Viewpoint Wiki is a reference site for understanding what people actually believe, and why. It exists because the modern information landscape has a systematic bias — not always toward one ideology or another, but toward consensus, toward comfort, and toward the erasure of views that challenge the assumptions of whoever controls the editorial process.

We think that's a problem. Not because every viewpoint is equally well-supported, but because you can't evaluate a position you've never been allowed to see stated fairly.

We document viewpoints. All of them — mainstream and heterodox, majority and minority, popular and deeply unpopular. We document the history of ideas. We document where genuine expert consensus exists, where it is partial, and where it is absent. We do this in a consistent format, held to consistent standards, without a house position on any of it.

We do not debate. We do not editorialize. We do not signal to the reader which views are respectable and which are not. We represent each position as its most thoughtful advocates would state it, and we let the reader decide what to make of it.

We are not Wikipedia. Wikipedia's editorial model — neutral point of view enforced by editors with their own points of view, consensus-based decision-making that systematically disadvantages minority positions, and a bias toward institutional and mainstream sources — produces a resource that is useful for settled questions and unreliable for contested ones. Many important debates have been effectively foreclosed on Wikipedia, not because the evidence settled them, but because the editorial culture did.

We are not a debate platform. We do not host arguments between viewpoints. Each viewpoint gets its own page, stated on its own terms.

We are not an advocacy site. We have no political, ideological, or philosophical agenda. Our only commitment is to fair and complete representation.

Different kinds of pages are held to different standards, because different kinds of pages are trying to do different things. A full description of those standards is in the Editorial Policy.

History pages establish what happened, based on reputable historians and primary sources. They note where scholarly interpretation is contested and link to the pages that address those disputes — without resolving them.

Main Topic pages orient the reader to a subject — what it is, what the state of knowledge and debate looks like, and where to go for more. They note where consensus exists and where it doesn't, without using consensus as a cudgel against dissent.

Consensus pages document what recognized experts in a field have broadly concluded, on what evidence, and with what limitations. They are equally willing to document the absence of consensus. Expert opinion counts within its domain of competence — and not outside it.

Viewpoint pages represent a specific position as its most informed advocates would state it. No scare quotes. No dismissive framing. No filtering the position through the eyes of its critics. The standard is the same whether the viewpoint is one that our editors find congenial or one they find repugnant.

Every editorial project has biases, and honesty requires us to name ours.

We are biased toward openness. When in doubt, we publish.

We are biased toward the minority view getting a fair hearing. A position held by a small number of people is not, for that reason, unworthy of documentation.

We are biased against gatekeeping. The burden of proof is on the person who wants to reject a submission, not on the person who submitted it.

We are biased against false consensus. The fact that a position is mainstream does not make it correct. The fact that a position is heterodox does not make it wrong. We document both, and we let the evidence speak for itself.

What we are not biased toward is any particular conclusion on any particular question. That is the reader's job, not ours.

Viewpoint Wiki is edited by a community of registered contributors. Editing requires an account. We ask only that contributors act in good faith — meaning they are sincerely trying to represent viewpoints fairly, not to discredit them under the cover of documentation.

Bad faith editing is the one thing we do not tolerate, because it is the one thing that undermines everything else. An editor who submits content designed to make a viewpoint look foolish rather than represent it accurately will lose editing privileges. The wiki's openness depends on the good faith of the people who contribute to it.

Some of the viewpoints documented on this wiki are ones that many readers — including our own editors — will find wrongheaded, offensive, or worse. We document them anyway, because the alternative is a resource that only shows you the ideas someone else decided you should see.

Understanding a viewpoint is not endorsing it. Representing it fairly is not agreeing with it. The reader is an adult, capable of evaluating ideas without being protected from them.

That is the premise this wiki is built on.