Directory:The Wikipedia Point of View/Wikipedia & Political Agendas
Nationalism presents one of the most difficult challenges for Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy. In science and mathematics and many other academic disciplines, there is at least a recognised 'scientific consensus' that Wikipedia's policies require all articles to adhere to. There is not a similar consensus in the history of nations - American schoolchildren are taught a quite different version of the American wars of revolution than English ones. The English version of the Northern Irish 'Troubles' of the 1970's and 80's differs from the Republican one. These differences about history also reflect bitter modern disputes, often violent, about nationhood and national identity, about the rights and wrongs and the justice of a cause, about genocide and war.
Such bitter disagreements are brought onto Wikipedia, where editors will fight over the same issues that divided people in reality. The talk pages of these articles can often resemble a battleground. Often an editor or a group of editors learn to work the system in their favour to promote their own point of view, so that the article will become a stated Wiki fact, and itself a piece of history This brings up all sorts of moral and ethical issues.
