[Search-l] NPOV for Search?

[Brent Allsop]

Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> I want to keep hammering away on this theme until I have (hopefully) 
> explained my meaning clearly: NPOV is an *essential* component of *any* 
> good method for generating search results.
>
> The idea that all "selection" is equally "biased" is fallacious.  We 
> intuitively understand this when we talk about other forms or writing or 
> journalism; we need to understand it for *this* form of journalism as well.
>
>   

Jimbo,

I think all this focus on "neutrality" has its place. It works great in 
journalism, encyclopedias (that mostly contain non controversial stuff 
or stuff where there is clear consensus, or all the boring stuff), and 
surely it is also important for search which, as you are brilliantly 
helping everyone realize, is just another form of journalism.

But I believe there is a critical piece missing in all of this debate, 
and missing from what we have so far in all of the internet, Wikipedia, 
Google, Wikiea, and everything. And that is the ability to efficiently 
collaboratively develop, capture and concisely state diverse POV (all of 
it, especially minority POV even if MPOV that gets lots in wikipedia) 
and quantitatively measure it all in a survey kind of way in everyone's 
own words.

A prime example of what is missing can be seen in one of my favorite 
controversial topics, that of Transhumanism. Wikipedia has a great 
article on this, which currently states:

<<<
Ultimately transhumanist foresight of a profoundly transformed future 
humanity has attracted many supporters and detractors from a wide range 
of perspectives. Transhumanism has been described by one outspoken 
opponent as the world's most dangerous idea,[4] while a proponent 
counters that it is the "movement that epitomizes the most daring, 
courageous, imaginative, and idealistic aspirations of humanity".[5]
 >>>

What everyone needs to know is, how many people, and who, are in which 
of these two divisive camps? Is it 50/50, 75/25, what? At least amongst 
the people interested enough to get involved in edit wars and maybe 
more. And which people are in which camp? What are the trends…? You can 
search for and find lots of individual people expressing their singular 
POV on either side of the issue, but what is needed is a place where all 
this POV can be brought together, collaboratively and efficiently 
unified into camps, concisely stated, and quantitatively measured. As 
far as controversial issues go (everything really) only when you get 
this kind of quantifiable results, can you finally have true and just 
neutrality about what everyone wants and believes. And this, along with 
many other things, is our goal at http://canonizer.com.

We'd sure like to know what some of you think about such. Is there some 
way we can collaborate on such efforts?

Brent Allsop