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Wikipedia:Neutral point of view

All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic.

NPOV is a fundamental principle of Wikipedia and of other Wikimedia projects. It is also one of Wikipedia's three core content policies; the other two are "Verifiability" and "No original research". These policies jointly determine the type and quality of material acceptable in Wikipedia articles, and because they work in harmony, they should not be interpreted in isolation from one another. Editors are strongly encouraged to familiarize themselves with all three.

This policy is non-negotiable, and the principles upon which it is based cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, nor by editor consensus.

Explanation
Achieving what the Wikipedia community understands as neutrality means carefully and critically analyzing a variety of reliable sources and then attempting to convey to the reader the information contained in them fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without editorial bias. Wikipedia aims to describe disputes, but not engage in them. The aim is to inform, not influence. Editors, while naturally having their own points of view, should strive in good faith to provide complete information and not to promote one particular point of view over another. As such, the neutral point of view does not mean the exclusion of certain points of view; rather, it means including all verifiable points of view which have sufficient due weight. Observe the following principles to help achieve the level of neutrality that is appropriate for an encyclopedia:
 * Avoid stating opinions as facts. Usually, articles will contain information about the significant opinions that have been expressed about their subjects. However, these opinions should not be stated in Wikipedia's voice. Rather, they should be attributed in the text to particular sources, or where justified, described as widespread views, etc. For example, an article should not state that genocide is an evil action but may state that genocide has been described by John So-and-so as the epitome of human evil.
 * Avoid stating seriously contested assertions as facts. If different reliable sources make conflicting assertions about a matter, treat these assertions as opinions rather than facts, and do not present them as direct statements.
 * Avoid stating facts as opinions. Uncontested and uncontroversial factual assertions made by reliable sources should normally be directly stated in Wikipedia's voice, for example the sky is blue not [name of source] believes the sky is blue. Unless a topic specifically deals with a disagreement over otherwise uncontested information, there is no need for specific attribution for the assertion, although it is helpful to add a reference link to the source in support of verifiability. Further, the passage should not be worded in any way that makes it appear to be contested.
 * Prefer nonjudgmental language. A neutral point of view neither sympathizes with nor disparages its subject (or what reliable sources say about the subject), although this must sometimes be balanced against clarity. Present opinions and conflicting findings in a disinterested tone. Do not editorialize. When editorial bias towards one particular point of view can be detected the article needs to be fixed. The only bias that should be evident is the bias attributed to the source.
 * Indicate the relative prominence of opposing views. Ensure that the reporting of different views on a subject adequately reflects the relative levels of support for those views and that it does not give a false impression of parity, or give undue weight to a particular view. For example, to state that According to Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust was a program of extermination of the Jewish people in Germany, but David Irving disputes this analysis would be to give apparent parity between the supermajority view and a tiny minority view by assigning each to a single activist in the field.

What to include and exclude

 * See the NPOV tutorial and NPOV examples.

Generally, do not remove sourced information from the encyclopedia solely because it seems biased. Instead, try to rewrite the passage or section to achieve a more neutral tone. Biased information can usually be balanced with material cited to other sources to produce a more neutral perspective, so such problems should be fixed when possible through the normal editing process. Remove material when you have a good reason to believe it misinforms or misleads readers in ways that cannot be addressed by rewriting the passage. The sections below offer specific guidance on common problems.

Naming
In some cases, the name chosen for a topic can give an appearance of bias. Although neutral terms are generally preferable, name choice must be balanced against clarity. Thus, if a name is widely used in reliable sources (particularly those written in English) and is therefore likely to be well recognized by readers, it may be used even though some could regard it as biased. For example, the widely used names "Boston Massacre", "Teapot Dome scandal", and "Jack the Ripper" are legitimate ways of referring to the subjects in question despite appearing to pass judgment. The best name to use for a topic may depend on the context in which it is mentioned. It may be appropriate to mention alternative names and the controversies over their use, particularly when the topic in question is itself the main topic being discussed.

This advice especially applies to article titles. Although multiple terms may be in common usage, a single name should be chosen as the article title, in line with the article titling policy (and relevant guidelines such as on geographical names).

Article titles that combine alternative names are discouraged. For example, names such as "Derry/Londonderry", "Aluminium/Aluminum", and "Flat Earth (Round Earth)" should not be used. Instead, alternative names should be given their due prominence within the article itself, and redirects created as appropriate.

Some article titles are descriptive rather than being an actual name. Descriptive titles should be worded neutrally, so as not to suggest a viewpoint for or against a topic, or to confine the content of the article to views on a particular side of an issue (for example, an article titled "Criticisms of X" might be better renamed "Societal views on X"). Neutral titles encourage multiple viewpoints and responsible article writing.

Article structure
The internal structure of an article may require additional attention to protect neutrality and to avoid problems like POV forking and undue weight. Although specific article structures are not, as a rule, prohibited, care must be taken to ensure that the overall presentation is broadly neutral.

Segregation of text or other content into different regions or subsections, based solely on the apparent POV of the content itself, may result in an unencyclopedic structure, such as a back-and-forth dialogue between proponents and opponents. It may also create an apparent hierarchy of fact where details in the main passage appear true and undisputed, whereas other segregated material is deemed controversial and therefore more likely to be false. Try to achieve a more neutral text by folding debates into the narrative, rather than isolating them into sections that ignore or fight against each other.

Pay attention to headers, footnotes, or other formatting elements that might unduly favor one point of view or one aspect of the subject. Watch out for structural or stylistic aspects that make it difficult for a reader to fairly and equally assess the credibility of all relevant and related viewpoints.

Due and undue weight
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. Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects. Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all, except perhaps in a "see also" to an article about those specific views. For example, the article on the Earth does not directly mention modern support for the flat Earth concept, the view of a distinct (and minuscule) minority; to do so would give undue weight to it.

Undue weight can be given in several ways, including but not limited to the depth of detail, the quantity of text, prominence of placement, the juxtaposition of statements, and the use of imagery. In articles specifically relating to a minority viewpoint, such views may receive more attention and space. However, these pages should still appropriately reference the majority viewpoint wherever relevant and must not represent content strictly from the minority view's perspective. Specifically, it should always be clear which parts of the text describe the minority view. In addition, the majority view should be explained sufficiently to let the reader understand how the minority view differs from it, and controversies regarding aspects of the minority view should be clearly identified and explained. How much detail is required depends on the subject. For instance, articles on historical views such as flat Earth, with few or no modern proponents, may briefly state the modern position and then discuss the history of the idea in great detail, neutrally presenting the history of a now-discredited belief. Other minority views may require a much more extensive description of the majority view to avoid misleading the reader. See fringe theories guideline and the NPOV FAQ.

Wikipedia should not present a dispute as if a view held by a small minority is as significant as the majority view. Views held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views (such as the flat Earth). Giving undue weight to the view of a significant minority or including that of a tiny minority might be misleading as to the shape of the dispute. Wikipedia aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation in reliable sources on the subject. This rule applies not only to article text but to images, wikilinks, external links, categories, templates, and all other material as well.

 * Paraphrased from Jimbo Wales' September 2003 post on the WikiEN-l mailing list:
 * If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with references to commonly accepted reference texts;
 * If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents;
 * If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small minority, it does not belong on Wikipedia, regardless of whether it is true, or you can prove it, except perhaps in some ancillary article.

Keep in mind that, in determining proper weight, we consider a viewpoint's prevalence in reliable sources, not its prevalence among Wikipedia editors or the general public.

If you can prove a theory that few or none believe, Wikipedia is not the place to present such proof. Once it has been presented and discussed in sources that are reliable, it may be appropriately included. See "No original research" and "Verifiability".

Balance
Neutrality assigns weight to viewpoints in proportion to their prominence in reliable sources. However, when reputable sources contradict one another and are relatively equal in prominence, describe both points of view and work for balance. This involves describing the opposing views clearly, drawing on secondary or tertiary sources that describe the disagreement from a disinterested viewpoint.

Balancing aspects
An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject. 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. This is a concern especially for recent events that may be in the news.

Giving "equal validity" can create a false balance

 * See: False balance

While it is important to account for all significant viewpoints on any topic, Wikipedia policy does not state or imply that every minority view, fringe theory, or extraordinary claim needs to be presented along with commonly accepted mainstream scholarship as if they were of equal validity. There are many such beliefs in the world, some popular and some little-known: claims that the Earth is flat, that the Knights Templar possessed the Holy Grail, that the Apollo Moon landings were a hoax, and similar ones. Conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, speculative history, or plausible but unaccepted theories should not be legitimized through comparison to accepted academic scholarship. We do not take a stand on these issues as encyclopedia writers, for or against; we merely omit this information where including it would unduly legitimize it, and otherwise include and describe these ideas in their proper context concerning established scholarship and the beliefs of the wider world.

Selecting sources
In principle, all articles should be based on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. When writing about a topic, basing content on the best respected and most authoritative reliable sources helps to prevent bias, undue weight, and other NPOV disagreements. Try the library for reputable books and journal articles, and look online for the most reliable resources. If you need help finding high-quality sources, ask other editors on the talk page of the article you are working on, or ask at the reference desk.

Bias in sources
A common argument in a dispute about reliable sources is that one source is biased, meaning another source should be given preference. Some editors argue that biased sources should not be used because they introduce improper POV to an article. However, biased sources are not inherently disallowed based on bias alone, although other aspects of the source may make it invalid. A neutral point of view should be achieved by balancing the bias in sources based on the weight of the opinion in reliable sources and not by excluding sources that do not conform to the editor's point of view. This does not mean any biased source must be used; it may well serve an article better to exclude the material altogether.

Controversial subjects
Wikipedia deals with numerous areas that are frequently subjects of intense debate both in the real world and among editors of the encyclopedia. A proper understanding and application of NPOV is sought in all areas of Wikipedia, but it is often needed most in these.

Fringe theories and pseudoscience
Pseudoscientific theories are presented by proponents as science but characteristically fail to adhere to scientific standards and methods. Conversely, by its very nature, scientific consensus is the majority viewpoint of scientists towards a topic. Thus, when talking about pseudoscientific topics, we should not describe these two opposing viewpoints as being equal to each other. While pseudoscience may in some cases be significant to an article, it should not obfuscate the description of the mainstream views of the scientific community.

Any inclusion of fringe or pseudoscientific views should not give them undue weight. The fringe or pseudoscientific view should be clearly described as such. An explanation of how experts in the relevant field have reacted to such views should be prominently included. This helps us to describe differing views fairly. This applies to all types of fringe subjects, for instance, forms of historical negationism that are considered by more reliable sources to either lack evidence or actively ignore evidence, such as claims that Pope John PaulI was murdered, or that the Apollo Moon landings were faked.

See Wikipedia's established pseudoscience guidelines to help decide whether a topic is appropriately classified as pseudoscience.

Religion
In the case of beliefs and practices, Wikipedia content should not only encompass what motivates individuals who hold these beliefs and practices but also account for how such beliefs and practices developed. Wikipedia articles on history and religion draw from religion's sacred texts as primary sources and modern archaeological, historical, and scientific works as secondary and tertiary sources.

Some adherents of a religion might object to a critical historical treatment of their own faith because in their view such analysis discriminates against their religious beliefs. Their point of view can be mentioned if it can be documented by relevant, reliable sources, yet note there is no contradiction. NPOV policy means Wikipedia editors ought to try to write sentences like this: "Certain Frisbeetarianists (such as the Rev. Goodcatch) believe This and That and consider those to have been tenets of Frisbeetarianism from its earliest days. Certain sects who call themselves Ultimate Frisbeetarianists—influenced by the findings of modern historians and archaeologists (such as Dr. Investigate's textual analysis and Prof. Iconoclast's carbon-dating work)—still believe This, but no longer believe That, and instead believe Something Else."

Several words that have very specific meanings in studies of religion have different meanings in less formal contexts, e.g., fundamentalism, mythology, and (as in the prior paragraph) critical. Wikipedia articles about religious topics should take care to use these words only in their formal senses to avoid causing unnecessary offence or misleading the reader. Conversely, editors should not avoid using terminology that has been established by the majority of the current reliable and relevant sources on a topic out of sympathy for a particular point of view or concern that readers may confuse the formal and informal meanings. Details about particular terms can be found at Manual of Style/Words to watch.

Impartial tone
Wikipedia describes disputes, but does not engage in them. A neutral characterization of disputes requires presenting viewpoints with a consistently impartial tone; otherwise, articles end up as partisan commentaries even while presenting all relevant points of view. Even where a topic is presented in terms of facts rather than opinions, inappropriate tones can be introduced through how facts are selected, presented, or organized. Neutral articles are written with a tone that provides an unbiased, accurate, and proportionate representation of all positions included in the article.

The tone of Wikipedia articles should be impartial, neither endorsing nor rejecting a particular point of view. Try not to quote directly from participants engaged in a heated dispute; instead, summarize and present the arguments in an impartial, formal tone.

Describing aesthetic opinions and reputations

Wikipedia articles about art and other creative topics (e.g., musicians, actors, books, etc.) have a tendency to become effusive. This is out of place in an encyclopedia. Aesthetic opinions are diverse and subjective—we might not all agree about who the world's greatest soprano is. However, it is appropriate to note how an artist or a work has been received by prominent experts, critics, and the general public. For instance, the article on Shakespeare should note that he is widely considered one of the greatest authors in the English language by both scholars and the general public. It should not, however, state that Shakespeare is the greatest author in the English language. More generally, it is sometimes permissible to note a subject's reputation when that reputation is widespread and potentially informative or of interest to readers. Articles on creative works should provide an overview of their common interpretations, preferably with citations to experts holding those interpretations. Verifiable public and scholarly critiques provide a useful context for works of art.

Words to watch
There are no forbidden words or expressions on Wikipedia, but certain expressions should be used with care because they may introduce bias. For example, the word claim, as in "Jim claimed he paid for the sandwich", could imply a lack of credibility. Using this or other expressions of doubt may make an article appear to promote one position over another. Try to state the facts more simply without using such loaded words; for example, "Jim said he paid for the sandwich". Strive to eliminate flattering expressions, disparaging, vague, or clichéd, or that endorse a particular point of view (unless those expressions are part of a quote from noteworthy sources).

Attributing and specifying biased statements
Biased statements of opinion can be presented only with in-text attribution. For instance, "John Doe is the best baseball player" expresses an opinion and must not be asserted in Wikipedia as if it were a fact. It can be included as a factual statement about the opinion: "John Doe's baseball skills have been praised by baseball insiders such as Al Kaline and Joe Torre." Opinions must still be verifiable and appropriately cited.

Another approach is to specify or substantiate the statement, by giving those details that actually are factual. For example: "John Doe had the highest batting average in the major leagues from 2003 through 2006." People may still argue over whether he was the best baseball player, but they will not argue over this.

Avoid the temptation to rephrase biased or opinion statements with weasel words, for example, "Many people think John Doe is the best baseball player." Which people? How many? ("Most people think" is acceptable only when supported by at least one published survey.)

Point-of-view forks
A POV fork is an attempt to evade the neutrality policy by creating a new article about a subject that is already treated in an article, often to avoid or highlight negative or positive viewpoints or facts. POV forks are not permitted on Wikipedia.

All facts and significant points of view on a given subject should be treated in one article except in the case of a spinoff sub-article. Some topics are so large that one article cannot reasonably cover all facets of the topic, so a spinoff sub-article is created. For example, Evolution as fact and theory is a sub-article of Evolution, and Creation–evolution controversy is a sub-article of Creationism. This type of split is permissible only if written from a neutral point of view and must not be an attempt to evade the consensus process at another article.

Making necessary assumptions
When writing articles, there may be cases where making some assumptions is necessary to get through a topic. For example, in writing about evolution, it is not helpful to hash out the creation-evolution controversy on every page. There are virtually no topics that could proceed without making some assumptions that someone would find controversial. This is true not only in evolutionary biology but also in philosophy, history, physics, art, nutrition, etc.

It is difficult to draw up a rule, but the following principle may help: there is probably not a good reason to discuss some assumption on a given page if that assumption is best discussed in depth on some other page. However, a brief, unobtrusive pointer or wikilink might be appropriate.

Common objections and clarifications
Common objections or concerns raised to Wikipedia's NPOV policy include the following. Since the NPOV policy is often unfamiliar to newcomers—and is so central to Wikipedia's approach—many issues surrounding it have been covered before very extensively. If you have some new contribution to make to the debate, you could try the policy talk page. Before asking, please review the links below.

Being neutral

 * "There's no such thing as objectivity"
 * Everybody with any philosophical sophistication knows we all have biases. So, how can we take the NPOV policy seriously?

 * Lack of neutrality as an excuse to delete
 * The NPOV policy is sometimes used as an excuse to delete texts that are perceived as biased. Isn't this a problem?

 * A simple formulation—what does it mean?
 * A former section of this policy called "A simple formulation" said, "Assert facts, including facts about opinions—but don't assert opinions themselves." What does this mean?

Balancing different views

 * Writing for the opponent
 * I'm not convinced by what you say about "writing for the opponent". I don't want to write for the opponents. Most of them rely on stating as fact many demonstrably false statements. Are you saying that to be neutral in writing an article, I must to represent the view I disagree with?

 * Morally offensive views
 * What about views that are morally offensive to most readers, such as Holocaust denial, that some people actually hold? Surely we are not to be neutral about ?

Editor disputes

 * Dealing with biased contributors
 * I agree with the nonbias policy, but there are some here who seem completely, irremediably biased. I have to go around and clean up after them. What do I do?

 * Avoiding constant disputes
 * How can we avoid constant and endless warfare over neutrality issues?

Other objections

 * Anglo-American focus
 * The English Wikipedia seems to have an Anglo-American focus. Is this contrary to NPOV?

 * Not answered here
 * I have some other objection—where should I complain?

History
"Neutral Point Of View" is one of the oldest governing concepts on Wikipedia. Originally appearing within Nupedia titled "Non-bias policy", it was drafted by Larry Sanger in 2000. Sanger in 2001 suggested that avoiding bias as one of Wikipedia's "rules to consider". This was codified with the objective of the NPOV policy to produce an unbiased encyclopedia. The original NPOV policy statement on Wikipedia was added by Sanger on December 26, 2001. Jimmy Wales has qualified NPOV as "non-negotiable", consistently, throughout various discussions: 2001 statement, November 2003, April 2006, March 2008

No original research (NOR) and verifiability (V) have their origins in the NPOV policy and the problem of dealing with undue weight and fringe theories. The NOR policy was established in 2003 to address problematic uses of sources. The verifiability policy was established in 2003 to ensure the accuracy of articles by encouraging editors to cite sources. Development of the undue-weight section also started in 2003, for which a mailing-list post by Jimmy Wales in September was instrumental.

Policies and guidelines

 * Conflict of interest
 * Fringe theories
 * Words to watch
 * No original research
 * Verifiability

Noticeboards

 * NPOV noticeboard

Information pages

 * Describing points of view
 * List of controversial issues
 * NPOV dispute
 * NPOV FAQ
 * NPOV quiz
 * Recentism
 * Positive tone (historical Meta policy)
 * Understand bias (historical Meta policy)

Essays

 * Be neutral in form
 * Cherrypicking
 * Civil POV pushing
 * Coatrack articles
 * Conflicting sources
 * Controversial articles
 * Criticism sections
 * Describing points of view
 * Don't "teach the controversy"
 * Let the facts speak for themselves
 * Let the reader decide
 * NPOV means neutral editing, not neutral content
 * NPOV tutorial
 * POV and OR from editors, sources, and fields
 * Presentism
 * Scientific consensus
 * Scientific point of view
 * Systemic bias
 * Why NPOV?
 * Wikipedia only reports what the sources say
 * Ye shall know them by their sources

Articles

 * Consensus reality
 * Journalistic objectivity
 * One-sided argument
 * One-sided argument

Templates

 * General NPOV templates:
 * POV—message used to attract other editors to assess and fix neutrality problems
 * POV section—message that tags only a single section as disputed
 * POV lead—message when the article's introduction is questionable
 * POV statement—message when only one sentence is questionable
 * NPOV language—message used when the neutrality of the style of writing is questioned
 * Political POV—message when the political neutrality of an article is questioned
 * Fact or opinion—message when a sentence may or may not require in-text attribution (e.g., "Jimmy Wales says")
 * Attribution needed—when in-text attribution should be added
 * Undue-weight templates:
 * Undue weight—message used to warn that a part of an article lends undue weight to certain ideas relative to the article as a whole
 * Undue weight section—same as above but to tag a section only
 * Undue weight inline—same as above but to tag a sentence or paragraph only

title: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view


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Nature versus nurture

Nature versus nurture is a long-standing debate in biology and society about the relative influence on human beings of their genetic inheritance (nature) and the environmental conditions of their development (nurture). The alliterative expression "nature and nurture" in English has been in use since at least the Elizabethan period and goes back to medieval French. The complementary combination of the two concepts is an ancient concept (ἁπό φύσεως καὶ εὐτροφίας). Nature is what people think of as pre-wiring and is influenced by genetic inheritance and other biological factors. Nurture is generally taken as the influence of external factors after conception e.g. the product of exposure, experience and learning on an individual.

The phrase in its modern sense was popularized by the Victorian polymath Francis Galton, the modern founder of eugenics and behavioral genetics when he was discussing the influence of heredity and environment on social advancement. Galton was influenced by On the Origin of Species written by his half-cousin, the evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin.

The view that humans acquire all or almost all their behavioral traits from "nurture" was termed tabula rasa ('blank tablet, slate') by John Locke in 1690. A blank slate view (sometimes termed blank-slatism) in human developmental psychology, which assumes that human behavioral traits develop almost exclusively from environmental influences, was widely held during much of the 20th century. The debate between "blank-slate" denial of the influence of heritability, and the view admitting both environmental and heritable traits, has often been cast in terms of nature versus nurture. These two conflicting approaches to human development were at the core of an ideological dispute over research agendas throughout the second half of the 20th century. As both "nature" and "nurture" factors were found to contribute substantially, often in an inextricable manner, such views were seen as naive or outdated by most scholars of human development by the 21st century.

The strong dichotomy of nature versus nurture has thus been claimed to have limited relevance in some fields of research. Close feedback loops have been found in which nature and nurture influence one another constantly, as seen in self-domestication. In ecology and behavioral genetics, researchers think nurture has an essential influence on the nature of an individual. Similarly in other fields, the dividing line between an inherited and an acquired trait becomes unclear, as in epigenetics or fetal development.

History of debate
According to Records of the Grand Historian (94 BC) by Sima Qian, during Chen Sheng Wu Guang uprising in 209 B.C., Chen Sheng asked the rhetorical question as a call to war: "Are kings, generals, and ministers merely born into their kind?" (王侯將相寧有種乎). Though Chen was obviously negative to the question, the phrase has often been cited as an early quest to the nature versus nurture problem.

John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) is often cited as the foundational document of the blank slate view. In the Essay, Locke specifically criticizes René Descartes's claim of an innate idea of God that is universal to humanity. Locke's view was harshly criticized in his own time. Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, complained that by denying the possibility of any innate ideas, Locke "threw all order and virtue out of the world," leading to total moral relativism. By the 19th century, the predominant perspective was contrary to that of Locke's, tending to focus on "instinct." Leda Cosmides and John Tooby noted that William James (1842–1910) argued that humans have more instincts than animals, and that greater freedom of action is the result of having more psychological instincts, not fewer.

The question of "innate ideas" or "instincts" were of some importance in the discussion of free will in moral philosophy. In 18th-century philosophy, this was cast in terms of "innate ideas" establishing the presence of a universal virtue, prerequisite for objective morals. In the 20th century, this argument was in a way inverted, since some philosophers (J. L. Mackie) now argued that the evolutionary origins of human behavioral traits forces us to concede that there is no foundation for ethics, while others (Thomas Nagel) treated ethics as a field of cognitively valid statements in complete isolation from evolutionary considerations.

Early to mid-20th century
In the early 20th century, there was an increased interest in the role of one’s environment, as a reaction to the strong focus on pure heredity in the wake of the triumphal success of Darwin's theory of evolution. During this time, the social sciences developed as the project of studying the influence of culture in clean isolation from questions related to "biology. Franz Boas's The Mind of Primitive Man (1911) established a program that would dominate American anthropology for the next 15 years. In this study, he established that in any given population, biology, language, material, and symbolic culture, are autonomous; that each is an equally important dimension of human nature, but that none of these dimensions is reducible to another.

Purist behaviorism
John B. Watson in the 1920s and 1930s established the school of purist behaviorism that would become dominant over the following decades. Watson is often said to have been convinced of the complete dominance of cultural influence over anything that heredity might contribute. This is based on the following quote which is frequently repeated without context, as the last sentence is frequently omitted, leading to confusion about Watson's position: "Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years."During the 1940s to 1960s, Ashley Montagu was a notable proponent of this purist form of behaviorism which allowed no contribution from heredity whatsoever: "Man is man because he has no instincts, because everything he is and has become he has learned, acquired, from his culture ... with the exception of the instinctoid reactions in infants to sudden withdrawals of support and to sudden loud noises, the human being is entirely instinctless."In 1951, Calvin Hall suggested that the dichotomy opposing nature to nurture is ultimately fruitless.

In African Genesis (1961) and The Territorial Imperative (1966), Robert Ardrey argues for innate attributes of human nature, especially concerning territoriality. Desmond Morris in The Naked Ape (1967) expresses similar views. Organised opposition to Montagu's kind of purist "blank-slatism" began to pick up in the 1970s, notably led by E. O. Wilson (On Human Nature, 1979).

The tool of twin studies was developed as a research design intended to exclude all confounders based on inherited behavioral traits. Such studies are designed to decompose the variability of a given trait in a given population into a genetic and an environmental component. Twin studies established that there was, in many cases, a significant heritable component. These results did not, in any way, point to overwhelming contribution of heritable factors, with heritability typically ranging around 40% to 50%, so that the controversy may not be cast in terms of purist behaviorism vs. purist nativism. Rather, it was purist behaviorism that was gradually replaced by the now-predominant view that both kinds of factors usually contribute to a given trait, anecdotally phrased by Donald Hebb as an answer to the question "which, nature or nurture, contributes more to personality?" by asking in response, "Which contributes more to the area of a rectangle, its length or its width?"

In a comparable avenue of research, anthropologist Donald Brown in the 1980s surveyed hundreds of anthropological studies from around the world and collected a set of cultural universals. He identified approximately 150 such features, coming to the conclusion there is indeed a "universal human nature", and that these features point to what that universal human nature is.

Determinism
At the height of the controversy, during the 1970s to 1980s, the debate was highly ideologised. In Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology and Human Nature (1984), Richard Lewontin, Steven Rose and Leon Kamin criticise "genetic determinism" from a Marxist framework, arguing that "Science is the ultimate legitimator of bourgeois ideology ... If biological determinism is a weapon in the struggle between classes, then the universities are weapons factories, and their teaching and research faculties are the engineers, designers, and production workers." The debate thus shifted away from whether heritable traits exist to whether it was politically or ethically permissible to admit their existence. The authors deny this, requesting that evolutionary inclinations be discarded in ethical and political discussions regardless of whether they exist or not.

1990s
Heritability studies became much easier to perform, and hence much more numerous, with the advances of genetic studies during the 1990s. By the late 1990s, an overwhelming amount of evidence had accumulated that amounts to a refutation of the extreme forms of "blank-slatism" advocated by Watson or Montagu.

This revised state of affairs was summarized in books aimed at a popular audience from the late 1990s. In The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do (1998), Judith Rich Harris was heralded by Steven Pinker as a book that "will come to be seen as a turning point in the history of psychology." However, Harris was criticized for exaggerating the point of "parental upbringing seems to matter less than previously thought" to the implication that "parents do not matter."

The situation as it presented itself by the end of the 20th century was summarized in The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (2002) by Steven Pinker. The book became a best-seller, and was instrumental in bringing to the attention of a wider public the paradigm shift away from the behaviourist purism of the 1940s to 1970s that had taken place over the preceding decades.

Pinker portrays the adherence to pure blank-slatism as an ideological dogma linked to two other dogmas found in the dominant view of human nature in the 20th century:

 * 1) "noble savage," in the sense that people are born good and corrupted by bad influence; and
 * 2) "ghost in the machine," in the sense that there is a human soul capable of moral choices completely detached from biology.

Pinker argues that all three dogmas were held onto for an extended period even in the face of evidence because they were seen as desirable in the sense that if any human trait is purely conditioned by culture, any undesired trait (such as crime or aggression) may be engineered away by purely cultural (political means). Pinker focuses on reasons he assumes were responsible for unduly repressing evidence to the contrary, notably the fear of (imagined or projected) political or ideological consequences.

Heritability estimates

The term heritability refers only to the degree of genetic variation between people on a trait. It does not refer to the degree to which a trait of a particular individual is due to environmental or genetic factors. The traits of an individual are always a complex interweaving of both. For an individual, even strongly genetically influenced, or "obligate" traits, such as eye color, assume the inputs of a typical environment during ontogenetic development (e.g., certain ranges of temperatures, oxygen levels, etc.).

In contrast, the "heritability index" statistically quantifies the extent to which variation between individuals on a trait is due to variation in the genes those individuals carry. In animals where breeding and environments can be controlled experimentally, heritability can be determined relatively easily. Such experiments would be unethical for human research. This problem can be overcome by finding existing populations of humans that reflect the experimental setting the researcher wishes to create.

One way to determine the contribution of genes and environment to a trait is to study twins. In one kind of study, identical twins reared apart are compared to randomly selected pairs of people. The twins share identical genes, but different family environments. Twins reared apart are not assigned at random to foster or adoptive parents. In another kind of twin study, identical twins reared together (who share family environment and genes) are compared to fraternal twins reared together (who also share family environment but only share half their genes). Another condition that permits the disassociation of genes and environment is adoption. In one kind of adoption study, biological siblings reared together (who share the same family environment and half their genes) are compared to adoptive siblings (who share their family environment but none of their genes).

In many cases, it has been found that genes make a substantial contribution, including psychological traits such as intelligence and personality. Yet heritability may differ in other circumstances, for instance environmental deprivation. Examples of low, medium, and high heritability traits include:

Twin and adoption studies have their methodological limits. For example, both are limited to the range of environments and genes which they sample. Almost all of these studies are conducted in Western countries, and therefore cannot necessarily be extrapolated globally to include non-western populations. Additionally, both types of studies depend on particular assumptions, such as the equal environments assumption in the case of twin studies, and the lack of pre-adoptive effects in the case of adoption studies.

Since the definition of "nature" in this context is tied to "heritability", the definition of "nurture" has consequently become very wide, including any type of causality that is not heritable. The term has thus moved away from its original connotation of "cultural influences" to include all effects of the environment, including; indeed, a substantial source of environmental input to human nature may arise from stochastic variations in prenatal development and is thus in no sense of the term "cultural".

Gene–environment interaction
The interactions of genes with environment, called gene–environment interactions, are another component of the nature–nurture debate. A classic example of gene–environment interaction is the ability of a diet low in the amino acid phenylalanine to partially suppress the genetic disease phenylketonuria. Yet another complication to the nature–nurture debate is the existence of gene–environment correlations. These correlations indicate that individuals with certain genotypes are more likely to find themselves in certain environments. Thus, it appears that genes can shape (the selection or creation of) environments. Even using experiments like those described above, it can be very difficult to determine convincingly the relative contribution of genes and environment. The analogy "genetics loads the gun, but environment pulls the trigger" has been attributed to Judith Stern.

Heritability refers to the origins of differences between people. Individual development, even of highly heritable traits, such as eye color, depends on a range of environmental factors, from the other genes in the organism, to physical variables such as temperature, oxygen levels etc. during its development or ontogenesis.

The variability of trait can be meaningfully spoken of as being due in certain proportions to genetic differences ("nature"), or environments ("nurture"). For highly penetrant Mendelian genetic disorders such as Huntington's disease virtually all the incidence of the disease is due to genetic differences. Huntington's animal models live much longer or shorter lives depending on how they are cared for.

At the other extreme, traits such as native language are environmentally determined: linguists have found that any child (if capable of learning a language at all) can learn any human language with equal facility. With virtually all biological and psychological traits, however, genes and environment work in concert, communicating back and forth to create the individual.

At a molecular level, genes interact with signals from other genes and from the environment. While there are many thousands of single-gene-locus traits, so-called complex traits are due to the additive effects of many (often hundreds) of small gene effects. A good example of this is height, where variance appears to be spread across many hundreds of loci.

Extreme genetic or environmental conditions can predominate in rare circumstances—if a child is born mute due to a genetic mutation, it will not learn to speak any language regardless of the environment; similarly, someone who is practically certain to eventually develop Huntington's disease according to their genotype may die in an unrelated accident (an environmental event) long before the disease will manifest itself.

Steven Pinker likewise described several examples: "[C]oncrete behavioral traits that patently depend on content provided by the home or culture—which language one speaks, which religion one practices, which political party one supports—are not heritable at all. But traits that reflect the underlying talents and temperaments—how proficient with language a person is, how religious, how liberal or conservative—are partially heritable."When traits are determined by a complex interaction of genotype and environment it is possible to measure the heritability of a trait within a population. However, many non-scientists who encounter a report of a trait having a certain percentage heritability imagine non-interactional, additive contributions of genes and environment to the trait. As an analogy, some laypeople may think of the degree of a trait being made up of two "buckets," genes and environment, each able to hold a certain capacity of the trait. But even for intermediate heritabilities, a trait is always shaped by both genetic dispositions and the environments in which people develop, merely with greater and lesser plasticities associated with these heritability measures.

Heritability measures always refer to the degree of variation between individuals in a population. That is, as these statistics cannot be applied at the level of the individual, it would be incorrect to say that while the heritability index of personality is about 0.6, 60% of one's personality is obtained from one's parents and 40% from the environment. To help to understand this, imagine that all humans were genetic clones. The heritability index for all traits would be zero (all variability between clonal individuals must be due to environmental factors). And, contrary to erroneous interpretations of the heritability index, as societies become more egalitarian (everyone has more similar experiences) the heritability index goes up (as environments become more similar, variability between individuals is due more to genetic factors).

One should also take into account the fact that the variables of heritability and environmentality are not precise and vary within a chosen population and across cultures. It would be more accurate to state that the degree of heritability and environmentality is measured in its reference to a particular phenotype in a chosen group of a population in a given period of time. The accuracy of the calculations is further hindered by the number of coefficients taken into consideration, age being one such variable. The display of the influence of heritability and environmentality differs drastically across age groups: the older the studied age is, the more noticeable the heritability factor becomes, the younger the test subjects are, the more likely it is to show signs of strong influence of the environmental factors.

For example, one study found no statistically significant difference in self-reported wellbeing between middle-aged monozygotic twins separated at birth and those reared in the same household, suggesting that happiness in middle-aged adults is not based in environmental factors related to family rearing. The same result was also found among middle-aged dizygotic twins. Furthermore, there was significantly more variance in the dizygotic twins' self-reported wellbeing than there was in the monozygotic group. Genetic similarity has thus been estimated to account for around 50% of the variance in adult happiness at a given point in time, and as much as 80% of the variance in long-term happiness stability. Other studies have similarly found the heritability of happiness to be around 0.35–0.50.

Some have pointed out that environmental inputs affect the expression of genes. This is one explanation of how environment can influence the extent to which a genetic disposition will actually manifest.

Obligate vs. facultative adaptations
Traits may be considered to be adaptations (such as the umbilical cord), byproducts of adaptations (the belly button) or due to random variation (convex or concave belly button shape). An alternative to contrasting nature and nurture focuses on "obligate vs. facultative" adaptations. Adaptations may be generally more obligate (robust in the face of typical environmental variation) or more facultative (sensitive to typical environmental variation). For example, the rewarding sweet taste of sugar and the pain of bodily injury are obligate psychological adaptations—typical environmental variability during development does not much affect their operation.

On the other hand, facultative adaptations are somewhat like "if-then" statements. An example of a facultative psychological adaptation may be adult attachment style. The attachment style of adults, (for example, a "secure attachment style," the propensity to develop close, trusting bonds with others) is proposed to be conditional on whether an individual's early childhood caregivers could be trusted to provide reliable assistance and attention. An example of a facultative physiological adaptation is tanning of skin on exposure to sunlight (to prevent skin damage). Facultative social adaptation have also been proposed. For example, whether a society is warlike or peaceful has been proposed to be conditional on how much collective threat that society is experiencing.

Advanced techniques
Quantitative studies of heritable traits throw light on the question.

Developmental genetic analysis examines the effects of genes over the course of a human lifespan. Early studies of intelligence, which mostly examined young children, found that heritability measured 40–50%. Subsequent developmental genetic analyses found that variance attributable to additive environmental effects is less apparent in older individuals, with estimated heritability of IQ increasing in adulthood.

Multivariate genetic analysis examines the genetic contribution to several traits that vary together. For example, multivariate genetic analysis has demonstrated that the genetic determinants of all specific cognitive abilities (e.g., memory, spatial reasoning, processing speed) overlap greatly, such that the genes associated with any specific cognitive ability will affect all others. Similarly, multivariate genetic analysis has found that genes that affect scholastic achievement completely overlap with the genes that affect cognitive ability.

Extremes analysis examines the link between normal and pathological traits. For example, it is hypothesized that a given behavioral disorder may represent an extreme of a continuous distribution of a normal behavior and hence an extreme of a continuous distribution of genetic and environmental variation. Depression, phobias, and reading disabilities have been examined in this context.

For a few highly heritable traits, studies have identified loci associated with variance in that trait, for instance in some individuals with schizophrenia. The budding field of epigenetics has conducted research showing that hereditable conditions like schizophrenia, which have an 80% hereditability with only 10% of those who have inherited the trait actually displaying Schizophrenic traits. New research is showing that gene expression can happen in adults due to environmental stimuli. For example, people with schizophrenic gene have a genetic predisposition for this illness but the gene lays dormant in most people. However, if introduced to chronic stress or introducing some amphetamines it caused the methyl groups to stick to hippocampi histones.

Heritability of intelligence
Cognitive functions have a significant genetic component. A 2015 meta-analysis of over 14 million twin pairs found that genetics explained 57% of the variability in cognitive functions. Evidence from behavioral genetic research suggests that family environmental factors may have an effect upon childhood IQ, accounting for up to a quarter of the variance. The American Psychological Association's report "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns" (1995) states that there is no doubt that normal child development requires a certain minimum level of responsible care. Here, environment is playing a role in what is believed to be fully genetic (intelligence) but it was found that severely deprived, neglectful, or abusive environments have highly negative effects on many aspects of children's intellect development. Beyond that minimum, however, the role of family experience is in serious dispute. On the other hand, by late adolescence this correlation disappears, such that adoptive siblings no longer have similar IQ scores.

Moreover, adoption studies indicate that, by adulthood, adoptive siblings are no more similar in IQ than strangers (IQ correlation near zero), while full siblings show an IQ correlation of 0.6. Twin studies reinforce this pattern: monozygotic (identical) twins raised separately are highly similar in IQ (0.74), more so than dizygotic (fraternal) twins raised together (0.6) and much more than adoptive siblings (~0.0). Recent adoption studies also found that supportive parents can have a positive effect on the development of their children.

Environmental role on IQ
Other studies have focused on environmental factors that may affect IQ. For example, research has shown that factors such as access to education, nutrition, and social support can have a significant impact on IQ. Furthermore, research has suggested that certain experiences during early childhood, such as exposure to lead or other environmental toxins, can have a negative impact on IQ.

Studies have consistently shown that environmental factors can have a significant impact on IQ. Access to quality education has been found to have a positive effect on IQ, with one study indicating that access to quality preschool education had a lasting impact on IQ scores up to age 35. Malnutrition in early childhood has been linked to lower IQ scores later in life, while supplementation with certain nutrients such as iron and iodine has been shown to improve IQ scores. Social support is also an important environmental factor that positively affects IQ, with one study indicating that children who received high levels of emotional support from their mothers had higher IQ scores than those who received low levels of emotional support.

Personality traits
Personality is a frequently cited example of a heritable trait that has been studied in twins and adoptees using behavioral genetic study designs. The most famous categorical organization of heritable personality traits were defined in the 1970s by two research teams led by Paul Costa & Robert R. McCrae and Warren Norman & Lewis Goldberg in which they had people rate their personalities on 1000+ dimensions they then narrowed these down into "The Big Five" factors of personality—openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Studies have found that extraversion has a genetic component, with estimates of heritability ranging from 30% to 50%. However, environmental factors such as parenting style, cultural values, and life experiences can also shape a person's level of extraversion. Likewise, neuroticism has a genetic component, with estimates of heritability ranging from 30% to 50%. Environmental factors such as adverse childhood experiences, chronic stress, and cultural values can also influence a person's level of neuroticism. The close genetic relationship between positive personality traits and, for example, our happiness traits are the mirror images of comorbidity in psychopathology. These personality factors were consistent across cultures, and many studies have also tested the heritability of these traits. Personal agency also factors into this debate. While genetic and environmental factors can shape personality, individuals also have agency in shaping their own personality through their choices, behaviors, and attitudes. For example, one study found that college students who participated in study abroad programs scored higher on measures of openness to experience compared to those who did not participate. Another study found that individuals who lived in diverse neighborhoods were more likely to score higher on openness to experience compared to those who lived in more homogenous neighborhoods.

Identical twins reared apart are far more similar in personality than randomly selected pairs of people. Likewise, identical twins are more similar than fraternal twins. Also, biological siblings are more similar in personality than adoptive siblings. Each observation suggests that personality is heritable to a certain extent. A supporting article had focused on the heritability of personality (which is estimated to be around 50% for subjective well-being) in which a study was conducted using a representative sample of 973 twin pairs to test the heritable differences in subjective well-being which were found to be fully accounted for by the genetic model of the Five-Factor Model's personality domains. However, these same study designs allow for the examination of environment as well as genes.

Adoption studies also directly measure the strength of shared family effects. Adopted siblings share only family environment. Most adoption studies indicate that by adulthood the personalities of adopted siblings are little or no more similar than random pairs of strangers. This would mean that shared family effects on personality are zero by adulthood.

In the case of personality traits, non-shared environmental effects are often found to out-weigh shared environmental effects. That is, environmental effects that are typically thought to be life-shaping (such as family life) may have less of an impact than non-shared effects, which are harder to identify. One possible source of non-shared effects is the environment of pre-natal development. Random variations in the genetic program of development may be a substantial source of non-shared environment. These results suggest that "nurture" may not be the predominant factor in "environment". Environment and our situations, do in fact impact our lives, but not the way in which we would typically react to these environmental factors. We are preset with personality traits that are the basis for how we would react to situations. An example would be how extraverted prisoners become less happy than introverted prisoners and would react to their incarceration more negatively due to their preset extraverted personality. Behavioral genes are somewhat proven to exist when we take a look at fraternal twins. When fraternal twins are reared apart, they show the same similarities in behavior and response as if they have been reared together.

Genetics
The relationship between personality and people's own well-being is influenced and mediated by genes. There has been found to be a stable set point for happiness that is characteristic of the individual (largely determined by the individual's genes). Happiness fluctuates around that setpoint (again, genetically determined) based on whether good things or bad things are happening to us ("nurture"), but only fluctuates in small magnitude in a normal human. The midpoint of these fluctuations is determined by the "great genetic lottery" that people are born with, which leads them to conclude that how happy they may feel at the moment or over time is simply due to the luck of the draw, or gene. This fluctuation was also not due to educational attainment, which only accounted for less than 2% of the variance in well-being for women, and less than 1% of the variance for men.

They consider that the individualities measured together with personality tests remain steady throughout an individual's lifespan. They further believe that human beings may refine their forms or personality but can never change them entirely. Darwin's Theory of Evolution steered naturalists such as George Williams and William Hamilton to the concept of personality evolution. They suggested that physical organs and also personality is a product of natural selection.

With the advent of gene sequencing, it has become possible to search for and identify specific gene polymorphisms that affect traits such as IQ and personality. These techniques work by tracking the association of differences in a trait of interest with differences in specific molecular markers or functional variants. An example of a visible human trait for which the precise genetic basis of differences are relatively well known is eye color.

In contrast to views developed in 1960s that gender identity is primarily learned (which led to a protocol of surgical sex changes in male infants with injured or malformed genitals, such as David Reimer), genomics has provided solid evidence that both sex and gender identities are primarily influenced by genes:

"It is now clear that genes are vastly more influential than virtually any other force in shaping sex identity and gender identity ... The growing consensus in medicine is that ... children should be assigned to their chromosomal (i.e., genetic) sex regardless of anatomical variations and differences—with the option of switching, if desired, later in life."

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Nature versus nurture


text:
Wikipedia:Etiquette

This page offers some principles of etiquette, also referred to as "Wikiquette", on how to work with others on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia's contributors come from many different countries and cultures. We have many different views, perspectives, opinions, and backgrounds, sometimes varying widely. Treating others with respect is key to collaborating effectively in building an international online encyclopedia.

Principles of Wikipedia etiquette

 * Assume good faith. Wikipedia has worked remarkably well so far based on a policy of nearly complete freedom to edit. People come here to collaborate and write good articles.
 * Remember the Golden Rule: Treat others the way you would want to be treated.
 * Be polite.
 * Keep in mind that raw text may be ambiguous and often seems ruder than the same words coming from a person standing in front of you. Irony is not always obvious when written. Remember that text comes without facial expressions, vocal inflection, or body language. Be careful choosing the words you write: what you mean might not be what others understand. Likewise, be careful how you interpret what you read: what you understand might not be what others mean.
 * Civilly work towards an agreement.
 * Argue facts, not personalities.
 * Do not intentionally make misrepresentations. Apologize if you inadvertently do so.
 * Do not ignore reasonable questions.
 * If someone disagrees with your edit, provide good reasons why you think that it is appropriate.
 * Concede a point when you have no response to it, or admit when you disagree based on intuition or taste.
 * Although it is understandably difficult in an intense argument, if other editors are not as civil as you would like them to be, be more civil, not less. That way at least you are not moving towards open conflict and name-calling; by your own action, you are actively doing something about it. Try to treat others with dignity—they are people as well.
 * It may help to politely let the others know if you are not comfortable with their tone (e.g., "I feel that you have been sarcastic above, and I don't feel good about it. Let's try to resolve the issue").
 * Be prepared to apologize. In animated discussions, we often say things we later wish we had not. Say so.
 * Forgive and forget.
 * Recognize your own biases and keep them in check.
 * Give praise when it's due. Everybody likes to feel appreciated, especially in an environment that often requires compromise. Drop a friendly note on users' talk pages.
 * Remove or summarize resolved disputes that you initiated.
 * Help mediate disagreements between others.
 * Say please.
 * Take it slowly. If you are angry, spend time away from Wikipedia instead of posting or editing. Come back in a day or a week. You may find that someone else made the desired change or comment for you. If you think mediation is needed, enlist someone. Find another Wikipedia article to distract yourself—there are articles on the English Wikipedia. Take up a Wikiproject, lend your much-needed services at Cleanup, or write a new article.
 * Request a list of other articles to work on, provided by SuggestBot.
 * Remember what Wikipedia is not.
 * Review the list of common mistakes.
 * Avoid reverts whenever possible, and stay within the three-revert rule except where exemptions apply.
 * When reverting other people's edits, give a rationale for the revert (on the article's talk page, if necessary) and be prepared to enter into an extended discussion over the edits in question. Calmly explaining your thinking to others can often result in their agreeing with you; being dogmatic or uncommunicative evokes the same behavior in others and gets you embroiled in an edit war.
 * Unless you have an excellent reason not to do so, sign and date your posts to talk pages (not articles).
 * Do not use jargon that others might not understand. Use acronyms carefully and clarify if there is the possibility of any doubt.

Avoid indirect criticism
Avoid use of unexplained scare quotes and other means of implying criticism or making indirect criticism when you are writing in edit comments and talk pages. Write clearly, plainly and concisely in a way that enables other editors to easily respond to you.

Keep in mind that sarcasm cannot easily be conveyed in writing and may be misinterpreted. Insinuation and double entendre should be avoided when expressing constructive criticism. This also helps the editor receiving criticism to correctly understand you and respond to your concerns and may particularly help editors for whom English is not a first language or who have trouble understanding written English.

When this style of communication is necessary in the interest of being concise or illustrative, it is best to explain the intended meaning of your use of scare quotes or other indirection immediately afterward.

Of course criticism communicated in any manner and concerning any subject must be civil, should assume good faith as described in the relevant guideline, should not constitute biting of newcomers, and should comply with other Wikipedia policies and guidelines. If directed generally towards an editor's behavior or other aspects of talk page commentary, criticism constitute a personal attack as described in the "no personal attacks" policy. See also the essay "Avoid personal remarks" for a viewpoint on the latter form of criticism.

How to avoid abuse of talk pages

 * Most people take pride in their work and in their point of view. Egos can easily get hurt in editing, but talk pages are not a place for striking back. They are a good place to comfort or undo damage to egos, but most of all, they are for reaching agreements that are best for the articles to which they are attached. If someone disagrees with you, try to understand why, and in your discussion on the talk pages take the time to provide good reasons why you think that your way is better.
 * The improvement process employed by Wikipedia is constant, and the critical analysis of prior work is a necessary part of that process. If you are not prepared to have your work thoroughly scrutinized, analyzed, and criticized, or if your ego is easily damaged, then Wikipedia is probably not the place for you.
 * Do not label or personally attack people or their edits.
 * Labeling editors or their edits with terms like "racist" or "sexist" make people defensive. This makes it hard to discuss articles productively. If you must criticize, do it politely and constructively. Avoid usage of invectives and expletives, even if used without an intention to attack any editor, as these may be easily construed to be personal attacks and may not productively add to a collegial and congenial environment.
 * Always make clear what point you are addressing, especially in replies.
 * In responding, quoting a post is acceptable, but paraphrasing it or stating how you interpreted it is often better. Qualify your interpretation by writing, "As you seem to be saying" or "as I understand you" to acknowledge that you made an interpretation. Before going on to say that someone is wrong, concede you might have misinterpreted them.
 * Interweaving rebuttals into the middle of another person's comments disrupts the flow of the discussion and breaks the attribution of comments. It may be intelligible to some, but it is virtually impossible for the rest of the community to follow.
 * Editing another editor's signed talk page comments is generally frowned upon, even if the edit merely corrects spelling or grammar.

Working towards a neutral point of view
When dealing with suspected violations of Neutral point of view:

 * 1) Inquire politely on the article's talk page about aspects of the article you consider non-NPOV (unless they are really egregious), and suggest replacements.
 * 2) If no reply comes, make the substitutions. (Use your watchlist to keep track of what you want to do.)
 * 3) If a reply comes, try to agree about the wording to be used. That way, when an agreement is reached, an edit war is very unlikely. Waiting to make an edit until an agreement has been reached has the disadvantage that the article stays in an unsatisfying state for a longer period, but an article that changes frequently does not create a good impression with other Wikipedians or of the project as a whole.

A few things to bear in mind

 * Wikipedia articles are supposed to be neutral, instead of endorsing one viewpoint over another, even if you believe something strongly. Talk (discussion) pages are not a place to debate value judgments about which of those views are right or wrong or better. If you want to do that, there are venues such as social media, public weblogs, and other wikis. Use article talk pages to discuss the accuracy/inaccuracy, POV bias, or other problems in the article, not as a soapbox for advocacy.
 * If someone disagrees with you, this does not necessarily mean that the person hates you, that the person thinks that you are stupid, that the person is stupid, or that the person is mean. When people post opinions without practical implications for the article, it is best to just leave them alone. What you think is not necessarily right or necessarily wrong—a common example of this is religion. Before you think about insulting someone's views, think about what would happen if they insulted yours. Remember that anything written on Wikipedia is kept permanently, even if it is not visible.
 * Wikipedia invites you to be bold, though it is wise to remember that it is possible to be too bold. Before initiating discussion, ask yourself: is this necessary to discuss? Could I provide a summary with my edit and wait for others to express opinions if they like? Might my actions have consequences that I have not considered?
 * You can always take a discussion to email or to your user page, if it is not essential to the article.
 * If you know you do not get along with someone, do not interact with that person more than you need to do. Unnecessary conflict distracts everyone from the task of making a good encyclopedia and is unpleasant. Following someone you dislike around Wikipedia—Wikihounding—can be disruptive. If you do not get along with someone, try to become friendlier. If that does not help the situation then it is probably best to avoid them.
 * Though editing articles is acceptable and encouraged, editing the signed words of another editor on a talk page or other discussion page is generally not acceptable, as it can alter the meaning of the original comment and misrepresent the original editor's thoughts. Avoid editing another editor's comments unless necessary.

Other words of advice
Parting words of advice from Larry Sanger:
 * Be open and warmly welcoming, not insular;
 * Be focused single-mindedly on writing an encyclopedia;
 * Recognize and praise the best work: work that is detailed, factual, well-informed, and well-referenced;
 * Work to understand what neutrality requires and why it is so essential to and good for this project;
 * Treat your fellow productive, well-meaning members of Wikipedia with respect and good will;
 * Attract and honor good people who know a lot and can write about it well, and;
 * Show the door to trolls, vandals, and wiki-anarchists who, if permitted, would waste your time and create a poisonous atmosphere here.

For more advice of a similar nature, see User:Kingturtle/WikiPrinciples.

title: Wikipedia:Etiquette


text:
Talk:Sailor Moon (character)

who noticed this
i am of a wiccan religion and i noticed that some of the wiccan symbols are in the show like venus love chain and then you see the sign for venus where would the creators get an idea to use that please explain!!!!!!!!!!! Punksk8r99 (talk) 23:57, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The symbols you see aren't Wiccan, they're astronomical symbols that have been used before Wicca was a twinkle in Gardner's eye. They're most attributed to the Greeks than anyone else. (I know that this was from a while ago but wanted to answer in case anyone else was curious.) Tokyogirl79 (talk) 07:26, 15 November 2011 (UTC)tokyogirl79

Usagi as a mother
Would it be alright to add a section about how Usagi is when she is placed in a "motherly" role?

In Sailormoon R, S and SuperS (and for the manga, Stars) We see Usagi reluctantly taking care of Chibiusa. In Stars we see her being more open about caring for Chibi Chibi, even though she is not her daughter. In Parallel Sailormoon she is a mother of two. As Neo Queen Serenity, we see her caring for Chibiusa.

This is an important role for Usagi. I'd like to see this addressed. FF3TerraAndLocke (talk) 12:50, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Suggested source
For "Reception":. Hula Hup (talk) 09:10, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Edit Warring
Stop it. Take any content disputes here (the talk page) for resolution. Do not attack other editors in edit summaries. If you believe someone is committing vandalism or engaging in some other form of obvious disruptive editing report them to either WP:AIV or WP:ANI. Thank you. -Ad Orientem (talk) 02:53, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
 * To make a bit of a drive-by comment, to me, the tags that the IP editor is restoring are valid. Much of the article is uncited, apparently original research, and over-detailed. Removal of the tags without addressing the issues is inappropriate. ~Cheers, Ten  Ton  Parasol  02:59, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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Sailor Moon being both Bisexual and a Bi Icon
If anyone wants. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.239.226.80 (talk) 02:29, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

 * Negative; does not reflect Naoko Takeuchi's views.--Loyalmoonie (talk) 17:09, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
 * While it's possible for a fictional character to go beyond an author's views, I'm OK with omitting this because Medium is a self-publishing website and views need to come from published sources (that is not self published) WhisperToMe (talk) 14:11, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

December 2019
Riley from Inside Out is based on Usagi Tsukino from Sailor Moon by Naoko Takeuchi. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 181.222.81.17 (talk) 21:56, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Unsourced and irrelevant.--Loyalmoonie (talk) 05:14, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Tokyopop usage of "Bunny"
FYI an early page of the Tokyopop adaptation of the manga clarifies that "Bunny" is a nickname and Serena is the character's actual name.

I think it's the French version where Bunny is the actual name, but I'm not sure.... WhisperToMe (talk) 14:13, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

EDIT: However in the thread https://www.sailormoonforum.com/index.php?threads/revisiting-the-tokyopop-manga.32756/ it's stated that Serena being Usagi's real name in the manga isn't brought up again, and a later volume has her name as "Serenity" (there's inconsistency over whether Chibiusa is "Serena" or "Serenity"). The Tokyopop volumes seem to be poorly edited. WhisperToMe (talk) 19:18, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Image change
Does anyone else believe we should change the image on the infobox? No offense, but the picture portays Sailor Moon in a way that can only be easily recognized by people who have followed Sailor Moon's story very closely. I believe we should change the picture to something that can be recognized by general audiences, namely a picture of Sailor Moon in her initial outfit. What do you think? Leader Vladimir (talk) 15:34, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Sailor Moon (character)