Template:Breadcrumb
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This page is an official policy on Wowpedia. This policy has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow.
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Note: NPOV refers to a fan's perspective rather than official info originating from Blizzard. Blizzard may officially state negative or positive elements regarding a subject (via sources of lore). Any such material must be mentioned, and does not break the NPOV policy. Articles should not be edited to remove correctly cited details.
A Neutral Point of View (often referred as NPOV) is a principle which describes an authoring or editing perspective representing views fairly and without bias (or at least attempting to remove as much bias as possible). On WoWWiki, an editor has to assume a neutral point of view when writing articles.
Why neutral point of view ?
Writing articles at WoWWiki with a neutral point of view, helps remove conflicts that may occur from conflicting fan opinions stated in articles. Additionally maintaining neutrality can help prevent personal attacks.
How to write with neutral point of view
To quote Wikipedia; "Neutral point of view is a point of view that is neutral - that is neither sympathetic nor in opposition to its subject." Any subject where there is multiple significant fan points of view, should be written so that each of these is impartially stated, with equal merit to the other, the article should not imply that one opinion is the correct one.
Additionally, when discussing lore details, the information should originate from Blizzard information only, fan interpretation and speculation are not allowed (except in speculation sections).
Additionally when writing about other people or yourself, try to refrain from personal attacks or self promotion, articles should be written in an encyclopedic style.
Dealing with biased articles
Upon coming across an article containing non-neutral points of view originating from fans, editing the article to replace contentious sections, writing in a neutral style would be appropriate, if you do not wish to edit the article, then add the {{NPOV}} template to the first line of the article, then comment in the article's Talk: page, describing any Neutrality issues in the article.
Conversely, if you see an article with {{NPOV}} and wish to edit the article to correct the NPOV issues, do so, leaving the original issues in the Talk: page.
See also
Neutral point of view policy at Wikipedia Text removal guidelines