Africa Growth Pilot/Online self-paced course/Module 3/Neutrality about controversy

Wikipedia does not take sides. That's another aspect of neutrality. And maybe that's the aspect we immediately thought of when we heard "neutrality". Don't take sides. But if you'll notice, everything we have talked about until now was not even about sides of an argument, or of a football rivalry, or anything like that. It was literally about how we phrase, how we speak, how we write. It was about the voice, Wikipedia's Voice, and how we are to be fair and accurate.

But now we will talk about controversies and things where there are two or more distinct sides to a disagreement. And the key here is that Wikipedia does not *engage* in the controversy, but *describes* the controversy. There are many contentious things in this world, many disagreements, sometimes even the basic facts of a conflict are disputed. And the Wikipedia way -- the principle we should all bear in mind -- is to *transcend* that conflict, to zoom out from the conflict instead of participating in it. Don't take a position on one side or another. Rather, *describe* the different well-sourced points of view.

So if we're trying to cover an impossibly complicated topic like the Arab-Israeli conflict, for example, which is in the news again these days, we have to not just say, "this is how it is", the way the Arabs say, or "this is how it is", the way the Israelis say. Absolutely not. We have to *report* on this conflict. It has historical roots. It has current events. It has claims and counterclaims. It has geopolitical contexts. It has statements by various politicians. There's a wealth of things to *report* on without taking a position, without using Wikipedia's Voice to say that something is or isn't this way. So we *serve the reader* by giving the reader *access* to these different points of view, to these disagreements. Even if they're disagreements about facts, then we can say "this is disputed", and that's a fact.