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Wikipedia:How to be neutral when taking sides

Everyone has opinions which they strongly believe, and positions which the strongly advocate. Yet Wikipedia was founded on the notion that all articles must be written from the neutral point of view (NPOV).

How can someone who has taken a side, assume a tone of neutrality when describing a controversial topic? Such as:

I don't pretend to be an expert. Often I've lapsed into a dogged (or dog-eat-dog) fight to make my POV prevail. Only days or weeks later do I come to my senses and regret my "contributions". I've hurt some feelings and wasted a lot of people's time.

On the other hand, to my everlasting astonishment, I have occasionally been able to settle a dispute between parties engaged in an edit war, to both sides' satisfaction!

Now, how did I do that? Gosh, if I could bottle that up and sell it I'd be a millionaire for sure :-)



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