Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view

Russian wiki

Hi,

In Russian description of the NPV rule there is missing a clause, namely that about importance of sources:

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.

My attempt to supplement the rule has not yet been successful. My question: is it possible to describe the importance of the said above clause? Thanks in advance. Basicowes (talk) 08:37, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

We, uh, aren't the Russian wiki. ☩ ^{(Babysharkboss2)} 00:48, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

Try [[1]] and the UCoC. A number of other complaints to do with RuWi have ended up there Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 05:14, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

To explain a bit more: the various language Wikipedias are each separate projects… and while the rules tend to be similar, there are significant differences between them. If you think something is missing from a policy at the Russian WP, you will have to discuss it over at the Russian Wikipedia. We here at the English Wikipedia can’t tell them what to do. Blueboar (talk) 17:18, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

RfC on BLPCRIME

There is currently an RfC on WP:BLPCRIME at Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons § RFC: Amount of coverage in reliable primary news sources. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:13, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

Notability of asteroid namings

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) can officially name minor planets after anything or anyone who they deem deserving of the honor. Often, the namesake will be notable enough to have a Wikipedia article. Since the early days of Wikipedia, many users have operated under the implicit assumption that such an asteroid naming is automatically notable, and deserves to be mentioned in the article about the namesake. For example, the biography Valentin Lebedev mentions asteroid 10015 Valenlebedev; the article about the village Fröjel mentions asteroid 10127 Fröjel. I estimate that about one third of all articles whose subject has an asteroid named after them mentions that fact. This rarely entails more than a single sentence, of the form "In 2025, asteroid X has been named in their honor." Sometimes it also includes a quote from the brief naming citation published by the IAU. I am not aware of a Wikipedia article where this has later been removed. That does make it look uncontroversial.

I agree with making such additions in principle, and have made some myself (example diffs: Martha Argerich; Hofheim, Hesse; and MS Zaandam). As a source, I usually refer to the official announcement by the IAU (that is, the corresponding issue of the IAU's WGSBN Bulletin [2] or of the Minor Planet Circulars [3]). Others have referenced astronomical databases like JPL's Small Body Database [4] or the MPC Database [5]. Those are undoubtedly reliable sources. However, to my knowledge, the assumption that this is notable by default has never received community consensus, or any form of discussion. This has become even more acute in recent years, when the numbers of known and named asteroids have increased dramatically. By now, the IAU has named about 25,000 asteroids, mostly small rocks in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter that themselves are completely non-notable (see WP:DWMP for the guideline how to deal with articles about the asteroids themselves).

The question is: Is a reference to WGSBN or a database entry enough to establish that the naming is notable enough to be mentioned in the namesake's article? That is, do we need additional coverage of the naming in reliable secondary sources, like the ABC news story [6] cited at Ghillar Michael Anderson in addition to the WGSBN Bulletin, to justify mentioning the asteroid? Or is the mere announcement of the name by the IAU enough? I personally believe that such a naming is generally interesting, and that a single sentence does little harm, but I'm too invested in asteroids to form an unbiased opinion.

There has been a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Notability (astronomical objects) about this question, but this was found to be the wrong place to make such a decision. Still, you may want to refer to that discussion for further context, and for input from other users. Renerpho (talk) 03:09, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Notified: WT:ASTRO, WP:NASTRO. Renerpho (talk) 03:09, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

BALASP

I don't think BALASP (editors "should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject") reflects how articles are actually written. We aren't simply trying to reflect the treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject. Apart from obvious (to experienced editors) caveats like NOT and BLP, the emphasis of sources covered by WP:BESTSOURCES, tertiary sources and retrospective accounts are understood to better establish emphasis than the "body of reliable, published material on the subject". Leaving source hierarchies aside, striving to treat each aspect with a proportional weight would result in movie articles that are 90% reviews and embedded systematic bias, which is just not how we try to write articles.

I asked WhatamIdoing what she thought about my assessment, and was told: BALASP needs to move away from pure "prominence in the reliable sources" towards "encyclopedia articles provide some basic context, even if reliable sources mostly ignore it". For example, every biography needs to place the subject in the basic context of time, place, situation, etc. If we write a ten-sentence stub about a 19th-century person, we don't spend two of those sentences on his birth and family because 20% of reliable sources are all about his birth and family; we do that because that's what encyclopedia articles do. The "articles should provide basic context" framing seems true, as do similar framings of articles should take explaining their subjects as the primary goal.

Generally, I find the framing of content inclusion/exclusion around neutrality strange. While overemphasizing aspects or including/excluding information can compromise neutrality, coherence, subject MOS compliance, preventing the article from looking unbalanced (irrespective of source emphasis) and subjective boundary drawing around subject definitions (tangentiality) will often be the driving reasons for adding or removing information to an article. Rollinginhisgrave (talk | contributions) 07:50, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

Scope of WP:DUE

I have seen a LOT of links to WP:DUE that make me think we are extending that shortcut to include things that go beyond NPOV… it is being used when discussing trivia and material that is deemed a minor aspect or not “important” to an article’s topic. I am wondering if we need to hive that shortcut off to a different (perhaps new) p&g page. Not proposing… just raising the observation for discussion. Blueboar (talk) 14:48, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

Many editor seem to use WP:DUE when they mean WP:BALASP, but that's still a part of NPOV. It might be worth adding hatnote to DUE pointing to BALASP for matters of trivia. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:19, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

Do we have a guideline on not giving minor aspects of a topic “undue weight”? (Not in terms of fringe… but simply in terms of relevance/importance to the topic?).

Example: Movie Star says something dumb on Twitter, and it gets lots of coverage on outrage media for a day or two and then fades. Because of the flurry of coverage, however, Star’s bio article currently has an entire section on this incident. A editor comments that this is giving too much “weight” to what was really just a dumb Twitter post that got blown out of proportion. They link to WP:DUE.

The problem is that WP:DUE is about fringe opinions… not normal stuff. the editor who wants to cut (or at least shorten) the material on the dumb Twitter post is using the term “DUE weight” in a different way than we use it in this policy. The dumb Twitter post isn’t “fringe”… it’s just overblown. Blueboar (talk) 18:02, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

BALASP says "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." In your example the dumb thing said on twitter shouldn't be given excessive prominence beyond it's significance to the overall subject of the movie star, even if it was well reported on at the time. It's coverage in the article should be weighted by how much effect it's had on the article (the movie star). If it ended or negatively effected their career it should be given as much exposure as is appropriate, but if it is now of little importance it should be cut back.
As is common the uppercase "DUE" gets confused with the word "due", removing content with 'DUE weight' should be reducing the coverage of a minority viewpoint,† the correct edit summary to use would be 'due PROPORTION'. This is less misusing DUE and more just naming the wrong part of NPOV.
†Although DUE spends a lot of time talking about fringe topics, it's actual about balancing view points in an article and not giving undue weight to minority views. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:44, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

I like “due PROPORTION” (I’ll start using it and see who salutes). Thanks. Blueboar (talk) 21:21, 5 October 2025 (UTC)