Wikipedia:Balance Your Perspectives
 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
- Attempt to ensure that all provable views are represented fairly and equally in all articles and that facts are cited to back them up.
In an encyclopedia, ideally any and all opinion should be absent and only the facts present. But this is an ideal that might never be totally realized because:
- We all develop our own prejudices, we all see a story from different sides and we all don't get to learn all of the same facts.
- It is or can be difficult to have or maintaining a true neutral point of view without restricting our understanding of the facts of a given topic. This directly goes against the purpose of an encyclopedia.
- We are people and can find it hard to keep our opinions out of the words we type.
- There is nothing appropriate about suggesting that a popular opinion is the correct one. Popularity isn't certainty or verifiability.
Nobody's perfect, your opinions might not be the same as another's but might be equally valid. Understand though that Wikipedia is a collective intelligence community and is a place for facts, not feelings. Just try to be fair and avoid bias. Contribute your truth not your prejudices and let the facts speak for themselves. This is the ideal of Wikipedia.