How even the "neutral point of view" (NPOV) varies from Wikipedia to Wikipedia
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Considering there is no true neutral point of view (only a kind of mostly neutral grey area that is mostly neutral but never entirely) it doesn't come as a surprise that Wikipedias in different languages treat political subjects in different ways, but it can be hard to verify this unless you happen to be particularly adept at languages. Google Translate can help, but it's certainly not perfect.
An article here from Radio Free Europe though has done all the work for us on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, comparing the point of view of the English Wikipedia compared with that in the Russian Wikipedia. Check it out to see just how one ends up with quite a different perspective on the exact same event through just a slight variation in emphasis here and there.
1 comments:
(I haven't read the article on the M-R pact).
This does not limit itself to political questions. Look at the (lesser known) conlangs articles and try to write an article on Sambahsa. On the English wiki (and many other ones), they'll have the article delete because they find it lacks external references and speakers. But, looking further, one of the friendly guy who tells you that has an article about his own-made artlang, spoken by no-one; likewise, there is an article on Dnghu, not even spoken by its creators....
Olivier
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