difference between a viewpoint being popular, especially within a filter bubble, and a viewpoint being presented in high-quality sources.
  • etc.

The second point could probably be expanded into half a dozen useful essays. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:39, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

Hey @WhatamIdoing useful points. Your two points, fold critique into context and skip the obvious are about how to serve up crticism that already passes the Inclusion test. Good seasoning, all good. Dilemma is one pot earlier: when does a thinly-sourced allegation earn its place at the table at all? Picture a non-BLP page like a company or organization or deceased person, basically any non-BLP. For a thinly-sourced allegation, nobody else picks it up, no follow-up, no investigation, the story just sits there like a single grain of rice on the plate. WP:V says yes, WP:DUE shrugs. Commonsense used by editors looking at the same text walk away with different answers and round and round potentially inconsistently across pages. So a small example within WP:UNDUE, nothing fancy, not a new rule, just a little lighthouse for editors. Something like: A claim's appearance in one (or thinly-sourced) reliable source establishes verifiability but does not by itself establish due wieght. Where coverage is limited to isolated reporting without follow-up or engagement by other reliable sources, inclusion may give the claim undue weight". NicoR8 (talk) 11:46, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

I think that if you can't fold the critique into context, that should be a warning that you might be headed into UNDUE territory.

For example, consider Vector Marketing. Pretty much everything published about the company is criticism of their main business model: inexperienced young people buy (or put a security deposit on) a sales kit, get a small amount of training, and are unleashed to sell the product (which is kitchen knives) to their friends, family, neighbors, etc. In response to criticism and a few lawsuits, they stopped charging for the sales kit and maybe started paying for the training program (at least sometimes). Consequently, that should be in ==History== instead of ==Criticism==. The fact that you could put it in ==History== shows that this criticism is DUE (though in the case of that company, the only question is how much criticism, not whether any should be there).

But there's another lawsuit that's rather unlike the others: One of the new sellers was an 18-year-old woman who met a 25-year-old man and offered to do an in-home sales demo for him. Shortly after she arrived, he drugged her and raped her. He went to prison, and she sued the company, claiming that they should have prevented this through the provision of safety training. There are few sources about the lawsuit being filed, I see no follow-up sources about the lawsuit, and there is no indication that the company took any action or made any changes in response. Therefore I would lean towards not including this information. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:02, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

Ahh, now I see what you mean @WhatamIdoing. Vector Marketing makes the point clear where the general criticism has an arc, so it folds into ==History== naturally. Maybe a small note in WP:UNDUE that ties them together: "Where an allegation or controversy can only stand as an isolated item - without follow-up, coverage, response, or broader narrative to fold it into, its inclusion may give the claim undue weight." captures both the structure test you gave and the sourcing angle. Feel free to change, your phrasing will probably be cleaner. Maybe worth circling back to Toadspike for their earlier points? NicoR8 (talk) 16:26, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

We should probably move this discussion to Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:06, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

Hey @WhatamIdoing I followed Template:Moved talk and completed the move. NicoR8 (talk) 19:19, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

Regarding the "reasonable shape" comment - as I was the editor who made it - I had glanced at the article and seen what looked much like a pretty normal article about a pseudoarchaeologist of marginal notability. At the time I watchlisted the article and put a pin in it for later as I didn't see it as top-priority and even mentioned that I was a bit rusty on pseudoarchaeology articles which hadn't been a focus of my editing for quite some time. I actually agree with the later editor (@ScottishFinnishRadish) with regard to the overall quality of the sources in the article. I felt little need to go back to the noticeboard and revise my comment as it was already in safe hands. Simonm223 (talk) 11:49, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks.

I think this idea is closer to WP:BALASP than to WP:DUE. In particular, I think it fits in with this paragraph:

An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject. For example, a description of isolated events, quotes, criticisms, or news reports related to one subject may be verifiable and impartial, but still disproportionate to their overall significance to the article topic. This is a concern especially for recent events that may be in the news.

What do you (all) think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:12, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

That too works @WhatamIdoing. In this place, something like this with few changes can fit well right after this first para you gave. "Also, for example, where an allegation or controversy can only stand as an isolated item - without follow-up, wider coverage, or a broader narrative to fold it into - its inclusion may be disproportionate. A denial by itself does not make inclusion proportional." NicoR8 (talk) 11:41, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

Does anybody object to adding a sentence like this? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:47, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

I second everything in this discussion and support inclusion. Stronger barriers to prevent criticism-collecting are desperately needed (especially since there are editors trying to erode away WP:ONUS, one of the few tools we have besides WP:BALASP). Also note there are over 5,000 BLPs with section headings that include the words "criticism" or "controversy". Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:26, 17 May 2026 (UTC)

• I suspect this is too contextual to come up with one hard-and-fast rule (it's really a huge chunk of NPOV and DUE, and to an extent RS.) Some considerations:

• First, due weight is relative. Weigh the coverage something has received (in terms of breadth, duration, quality, etc) against what's already in the article. "We can't weigh this more / less than XYZ" is one of the strongest and most reliable WP:DUE arguments - with the obvious caveats that editors can still disagree about relative weight and that, even when it's true, it can be solved either by adjusting the weight given to the proposed addition (possibly to zero) or by adjusting the weight to the other points of comparison. Often uncontroversial but insignificant things accrue in articles because nobody bothers to challenge them, and going "wait we have all of this minor stuff but people are objecting to a bit more text for this big scandal?" might mean we just need to clean the minor stuff up.
• Second, there's a bunch of things that can cause something to be due or undue, whose meaning shifts depending on the subject and its overall coverage. I think that sustained coverage, broad coverage, coverage in high-quality sources, coverage that relates it to the subject's main source of notability, and coverage that itself treats the aspect as important are all significant, but I'd be reluctant to turn any one of them into a red line; various combinations of them can lead to something passing the bare minimum threshold for inclusion.
• "Broad coverage" perhaps ought to be elaborated on because I'm not sure we have guidelines discussing it - in general, especially when talking about WP:BIASED sources or the like, if coverage is all from the same "informational bubble", so to speak, or from sources that are all biased in the same direction, I would say that this gives it less weight; a story that has been covered by every news article that reports the position of Party XYZ but has failed to make the jump outside that is due less weight. Personally I feel that we could stand to elaborate a bit more on the relationship between BIASED and due weight in particular.

Also, in most articles, the bare minimum needed for one sentence devoted to something is usually not that high; total exclusion is often a high bar. So sometimes it's more useful to start with that minimal coverage. Due weight is also about placement and focus, after all. And how we frame it also matters; if the sources don't treat something as important, then we shouldn't word it in a breathless manner. That said, another consideration is "are we giving this overall perspective too much weight" - a common problem is editors who add every single opinion piece or biased source that argues a particular position, giving each of their arguments massive amounts of depth. Even if the position itself is WP:DUE, the massive amount of focus that this results in may be undue, so it might make more sense to just combine them all into one sentence. --Aquillion (talk) 01:29, 17 May 2026 (UTC)

@Aquillion, I like your phrase of "We can't weigh this more / less than XYZ". It sounds very practical. Would you please find a way to put that in this policy?

I agree with you about "broad coverage". Maybe an essay defining Wikipedia:Broad coverage would be the place to start? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:31, 17 May 2026 (UTC)

Trying to fold in Aquillion's considerations, but yeah, the broader "we can't weigh this more / less than XYZ" point likely needs separate treatment. This can be stirred further: "Also, for example, where an allegation or controversy is covered only in isolated reporting, editors should consider whether it is treated as significant in the body of reliable sources on the subject. If not, including it may give undue weight to a minor aspect of the subject. A denial by itself does not make inclusion proportional." Keeping it close to BALASP itself using "undue weight" and "minor aspect" in first para, so this adds clarification to that. NicoR8 (talk) 00:05, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

@NicoR8 Quite the discussion, I've proposed another version below. Anchoring this to retained inclusion after the initial breaking-news directly onto the WP:Notnews and WP:Recentism paragraph already in WP:Balasp, and it picks up @Aquillion's point that "sustained coverage" is one of the strongest signals of due weight. It also speaks to @WhatamIdoing's Vector Marketing example, where the absence of follow-up sourcing on the isolated lawsuit was precisely what tipped it toward exclusion. Also I tightened the denial clause in your original wording. A subject's denial is a downstream consequence of the allegation being published, not independent evidence that the matter carried weight in reliable sources, and without that line, editors can highlight the denial as if it were a balancing second "side."

"Also, for example, where an allegation or controversy reported as breaking news was previously included in an article, editors should consider its retained inclusion on the merits of its sustained coverage as evidenced by what has been published in reliable sources following the initial report. Otherwise, inclusion of an allegation or controversy in the absence of sustained coverage risks undue weight. A denial of allegations by an involved party itself does not merit inclusion and also risks undue weight."

LeónGonsalvesofGoa (talk) 13:34, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

A denial of allegations by an involved party itself does not merit inclusion could be read to mean that a denial of allegations should never be included, which is obviously not true. I presume you are intending to say that allegations being denied does not guarantee inclusion? Thryduulf (talk) 14:45, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

If the allegations are about a crime or similarly serious claim about a BLP, editors consistently include the BLP's denial. We should respect the community's ordinary practices in such cases. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:39, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure what a Wikipedia version of this would look like, but many sources have a formal right of reply policy. - Palpable (talk) 20:13, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

What we're mostly looking at is something like this:

• Monday: A hundred websites report that a celebrity was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving.
• Tuesday: A hundred websites report that the celebrity denies all guilt.

This isn't proof that any of this should be in a Wikipedia article. If something belongs in Wikipedia, it should look more like this:

• January: Reliable sources report that a celebrity was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving.
• February: The celebrity's publicist reports that the celebrity is in a detox facility.
• March: Reliable sources report that the trial has been postponed.
• April: Reliable sources report that a legislator has introduced the Celebrity Rehab Act to encourage film studios to screen actors for high-risk drug and alcohol abuse.
• May: Reliable sources report that the celebrity plead guilty to lesser charges.
• June: The celebrity's publicist announced that they're in negotiations with an anti-drunk-driving public service announcement.
• and so on.

Or at least like this:

• January 2021: Reliable sources report that a celebrity as arrested for drunk driving.
• June 2021: The celebrity plead guilty to lesser charges.
• January 2022: The news story appeared in the end-of-year reviews in some newspapers.
• Next couple of years: The arrest is mentioned occasionally in unrelated news articles (e.g., "Chris Celebrity, who hasn't been seen drinking in public since their arrest in January 2021, sipped ginseng tea while answering my questions").

WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:47, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

Yea, thanks, I think the Monday/Tuesday example catches the point well. An allegation reported one day and denied the next may still just be one short news wave. Thryduulf's point taken too. The point about denial would be narrower, that a denial by itself does not make the allegation proportional for inclusion. Some tweaks:

"Also, for example, where an allegation or controversy is covered only in isolated or short-lived reporting, editors should consider whether it is treated as significant in the body of reliable sources on the subject, such as through sustained coverage, follow-up reporting, or later discussion in reliable sources. If not, including it may give undue weight to a minor aspect of the subject. A denial by itself does not make inclusion proportional." NicoR8 (talk) 20:04, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

I think that "short-lived" is a good way to describe it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:34, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

I agree with your points here but I don't think the wording is great as it has negatives and positives in one long sentence. Perhaps something like:

Editors should consider the significance of the allegation or controversy in the context of the totality of reliable sources on the subject. For example, something that is covered only in isolated or short-lived reporting is less likely to be significant than something which has sustained coverage or follow-up reporting. Something for which discussion exists in reliable sources that significantly post-date the event happening or allegation being made is more likely to be due for inclusion than something which lacks this. A denial does not impact whether an allegation should or should not be included, but where allegations are included it will normally be appropriate to also include verifiable responses to them by the accused.

Although I'm sure this could be improved upon. Thryduulf (talk) 20:42, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

That is a fair point. Trying to fold in Thryduulf's point, I agree the wording was trying to carry too much in one bag and doing too much heavy lifting, mixing the negative and positive points. Splitting them makes things clearer.

"Also, for example, editors should consider the significance of an allegation or controversy in the context of the body of reliable sources on the subject. Isolated or short-lived reporting does not by itself establish that the matter is significant to the subject. Sustained coverage, follow-up reporting, or later discussion in reliable sources can indicate that inclusion is due. When sustained or later coverage is lacking, including it may give undue weight to a minor aspect of the subject. A denial by itself does not make inclusion proportional, but if the matter is due for inclusion, verifiable responses should normally be included as well."

This keeps the two sides in separate buckets, while still tracking the existing BALASP point. NicoR8 (talk) 00:06, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

I'll read this again when I'm more awake but an immediate thought is that we don't want verifiable responses should normally be included as well. to be an unintended license for extensive reactions sections featuring everyone and their dog's opinions on twitter. Adding "by the accused" (or similar) after "responses" should sort that. Thryduulf (talk) 00:30, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

Hmm, I suppose someone could wikilawyer that to exclude statements by the accused actual lawyer or agent, but do we really need to state "by the accused or their representatives"? Thryduulf (talk) 00:45, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

Ah, makes sense. Folding that in, maybe the last sentence could be "A denial by itself does not make inclusion proportional, but if the matter is due for inclusion and the subject has denied the allegation, the denial should normally be included as well." (NB: borrowed a few words from BLP's denial wording). What you proposed "by the accused or their representatives" also works. NicoR8 (talk) 01:19, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply on this. I prefer "accused" rather than "subject" as the latter could be misunderstood where the subject of the article is the party making the accusations, so putting it all together:

"Also, for example, editors should consider the significance of an allegation or controversy in the context of the body of reliable sources on the subject. Isolated or short-lived reporting does not by itself establish that the matter is significant to the subject. Sustained coverage, follow-up reporting, or later discussion in reliable sources can indicate that inclusion is due. When sustained or later coverage is lacking, including it may give undue weight to a minor aspect of the subject. A denial by itself does not make inclusion proportional, but if the matter is due for inclusion and the accused has denied the allegation, the denial should normally be included as well."

I think "or their representatives" is sufficiently implied in that wording that we don't need to make it explicit, but I absolutely will not oppose a footnote after "denied" along the lines of "either directly or through lawyers or other representatives"). Thryduulf (talk) 19:07, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

I also think that "or their representatives" is sufficiently implied. If we find that we're wrong, we can add the footnote later. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:35, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

I like the wording, but can I suggest a slightly shorter version of the last sentence:
"A denial by itself does not make inclusion proportional, but if the accusation is due for inclusion then the denial should normally be included as well"
The subclause "and the accused has denied the allegation" is redundant, as the subject must have denied it for there to be a denial. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:47, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

"A denial by itself does not make inclusion proportional, but if the accusation is included, then any denial should normally be included as well"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:43, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

"any denial" is better than "the denial" as there isn't necessarily going to be a denial (e.g. there could be no response (yet), an admission or a "yes, but"). However, I worry that "any" will be misconstrued to allow denials by people other than the accused or their representatives. I can't bring the details to mind but I recall a case not too long back where a party leader or CEO or someone like that stridently said words to the effect of "Jee Bloggs strenuously denies these allegations" shortly after they were made with an "actually, I don't deny them", and then there are semi-regular occasions when Trump contradicts his cronies. The first denials might be worthy of inclusion but should not be regarded as automatically so. This means I still favour the apparently redundant formulation. Thryduulf (talk) 23:05, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

OK I see your point. I didn't see that the sentence is trying to define both the denier and the denial, which means the subclause isn't redundant. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:12, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

Either works for me.

On the other change I suggested, I think that "if the accusation is included" is better than "if the accusation is due for inclusion", because it doesn't matter why the accusation is included, and having an UNDUE accusation in the article without the denial is worse than having an UNDUE accusation with a denial. I could see a POV pusher saying "You said this accusation of harassment is UND, and that line in NPOV says denials should only be included if the accusation is DUE". WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:13, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

That's a good point and I agree. Thryduulf (talk) 23:43, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

So where are we at on this? I came on this talk page to raise this issue, having completely forgotten about this discussion. Are we ready to include some statement about events of no lasting consequence? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:59, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

@Thebiguglyalien very nearly I think, see my most recent comment. Thryduulf (talk) 19:09, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

Building off NicoR8's proposal and suggestions from Thryduulf, WhatamIdoing's modification from "due for inclusion" to "is included" (which forecloses the WP:Game interpretation where a POV pusher uses an undue finding to remove denial), and retaining "and the accused has denied the allegation" part, here's another version.

Also, for example, editors should consider the significance of an allegation or controversy in the context of the body of reliable sources on the subject. Isolated or short-lived reporting does not by itself establish that the matter is significant to the subject. Sustained coverage, follow-up reporting, or later discussion in reliable sources can indicate that inclusion is due. When sustained or later coverage is lacking, including it may give undue weight to a minor aspect of the subject. A denial by itself does not make inclusion proportional, but if the accusation is included and the accused has denied the allegation, the denial should normally be included as well. LeónGonsalvesofGoa (talk) 04:51, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

That looks good to me. Thryduulf (talk) 10:04, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Do we want this to link to the WP:DENIALS policy? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:24, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable to me. See revision below.

Also, for example, editors should consider the significance of an allegation or controversy in the context of the body of reliable sources on the subject. Isolated or short-lived reporting does not by itself establish that the matter is significant to the subject. Sustained coverage, follow-up reporting, or later discussion in reliable sources can indicate that inclusion is due. When sustained or later coverage is lacking, including it may give undue weight to a minor aspect of the subject. A denial by itself does not make inclusion proportional, but if the accusation is included and the accused has denied the allegation, the denial should normally be included as well (Wp:Denials). LeónGonsalvesofGoa (talk) 02:37, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

WP:DENIALS should be capitalised but other than that it looks good to me. Thryduulf (talk) 09:42, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Sorry for the island-time delay! I'm only now catching up. Agreed on the finalized wording. Is an edit request needed to add it to the policy page, or would someone here be able to add it? NicoR8 (talk) 21:40, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

When we have agreement here, someone can just make the change. Even you can make the change. (If it were a major change, someone would have started a formal WP:PROPOSAL process, but this is closer to a tweak or a clarification than to a big change.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:25, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Hi @WhatamIdoing. I went ahead and added this clarification under "Balancing aspects". Thanks to everyone for the great discussion and for helping refine the wording through multiple drafts, and for the guidance along the way. NicoR8 (talk) 21:59, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

I removed it. Not having followed the discussion I found the text puzzling. Is this purely about new content and biographical content? If it isn't I can see it being twisted around in weird ways (e.g. "sure this paper says the research was fraudulent, but that's only a one-off 'allegation' so including it would fail NPOV"). If it is, it should be added at WP:BLP. Bon courage (talk) 22:58, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes, we were thinking primarily about people, though it would also apply to larger groups (e.g., corporations). WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:59, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

Where would that leave articles like Criticism of Tesco? (Gutted would be good). Bon courage (talk) 01:20, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

@Bon courage Fair point. I don't think this would gut articles like Criticism of Tesco, which are based on properly sourced, sustained criticism, litigation, major controversies, and so on.

The little gap this was trying to clarify in BALASP is one step earlier as we have discussed here. Promotional puff is usually easy to trim under existing policy, but one-off negative allegations can be trickier when they are verifiable but very thin on weight. If something is only one short news wave, reported by one or just a few sources, with no wider follow-up, then some clarification in DUE/BALASP can aid editors.

That said, you are seeing something in the wording that the rest of us missed. The aim was only to clarify BALASP, not to exclude criticism or controversies within, for example, a corporation's article or standalone criticism articles. Any suggestions for refining or tightening the sails? NicoR8 (talk) 13:22, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

I'm surprised there's nothing explicitly on this in BLP, where I think it should live. Are we saying that allegations and rebuttals that have not generated wider coverage are of little weight and generally should not be included? Bon courage (talk) 13:54, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

@Bon courage Good points again! BLP has the stricter rules, and if this were only about living people then BLP would be the natural home.

The gap is more for stuff outside those BLP-specific protections, like corporations, orgs etc. non-BLP topics. In those cases, a negative allegation may be verifiable but still quite isolated or short-lived reporting. BALASP looked like the place to clarify that.

There are some examples discussed earlier, for example, Vector Marketing that WhatamIdoing gave. Somewhat relevant examples might be last para at Morrissey#Animal rights advocacy or Glossier#Financial data (last para), Glossier#Reception (second para), American_Red_Cross#Storms controversy (Hurricane Sandy, Isaac, other major storms) (second para). Not necessarily wrong, but such clarification could help with isolated one-off alleged or negative coverage that may be verifiable, but where the wider significance or lasting coverage is lacking. If similar info was written as puffery, per policies, removal is clear, but for this thinly covered negative info lingers. NicoR8 (talk) 14:23, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

More generally, think about any notable business, and the problem of a disgruntled employee. Maybe they got fired for cause, and they decided to sue the employer for having a toxic workplace, or may try to establish themselves as a whistleblower by filing complaints with a regulatory agency. One or two WP:PRIMARYNEWS articles were published, so it's verifiable in an independent source. But I doubt that "Fred Fired filed a lawsuit" belongs in that article.

Looking over Criticism of Tesco, I think that quite a lot of that is less-than-stellar content. For example, in Criticism of Tesco#Clubcard we start with a short paragraph criticizing Tesco for ending promotion that double or quadruple points, and we end with a short paragraph criticizing Tesco for having promotions that increase the number of points. Glancing through the article, I think that a fair bit of it is minor, ephemeral events or complaints that probably don't belong in Wikipedia at all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:55, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

Agreed. If a policy shift could address that I could get behind it. But isn't the deeper problem that companies (unlike individuals) are "fair game" on Wikipedia? Especially nasty profitable ones like Tesco. Do I dimly remember some kind of WP:BLPCORP proposal from the past? Bon courage (talk) 15:49, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

There have been a couple such proposals kicked around, but I don't think any of them got much past the brainstorming stage.

I suspect that @Masem would tell you that the problem is too much WP:RECENTISM. There also appears to be a problem with copyvios in that article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:42, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes, our articles on corps get far too much into the negative aspects of how a company is run (legal problems, allegations, disgruntled employees, etc.) because as humans we generally like to throw criticism at larger targets that likely will not come back to hurt us. There obviously is valid criticism that are directed at some companies, but more often we are gathering every tiny negative thing (in the area of video games I work in, this is extremely common with disgruntled gamers). This is comparable to the same problems with BLP collecting all those negative elements just because an RS or two have commented on it. Masem (t) 15:54, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

Using Criticism of Tesco as an example, there are obviously some court cases that should be described on Wikipedia. But things like "one day, one store in one country failed one inspection" or "15 years ago, they closed a promotional program" is not encyclopedic. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:40, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing ah yes, that's exactly where this clarification will be helpful. @Bon courage the suggested clarification is not meant to change the policy itself or create a BLPCORP-style rule. It is only to clarify how the existing policy applies, particularly to non-BLP content. NicoR8 (talk) 15:04, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

I’m now more confused because “allegations” usually apply to people or entities. Bon courage (talk) 15:18, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

Maybe "allegations" sending the boat a little off course! I meant isolated or short-lived negative or critical material, like some examples WhatamIdoing and I gave, about non-BLP subjects like companies or orgs. And, also dead people who do not fall under BLP. BLP is already stricter for living people. And for example, only to clarify that one small news squall with no follow-up etc. may not deserve permanent place in an article. NicoR8 (talk) 15:42, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

Do we need something more/different from this?

For example, a description of isolated events, quotes, criticisms, or news reports related to one subject may be verifiable and impartial, but still disproportionate to their overall significance to the article topic. This is a concern especially for recent events that may be in the news. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:11, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing Yea, that keeps it clear without overcomplicating it. What do you think @Bon courage? NicoR8 (talk) 22:29, 8 July 2026 (UTC)

I think an editor should understand this if they understand WP:DUE, but of course it's always going to be debatable how significant some one-off incident is, particularly if it's politically charged. Are what we're really saying is that there's a particular type of WP:NOTEVERYTHING / WP:NOTNEWS consideration? Is there any example of how this mooted lack of policy has caused problems in the past ... or put another way, is there any article on Wikipedia that would be different if this policy change existed? Am I right in thinking this was spurred on by claims of excessive compensation in the Paul Crouch article? Bon courage (talk) 07:32, 9 July 2026 (UTC)

@Bon courage Yea other than Paul Crouch, other examples given here Vector Marketing, parts of Criticism of Tesco, Criticism of Tesco#Clubcard, Morrissey#Animal rights advocacy, Glossier#Reception. Others like Hooters#Legal history, Zara (retailer) (a design mistake), parts of H Mart#Controversies. There is also npov noticeboard discussing Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/Noticeboard#Concern regarding neutrality and due weight Accession of Albania to the European Union, which got removed. Tools are already in the policy shed with WP:NOTEVERYTHING / WP:NOTNEWS, WP:DUE and others but editors can still pick up the same hammer and use it inconsistently across articles. The proposed BALASP wording would simply make things little clearer for editors and help lead to more consistent outcomes, as with promotional puffery. NicoR8 (talk) 14:07, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Another example at Papa John's#Controversies. NicoR8 (talk) 14:42, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Well, I don't have any particular objection to WAID's proposed wording, just a general misgiving about our WP:PAGs being over-long already and about the impossibility of legislating clue. Bon courage (talk) 16:39, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

You're in luck: It won't increase the length, because it's been in this policy for at least 15 years.

It sounds, therefore, like we have all the policy tools that we need. What we need now is editors who WP:VOLUNTEER to do the necessary policy-authorized enforcement work.

As a tip to anyone who might want to try, I suggest removing older instances (it's more obvious to editors that minor events from 5+ years ago are inappropriate, so you can remove 10 old problems in the space of time that it takes to argue about one new problem) and when a page is long, to only remove the worst of the worst (so you don't get stuck in discussions about borderline cases). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:49, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Ha! Nice one. So we're done. I suggest this thread is closed. Bon courage (talk) 21:20, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Proposal for new section(s)

Giving undue weight to a given position or set of positions is, of course, not neutral, and creates a false balance. But the other side of the same coin is unduly suppressing a given position or set of positions, which evinces a false consensus. I think we should dedicate a section or two to this and possibly reorganize the article to make it read more logically if need be. I'm not sure what we should call the new section(s), however, as we already have WP:DUE and WP:UNDUE for weight and WP:SUPPRESSION for something else entirely. Any suggestions? OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 14:19, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Unduly suppressing a given position would be against the most basic part of WP:DUE. The first sentence is "Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources." Editors are already required to do what you mention. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:06, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Right, but I think it deserves an especial emphasis via a discrete, dedicated section. OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 15:13, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure it needs a separate section, as it's the entire point of DUE. Maybe a modification of the second sentence, clarifying that giving due and avoiding undue weight doesn't mean the minority view should excluded. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:37, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Doesn't necessarily mean ... For some minority views (e.g. fringe ones) we omit them unless they're weighted by mainstream commentary. Bon courage (talk) 15:44, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Certainly. But there have been times when a significant minority viewpoint has been unduly suppressed. Outside of Wikipedia and the COVID debacle (which see), there was a long period in the field of law, for example, during which originalism (the belief that the Constitution should be interpreted according to its original meaning) was deemed utter quackery advanced by partisan hacks. It is also often the case that scientific breakthroughs are met with more than a healthy amount of skepticism (i.e. outright dismissal) among peers. OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 18:28, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

But there have been times when a significant minority viewpoint has been unduly suppressed ← Really? Could you give some evidence for that claim relevant to Wikipedia policy? Bon courage (talk) 19:01, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

If originalism was considered quackery by reliable sources, then Wikipedia should have handled it as quackery. As perceptions of it changed in reliable sources Wikipedia should have updated reflect that change, and even discuss the change in the article if sources can be found for it. The same is true of anything to do with COVID, we're not suppressing anything if reliable sources that something that latter turns out to be incorrect.
It's not our place to say what is or is not currently considered a fringe view, but instead we rely on sources. If the real world changes, then Wikipedia changes but Wikipedia doesn't lead. It's not Wikipedia's purpose to support dissent, legitimate or not, only to reflect sources. To do anything else would be completely against being neutral. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:20, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Well, that period was from the 1970s through part of the 2000s, long before today (although there are still plenty of jurists who despise originalism and its adherents); I was only using it as an analogy. But regarding your central point, it is also not Wikipedia's purpose to represent any one opinion (or set of opinions) as correct. That's what I was getting at: an opinion is an opinion, not a fact, and the notion that COVID originated from a laboratory or was communicated by bats is an opinion at the end of the day and consequently may well be contested. OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 20:48, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

No sorry, those are not matters of opinion. Both have scientific knowledge behind them, and different understanding can be had from the knowledge at hand but they aren't just matters of opinion. Different scientists might put forward different theories on COVIDs origins, but those are not just opinions it's their understanding based on the their knowledge, training and experience. People putting forward just opinions on the origin of COVID don't define how the article should be structured. For instance the opinions of politics are worth very little in that situation. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:06, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

A belief is an opinion. An opinion may be informed, as with scientific journals (e.g. "SARS-CoV-2 likely was introduced via zoonosis"), just as well as it may be capricious (e.g. "blue is the best color"). An assertion that can reasonably be contested is necessarily an opinion. OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 15:22, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

If we wish to see it that way than we have to be very careful to exclude anything other than informed opinion. Balancing informed opinion with uninformed opinion is still false balance. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:24, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

I do not disagree with this basic principle. OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 01:17, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

It sounds like we could use a page titled Wikipedia:What is an opinion? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:14, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

Agreed. Wanna draft it? OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 01:20, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

We could use one on the difference between informed and uninformed opinion as well, given how much of the latter gets put forward about COVID 19. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 10:08, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

Agreed. OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 16:30, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

Can you be more specific what changes you are looking for here? Simonm223 (talk) 15:31, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Well, what I'm getting at is the counterpart of bothsidesism, the erroneous allowance of illegitimate dissent. This counterpart is namely the erroneous suppression of legitimate dissent, although I'm not sure whether it has a real name at the moment. Maybe one-sidedness? Regardless, I'll give an example from recent memory: The United States government once colluded with social media companies like Twitter to suppress statements deemed misinformation, a non-trivial proportion of which, if not the actual truth, were at least plausible, such as the COVID-19 lab leak theory, which the Wikipedia community had similarly suppressed prematurely without any real proof that the theory was incorrect. We now know, of course, that it was more likely than not transmitted by a bat, but the theory was demonized for quite some time (despite its plausibility and the sheer number of its adherents) well before any conclusive evidence came out.

I don't want another disaster like that happening again. Now, I'm not saying that I want to legitimize fringe viewpoints, and I thus think that, if we do go through with making a separate section, there ought to be a hatnote cautioning editors to invoke it sparingly so as to avoid the bothsidesism that I mentioned earlier—and maybe a cross-reference to WP:FALSEBALANCE for editors to review—but I am saying that, because we ought equally not to delegitimize significant viewpoints held by minorities, the policy could use some clarification and/or elaboration by means of a separate section. OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 18:17, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Oh you want more permission of fringe material. No. Opposed. Simonm223 (talk) 15:05, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

Agree. Wikipedia's handling of lab leak stuff has been broadly correct per the WP:BESTSOURCES, even though a narrative has taken hold about it in the crankosphere. So this proposal just looks like Sangerism in that context. Bon courage (talk) 15:22, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

@Simonm223 and @Bon courage: Respectfully, I do not "want more permission of fringe material". I do not espouse the view that it originated from a laboratory—not that my view is even relevant—although, for the record, a CIA report "completed at the behest of the Biden administration" (i.e. not the Trump administration) subscribes to the theory. What I advocate is refraining from outright dismissing a viewpoint merely because it's disliked, which dislike you two have made evident. The fact that consensus can change is no reason to come to a consensus prematurely, especially at a time when new information is constantly coming out (i.e. the past several years in this context).

Taking sides, even if a good chunk of the sources agree, is not neutral. "Wikipedia aims to describe disputes, but not engage in them. The aim is to inform, not influence". If basic tenets of neutrality are Sangerism, then you shouldn't have an issue with it. I'm not going to say that I agree with Larry entirely on his NPOV thesis, but he was absolutely right about "not […] stat[ing], imply[ing], or insinuat[ing] that any one side is correct". OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 19:59, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

No. Sorry. Still advocacy for fringe views even with the clarification. I really couldn't care less which American president got the spy agency to make a bunch of conspiracy theory claims. I do think it's amusing when people assume an editor will be like "blue team good". I'm not even American. Simonm223 (talk) 20:06, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

My point wasn't that "this guy must be a Democrat"; that's a non sequitur. My point was that the report wasn't partisan, lending it more credence. Joe Biden criticized Donald Trump's anti-China sentiment on several occasions (one cited here), yet his CIA still concluded, despite the tendency of Democrat-leaning sources to disagree with the lab leak theory—albeit with low confidence—that the virus originated in a Chinese lab.

It is not advocacy to simply take a step back and be neutral, refraining from engag[ing] in disputes. OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 21:23, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

But like for Sangerism, this is just a complete misunderstanding of what neutrality means for en.wiki, especially for WP:FRINGESUBJECTS. We don't say the Holocaust might or might nor have historically happened according to X or Y; we don't say vaccines might/might not cause autism according to X or Y; we don't say SARS-CoV-2 was/was not a American bioweapon according to X or Y (though in fact, the US Intelligence stuff is covered in our lab leak article). Anyway, since this is transparently an attempt to have Wikipedia indulge fringe views, I think we're done. It's not going to fly. Bon courage (talk) 22:57, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

+1 Simonm223 (talk) 23:31, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

@Bon courage and @Simonm223: That's transparently a straw man argument and you both know that. The Holocaust is unquestionable. That there's no correlation between vaccines and autism hasn't been seriously disputed in any academic literature. And the bioweapon theory is similarly frivolous. The lab leak theory is not the same thing as the bioweapon theory, and you'd know that if you'd bothered to read either the article on the lab leak theory or the relevant literature—or even ask ChatGPT for all I care. OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 07:01, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

Lots of people deny the Holocaust. 23% of non-senior adult Americans for example. So your proposal would have to admit this "intellectual diversity" they would no doubt claim. Likewise, the kind of US institutions you seem so keen on boosting have very much announced a link between vaccines and autism (also paracetemol for good measure).
Our very well-sourced lab leak article does a good job of distinguishing between the bare possibility of a lab leak (possible but unlikely, but with no evidence) and the massive superstructure of conspiracism, nationalism, pseudoscience and racism built atop that. Again, your proposal would have to admit the (massively popular in China) "theory" that SCV2 was planted in China by American spooks during the Wuhan Military Games. Either you allow the crankery in or you keep it out. Your proposal would take the first course. Bon courage (talk) 08:27, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

By no means would it admit of the bioweapon "theory". If an issue is seriously contested, one side cannot be represented as objectively correct. If a theory is frivolous in nature, like the bioweapon "theory", it is fringe (or even objectively incorrect). But if it is merely a minority view that one side doesn't like, it is not inherently frivolous and consequently not fringe. [D]epart[ing] significantly from the prevailing views or mainstream views in [a] particular field refers to this kind of frivolity: climate change denial and the like. It does not refer to minority views like the lab leak theory. The Wuhan Institute of Virology studied, amongst other things, bat-associated coronaviruses; the contention that COVID-19 came about as a consequence of this research isn't even inconsistent with the zoonosis theory, let alone outright frivolous. Again, I don't even believe the lab leak theory.

All I advocate is neutrality. (And civility.) OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 16:00, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

If I had not already found your argument lacking on its merits your suggestion I ask the plagiarism machine that kills the planet about a conspiracy theory would have clinched it. Please do not tag me again. Your proposal is a non-starter. Sanger was very wrong to want to throw open the doors to fringe. This proposal is likewise misguided. Simonm223 (talk) 11:02, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

One would think the other side of the coin of WP:UNDUE is WP:DUE --- and, yes, there they are. Surely, it makes more sense to discuss them together. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:41, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Well, my point is that there's a difference between undue weight and undue dismissal—undue "unweight", if you will (which see). And, as I said, WP:DUE and WP:UNDUE both link to the same section. OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 18:21, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

We need a time factor in DUE/WEIGHT that this applies to. That is, sources close to an event or an incident should not contribute as much to a WEIGHT/DUE assessment compared to those farther out.

When writing about an event or incident 5-10 years after the fact, using sources far away in time from the event when the dust has long since settled, we likely have a reasonable good picture to know what side(s) are the prevalent ones that we should only include under DUE. That may mean that minority viewpoints that never held in these long-term sources may simply not have enough to be included in the first place.

But the short term, particularly within the months and first couple years from an event? We shouldn't be trying to decide which side is the most prevalent, and instead focus on documenting controversy and what the sides are saying, if that even needs documenting. With many current event articles we write way too much commentary from every tom, dick, and harry that said something (particularly in a RGW-type way when the topic is something close to a cause that editors have a very strong interest and viewpoint on), and that leads to moving far too away from documenting the controversy in the short term. Note that this does not mean we have to give equal weight or a false balance to minority viewpoints, but that we should give a minimal statement on what their side of the controversy is, but still watching how much excessive detail we are giving to the majority viewpoints. But a lot starts at re-evaluating how excessive we go into describing commentary on a topic at such an early stage. Masem (t) 18:50, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

That's not my exact point, but I nevertheless agree. Wasn't there some kind of policy about how Wikipedia is supposed to lag behind everything else specifically for the purpose of avoiding this kind of issue? OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 18:54, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

It's unfortunate but articles on current events are popular, most issues would be avoided if we waited before writing them. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:24, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

+1 Simonm223 (talk) 15:07, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

Unfortunate, yes. And far more common than most people realize. Use the tool WikiNav that has come back alive and you will see. The attention span of a large % of users seems to be about 17 seconds or so. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 06:44, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

WP:NOT#NEWS is the basic policy, while WP:10YT is an essay on this point. Masem (t) 15:25, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

The biggest problem with UNDUE is not the wording of the policy itself, but the manner in which editors invoke the UPPERCASE in content disputes: every POV warrior uses it as a proxy argument for WP:IDLI; and they all do so with impunity, because plausible deniability and all. Maybe a hatnote at top of section would be helpful: "WP:UNDUE is not to be used as a drop-in to legitimize IDontLikeIt arguments. Comments in discussions that say nothing beyond "Exclude per WP:UNDUE" will be weighted by closers the same as "Exclude because I don't like it". ~2026-34838-40 (talk) 18:33, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

Which would be about as helpful as rating argument to "Include content as it's due" as merely WP:ILIKEIT. In practice, the killer answer to arguments of content being UNDUE is a just a really good source that verifies that content. Bon courage (talk) 18:55, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

Ideally, you'd have a few unrelated sources.

We could use the COVID-19 pandemic problems as a way of showing that Wikipedia follows the sources. For example:

• First they say to mask up; then they say to save masks for the hospitals; then that say to use a different mask...
• First they say lab leak is possible; then they say it's not; then they say it is; then they say it's not...

The Wikipedia articles should have shifted each time the sources shifted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:48, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

But that was a somewhat unique situation. Yes, the word "stupid" is the only word that can describe their multiple Uturns, but pandemic do not happen every week, yet. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 06:48, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

I don't think that changing as more is learned is "stupid". I think in fact that a good example of stupidity would be sticking with the first answer just because it was the first answer, even if you currently have reasons to believe the first answer is wrong. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:59, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

To begin with your description missed their first and dumbest statement, namely that masks increase the risk! I remember that early on a man approached me (wearing a mask) on the street and said that was the official position. I laughed and walked away. If that is not stupid, what is. Anyway, I will say no more. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 16:36, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

I don't remember any governmental or scientific body saying that wearing masks increases the risk of viral transmission (for any virus, ever). If some random man on the street was confused or believed a conspiracy theory, that's not really relevant. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:43, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

I suppose it's theoretically possible at a public-health level if the mask is ineffective AND it leads people to behave recklessly thinking they are protected. But we digress .... Bon courage (talk) 16:45, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

Please see the above. Thanks Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 21:18, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

Ah I see, so the idea was amateur maskers would be touching their face a lot and since it was believed SCV2 was spread by fomite transmission that could increase viral spread. Plausible given the premises, but those turned out to be wrong. And yes "stupid" would be not changing your mind when the facts change. Bon courage (talk) 23:29, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

Please look up Jerome Adams:

"In February 2020, Adams was appointed to the task force for dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Adams initially downplayed the risk from COVID-19 by comparing it to the flu, which was criticized by experts. He also strongly implored people not to buy or use face masks because he said they were “NOT effective” in preventing the general public from catching COVID-19, and that wearing a mask could actually increase the risk of catching the virus."

And please remember that I "usually" know what I am talking about. Now, I will really stop. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 21:17, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

Or not arrived at a premature consensus in the first place. Wikipedia shouldn't be participating in majoritarianism generally, but especially not when new facts are still emerging. OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 21:06, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

• My suggestion: Leave it as is. No need for a change. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk)

06:50, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

• The not so merry merry-go-round: I think any bystander can see that there is circular and repetitive discussion here. Several editors (myself included) think that this proposal is tantamount to an overdose on Sangria which will open the door to fringe content. The other side has very little support. Let us look at the page again and recall what The Man said long ago: "If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small minority, it does not belong on Wikipedia, regardless of whether it is true, or you can prove it, except perhaps in some ancillary article." I think Ozzy needs to accept that the opposition is too strong and circular discussions will achieve nothing. Let us just move on please. Thanks. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 09:00, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

  But there's the rub: the Central Intelligence Agency, famous for knowing things that the general public doesn't know, things that other intelligence agencies may not know, things that even the scientific community might not even know, concluded in their report (albeit with a low degree of confidence) that it originated from a lab. Respectfully, that does not seem like "an extremely small minority" to me.

  As aforesaid, I recommended that, if we were to go through with it, we should insert a hatnote cautioning users to invoke it sparingly so as to avoid bothsidesism. What I proposed is something very narrow, with guardrails against abuse. I am not trying to be disruptive here. While I can foresee a few trolls or misguided users invoking this proposed section without cause, I cannot foresee the community accepting those invocations on blind faith.

  Perhaps my idea still remains a bad idea in your mind; what I'm doing here is more-or-less just spitballing at the time. But I can assure you that it was conceived while sober. OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 16:26, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

  Forgive me if I'm unwilling to trust an anti-communist spy organization over scientists as a source for encyclopedia entries regarding an anti-communist conspiracy theory. The CIA may be "famous for knowing things" but it's far more famous for lies, manipulations, dirty tricks and pseudoscience. I mean whatever happened to the men who stare at goats? Did they ever provide good intelligence with their psychic powers? Simonm223 (talk) 16:34, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

  What of the roughly one-in-five average chance given by 168 epidemiologists, virologists, and "biosafety experts and evolutionary geneticists, from 47 countries", then? One-in-five is far from trivial, and only a quarter of them were highly confident in the zoonosis hypothesis. OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 17:25, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

  Well, as that article title says: "Virologists and epidemiologists back natural origin for COVID-19, survey suggests". Which aligns with Wikipedia's article. Most (but not all) scientists incline that way. We're not going to spin it another way. Bon courage (talk) 17:34, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

  To clarify, I am not advocating spin[ning] articles any way other than in a purely neutral way. Taking sides is not neutral. Suppose that a plane were to crash into the ocean, and that it were a notable event. Suppose, further, that there were three theories advanced as to the cause of the crash:

  1. that both captains had become incapacitated and, at the same time, the autopilot system had failed;
  2. that Islamic terrorists had hijacked the plane; and
  3. that a Chinese EMP had disabled the plane.

  And suppose that the first of these theories should be assessed with a chance of 75%; the second, 20%; and the third, 5%: The third would be a fringe theory, but the second would remain a significant minority theory. It might be permissible to write that a majority of sources agree with the first theory, but it would not be permissible to state, imply, insinuate, or otherwise represent that it were anywise the correct theory until and unless further evidence should firmly establish it thus.

  And the origin of COVID-19 is likely something that can never be absolutely proven; it is seriously contested. That the survey back[s] a natural origin in terms of uncertain guesstimates—remember: only a quarter of the respondents had a high degree of confidence—is not the same thing as backing the natural origin firmly. OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 18:14, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

  We follow the sources well. Nowhere on Wikipedia does the term "correct theory" appear. But certain ideas within the "lab leak" ambit, like that the virus was bio-engineered, are flat-out conspiracy theories for cranks only. Bon courage (talk) 18:39, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

  I do not disagree that several notions adjacent to the lab leak theory, if not most or all, are frivolous. But correct need not appear in an article for bias to be perceived. (See the thread linked in @Palpable's reply below.) There is a big difference, albeit subtle, between stating that there is a consensus that the zoonosis hypothesis is more likely than the lab leak hypothesis, i.e. that the professionals generally "lean[] toward a natural origin", and that the lab leak theory "remains 'speculation'" (correct); and stating, on the other hand, that there is a consensus that zoonosis is strictly what happened (incorrect).

  Only a quarter of those surveyed—insufficient for the latter consensus—had a high degree of confidence, whereas the other three-quarters necessarily placed more weight on the lab leak theory, because that's how averages work. Suppose that a sample of $1,000$ geologists and field-adjacent professionals were asked for their assessments as to the likelihood of another Yellowstone eruption within the next millennium, and the average response were $25\%$, with 1⁄4 of those surveyed having responded with $5\%$ or lower. By this hypothetical data, one would be able to infer that the rest believed in a higher likelihood, about 32% on average, which is not substantially higher than the sample mean, but is also not nothing:

  1. $1{,}000$ professionals $\times 25\%$ likelihood $=25{,}000$ pp.
  2. $1,000$ professionals $\times$ 1⁄4 $=250$ professionals.
  3. $250$ professionals $\times$ a maximum of $5\%$ likelihood $\leq$ a maximum of $1{,}250$ pp.
  4. $25{,}000$ pp. $-$ a maximum of $1{,}250$ pp. $\geq$ a minimum of $23{,}750$ pp.
  5. $1{,}000$ professionals $-250$ professionals $=750$ professionals.
  6. A minimum of $23{,}750$ pp. $\div 750$ professionals $\geq$ a minimum of $31{.}{\overline {6}}\%$ likelihood.

  Going through the same steps, with $n$ $=168$ professionals assigning a sample mean of approximately a $77\%$ likelihood to the zoonosis hypothesis, of whom roughly 1⁄4 believed that it was at least $96\%$ likely, one may readily infer that this subset consisted of about $42$ professionals and that the other subset (3⁄4) consisted of about $126$ professionals. From this, one may infer that the latter subset, i.e. the majority, assigned an average likelihood of at most approximately $70{.}{\overline {6}}\%$. Given that the likelihood assigned to the lab leak hypothesis was given a sample mean of $21\%$ (statistically significant), and that "'other'" causes were assigned an average likelihood of $2\%$ (negligible), one might approximate the majority subset's assessment of the lab leak theory's likelihood to have been at least somewhere around $(100\%-70.{\overline {6}}\%)\times {\frac {21\%}{21\%+2\%}}$, which computes to approximately $26.8\%$. It's not a big difference, but it's also not negligible.

  (TL;DR)  We can say that there's a consensus as to the likelihood of the zoonosis hypothesis, but not as to its supposed having actually happened. OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 14:59, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

  For context on how Wikipedia handles NPOV and the COVID origins debate I recommend reviewing this recent attempt to improve NPOV on the lab leak article. - Palpable (talk) 18:11, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

  This appears to have become just another treading of the same old discussion that have previously happened at COVID-19 lab leak theory. Including all the same talking points and sources. If editors want to have those discussions again maybe that articles talk page, or WP:NPOVN are more appropriate that a policy page. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:46, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

  The more this goes on the more firmly this looks like a specific attempt to rewrite policy to bring more Fringe into a specific article. Simonm223 (talk) 15:08, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

  I have only replied with argumentation in response to hand-waving, not least from yourself. I could have dismissed any of you as unreasonable, but my intention is to improve Wikipedia, not to "be right". I am not here to disrupt; all I am saying is that the status quo of majoritarianism rather than actual neutrality is cause for concern and thus ought to be addressed.

  The lab leak theory is admittedly not of "equal validity" with the principal theory of zoonosis. But it should not be dismissed as entirely invalid, either expressly (as by some in this thread) or impliedly (as by the respective articles at different points in time). OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 16:29, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

  The issue here is that you insist this is a serious issue and then present a deeply unserious example. And then, when it's pointed out that this is deeply unserious, you dig in your heels and insist that you just want neutrality without really defining what you're looking for.

  Originally I asked you to describe what change you wanted to make to policy and your response was that you wanted the lab leak conspiracy theory to be treated less fringe.

  What am I supposed to think? Simonm223 (talk) 18:18, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

  Here is a definition of neutrality: the absence of bias or partiality. At a fundamental level, that is what I want. And what I proposed in advancing that goal is a discrete section clarifying that a view is not to be wished away as crackpot buffoonery simply because it is held by a minority of adherents—together with a clarification that that still doesn't legitimize actual fringe theories such as climate change denial—and possibly a slight rewrite of the policy for a more logical flow.

  And it is precisely because of this kind of dismissiveness that I brought that exact topic up. It is a serious issue: the lab leak theory is not deeply unserious. As I told you, and as @Bon courage seems to have implicitly conceded, there is a big difference between the plausible lab leak theory as such on the one hand, which I've seen quite a bit on social media and elsewhere, and the implausible nonsense that's adjacent to it on the other hand, which seems to be far less prevalent than one seems to get the impression of, as I haven't encountered it personally (although I'll admit that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence).

  Again, I will reiterate that I do not believe in the lab leak theory myself. But the habitual dismissiveness exemplified here and elsewhere is a case in point. What we can say: There is a consensus that zoonosis was more likely than a leak from a laboratory. What we cannot say: There is a consensus that the idea that it came from a lab is incorrect. We can't say more than what the sources actually say as to the matter. And if they disagree, we can't declare a victor. OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 19:33, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

  Again, no specific changes to policy proposed but a lot of apologia for a fringe view. Simonm223 (talk) 19:38, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

  Apologia it is, and precisely because it's not fringe. Regardless, however, I don't have a specific proposal as of yet, because my goal is to collaborate with others on the matter. As much as I would like to be bold and do it myself, I will readily admit that something of this magnitude ought to be thought through with great deliberation, with much collaboration between several editors, before any actual edits should be made.

  What I have so far:

  • Clarifying WP:DUE vis à vis WP:UNDUE insofar as some inclusion is due and ought not to be dismissed needlessly.
  • Inserting a cautionary hatnote emphasizing that this rule ought not to be overused.
  • Possibly rewriting the rest of that section to blend logically.

  OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 19:56, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

  This has all been discussed at the article's talk page, and going over it all again on the talk page of a policy isn't appropriate. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:01, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

  Agree, the inappropriate fringe-pushing here is starting to get disruptive. Bon courage (talk) 05:44, 3 July 2026 (UTC)

  Truth be told, I didn't mean for this discussion to devolve into this. I only used the COVID-19 debacle as an example because it's the most prominent one I could think of. And given how hostile some of the replies have been, the fact speaks for itself (although, to @Bon courage's credit, he has ceased his hostility and become more reasonable). Indeed, many people have been irrational when it came to the pandemic, including by scalping toilet paper, hand sanitizer, etc.; violating the First Amendment and other provisions of the Constitution; and, as relevant here, coming up with implausible conspiracy theories, or, on the other hand, erroneously dismissing legitimate theories as if they were fringe by lumping them in with the ones that actually are fringe.

  My point with this proposal was to clarify that a theory is not fringe simply because it is in the minority, even if it's a clear minority. Wikipedia does not take sides, or at least it shouldn't. Accordingly, whilst we may properly concede consensus as to the likelihood of zoonosis, we are not able to say that the consensus is any further than merely as to this likelihood, such as a consensus that zoonosis is actually what happened (even if a supposedly reliable source misrepresents the consensus thus), since a clear majority of those professionals surveyed gave an average likelihood of greater than $25\%$. That is not an "extremely small minority"; nor is the sample mean, $21\%$, negligible.

  Obviously, the lab leak theory is in the minority; consequently, it should not be given undue weight. But neither should it be dismissed outright, either explicitly (as by some in this thread) or implicitly (as by various articles at various times). Some weight is due. OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 16:05, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

  The lab leak theory is not dismissed outright, this has been discussed in the article's talk page repeatedly. If it did so in the past that was because different sources were available, it's not Wikipedia's purpose to resuppose that sources will change. This is exactly what my previous comments was about. The same arguments, about the same points, but at a different location. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:06, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

The sound of silence: My next suggestion: Let all those who oppose the proposal remain silent for 7 days. There is no way on earth that the policy can be modified given these discussions. Your personal challenge: do you have the inner strength to remain silent for 7 days? Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 11:35, 3 July 2026 (UTC)

Thread summary

I proposed a change to the policy:

• Clarifying WP:DUE vis à vis WP:UNDUE insofar as some inclusion is due and ought not to be dismissed needlessly.
• Inserting a cautionary hatnote emphasizing that this rule ought not to be overused.
• Possibly rewriting the rest of that section to blend logically.

This, however, did not go well, as other participants in this thread disliked the example I chose: the origin of COVID-19. I don't believe the lab leak theory, but I also don't believe that it is fringe, with which my fellow editors strongly disagree. I also defended the legitimacy of the theory, but the others were not satisfied. --OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 14:20, 3 July 2026 (UTC)

Sorry others may have said lab leak was fringe, but as I said that's not what the article about the subject says. I do agree that you choice of examples has derailed the discussion. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:59, 3 July 2026 (UTC)

References

Examples of viewpoints

I wonder whether WP:DUE or WP:YESPOV should have some clear examples of viewpoints that aren't of the support/oppose type. For example:

• deontology vs consequentialism
• progressivism vs conservatism
• religion vs secularism
• collectivism vs individualism
• social equality vs hierarchicalism
• social cohesion vs personal liberty
• moral relativism vs moral absolutism
• good, fast, and cheap

I'm hoping that the result would be less emphasis on balancing negative/positive opinions and more emphasis on looking for actual viewpoints. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:20, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

I'd be in favor of adding a note/provision that positive/negative opinions are fundamentally not a matter that is of encyclopedic concern and should only be included if there's a very good reason, and should usually not be included at all. I think your suggestion is good, anyway. ~2026-40817-33 (talk) 18:36, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

If only it were that simple. There are many examples where opinions about are subject are a significant factor in its notability. For example almost all articles about politically contentious issues would be impossible to cover completely without reporting the positive and negative opinions. Thryduulf (talk) 15:19, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Proposal: Restore the rationale for this policy

I propose that the rationale for this policy be restored. This will allow editors and admins to make judgements concerning the policy. The rationale was formerly in the policy but was deleted:

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, a compilation of human knowledge. But since Wikipedia is a community-built, international resource, we cannot expect collaborators to agree in all cases, or even in many cases, on what constitutes knowledge in a strict sense. We can, therefore, adopt the looser sense of "human knowledge" according to which a wide variety of conflicting theories constitute what we call "knowledge." We should, both individually and collectively, make an effort to present these conflicting views fairly, without advocating any one of them, with the qualification that views held only by a tiny minority of people should not be represented as though they are significant minority views, and perhaps should not be represented at all.

Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:57, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

• Isn't the core of this just word salad? What does a wide variety of conflicting theories constitute what we call "knowledge." even mean? It doesn't correspond to what I understand as "knowledge", and it contradicts WP:NOT which states Wikipedia refects "accepted knowledge". What is the problem this text would solve? Bon courage (talk) 05:31, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

  WP:NPOV is one of the core content policies that is non-negotiable; WP:NOT is a policy, but it is not (not pun intended) a non-negotiable core content policy. So if something was introduced into WP:NOT that was in contradiction to something that was already in WP:NPOV, then the default would be for the latter to have priority.

  You have a POV. That's perfectly alright, we all do. I would argue that having "knowledge" about any subject on which disagreement exists requires hearing/reading what your ideological opponents say, and not exclusively what your ideological allies say about what they say. A knowledgeable atheist, for instance, will actually read the Bible himself (and there's plenty of fuel for atheist positions to be found in there); if he reads nothing but writings from other atheists then he won't be knowledgeable of either religion or atheism. Same applies the other way to a Christian arguing against atheism.

  This is because ALL POVs will misrepresent those they disagree with eventually, and not necessarily intentionally. It is unavoidable. If you only include one side, sooner or later there will be uncountered misinformation, and then everyone loses.

  Sorry for the essay... enjoy the rest of your day :). ~2026-40817-33 (talk) 19:05, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

  I wouldn't put too much stock in that "non-negotiable" language.

  First, it was added only because Jimmy Wales allegedly said that NPOV is "absolute and non-negotiable" in an e-mail thread, only the e-mail message that was cited isn't from him and doesn't contain those words (he is known to have said similar things in other discussions).

  Second, several of the policies have declared to be non-negotiable at various points, and eventually, people actually tried to sort out what that actually meant. Those discussions (example) resulted in several changes (example) that clarified that NPOV a fundamental principle that the community upholds, and not a rule saying (to give only one example of the ways it was misunderstood) that editors couldn't negotiate what the written policy should/shouldn't say. The result of the discussion was that editors discovered that NPOV isn't actually "absolute" (because it has to be interpreted with an eye on other policies) and that "non-negotiable" doesn't mean that Wikipedia:Negotiation is discouraged.

  Thirdly, all policies and guidelines are written and enforced by consensus, and that means, as a practical matter, that if the community ever stops supporting this policy, then it will stop being a policy in practice, and no amount of pounding on the table or wailing that the god-king of wikis said it will matter. We could (you know, if we were truly determined to damage Wikipedia) start a WP:PROPOSAL to gut this policy today. If the community suddenly, totally lost its mind, they might even go along with it. And if all of that happened, then it wouldn't matter one whit who said what 23 years ago, because in the end, the wiki way is that what the community supports is what sticks, and if they want to replace this policy with a feeble shadow of itself, there is no way to stop them from doing it.

  What we are actually (though badly) trying to communicate with this language is that the community currently objects to someone saying that NPOV can be outright ignored for this small group of articles (e.g., the 2026 Iran war because of soldiers' safety, Suicide because someone might die, Sexual practices between men because that's against some religions, or whatever). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:49, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

  Yes! NPOV explicitly overrides WP:BLP. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:34, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

  @Hawkeye7, really? Explicitly? Explicit means that there's a sentence in this policy that says something like "This policy overrides BLP". However, I don't see any mention of the BLP policy in this policy at all. Could you quote for me the alleged "explicit" overriding statement? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:33, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

  This policy is non-negotiable, and the principles upon which it is based cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:42, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

  I was expecting something that explicitly mentioned the BLP policy. I wonder if there were any discussions when the BLP policy was adopted about whether NPOV should be considered to "override" it. I doubt that would have been acceptable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:42, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

  There were concerns in the early days that some editors might favour BLP over NPOV (Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons/Archive 3#Concern over implications of this policy) Conflict between NPOV and BLP was noted, and inevitably NPOV won (Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons/Archive 3#Nutshell) "NPOV is uncompromisable". (Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons/Archive 4#Defamatory material in user namespace) "It would be harmful to the effective functioning of wikipedia as a NPOV encyclopedia to systematically limit discussion anywhere on wikipedia of negative unsourced material. NPOV trumps BLP." Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:06, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

  I'm not sure small discussion from 20 years ago dictate interpretation. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 10:31, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

I would rather it mentioned that we should rely on sources for all of this, as it's something a lot of editors seem to struggle with. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:48, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

Any rationale must include reliable sourcing and some mention of fringe sources. Otherwise we open the door to woo, "scientific" racism, pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. Simonm223 (talk) 12:06, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

I'd add a problem with this kind of broad abstract opening statement (MEDRS bears the scars of this), is that editors read it, stop there, and imagine they can extrapolate the whole policy from it in their head, and/or use that imagined extrapolation to override the specific wording that follows. So in general I think such statements are a bad idea. Is there any example anywhere on Wikipedia where the absence of this text has proved problematic, and where its addition would solve that problem? If so, examples please! Bon courage (talk) 13:42, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

We could have a Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Why page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:32, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

I like the idea of stating a rational at the start of policy pages… but… the specific language that was removed and is being proposed for restoration is, IMO, horrible - overly wordy and not at all clear. Needs workshopping. Blueboar (talk) 12:28, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

I'm less enthusiastic about providing a rationale. At some level, something is our policy/guideline/process because we choose to have it. For this particular page, I can imagine circumstances in which it'd be useful to have a "Dear friends in the media" explanation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:10, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

Well, as the man famously said: There are two things the public should never be told about, namely "how laws and sausages are made" . Now we can add policies to that as a third item, I think. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 21:23, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

NPOV differs from other policies because we didn't choose to have it; it was imposed from above and declared non-negotiable. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:32, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

That's not factually true. First, Jimbo isn't "above"; second, he didn't create NPOV; third, the "non-negotiable" language just came from an ordinary discussion in a mailing list. The "non-negotiable" quotation used to be explicitly marked as just something he said once in this policy. Maybe we should go back to that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:36, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

We can go back to that as easily as we could unscramble a plate of scrambled eggs. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 17:42, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

I think it'd take me about 10 seconds to change the sentence to its original form, which is According to Jimbo Wales, "NPOV is absolute and non-negotiable". That sounds much easier than trying to re-nature denatured proteins. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:30, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

Pronouncements by Jimbo have no place in current Wikipedia policy. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:41, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

Once again, I would go further. Once upon a time, in a land called Northern California, there was a nice operating system called Berkeley Unix which gave a fortune cookie every time you logged in. One has stuck in my mind for decades: Whoever makes a significant contribution to any field of endeavor will in time become an obstacle to progress in that field. The size of the obstacle will be directly proportional to the size of the original contribution. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 22:19, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

If you change that in 10 seconds without consensus, it will remain there for about 7 seconds. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 21:58, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

Jimbo didn't create NPOV; Larry Sanger did. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:42, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

I believe the point is that the sentence comes from a quote by Wales. It's not present in Sangers original version. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:02, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

It does not matter who cooked the dish. What matters is: Is it good? Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 22:12, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

I think there is a big difference between expressing something as an opinion of Jimbo Larry some Wikipedian and a categorical statement of immutable policy. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:24, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

This policy isn't immutable, it has changed over the years to reflect best practice. The outdated ideals of a quarter century ago have been refined and improved up on. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 10:33, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

My understanding is that all WP:5P are not subject to consensus (or, more specifically, they are core principles that consensus is used to implement, which carries the same implication; a consensus that unambiguously goes against the 5P is never valid, although of course one editor arguing that a consensus goes against the 5P isn't going to get them anywhere if people overall disagree with them.) I did notice someone in another discussion arguing that NPOV trumps OR because it has this explicit statement at the top (and I would assume they'd also argue it trumps WP:V); I don't think this is the case. All three are non-negotiable but all three are also of equal weight (in the sense that we cannot ignore any of them.) Also, of course, all three are derivable from each other; the requirement for verifiability and the prohibition against OR are natural consequences of NPOV, for instance. If people are using the statement on NPOV to argue that we can sometimes override the other two, I think we should consider a tweak to eliminate that interpretation (although I would lean more towards adding the same This policy is non-negotiable, and the principles upon which it is based cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, nor by editor consensus to OR and V to make it clear that the three are coequal; when they come into conflict, we have to find a solution that satisfies all of them, we can't just prioritize one and ignore the other. WP:CIVIL also falls under that category but it's not as important to clarify because it doesn't generally come into conflict with content policies. I do think that it's important as a principle because sometimes lesser (or just more specific) policies or guidelines can be overridden by core policy or the WP:5P, in situations where following an overly-specific lesser policy or guideline in a particular case would obviously contravene NPOV / OR / V. EDIT: That said, we might also tweak the wording down to just The principles this policy is based on cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, nor by editor consensus. The "non-negotiable" part is only half-true; editors cannot propose we ignore NPOV, OR, or V, but they can absolutely argue over interpretation and applicability in individual cases, and even tweak the wording as long as the core principle is maintained. It's the principle that is non-negotiable, not the specific text; the specific text is just an implementation. --Aquillion (talk) 03:37, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:Five pillars/FAQ. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:57, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Editor consensus is based upon WP:CIVIL, so it does come into conflict with content policies on occasion. Since NPOV overrides consensus, it implicitly trumps CIVIL, and therefore the five pillars are not equal. Our three core content policies are NPOV, OR and V, all of which are derived from the NPOV pillar. BLP is not a core policy, although it is also derived from NPOV, so is an example of an " overly-specific lesser policy" that you were referring to. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:49, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

NPOV doesn't override consensus. Consensus can, and has, changed the NPOV policy. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:33, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

Kind-of sort-of. I do agree with the interpretation that a consensus can't override the basic principle of NPOV. If we had a consensus somewhere that said "we should ignore the sources and just say Senator Smith is the best person ever, because it's really important that Senator Smith win this upcoming election", that would be illegitimate. That said, that isn't really unique to NPOV; consensus in general has to be based on policy, so any consensus that said "let's just ignore policy Y" without a competing policy reason (eg. "policy Z is controlling here and overrides it") or a really really strong IAR rationale is on shaky ground. But I do think there are policies that are stronger than others and which we have to prioritize when they come into direct conflict, and NPOV is one of the strongest (I would say that it is equal with WP:V and WP:OR.) This matters in particular because a lot of subject-specific or MOS stuff tells us to write specific things or in specific ways, and many of them were written under the unstated assumption of "the sources will always support this"; it's important that those don't override NPOV / V / OR for situations where that isn't true. It's important that "we should follow guideline X here" can be answered with "no, we can't do that here, it would contradict NPOV." (Caveat: of course people can disagree on whether that is true, so in practice, in most cases, what this means is that that "we should ignore guideline X here because it would contradict NPOV to follow it" is a valid argument, not that it actually lets you just walk around ignoring a consensus to the contrary.) Also, while we can tweak NPOV to better-reflect its spirit, and can argue about what its spirit means, I do think that we can't just go "NPOV no longer matters at all, let's delete this page"; arguments over NPOV have to be premised in some reasonable understanding of NPOV rather than just "let's just get rid of it, NPOV is for suckers" or the like. --Aquillion (talk) 15:46, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

WP:CONSENSUS can't override the principle of any policy, as it states that it requires the following of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. In the same way that NPOV requires that other policies be followed. They're interconnected, and you can't use part of one to say that another can be overridden or trumped. NPOV will be more important than MOS, but that's just a valid consensus argument rather than something special. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:04, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

I agree with you both, except that I want to be clear that we could actually have a consensus to delete NPOV ("policy", "page" and/or "principle"). IMO doing that would make Wikipedia stop being Wikipedia, and I doubt that the current community would stand for it, but it's possible. We can't get rid of NFCC or BLP because the WMF's board requires us to have those, but NPOV is currently optional, and even when it finally joins the list of mandatory policies, there is no requirement that it contain words like "non-negotiable".

We sometimes say that "consensus is king". It would probably be more accurate to say that consensus is gravity: It is an implacable and universal law that all voluntary associations abide by, and it is only through the expenditure of significant energy that you can temporarily overcome it. If "the community" wants something, a changeable page that is created and changed by that same community will not long stand in their way. We can show future generations that this is a good path, but we cannot force them to walk in it – not even by (mis?)quoting Jimmy Wales. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:48, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

I would agree with both points, that NPOV could be deleted as it's not a legal requirement, and that it would essentially mean that the project would no longer be Wikipedia. If anything BLP and NFCC should be the ones that state they're non-negotiable. We could turn the site into the POV pushing bogeyman that so many make money portraying us to be, but if we started adding endless libel and copyright infringing content then the WMF would likely take the servers offline until it was stopped. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:02, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

BLP and NFCC are both negotiable. They should never be confused with libel and copyright infingement; they are quite distinct. FWIW, WMF only requires that we have a NFCC policy; there is some latitude in what it contains. There is no WMF requirement for BLP, which lacks a rationale, and derives its authority from Jimmy Wales. NPOV is not subject to consensus and cannot be deleted. This policy is non-negotiable, and the principles upon which it is based cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, nor by editor consensus. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:01, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

WMF doesn't require projects to have project-specific BLP policies, but (unless I'm mistaken), the WMF has adopted their own, universal/global BLP policy (but their P stands for "people" instead of persons - I think "persons" is more correct), which enwiki would be bound by should it ever decide to abolish the enwiki BLP policy. So in that sense BLP is still "non-negotiable", even if our own BLP technically isn't. ~2026-40817-33 (talk) 22:32, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

The WMF requires a BLP policy; see foundation:Resolution:Biographies of living people. Note the words at the top: It may not be circumvented, eroded, or ignored by Wikimedia Foundation officers or staff nor local policies of any Wikimedia project. According to that rule, "the global Wikimedia community to uphold and strengthen our commitment to high-quality, accurate information, by:

1. Ensuring that projects in all languages that describe living people have policies in place calling for special attention to the principles of neutrality and verifiability in those articles;"

We therefore must have a BLP policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:20, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

You're quite right! I overlooked that. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 06:15, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

Hawkeye, I'm really not sure how you've gotten stuck in this hole, but let me take you through a series of steps, and maybe that will help you see this policy in a different light:

1. This policy previously did not say anything about being non-negotiable. This was what the community chose to say on this page, at that time. The world did not end.
2. This policy was changed to (allegedly) quote Jimbo saying that NPOV is "absolute and non-negotiable". This was what the community chose to say on this page, at that time. The world did not end.
3. This policy was changed to remove the words "absolute and non-negotiable". This was what the community chose to say on this page, at that time. The world did not end.
4. This policy was changed to add the words "fundamental principles". This was what the community chose to say on this page, at that time. The world did not end.
5. This policy was changed to put back only the word "non-negotiable". This was what the community chose to say on this page at that time. The world still did not end.

The community has chosen several different things to say on this page, at different time. I suggest to you that:

• This policy could, at any time the future, be changed again, to remove the word "non-negotiable" again. The community can choose not to have that word on this page, at any time, and the world would still not end.

Do you understand that the community is allowed to choose whether that particular word is on this page? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:27, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

We have some small leeway on BLP and NFCC, but their basic principles are non-negotiable as the WMF require Wikipedia to have them. The same is not true of NPOV, and it could be changed by consensus at anytime. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:54, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

WMF was talking about requiring NPOV as well. (Proposed baseline NPOV standard) Note that it includes "This standard is not negotiable. Neither editor consensus nor other policies and guidelines can supersede the principle of neutral point of view." Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:07, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

So at the moment it isn't required. Even if that wording is included in the WMF version, that version is only suggested. No exact wording is required. So we could still remove the wording even if that is adopted, or add it to the V and OR. "The proposed baseline is meant for the Wikipedias which do not yet have an NPOV policy, for their communities to adopt, use, and build upon.", but we'll see what they say in mid-August. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:05, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

Note, too, that I have strongly suggested that they change that wording. @Risker is involved in that work and might be interested in knowing that this discussion is happening here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:59, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

The problem with the wording is that it encourages editors to get hung up on a single sentence, rather than taking all of policy and guidance into account. Single mindedly focusing on one sentence of a policy or guideline, to the exclusion of everything else doesn't usually end well. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:58, 2 August 2026 (UTC)

I agree. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:23, 2 August 2026 (UTC)

• Please permit me to formally oppose the addition of the green text rationale at the top of the thread because it is reminiscent of a speech by some politician we have never heard of. It is pure rhetoric. I will make no further comments on this thread and predict that consensus will not be reached to implement the proposal. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 04:06, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

  The reason I started this is that an editor told me that NPOV was for imposing American values on the project. I was hoping for a better rationale. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:52, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

  If the reliable sources for a given subject are all American (or nearly so), then NPOV means we'll have an article about the American view of that subject. That's likely to happen for some US subjects. For example, we have lots of articles about US highways, and I doubt that there is a non-US POV about most of them. However, the converse is also true: anything we write about most politicians in non-US countries will primarily be written from non-US sources, and therefore reflect sources with non-US values. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:51, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

  The converse is not true and is a common criticism of the English Wikipedia. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:45, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

  The converse is not always true, but it is IMO often true, especially when editors use WP:NONENG sources. The main challenge is that we often just don't have the articles at all. For example, WP:NPOL says we probably should have an article on every member of every national legislature, and we probably don't. If we were to try to write those articles, we probably couldn't use primarily (or any) US sources for most of them, because US sources really don't spend much time writing about the individual elected legislators of most developing countries. List of legislatures by number of members says there are more than 47,000 legislators, and it doesn't include sub-national legislatures. We probably don't have articles on all of them, and even if we do, we'll have to use non-US sources, because my newspaper, at any rate, isn't running thousands of articles each year about non-US politicians. If we're to have sources, we will not be able to find US sources for these articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:26, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

Relation between NPOV and intellectual diversity

I honestly cannot believe that neutral point of view and intellectual diversity are closely related somehow. NPOV means not taking sides but rather state facts and treat opinions as mere opinions... and nothing more. Intellectual diversity, on the other hand, has been vague and lacking coherent definition among academics especially. Nonetheless, the term "intellectual diversity" and its vagueness may have been exploited for especially political gain and further control. I just can't help wonder whether (a call for) intellectual diversity is more NPOV-related or.... civility-related, i.e. how we treat other editors with alternative mindset of knowledge or viewpoints... or whatever it is.

Jimmy Wales can define the term as an inclusive approach to engaging thoughtfully with a wide range of ideas, political affiliations, and schools of thought, which he likes the term to be. See the following discussion for further context: User talk:Jimbo Wales#"intellectual diversity" now an article. George Ho (talk) 16:42, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Isn't "intellectual diversity" a bland term which, in practice, means giving licence to all kinds of bullshit, stupidity and anti-knowledge (as particularly prevalant in the USA)? The article makes a fairly good job of portraying this. WP:NPOV is already nice and clear about how to deal with WP:FRINGESUBJECTS. Bon courage (talk) 17:33, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

I initiated this thread especially in hopes to make Jimmy Wales reconsider promoting the (so-called?) concept (of the vague term that has academics befuddled). He's been still adamant about his own definition... when discussing the Wikipedia community itself. George Ho (talk) 18:13, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

George, this is mainly a problem with the terminology. Are you familiar with the problem with words like inflammable and biannual? People think "Inedible means it's not edible, so inflammable means it's not flammable" – when it's quite the opposite: an inflammable substance is something that is able to be inflamed (able to be set on fire). Biweekly means once every two weeks, so people think biannual means once every two years – except that biannual technically means twice in the same year, and biennial means once every two years.

The same thing happens with the term intellectual diversity: people use it to mean opposite things. Some people think it's the diversity of intellectual ideas in general; other people mean "more of my [usually right-wing or conservative] views, and less of yours".

In a conversation about how to promote intellectual diversity in Wikipedia, I'd suggest asking people to give a specific example or to rephrase their sentence without using the word intellectual diversity. "This article needs more intellectual diversity" isn't very informative. "This article needs to say more about the politician's supporters" or "This article is written from a US-only viewpoint" is more informative. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:39, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, i was kind of wondering why anyone would think more divergent intellects running around here was a good idea? fiveby(zero) 17:47, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

"intellectual diversity" falls under NEO, as a term without a firm definition. Like "woke". I wouldn't try to frame WP policy around a vague concept. Masem (t) 17:48, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

It should just be a pretentious synonym for 'multiple viewpoints', but it's not used that way. Instead it's a load term stemming from the US culture war. Better avoided and plain language used instead. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:52, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

I'm now worried that almost nothing we say would change Jimmy's mind about intellectual diversity. Indeed, he said the following:

I think intellectual diversity ought to be a rule in the same way and for the same reason that NPOV ought to be a rule.

I thought about inviting him to this thread, but then I'm worried that I may be canvassing him here. Indeed, I hate to see him being confronted by the community again and again as he has been especially in recent years. George Ho (talk) 20:03, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

He can come up with any idea he likes, but ultimately he is just one voice among many. Personally I think we need less US culture war in this international project. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:12, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

You are right. The times have changed in the past few decades and the emperor position is just a formality, as in Japan. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 23:09, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

More like the UK. The King theoretically has immense powers, but any attempt to use them would result in a constitutional crisis and ultimately a republic. Don't want to end up like Charles I. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:42, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Please be careful, for we are about to run into one of our heated agreements again. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 14:28, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Actually I think we're heatedly agreeing. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:02, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

I agree, as I said above. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 15:24, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

I need new eyes, these are clearly defective. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:35, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

I think that by itself "intellectual diversity" has one really broad/vague meaning and a zillion specific meanings, where the specific meaning is determined by context. I think the meaning in the Wikipedia context is an assertion that Wikipedia is biased in certain areas (e.g. US politics related) to the extent that it doesn't have have intellectual diversity in those areas, and so an assertion that an intellectual diversity initiative would help fix that. North8000 (talk) 18:11, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

If that's intended as a definition of intellectual diversity, it's very circular. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:17, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

so an assertion that an intellectual diversity initiative would help fix that.

....Okay...? (I'm thinking this part you said is a run-on sentence, isn't it?) George Ho (talk) 18:17, 23 July 2026 (UTC); specified, 18:23, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

To both of you. I didn't want to get in too deep/ direct in a hot topic that has been discussed elsewhere. Sorry if I was unclear as a result. The first part was to note that the general meaning is uselessly broad and then to provide the context-specific meaning in the context of Wikipedia discussions. More specifically, it's context-specific meaning asserts the Wikipedia has a left bias (on US politics items), implicitly describes that as a lack of intellectual diversity, and proposes increasing intellectual diversity as a solution. And yes, even that is not a specific definition, but such is the reality of the usage. North8000 (talk) 20:27, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

To put it more bluntly, "intellectual diversity" is code for the idea that we should coddle and promote nazis and cranks instead of rejecting their ideas. No thank you. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:51, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

I had never heard the term before, but neutral point of view and intellectual diversity are both ill-defined neologisms which seem to mean exactly the same thing. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:10, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

You mean you've not yet read the "intellectual diversity" article yet, right? George Ho (talk) 21:41, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

• Part of the issue is that the term has its roots in conservative attacks on academia in the US, with the underlying premise that if academia's output on any topic doesn't perfectly reflect the divide in American politics, that must somehow represent some form of bias; eg. since half the population votes for people who oppose the consensus on climate change, the fact that 99% of climatologists say humans are the cause must represent bias within academia rather than academia concluding the truth. Recently, in more extreme cases (like Texas and Florida, or in the Trump administration's handling of research grants), this argument has been used to support state efforts to force academia to toe the party line. This is the reason the term attracts such skepticism today, in particular - in those cases it was used not even as an effort to force academia to represent the electorate (already a dubious argument, for reasons the climate change example makes clear), but to outright censor and eliminate any views the state deems "woke" and therefore ideologically suspect. At that point it can no longer really even be considered a disagreement over what balance is, but a bare-knuckle effort to eliminate or assert control over any spheres of public life that lie outside their ideological movement. Obviously, it is important for Wikipedia's editors to represent a wide range of views and perspectives, but the idea that the intellectual thread of either mainstream party in the US lacks representation here is obviously absurd; anyone who glances at WP:AP2 can see that both threads are adequately represented. If they weren't, it wouldn't be the WP:CTOP it is. Either way, the history surrounding this term in particular makes it not particularly useful for anything except a dogwhistle. --Aquillion (talk) 22:08, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

  Yeah. The American culture war idea that academia is a pack of untrustworthy left-wing extremists is very pernicious to an international encyclopedia project. This is actually part of my hostility toward using newspapers, in general, as sources. I think Wikipedia already allows too much "intellectual diversity" by treating journalists as if they were as useful to a neutral encyclopedic project as academic experts. "Academic" isn't perfect. We recently saw an issue with a Eurabia conspiracy theorist who published with an American academic press. But cleaving more to academic sources will, in general, improve this project even it it seems less "intellectually diverse". Simonm223 (talk) 12:49, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Sorry, not just nazis and cranks. Once the door is opened every form of half-baked theory on economics will come in. It will be a nightmare. Someone should come up with a variant of the saying "only an intellectual could be that stupid" to apply to this type of quest for so called diversity. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 23:05, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

You may be interested in Nobel disease. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:32, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

There is also the Nobel cure. I will explain on your talk page. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 04:23, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

Technical issues: Ever since An Essay Concerning Human Understanding the issue of argumentation has been discussed but not widely enough. The basic approach in Wikipedia is to rely on experts, namely Argument from authority, considered fallible since the 19th century. However, the Wikipedia experiment has shown that this form of argumentation within a "highly focused" Argumentum ad populum setting can get reliable results. Ever since the over consumption of Sangria in that famous debate (the length of Long Island Expressway) the idea that Wikipedia should simply use Argumentum ad populum (ala Reddit) has been thrown around, to no avail, as we all know. Argumentum ad populum is a hopeless approach and will effectively murder Wiki quality by turning Wikipedia into a semi-Reddit. What taxi drivers in New York may think about high energy physics will not correspond to what the experts think. But there are more of them than physicists. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 22:44, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

I do think it's important to emphasize that WP:NOTTRUTH applies. We're not engaging in an argument from authority, because we're not actually presenting an argument at all; rather, we're saying that, as an encyclopedia, our goal and purpose is to summarize what the authorities on each subject say. If a reader thinks the authorities are wrong, that's fine - sometimes they are! And if they are, hopefully one day some smart young reader will do the research necessary to prove them wrong, and get it peer-reviewed and published, and we'll ultimately cover that correction. But people can't start debunking authorities here, nor is "authorities are sometimes wrong" a reasonable argument for "...so you should stop writing an encyclopedia, and instead just equivocate between the main political parties in each country" or "you should balance things according to the polling of the public" or somesuch. Those approaches are literally unencyclopedic, in the sense that they'd take us away from what an encyclopedia is. That said, as I mentioned above, part of the issue is that "intellectual diversity" has largely become a rallying cry for people who reject academic authority. The argument that "if 99% of academics agree on something, it clearly means academia is biased" is obviously circular logic that could be used to reject any academic consensus on anything at all. People who hold that position will never be happy with any serious encyclopedia. This is, I think, is by design; it is an epistemological framework that allows those who hold it to reject anything they disagree with out of hand. If any agreement that they dissent from is evidence of bias, then no academic consensus that goes against their priors can ever be valid. And, similarly, applying that logic to Wikipedia, mere representation on talk pages - which, as I mentioned above, most of the views in question clearly have in abundance - would never satisfy them, because any consensus they disagree with is a priori evidence of bias. --Aquillion (talk) 04:41, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Sorry, but to "summarize what the authorities on each subject say" is an argument from authority by definition. In doing so we are in effect repeating the statements by authorities, rather than the general public. And please note that I specifically avoided the word "truth" for I do not know what it means outside the context of model theory ala Tarski. The logic used in the discussions is of course informal logic, but I will not engage in a long discussion on the nature of logic here. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 07:48, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Except, many many times in talking on current controversial topics, particularly outside of the physical sciences, we are not using authorities, we are using journalists, activists, and other people that may know the area well and lean in a specific ideological direction that are presented in those RSes we have deemed reliable. Those people are likely not the authoritive voices from a long-term, academic view that we need to be writing towards. This is why NPOV needs to speak about time and long-term coverage and downplay the immediate commentary that is ubiquitous today from sources like newspapers and magazines that make it easy to flood an article as well as overwhelm factors like DUE/WEIGHT. The less we try to cram short term commentary on a controversial topic and stick to simply documenting what the controversy is, the better. Masem (t) 04:25, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

I agree. The typical encyclopedias were never based on what journalists would say. I had a friend who was a journalist for a respectable paper and all he could talk about were deadlines and how upset he was about his editor. What you call short term commentary is often written at midnight, under intense pressure for tommorow's deadline. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 04:47, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

• I broadly speaking disagree. In my experience, mainstream news coverage is often more cautious, not less; it is academia that is generally more willing to make declarations that society as a whole might find shocking or surprising, because they're not bound by the same need to cater to subscribers. As an example (and I mention this because I know this is someplace where the dispute at hand particularly comes up), I find that academia and peer-reviewed papers are generally more willing to clearly identify the far-right than news coverage is. Of course, those academic papers take time, but I've noticed you making this argument about how mainstream coverage is breathless and potentially defamatory before and I just don't think it's true - in fact, I think the precise opposite is true. Most news coverage leans more towards both-siding and equivocation, since they lack the resources and time for proper research and investigation, in addition to not wanting to offend readers. Most of the time, when I make a note to swing back to some controversy a half a year or a year down the line when academia and other higher-quality sources have covered it, I discover the later academic coverage is far more clear-cut and incisive, and much less cautious, than the breaking-news coverage we used initially. (For an example which I know you're familiar with, look at the Gamergate sources; that first sentence, which is well-cited and reflects a well-cited body today, wouldn't have been something the sources existed for early on.) And this does mean that in the rare situations where they say something clearly, we have to take it seriously; we don't cover things the way the news does but we have to stay up to date, which means reflecting a clear-cut consensus among the best available sources when it occurs, even when the "best available sources" are just initial coverage. --Aquillion (talk) 21:08, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

  Near-term sources may be more cautious but the problem on that side is from our editors that are hyperfixated on RGW on controversial topics to make sure a controversial topic is presented in a one-sided manner (typically leaning on calling out on those that are against the average left-leaning mindset of WP editors). We're talking when editors shut out any consideration of alternate viewpoints because the body of short-term RSes distilled from RSP often share the view they want to express. And when we report things in Wikivoice than with attribution, we're going beyond the caution of those sources in the first place. Masem (t) 22:04, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

our editors that are hyperfixated on RGW on controversial topics to make sure a controversial topic is presented in a one-sided manner - look, I'll be blunt, it seems to me that, flipping what you said around, the thrust of your argument is "sometimes short-term sources themselves are unfair to people on the right, and therefore we should put our thumb on the scale to correct for that." That's a RGW argument itself, surely? If you feel editors are engaging in RGW behavior to the extent that they're ignoring or clearly inappropriately weighing sources, take them to WP:AE or WP:ANI; but if your problem is that editors are trying to get us to accurately summarize the best available sources, and you concede that what they want to add accurately reflects those sources, but you think that doing so is bad because you believe accurately summarizing those sources results in something biased towards the left, then the issue is that you believe the mainstream media as a whole to be biased and want Wikipedia to be a platform that pushes back against it. That's a much more severe WP:RGW argument than you're accusing other of! And it ties into my explanation for why I distrust some of the ways intellectual diversity has been deployed as a term in the past - at heart, what it boils down to (and correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see any other way to interpret what you've said) is that you have, in your heart, a personal understanding of the world that is balanced in a certain way; and you see any sources, and any summary of those sources, that don't reflect that as intrinsically imbalanced, to the point where it can't be you, it has to be the sources that are wrong. Everyone feels like that sometimes, because, yeah, sometimes the sources screw up; as I said, I frequently feel immediate news coverage is biased in, broadly, the opposite direction that you do. But the whole point of WP:RGW is that we can't let that feeling influence how we balance things when writing an encyclopedia, because it would amount to us just putting our own opinions in articles. --Aquillion (talk) 15:38, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

I 100% agree with Masem here. Simonm223 (talk) 21:00, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles are required to be impartial. Wikipedia articles are written by the community. Article impartiality can be violated by an intellectually homogeneous community. An intellectually homogeneous community weighs viewpoints outside its belief structure poorly, that's basic human in group bias. An intellectually homogeneous community will expel sources that do not align with the viewpoint of the community. Basically, without intellectual diversity, you cannot get impartiality. Basic human behavior and in-group biases will lead a intellectually homogeneous community to exclude viewpoints that do not align with their mores. This is especially prevalent in contested "ought", or moral subjects. --Kyohyi (talk) 12:40, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

This is very much what can and has happened on WP, that some editors create a walled garden around only what reliable sources say and ignore other viewpoints. This doesn't mean that we need to include those other viewpoints, but what I've seen happen is that editors go "if it is not in any reliable source, it doesn't exist", which is used to push on things like "Avoid stating facts as opinions." on the claim that if there are no non-RS reporting contest to an idea there must be no contest and therefore fact, when in fact there is contestable opinions on the topic for non-layperson sources, or that concept overall is highly subjective (claims that so-and-so is associated with the far right, being a very common problem). Most of time this can be easily resolved by tone of the writing, pulling out of wikivoice, adjusting location, etc. but it is very difficult to get editors stuck in this mode to see this. Masem (t) 13:14, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

I'm going to suggest it's actually a little bit further than that and raise that what is a reliable source is based on consensus opinion. We raise a walled garden around what constitutes a reliable source based on a position the source takes on a moral or "ought" subject. --Kyohyi (talk) 13:22, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

There is certainly a problem with some editors denigrating social sciences and humanities as being just opinion as it were impossible to form academic knowledge about socially constructed phenomena. Treating those who support the use of social science and humanities as if we are all simply moral crusaders is problematic. Simonm223 (talk) 13:43, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

It's not impossible for social sciences and humanities to form academic knowledge about socially constructed phenomena. It's that whatever axioms you hold foundational within the moral philosophy that's being proposed are functionally opinions. Documenting the axioms, and building upon them, is perfectly acceptable form of knowledge generation. Ascribing one set of axioms as correct, and all others should submit to it is moral crusading. It is the is-ought problem. --Kyohyi (talk) 14:25, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

So here's a problem with this framing: Nazis lie and overcode terms and symbols. This is an "is" statement. Every Nazi will claim it is not. (Redlink to remind me, yet again, to write the overcoding article) Simonm223 (talk) 15:05, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

And the relevance is? I'm hoping you're not planning to go with a Godwin argument, or a kafkatrap. If the intent is to make an implied argument of "If you don't agree with me, You're a Nazi" I'm not going to engage with you further. --Kyohyi (talk) 15:22, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

No it's not. My argument is that the far-right often use discursive dishonesty to obscure the is/ought distinction in politically expedient ways. The best way to avoid this trap without ideological thumb-scale action is to aggressively cleave to academic sources and to treat all reliability as contextual, avoiding the GREL thought-terminating cliche. Simonm223 (talk) 21:04, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

And I'm going to reply that this is not a unique condition to the far-right, but a near universal human condition. Further, as academia is a human construct, there is no reason to believe that it isn't happening there as well. All reliability is contextual, including academic sources. If our sources are treading into the realm of moral philosophy, even academic sources, we should be treating them as ought statements. --Kyohyi (talk) 16:58, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

I actually have a citation for this being a specific feature of far right discourse - Anti-Semite and Jew describes this discursive practice in extensive detail. Simonm223 (talk) 17:00, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

And my contention is whether or not it is a unique feature. I find that style of discourse is pretty typical of ideological extremists. --Kyohyi (talk) 13:23, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

@Kyohyi, I agree that "what is a reliable source is based on consensus opinion". A few years back, someone published an academic paper about Wikipedia's conception of Wikipedia:Reliable sources. They didn't get it 100% right, but they correctly pointed out that we don't have a definition of RS per se. The guideline begins with "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published sources" rather than "Reliable sources are sources that..."

IMO the way we would end that sentence is "Reliable sources are published sources that experienced editors would accept as being adequate to support the specific content in question." WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:51, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

About identifying "a reliable source based on a position the source takes": This happens, but technically it's just a shortcut. If you see something that claims HIV doesn't cause AIDS, or that climate change isn't real, or that racism doesn't exist any longer, it's so far outside the mainstream view that it's a tiny minority and WP:UNDUE to include. The problem isn't rejecting such sources; the problem is that Wikipedia editors don't always name the correct WP:UPPERCASE when they're explaining why they're rejecting it. It's possible to find a source that have all of the qualities we look for in a reliable source (see WP:NOTGOODSOURCE for a summary), and that source will simply be wrong. Instead of saying "that's unreliable", we should be saying "all the other sources give a height of 380 meters, so I think we should probably just ignore the one that claims 1380 meters". WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:06, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

We define reliable sources as independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. (WP:REPUTABLE) However, NPOV trumps this. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 06:17, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

For a stand-alone article, our notability requirement calls for significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. (WP:GNG) But NPOV says we do not restrict articles to reliable sources. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 06:33, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

WP:NPOV first sentence:
"All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic." So NPOV requires that sources with a reputation for fact checking and accuracy are used. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 10:56, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

There are still factors like the use of attribution rather than wikivoice and tone that need to be considered, which should consider more than just want RSes are saying, particularly if we are looking at near-term coverage coming from newspapers and similar media compared to long-term coverage from books and academic materials. Masem (t) 11:08, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

I don't think there is, at least as something separate from what sources say. Certainly there are different thresholds for degrees of attribution or for covering things with particular tones (skepticism, confidence, etc) but all of these ultimately come down to the sources, eg. skepticism is a tone issue if we introduce it or if it is inadequately sourced, but is appropriate (and can even be required) if it is sufficiently broad and clear among high-quality sources. There are things that require particularly high-quality sourcing, but there is no red line of "we [cannot / must] say this regardless of sourcing" or "we cannot use these terms regardless of sourcing" - WP:NPOV and WP:V ultimately bind us to the sourcing, so sufficiently unanimous high-quality sourcing will unconditionally override everything else. If it didn't work that way, we would be putting our own opinions and judgments before the sources, which is never acceptable. --Aquillion (talk) 21:08, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

And sufficiently unanimous high-quality sourcing will unconditionally override everything else. is the bulk of the problems with how many controversial current or recent-current topics are covered, and speaks to the walled garden problem. It is far different if we are using sources today to cover a topic that is decades old, because the events and situation around it have generally settled and become fixed, so we absolutely should use what RSes now as the only reasonable ones to include. But most recent events are very much in flux and even if it ends up that what RSes at the time of the event say becomes mirrored by sources far out from the event, we should not be taking the near term sources as the bible. Its not ignoring those sources, but not bending to the idea that because there's lots of these sources taking one side or the other that that must thus be fact, particularly if there's no way to objective demonstrate something true or not. Masem (t) 21:59, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

Us historians always prefer sources close to the event. While recent events are in flux in the sense that we don't yet know what they will lead to, events never become completely fixed, but are subject to review, revision and reconsideration by subsequent generations of historians. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:24, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

@ActivelyDisinterested: I appreciate your attempt at an end run around NPOV, but just because views have been published by reliable sources doesn't mean that they endorse them or agree with them. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:18, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

I never said they did, and was not attempting a run around. Rather I was simply pointing out that reliable sources are required by the NPOV policy, so NPOV can't "trump" V. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 10:31, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

I agree that there's no sense in talking about NPOV without reference to reliable sources, but I want to pushback against the idea that reliable sources means "sources with a reputation for fact checking and accuracy". Even a source with a widely acknowledged reputation for lying can still be a reliable source in an appropriate WP:RSCONTEXT. A recording of Richard Nixon saying "I am not a crook" is a reliable source for the fact that he said "I am not a crook", even though he has the opposite of a reputation for fact checking and accuracy, especially on that point. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:35, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

I think "reputation for fact checking and accuracy" is one of the least helpful phrases in the entire PAGs, as it puts editors in mind of journalism-type sources (not good) rather than WP:SCHOLARSHIP for which the phrase is not even wrong. 05:14, 28 July 2026 (UTC) Bon courage (talk) 05:14, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

My post was just to try to help on definitions. I don't agree with the "take" on subsequent posts but those are about a bundle of big topics which I won't try to tackle here. But be mindful, broadening intellectual diversity isn't about the straw-man descriptions as being about including the wackiest and worst. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 22:58, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

It actually is, in the sense that "wacky out-there positions" are the ones we're lacking and need more of. I do agree that articles should be edited by editors from a wide variety of perspectives; this is necessary because if a perspective has no representation then people will not necessarily point out places where we're not accurately reflecting the sources on it. A lot of editing takes the form of, say, someone skimming an article, spotting something that makes them go "wait, that can't be right!" or "wait, something is missing here!", and editing it in - they need to find sources and consider due weight and so on after that, but our initial impetus for noticing issues is inevitably colored by our perspectives. Having people with a variety of perspectives reading articles is necessary to ensure that issues will be caught, obscure-but-not-to-the-point-of-being-undue sources brought to our attention, and so on. But the perspectives that are missing are not mainstream American political ones; as I said above, nobody could look at the state of WP:AP2 and claim that we lack editors across the American political spectrum. Glaring problems that go against the perspective of one of the major American parties will be caught and corrected within moments on any remotely high-profile article; it is the truly obscure perspectives that lack representation. Hence my skepticism above vis-a-vis the way the term has been deployed in the past. "We need more people with obscure perspectives on birdwatching" is something I can get behind, I'm just skeptical that it's what people mean when they say intellectual diversity due to the way that that term has been previously deployed as part of conservative attacks on higher education in the US. If you don't mean to align yourself with that, or even if you disagree with my characterization of that history but don't intend to carry the baggage of that disagreement here, then I'd recommend using different (and less loaded) terminology. --Aquillion (talk) 21:08, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

I am sorry tho have to disagree again. The definition of Encyclopedia states that it is a "valued source of reliable information compiled by experts". It does not state that encyclopedias should include wacky out-there information. We could perform a simple experiment in our own cities and ask 20 random people on the street if they think encyclopedias generally include wacky info and see what they say. I think we all know the percentages of the answers. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 00:18, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

You're not wrong, but NPOV trumps WP:5P1. We have to be neutral even if it means that we cannot be a valued source of reliable information. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:13, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

• I'm talking about editors, not article content. Because our understanding of a topic inevitably affects what problems we see in articles, and especially which errors we're likely to catch, we do need editors who have diverse views (provided they can follow our policies.) Sometimes we will just get something unequivocally wrong about a fringe topic (citing a source for something it doesn't say, or omitting something that really does have to be included) and people whose perspectives are broadly closer to those fringe perspectives are more likely to spot and raise those errors. We do need editors with marginal viewpoints (as long as those viewpoints are ones conductive to editing constructively and collaboratively, ie. not out-and-out hate movements), they just need to understand policy and therefore accept that articles usually won't say what they want. My objection to the framing around ideological diversity is that, based on the arguments people have made using that term and the things that they've focused on, it feels like their real objection isn't "our views aren't represented among editors" (they clearly are! If you look at the WP:RFAR case for Lightbreather, there's basically unanimous agreement that the broad perspective I think we could reasonably characterize as more in alignment with WP:AP2 conservatives for that topic is so overwhelming among editors there that it was nearly a WP:1AM situation with Lightbreather on the other side.) It feels like the actual objection intended by the term is that Wikipedia's outcomes, as a whole, do not reflect what they would consider balanced, and that's not a reasonable argument for the reasons I outlined above. I do think we need editors with diverse perspectives, I just become extremely skeptical when people use that to argue that what is probably the second-most heavily represented broad perspective in the WP:AP2 topic area needs more representation. As a general rule, major nationalist and religious perspectives have massive representation on Wikipedia; it just feels unfair to some of the people who hold those views because they're used to being in the absolute majority (or a strong plurality) in their home countries, and Wikipedia is an international encyclopedia where that isn't true. As far as that goes, they are encountering ideological diversity, not suffering from a lack of it. --Aquillion (talk) 02:57, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

• George Ho, I think you started this discussion because you were worried about the safety of neutral point of view, as is. Please let me suggest that you have nothing to worry about. It would take an unprecedented tsunami to change it. Any attempt at doing so will quickly lead to a highly publicized and lengthy Rfc. Given the tremendous opposition to the intellectual diversity project, we all know the overall community feelings. So please have no worries and sleep well. People will talk and talk to release their frustrations, but it will be talk. I will have nothing further to say on this issue. Have a good day. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 00:37, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

  Per WP:DUCK, ideological diversity and neutral point of view are the one and the same thing, from the same people, with the same objectives. As Aquillion says, it is a "different (and less loaded) terminology". Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:33, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

  WP:DUCK is an essay on sockpuppetry. Also, you're using "ideological diversity" as if it were interchangeable with "intellectual diversity", right? Also, Aquillion suggested using a different (and less loaded) terminology instead of either term you were using. Isn't that right, Aquillion? George Ho (talk) 20:45, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

  Apologies George. Somewhere along the line I lost track of the difference between intellectual diversity and ideological diversity. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:55, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

• Hrm, not exactly. There are two separate questions here:

• First, do we need an base of editors with a diverse set of views and perspectives? I think we do, for the reasons I mentioned above, but as I said - bluntly, I feel that the more nationalist-leaning perspective which could roughly be characterized as leaning towards the more conservative strand of American politics is already well-represented on Wikipedia, and that the chill many people who hold those views feel when editing here is because they're encountering more intellectual diversity than they're used to, rather than a lack of it. The nature of nationalist and religious viewpoints in particular is to overestimate how pervasive they are internationally because they tend to live in areas where they're over-represented; so when they arrive on Wikipedia, even though they are well-represented, it feels like an injustice for them to suddenly be in the minority. That is not a problem with Wikipedia, though.
• Second, what range of views should our articles reflect? This is a very different question. It is important to have a wide range of views represented among editors so we have people who can spot and call out errors that are only likely to be caught by people with the relevant background and perspectives; but in terms of what our articles themselves say, we should reflect the scope and range of the best available sources, which doesn't always reflect, bluntly, individual editors' gut feelings about what it should say - that is to say, their personal Overton window and perception of what views are worth giving such-and-such amount of weight don't align with the sources. For example, there may be a lot of pop-culture noise about the Shakespeare authorship question, or about Creationism, or about Vaccines and autism or whatever, but our articles on relevant topics need to weigh them according to the best available sources - we don't include fringe perspectives just for the sake of ideological diversity. Which is to say, more bluntly, that ideological diversity for its own sake is contrary to WP:NPOV; when it comes to balancing articles, it is not a goal we should pursue in and of itself, and arguments grounded in it are not based on policy (and, in some cases, directly contrary to policy.) Neutrality is about weighing things based on the sources; pursuing ideological diversity for its own sake contradicts that and implies putting our thumb on the scale to include whatever views editors have personally identified as being necessary for something to be diverse, even in contexts where sources do not treat that view seriously. More specifically (because this is the undercurrent when this argument comes up) the argument that eg. "we need to have the views of both major American parties represented in every single article where they're conceivably relevant, even in contexts where the actual weighing of the best available sources doesn't support this" is contrary to the entire idea of encyclopedic neutrality - that approach would actually nail every topic to one specific and narrow "American centrist" POV.

Of course, when the best available sources cover a range of views with equal weight, we should reflect that range; and when a view is in the minority but still prominent, we should give it some minority-appropriate coverage. If your argument is "we're ignoring valid sources, or weighing the sources improperly, or improperly excluding sources we should be using" that's a serious concern that has to be addressed. But it has to be an argument made from the sources, not "we need to include this perspective for the sake of diversity." I do also think that the same thing I said about why some people feel wronged by being in a minority here may apply to how they feel about weighing sources, of course. There are intellectual movements that simply reject academia or which place absolute weight on particular religious or nationalist or governmental accounts. That's not how an encyclopedia is written, so unless they can compartmentalize, people with those perspectives may remain unhappy with our articles. That's, again, not a problem with Wikipedia; that's a disconnect between what Wikipedia is and what they want it to be. --Aquillion (talk) 21:16, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

+1 Simonm223 (talk) 21:32, 29 July 2026 (UTC)