CZ:Neutrality process new draft

The Citizendium has an important policy: you should write articles without bias. Our policy is that we should fairly represent all significant sides of a dispute, and not make an article state, imply, or insinuate that any one side is correct. We have to work together to make articles unbiased.

The basic concept of neutrality

A key Citizendium policy is that articles should be "unbiased" or "neutral." By this, we mean that ‘’articles’’ should not appear to advocate any particular point of view; instead, the different viewpoints in a controversy should all be described fairly. To write articles without bias is to try to describe debates rather than taking an “editorial” stand and advocating one position.

Why is neutrality so important to Citizendium?

It is important if we want our articles to be read and respected as widely as possible. An article that merely disparages opposing viewpoints does not deserve to be taken seriously even by those who agree with it.

How do we handle controversial topics?

Take a specific example. Intelligent Design is a subject that most experts in biology consider not worth serious consideration. However, it has many followers, because it is in accord with widely held religious beliefs. These followers present it as a scientific theory. How should we deal with this topic?

First, we ask who is the article for? The answer, for a general encyclopedia, is that it is ‘’for’’ everyone, scientists and non scientists, Christians and atheists alike.

Having said that, we don’t aim to please everyone, except by virtue of writing seriously in an engaging and accessible way. But nor do we aim to antagonize anyone, for a simple pragmatic reason. If we needlessly antagonize a reader, then he or she will stop reading any further. If we want to be read by as many people as possible, we must ‘’respect’’ our readers, including, especially, those readers whose views are different to our own.

We show that respect by treating their views and arguments seriously. We ‘’never’’ dismiss them with an arrogant display of authority. Instead we present them, and indeed try to ‘’make the best case for them that we feel can be made’’, just as we try to make the best case that can be made for the position we favour. We may analyze strengths and weaknesses in both positions, but always remembering that, in the end, it is the reader’s job to decide what he thinks, ours is only to give him the means to make an informed judgment. Informed judgments are never made on the basis of respect for authority, only on the basis of information and reason. We provide the information and we can provide the structure of reason to help the reader come to his or her own judgment. In the end, we are not in the business of telling people what they should think; we are in the business of empowering people to think for themselves.

How do we judge neutrality?

If it seems that ‘’we’’ are promoting a particular view in an article, then that article has fallen short of Citizendium ideals. ‘’We’’ neither promote nor denigrate. ‘’We’’ don’t praise or damn. We may quote others as praising or damning, but carefully, making it clear who is doing the judging, the qualifications that make their view noteworthy, and give a verifiable source in which the judgment that we quote is carefully explained and justified. We do ‘’not’’ cite flip comments like “Philosophy is baloney” as though they were worthy of attention unless the source is very notable and has expounded, with care, scholarship and authority, an argument of which this is an accurate summary, and which we fully reference. We use quotes to illustrate arguments, not to make them. But, when there are notable sources that make outspoken arguments then we don’t hesitate to report them, however disagreeable those views may be to some.

In the end the judgment of whether an article in Citizendium is neutral is one that must be made of the article as a whole, in its final form. Whether a particular item is described neutrally or not generally depends on the whole context, and cannot be fully assessed in isolation.

The following questions might be asked:

• Is it obvious, from what is written in the article, what the opinion of the authors is on the topic of controversy? If so, then the article is not neutral.
• For a political topic, is obvious to a reader that it’s been written by a conservative, a liberal or a socialist? If so, then the article is not neutral.
• Will followers of each of the different views represented consider ‘’their’’ views to have been presented fairly? If not, then the article is not neutral.

For examples of how Citizendium handles controversial topics, see

• Intelligent Design
• Pseudoscience
• Tony Blair