Wikipedia:NPOV dispute


Articles that have been linked to this page are the subject of a NPOV dispute (NPOV stands for neutral point of view; see below). This means that in the opinion of the person who added this link, the article in question does not conform to Wikipedia:Neutral point of view.

Drive-by tagging is discouraged. The editor who adds the tag should address the issues on the talk page, pointing to specific issues that are actionable within the content policies, namely Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. Simply being of the opinion that a page is not neutral is not sufficient to justify the addition of the tag. Tags should be added as a last resort. Also avoid over-tagging, using multiple redundant templates (e.g. {{Citation needed}} and {{Dubious}}) for the same problem.

NPOV stands for Neutral point of view. An NPOV (neutral, unbiased) article is an article that complies with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy by presenting fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias all significant views that have been published by reliable sources (N.B.: not all views held by editors or by the general public). This is especially important for the encyclopedia's treatment of controversial issues, where there is often an abundance of viewpoints and criticisms of the subject. In a neutral representation, the differing points of view are presented as differing points of view, not as widely accepted facts.

Often, authors can view "their" articles as being NPOV, while others disagree. That an article is in an "NPOV dispute" does not necessarily mean it is biased, only that someone feels that it is.

Note, however, that there is a strong inductive argument that, if a page is in an NPOV dispute, it probably is not neutral—or, at least, that the topic is a controversial one, and one should be wary of a possible slant or bias. The salient point is that one side—who cares enough to be making the point—thinks that the article says something that other people would want to disagree with.

Most probably the only grounds on which there could be an NPOV dispute over an article that actually conformed to the NPOV is when one or both of the parties to the dispute did not understand either the NPOV policy, or enough about the subject matter to realize that nothing favoring one POV had actually been said. For example, ideologues, when presented with an article that has exemplary neutrality (as per our policy), will consider the article biased precisely because it does not reflect their own bias enough.