This has all been discussed before: Wikipedia:Expert retention, Wikipedia:Expert rebellion. Please also see the discussions taking place on the talk page: User talk:Raymond arritt/Expert withdrawal.
This was presented for the benefit of User:Tparameter at the talk page of User:Raymond arritt"
"Expert" was the best shorthand term I could think of for "rational, well-informed person." Although most of the people who have raised issues do have expertise relevant to the topics in which they're editing, they're more than happy to work with well-intentioned novices. I'll gladly help people whose knowledge has some gaps but are coming at an issue in a constructive way (see for example
this exchange). It's dealing with aggressive POV-pushers and Kozmik Kadetts who are convinced they have
The TruthTM that gives people fits.
Raymond Arritt (
talk) 02:06, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Tparameter, let's take another example, which is not exactly about "experts". Let's consider the abortion and pregnancy articles. Now we have a few doctors and nurses and choice and right to life advocates who are trying to construct an article or two that show all sides.
And one or two antiabortion editors come to the articles and unilaterally demand that the articles be written as they dictate, ignoring all sources that they dislike and deleting all material that they disagree with. And they are abusive and combative and uncivil and attack others repeatedly who are trying to have articles that include material from both the right to life and the right to choose sides of the argument, and from the medical perspective. They fight frantically to present the articles ONLY from the right to life view. When told about NPOV, they ignore it or twist the words tortuously to get their way. And many other editors give up and leave Wikipedia because it is too unpleasant to deal with these anti-abortion editors.
Then finally, RfCs and Arbcomm proceedings are started against the antiabortion editors. But they promise to do better, and get off and then act badly again, and the entire cycle repeats a half dozen times. Finally the anti-abortion editors are blocked, but then plead to come back and are allowed back, and start acting badly again. And more mainstream editors trying to operate within NPOV give up and leave. And to save one troublesome editor who is unwilling or unable to abide by NPOV, we drive off 5 or 10 others who are trying to abide by NPOV.
If there are experts in this picture, it is the doctors and nurses, who are discouraged from editing by these difficult editors. But the principles are the same as on many other articles.
This same behavior goes on over and over. My main concern and Raymond arritt's concern is on pseudoscience articles and science articles. Where one person claims that magic is real and the articles must be rewritten to include magic or else it is patently unfair. And they and their friends demand that science take a back seat in science articles to magic.
And our administrative structure of admins and arbcomm etc are unable or unwilling to do anything about this situation. And they get 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 10th, 20th, 50th, 100th chances to improve and they never improve. And just drive regular productive editors working within NPOV away, and these regular productive NPOV editors are given no 2nd chances as the disruptive trolls, sock puppets, meat puppets, POV warriors and tendentious disruptive editors are.
Is that clearer?-- Filll ( talk) 02:34, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Proposal:
Given the level of dysfunction that has come to prevail on Wikipedia, the most appropriate course for a principled scientist is to withdraw from the project.
* How about a one-week strike!!!! :) Let's see what Jimbo has at the end of the week.
OrangeMarlin
Talk•
Contributions 15:44, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Regarding defeatism: It is only defeatism if this proposal is created by a lack of conviction. Given the amount of work a lot of people have put into stopping fringe theories, I don't think anyone's conviction here ought to be in question.
It is not defeatism if the problems are based on experience, reason, and evidence. See Outside scientific studies confirming Wikipedia failure on WP:FAIL. This proposal is based on a rational response to these real observed problems, not mere emotional weakness.
As a few studies have noted, Wikipedia has the stability that it does because of a core group of editors regularly watching certain pages. Based on this, an "expert revolt" or "boycott" would definitely have a noticeable, meaningful impact on getting the issue of fringe sources clarified.
For those that do, however, wish to call this "defeatism," based on the University of Minnesota's recommendations, here is one suggestion other than a boycott: A " Greylist" of sources that are usually used as unreliable sources, since fringe-pushers tend to use sources from the same URLs, regularly. Regularly consulting this "greylist" possibly in combination with one of the pro-Science Wikiprojects suggested here may be a more effective way of dealing with fringe. ☯ Zenwhat ( talk) 17:21, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I can't agree with this. Comparing what Wikipedia was when I started, to what it is now, it is infinitely better now. And yes I mean not only the articles, but also the hierarchy. There have been useful steps taken to curb the most heinous abuses. And the community openness to introspection is only one of those. There will always be people on the edges, and we should not only include proponents of alternative medicine, but also proponents of the idea that our encyclopedia should only include peer-reviewed sources. That might be fine if we were writing the PDR or a Physics textbook, but we aren't. There are POV-pushers from *both* sides of this debate. To characterize it as a "We-are-right-you-are-wrong" avoids the central problem, which is, we do allow minority viewpoints. Hard scientists need to accept that or make an attempt to change policy. Only consensus will change policy. If consensus cannot be achieved, then the alternative is to accept the status quo even if it grates. Wjhonson ( talk) 04:47, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, I don't see much evidence to support the assertion that we're somehow failing. We're doing very well. If individual editors are getting burned out keeping things in shape, that's a small concern. They need to take a more relaxed approach, or take a break for a while. We'll keep going because there are plenty of other editors to step in and keep things in shape. I don't get this bit about withdrawing because you're "principled"- it just sounds like melodrama to me. Friday (talk) 16:58, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
It definitely needs tweaking and shortening, so make Proposal 3, 4, 5, etc... -- Fyslee / talk 06:35, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
As a way to draw attention and more eyeballs to this discussion, I have posted a version of the "notice" to my user and talk pages and invited others to do so as well, with a link back to this page. I think some other mechanisms, like a special Science Committee with administrative powers and input to the Senior levels of the Wiki hierarchy might be helpful. I am not sure a boycott will be necessary, but a widespread threat of a boycott might be enough to get someone's attention. We need to brainstorm to think of ideas on what to do. Here are some:
Here is my proposed viral marketing notice for this page. Please feel free to copy it to your user and talk pages:
Given the level of dysfunction that has come to prevail on Wikipedia, the most appropriate course for a principled scientist is to withdraw from the project.
The bureaucracy should either take corrective steps to fix this situation, or else suffer the eventual loss of huge amounts of valuable talent and volunteered resources.
If you agree with this statement, post it to your pages, and pass it on.
(discuss this here)
-- Filll ( talk) 14:22, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia eats its young, no doubt about that. I do not know if it will survive in the long term. I'm afraid I spend time at Wikipedia with a cheerful apathy and yet I'm endlessly surprised by the destructive behavior: if Wikipedia were a person, I'd say it had a severe personality disorder.
For instance, in order to address the problem of unreliable sources and fringe views, there could be the creation of a " greylist" which automatically generates a list of articles which likely contain inappropriate edits, based upon the likelihood of certain sources to be regularly misused again and again. This could more appropriately address extreme violations of WP:NPOV and WP:V, which are not captured by bots, while at the same time allowing humans to make the final decision as to what constitutes a "reliable source" or not.
and
...Wikipedia's ability to prevent obvious vandalism is intriguing, but that alone is not how Wikipedia's success is defined since the problems stem from system bias and erosion of good content, which, unlike random vandalism, cannot simply be addressed through the use of large networks of bots crawling Wikipedia and making automatic reverts according to a set algorithm.
Anyway, as always, there is a lot of typing going on, but will anything get done? The academics seem to see failure. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast ( talk) 16:36, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
A completely open wiki-process appears to fail because it makes the false assumption that a minority of bad editors (vandals, trolls, and just general nutcases) cannot overwhelm a majority of good editors. An open question: Can we make a similar assumption regarding the sample of "expert editors"?
The idea of supporting a more closed system like Citizendium or a "Science Guild" as proposed above seems to rely on the assumption that the proportion of bad average editors to good average editors is larger than the proportion of bad expert editors to good expert editors. If we have a more closed system, a Science Guild, etc., some theoretical problems that could arise in certain fields:
As a demonstration of how this problem might arise (and certainly would in rare cases), there is User:Pundit who is a visiting professor at Harvard (I verified his credentials), but at the same time he made this absolutely absurd edit [1] and has argued that Cannabis Culture magazine is a "reliable source."
Having an education, such as a Ph.D., generally grants a greater absolute degree of trustworthiness, but not a guaranteed degree of trustworthiness. (See quackwatch) More importantly, does the attainment of a degree ensure a greater relative degree of trustworthiness, compared with others of the same educational achievement? If not, then how could such a policy improve Wikipedia's margin of error?
And should expert editors have broad authority or only authority over their particular field? How narrowly should "their particular field" be? On one article I saw a debate where some people claimed that a professor wasn't a reliable source, because the article was on Islamic history, but he was a professor just on Islamic theology, not specifically on "Islamic history"! Is that too narrow? ☯ Zenwhat ( talk) 17:48, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I mentioned this above, but I feel like putting it in a blue-bordered box like everyone else:
Given the level of dysfunction that has come to prevail on Wikipedia, the most appropriate course for a principled scientist is to impress upon all of his or her colleagues the importance and value of participating in a medium like Wikipedia.
The reason that WP:WEIGHT is so hard to uphold is that minority views are represented on Wikipedia far in excess of their representation in the real world. This creates a skewed perspective, where ideas like AIDS denialism or secondhand-smoke-is-harmless are considered reasonable alternative views rather than discredited fringism. The solution is not to go on strike, which would dilute the accurate representation of these topics even further, but to convince scientists, researchers, and generally knowledgeable folk of the need to contribute. Such people tend to be skeptical of an encyclopedia that anyone can edit - for good reason - but with increased participation these problems will go away. MastCell Talk 18:04, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Absolutely. I work with Nobel Prizewinners, and I guarantee not a single one would put up with this nonsense. I personally refuse to even look at the articles related to my expertise, because it is so unpleasant to edit with morons. The only want I can edit here is to work on things that I have no background in; I also get to learn something while I am at it.
Look for example at poor User: Orangemarlin, a cardiologist. OM is completely tied into knots and frustrated when trying to edit medical articles, because of interference with a vast assortment of POV warriors, nincompoops, people with a grade 8 education, trolls, sock puppets, meat puppets, FRINGE proponents ~etc. And it is frustrating as all get out.-- Filll ( talk)
I was thinking that if the idea of a complete abandonment of Wikipedia (or the controversial areas at least) by experts seems a bit extreme at first, we might wish to try enacting it on a much smaller scale. For instance, we could start with one article. Encourage everyone who's been working on defending the expert POV on that article to give it a break for a week or two (both on the article and talk page), and then we'll see how quickly and how badly it deteriorates.
One article I think might be perfect for this is Homeopathy. If you've had any experience with it, the reasons why should go without saying. For those that haven't, it's an extremely controversial article that was eventually pushed up to Good Article status a while back. It's been protected for long bouts of time, and recently came off of one long protection. Now might be a good chance to see how it falls from its GA version (or even the last protected version) when the homeopaths have their way with it. -- Infophile (Talk) (Contribs) 18:26, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Rather than a month-long total wikipedia boycott, how about nominating 8 or 10 specific articles ( evolution, intelligent design, homeopathy, abortion, atheism - whatever) and letting just those articles succumb to mob rule for a month. Just as effective in terms of making a point, perhaps easier to make a "story" out of for the media, and a lot less of a mess to clean up eventually (which I'm sure is what would happen). Snalwibma ( talk) 18:21, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I have serious doubts about this. The fringers would soon get wind of the experiment. The saner ones would encourage the others to back off (or even make constructive edits) to foil it. We'd end up with egg on our face, and the fringers would get to say "See? They're whinging about nothing." Raymond Arritt ( talk) 18:48, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I have actually proposed this exact same scenario a few times to the "fringers" in homeopathy a few times over the last few weeks. The "fringers" I talked to were anxious to "give it a go" (like Whig for example), since they are positive that the pro-science people are just insane and do not really know what neutral means and NPOV. I am positive if we gave Whig a reprieve from his currently impending doom at his 3rd RfC, he and several others would jump on board to promote the "Truth".
Believe me, they are just as annoyed with the pro-science lobby as we are with them. They would revel in a chance to get rid of us so they could really write these articles the way they should be written. And why not give them a chance to see how they do? I had previously suggested a period of 6 months of unfettered editing.-- Filll ( talk) 19:12, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Given the level of dysfunction that has come to prevail on Wikipedia, the most appropriate course is for all editors to work together to fix it.
I'm not saying that fixing it will be easy though. If it were, we'd have already done so. -- Ronz ( talk) 18:36, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Exactly correct Baegis. That is why we need two things:
Given the level of dysfunction that has come to prevail on Wikipedia, and that anonymous volunteers’ - who do not benefit because of their good work – labor on Wikipedia, the most appropriate course for a principled scientist is to withdraw from all stress inducing work and maximize leisure time pleasure. The principled scientist should treat the project as a fun hobby.
The community of hobbyist-editors ought not to concern themselves with the success or failure of Wikipedia. Perhaps Wikipedia will squander the labor of valuable talented volunteers. Perhaps Wikipedia will squander the good will of readers as inferior and worthless articles predominate. Wikipedia is an experiment that may not succeed.
Be a
WikiSloth. Spend time with your family. Write real papers and real articles in the real world. On Wikipedia, enjoy yourself.
Given the dysfunction that now prevails in the Wikipedia community, and the fact that effort on Wikipedia is anonymous, unrecognized, and unrewarded, the most appropriate course for a scientist or other expert is to avoid all stress inducing aspects of the project and maximize leisure time pleasure. They should treat the project as a fun hobby and stay away from potentially stressful activities such as resolving disputes or enforcing policy.
These hobbyist-experts ought not to concern themselves with the success or failure of Wikipedia. Perhaps Wikipedia will squander the labor of talented volunteers. Perhaps Wikipedia will squander the good will of readers as inferior and biased articles increasingly predominate. Such matters are of no consequence to the hobbyist-expert.
Be a
WikiSloth. Spend time with your family. Write real papers and real articles in the real world. On Wikipedia, enjoy yourself.
I suspect that a good fraction of our problems is the name NPOV for the goal for how articles should be written. As Jimbo has said before (and I am looking for this quote), the word "neutral" in this name is misleading and creates a lot of confusion, because we do not want our articles to be "neutral" but "balanced" in a certain way, and not balanced so that WP:FRINGE views have equal weight to mainstream scientific views.
I think that NPOV should be renamed. Called it "Mainstream Point of View" or "Balanced Point of View" or "Conventional Point of View" or "Dominant Point of View" or something. NPOV is an awful name, and creates probably 75% of the problems, I have observed.-- Filll ( talk) 00:31, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
It would help. We need something that clearly says, the mainstream dominates. Period. If you don't like it, then, make like the birds and flock off.--- Filll ( talk) 01:40, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Unfortunately, UNDUE is part of NPOV, and from what I have observed (and Jimbo noted in some talk as I am trying to verify), the "N" for "neutral" in "NPOV" is seized on by people who do not want to read a lot of text and just want to edit. And they misinterpret the "N" to mean "neutral" and therefore nothing negative about their favorite subject.-- Filll ( talk) 19:06, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Nothing besides SPOV will do- and then only partially. With Dominant POV, most people don't believe, for example, in evolution. Even Scientific Dominant POV won't work here, as "science" is not clearly demarcated, and sometimes scientists ignore subjects. Only Skeptical POV will work for Fringe topics, and Mainstream Scientific POV for mainstream topics. You can't put it all under one roof. Under current rules, the skeptics, being an extreme minority on many things, should flock off. Further, you have to do OR in some subjects for this to work well. —— Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 02:10, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
If you hold wikipedia to the standard of reliable sources, then it's dysfunctional purely by its nature. But, it's not a reliable source. Basically, it's young, and it functions fairly well, and seems to be improving. It's a great place to get basic information on a variety of topics - a place to start studying a topic. Moreover, as a platform, it's very young. Some people aren't cut out for it, however - whether they are scientists or otherwise. Of course, everyone who leaves has their own reasons, but it seems like most of the vocal ones that I've seen tend to leave because they can't function without more control than they can garner. Tparameter ( talk) 00:43, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
We can either give up and accept things as they are, or we can try to improve things.-- Filll ( talk) 02:02, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Of course Wikipedia is dysfunctional. However, several things have changed in the last few years to reduce, or attempt to reduce, dysfunctionality at Wikipedia, such as BLP, OTRS, Arbcomm and many other policies.
It is naive and even silly to imagine that the current Wikipedia system cannot be improved further. After all, there are volumes of criticism in the academic literature, popular media and other online and blog communities about how awful Wikipedia is at X, or Y or Z, and ideas for how Wikipedia should change to improve itself.
So it is not completely ridiculous to at least contemplate how Wikipedia might possibly improve in some areas where it is obviously struggling. Because, you never know, we might have a positive impact. And if you never try to improve, you never will.-- Filll ( talk) 19:15, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
What about if some articles require you to pass an NPOV quiz first before you are "certified" to edit?-- Filll ( talk) 01:42, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
That is what gave me the idea. I am positive that almost all of the people I have seen having trouble with the mainstream consensus on creationism, intelligent design, homeopathy and similar kinds of articles does not know what NPOV is. I have seen this over and over and over. If these people had to demonstrate a knowledge of NPOV, and could be rapidly barred from editing even the talk page because of failure to understand NPOV, then things would be far less tense and pressured and we might actually do more creative productive work.
I suspect that most of these people are here only to fight. However, those that want to be productive but cannot work within NPOV are frustrated over and over and become embittered and it consumes a huge amount of community effort to get rid of them. It is not that their material is not interesting and entertaining, but it is not suitable for Wikipedia. That is why I am trying to find other creative outlets for them so they can be productive too.-- Filll ( talk) 01:57, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
There's a problem with that idea, Fill. [2] ☯ Zenwhat ( talk) 15:39, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Just brainstorming. Tparameter ( talk) 03:03, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I would tend to say something like "that position appears to lack substantive evidence". If I were to instead say "you are a loon", I don't think I'd get anywhere with my editorial comrade. Wjhonson ( talk) 07:53, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I can see both sides of this. The Pseudoscience category is a bit like waving a red flag in front of a bull. I know some are considering other names for it and have considered other names for this category, to be less upsetting to the proponents. On the other hand, I find the categories very handy for finding related articles and topics quickly and easily. So...-- Filll ( talk) 15:37, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I couldn't resist joining this one - please note I have been indefinitely blocked (see User talk:Renamed user 4), but this almost no bearing on what I say here.
1. I originally started the 'Expert Rebellion' page with Engineer Scotty years ago. I see the situation hasn't improved, indeed got worse.
2. I am amused to see, still, that each person regards only their own area of expertise as vulnerable to crank ideas. Look, every area has its cranks. Mathematics I was involved with a complete nut who belongs to the 'Cantor was wrong' school of thought, courtesy usenet. Mainstream science we know about. And philosophy, my area of expertise, got corrupted long ago. Check out my talk page for the tracking I am doing on the articles as they degrade. Philosophy, despite being the origin of all rationalism in ancient greek times, and which in academic circles is still a very difficult technical subject to master, as a natural target for bar-room 'philosophers' (and ganja smoking ones, natch).
3. And you are all missing the real elephant in the room, which is Neurolinguistic programming. Just check out the version as at the end of 2006, with what it is now. It got taken over by a bunch of these kooks, who are practising 'therapists', and moreover they have very powerful support here (mentioning no names - that's what got me blocked).
4. On the idea of small-scale strike, we tried that on the philosophy main article when it was attacked by two well-meaning but idiotic editors. They tore the article into pieces in about a week, feuding with each other. One thing you haven't picked up on is that cranks, while they have a common target (scientific conspiracy against them) will appear united. But of course cranks are only cranks because they have some peculiar idiosyncratic view of their own meaning by definition they disagree with all other cranks. They quickly start fighting. The reason experts are able to agree is because they have a well-defined and very sharp line between crank theories on the one hand, and minority but scientific positions on the other, and can unite against cranks. This happened on the Philosophy page, where there Anglo-analytic types united with the European Hegelian/Habermas types for a unique period in the history of the subject against the cranks.
5. The suggestion above for a system based on trust, that would not need credentials, is the obvious way to go. Or perhaps some credentials based on work at WP, not the outside world. The trust could be earned in all sorts of ways, not just scientific expertise.
5a. [later edit] I do think academics (not just scientists - the 'humanities' side of WP needs far more attention than the science side) should be encouraged, perhaps financially, to edit WP, but this makes it quite obvious why this will not happen User:Renamed user 4
6. Wish you all well, I have every support for what you are doing. Good luck. (Though I have to say, you need it. ) Again, apologies for butting in when I am no longer really part of WP. User:Renamed user 4
Not a bad idea. I presume you will add more here?-- Filll ( talk) 15:48, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I suggest that Universities be contacted for named highly credentialed and respected volunteers to man an English-language Wikipedia content arbcom in which our regular arbcom passes them issues for deciding once and for all (or maybe only a year or two?) content decisions on highly limited but significant questions of fact that can not be resolved though consensus except by wearing out one side or the other. I see this as starting small and limited and becoming larger and more important and useful over time, especially with flagged versions. Using named people, limiting their time involvement, and limiting the issues to be decided can make this a post people will feel is worth their time and possibly useful in their career. see also Wikiquality WAS 4.250 ( talk) 15:52, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
See http://www.ocwconsortium.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view%20%20&id=15&Itemid=29 for such institutions that share WikiMedia's ideals (and also a great source for high quality data). WAS 4.250 ( talk) 15:57, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I have had similar thoughts myself, although I prefer the term editorial board. Personally, for the sake of fairness, I would have a number of subcommittees (for example: Fine Arts and history; Film, television and contemporary music; Physics, mathematics, and engineering; and Biology and medicine), each of which would have a post for each of the five major continental regions. This does lead to committee creep, yes, but we need to make sure that cultural biases are reduced, and each area does tend to have a slightly different style of coverage (certainly I doubt that a mathematician, a media studies professor and a historian would all agree on what is notable and needed to be covered for their own areas). Content policies should be controlled also by such a board, for as we have seen, a degree of expert understanding is really needed to understand their original spirit. LinaMishima ( talk) 17:12, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I think both have a place here. Of course, we need more outside independent review, one way or another to have more credibility. And academia is a perfect place to look towards.
However, I think something like an internal Science Guild and/or science editorial board might be of some use. The Science Guild could consist both of individuals with verified credentials, and those invited into the Guild, possibly creating an organization with multiple levels accordingly. There are many day-to-day functions that could be dealt with a structure like this. Presumably we would only go outside for reviews or to mediate problems once or twice a year, and it would be unreasonable to ask an outside body to be more intimately involved. For day to day questions and decisions and advice, the internal body would be relied on. One might imagine the Science Guild as functioning like the US Presidential Science Advisor, or US National Academy of Sciences. Many content questions dealing with science are sent to Arbcomm, which usually has nothing to say, and the issue continues to brew or fester.-- Filll ( talk) 22:16, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Since you already have been thinking in this direction, that tells me we might be on the right track.
The difference between science and other areas is that it is much easier to distinguish mainstream from nonmainstream material in science, in most cases. Also, the material that is strongest on Wikipedia in general is science, and most professional scientists use Wikipedia in their work according to surveys. The opposite is true in the humanities where Wikipedia is almost universally viewed as a pile of crap, and a quick view at a few articles in the humanities suggests why.
On the other hand, if a system like this works, it could easily be extrapolated to all areas.-- Filll ( talk) 23:34, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Theres something about this proposal which I find quite unsettling. Such a content ArbCom would have a lot of power to shape the tone of the encyclopaedia. What we might find is powerful grouping emerge to get their own candidates onto the committee. In effect this could transform a lot of small disputes into one big "presidential" election with all its associated drama.
The obvious current equivalent is WP:RFC. Of the many discussion processes on wikipedia RFC's seem to be one of the weakest. Are there any ways in which the RFC system can be improved? Would fixed cut off dates, transcluded sub-pages (as in AfD), or a change in format help?. -- Salix alba ( talk) 11:07, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
After we have collected a suitable number of ideas on these pages, I propose that we draft a "suggestion paper" including a summary of the main ideas, and their advantages and disadvantages.-- Filll ( talk) 17:23, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I have wondered if there was a way to get more voting on Referenda or Plebiscites by Wikipedians, and to draw more attention to issues and get more input. We can get a fair amount of voting on Arbcomm votes and on RfAs. Can we get more voting on Referenda and Plebiscites? What about an announcement at the top of the watchlist page during the voting period? What about an announcement in the Wikipedia Signpost?
Some of these issues we are discussing here need more input and more publicizing.-- Filll ( talk) 23:23, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I dreamed this up last night. Haven't reflected very long on it though... But it seems workable. WAS 4.250 ( talk) 14:54, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
I've started User:Raymond arritt/Expert withdrawal/Draft where we can begin summarizing the main points from our discussion. You'll note that I've couched the issue in slightly different terms. My original choice of "expert" as a shorthand for "person grounded in reality" has led to some misunderstandings: we're not concerned with creating more deference to experts, but with creating less deference to those with fringe views. In this spirit I've chosen to title the essay "Challenges to the integrity of Wikipedia." (Some might prefer "Coping with kooks," but that's a bit over the top...) I think the essay will work best if it's concise and as non-confrontational as possible. Raymond Arritt ( talk) 15:37, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
In order to bring attention to this, I suggest creating a boilerplate to display on the article pages that indicate that experts in the subjects have refused to edit the article until the community helps resolve the problem. ScienceApologist ( talk) 16:56, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Various Wikipedian
experts are on strike from editing this article until an effective policy for dealing with
disruptive editors is implemented. Please note that content here may not be
verifiable nor
neutral. Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page. |
Any campaign to make wikipedia worse by encouraging experts to not contribute is an attempt not to help wikipedia, but to harm wikipedia. Spamming notices about the wiki trying to get good contributors to help less is and will be seen as disruption that must be deleted and the disruptors as traitors to be excommunicated. WAS 4.250 ( talk) 20:40, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
I disagree with:
See Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture for an article written by scientists who are experts on this subject and therefor wanted an article in wikipedia on it. I wikified it for them and they thanked me.
Working scientists should create useful content on specialized subjects that they are experts on, and then let others maintain the page, other than checking it every month or so. If it turns into a cesspool like Homeopathy, then abandon it to the warriors. The current effort to stop any editing by scientists is pointless drama by science-minded warriors at wikipedia. No scientist who does not get off on battling in cyberspace would engage in these endless turf wars on controversial articles. I'm glad they do, but I don't so I won't. If they don't enjoy the fighting anymore, they can just stop fighting on those articles. There are plenty of science subjects that need articles and won't require fighting to keep them accurate. WAS 4.250 ( talk) 16:45, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Piggybacking on the above idea, I would throw out there that we should have a article-talk-space tag indicating when an article has been the subject of documented off-wiki canvassing to promote a particular POV. For example:
There have been attempts to recruit editors of specific viewpoints to this article. If you've come here in response to such recruitment, please review
the relevant Wikipedia policy on recruitment of editors, as well as the
neutral point of view policy. Disputes on Wikipedia are resolved by
consensus, not by majority vote. |
Off-wiki canvassing is a frequent occurrence; this recent example on homeopathy comes to mind, but I could just as easily produce calls for motivated fringe-POV-pushers on AIDS denialism or intelligent design, among many others. It might be useful to tag high-risk articles with links to the off-wiki canvassing; if nothing else, the heightened visibility might lead to the canvassing postings being taken down. MastCell Talk 18:12, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
I would like to see a Wikipedia:Finished article policy. I believe this would go a long way towards solving some of the problems discussed above. No article is ever really "finished" at Wikipedia but it should be easier than it is to protect well written articles developed by consensus. Good, well rounded articles about fringe topics have been developed in the past and shouldn't require babysitting. For example Intelligent Design has reached Featured Article status. The paranormal-related Spring Heeled Jack used to be a Featured Article but was worn down over time. It shouldn't require old editors protecting it constantly from new editors who want to slant it. All that does is burn out established editors. If there were a "Finished Article" policy that pretty much locked "finished" articles and required consensus for substantial changes, editors wouldn't get burnt out by the constant back and forth among points of view. It would go a long way towards protecting science and medical related articles from this burnout effect. Once an article is developed to Featured Article status, it could apply as a "Finished Article", and then be somewhat locked down to prevent POV pushes in any direction. For a criteria that defines a "Finished Article", I'm thinking along the lines of WP:1.0. Let's face it, working on these articles, and working with the varying viewpoints involved, is hard work. Currently the only pay-off after months and months of hard work is that the article is stable for a few weeks until another jackass comes along. Wikipedia:Finished article would both solve the problems of denigration and also give editors some sort of pay-off for their time in the trenches. -- Nealparr ( talk to me) 01:59, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
How do you know when an article is truly "finished"? Especially with regard to science articles; every year science makes many discoveries that make a mockery of thinking that was previously orthodox. I've heard this idea before with regard to biographies of long-dead people, but even the dead have a curious habit of changing, with discoveries of long-lost correspondence, publication of new research about them, new reflections in popular culture etc etc. Not a workable option, I'm afraid. -- Dweller ( talk) 11:46, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Actually, all that is required is for admins lock down controversial pages more often and for longer periods. More and more wikipedia articles are getting so good that most changes are reverted as just making the article worse. It is time to treat well written articles with no recent history of improvement as free to lock down until a request is made on the talk page accompanied with a useful addition or change suggestion. WAS 4.250 ( talk) 16:56, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I believe the Wikipedia:Flagged revisions proposal would be the best way to approach this. Sχeptomaniac χαιρετε 20:48, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't suppose it's necessary for me to say that the scientists here--actually, everyone who can work within our modest rules--is welcome to join the Citizendium. Why not give it a try? Within a few years, we'll probably have grown exponentially (we're already growing at an accelerating rate), and there will then clearly be no reason to avoid us. -- Larry Sanger ( talk) 03:57, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Unless Wikipedia can recognize some of these problems and begin to address them, or experiment with other approaches, then it will fail in certain areas, clearly.
For example, if one lets anyone edit, one will get articles reading like anyone wrote them. And if you survey the general public in the US, only 35% do not believe in haunted houses, only 18% do not believe in psychic healing, only 32% do not believe in demonic possession, only 34% do not believe in ghosts, only 42% do not believe in telepathy, only 40% do not believe that extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth, only 43% do not believe in fortune telling and prophecy, 44% in communication with the dead, 54% do not believe in astrology, and 55% do not believe in reincarnation.
So how do you think the average American would write articles on science and pseudoscience? Let's face it, science is going to lose every time. A minority of the average potential editors rejects mysticism and magic. So guess what your average editor and average admin is going to do when faced with a choice between science and magic and/or mysticism?
And the same is true in all areas where expertise is required, because the average person editing will believe nonsense and then put nonsense in the article.
So we have to find better methods of combatting this, or else defect to Citizendium.-- Filll ( talk) 05:49, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Polls were conducted by Bryan Farha at Oklahoma City University and Gary Steward of the University of Central Oklahoma in 2006, and compared to the results of a Gallup poll in 2001. [1] They found fairly consistent results.
belief | not sure | belief | not sure | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Farha-Steward | Gallup | |||
psychic/ spiritual healing | 56 | 26 | 54 | 19 |
ESP | 28 | 39 | 50 | 20 |
haunted houses | 40 | 25 | 42 | 16 |
demonic possession | 40 | 28 | 41 | 16 |
ghosts/spirits of the dead | 39 | 27 | 38 | 17 |
telepathy | 24 | 34 | 36 | 26 |
extraterrestrials visited Earth in the past | 17 | 34 | 33 | 27 |
clairvoyance and prophecy | 24 | 33 | 32 | 23 |
communication with the dead | 16 | 29 | 28 | 26 |
astrology | 17 | 26 | 28 | 18 |
witches | 26 | 19 | 26 | 15 |
reincarnation | 14 | 28 | 25 | 20 |
channeling | 10 | 29 | 15 | 21 |
Other surveys by different organizations at different times have found very similar results. A 2001 Gallup Poll found that the general public embraced the following: 54% of people believed in psychic/ spiritual healing, 42% believed in haunted houses, 41% believed in satanic possession, 36% in telepathy, 25% in reincarnation, and 15% in channeling. [2] A survey by Jeffrey S. Levin, associate professor at Eastern Virginia Medical School, Norfolk found that over 2/3 of the U.S. population reported having at least one mystical experience. [3] [1]
A 1996 Gallup poll estimated that 71% of the people in the United States believed that the government was covering up information about UFOs. A 2002 Roper poll conducted for the Sci Fi channel reported that 56% thought UFOs were real craft and 48% that aliens had visited the Earth. [1]
A 2001 National Science Foundation survey found that 9 percent of people polled thought astrology was very scientific, and 31 percent thought it was somewhat scientific. About 32% of Americans surveyed stated that some numbers were lucky, while 46% of Europeans agreed with that claim. About 60% of all people polled believed in some form of Extra-sensory perception and 30% thought that UFOs were "some of the unidentified flying objects that have been reported are really space vehicles from other civilizations." [4] New Scientist reported in 2006 that almost 2/3 of Americans believe they share less than half their genes with " monkeys", when in fact the figure is much closer to 95-99%, depending on the primates involved and the study used. [5]-- Filll ( talk) 02:33, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Um this is trivial to find. Tons and tons of this stuff. If this is not enough for you, go to the NSF. And literally hundreds if not thousands of other places. This kind of information is unbelievably easy to find. People in general are as dumb as stumps and will believe anything any moron tells them.-- Filll ( talk) 04:32, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
I've seen editors here (and elsewhere) suggest that it may be a good idea to defect to a different wiki, one more science-focused. If I may, I'd like to offer my expertise on why those suggestions aren't good ideas, especially if you're trying to build a useful reference for science related topics, one that teaches science, helps inform the masses, and is the "de facto" reference source. I come from a web development background and while many may be aware of how Google and other popular search engines work, not everyone does. So here is the technical reasons why you shouldn't defect.
Those two factors are what causes Wikipedia pages to turn up first in search engine queries on topics. The second is less important if the alternate wiki is based on MediaWiki, for example Citizendium. The first is very important.
Everyone links to Wikipedia. Bloggers do it (Google sees blog linking habits as important). News articles sometimes do it (Google sees outbound links from news sources as important). Nearly every link to a wiki (and it is common to link to wikis for background info) is a link to Wikipedia. This is what has caused Wikipedia articles to surface as the first or second link in queries at Google.
Can you duplicate that at an alternate wiki, for example Citizendium? Probably not. Everyone will continue linking to Wikipedia regardless of the quality of the articles, and Wikipedia will continue being the de facto source for all topics. It is very unlikely that the masses in general, not necessarily scientists, will start linking somewhere other than Wikipedia. Instead, they'll just assume that an article on Wikipedia related to science is as good, or good enough, as an article on Britney Spears. Only experts will see a quality difference, consider that quality difference to be important, and experts are by definition always the minority.
An expert based wiki/encylopedia will never receive the inbound links required to rise to the top of search engine queries. In other words it ends up being an encyclopedia only for internal use, an encyclopedia by scientists for scientists and one that no one outside of science will read.
It won't solve the problems editors here are saying needs to be solved. That from-scientists-for-scientists article on Creationism will be buried, Wikipedia's article on Creationism will continue to be dominant in search engine queries, and the masses will continue to be scientifically illiterate on Creationism. If the goal of science is to teach and clear up misrepresentations of science, why would scientists ever want to abandon Wikipedia, considering it's technical position in terms of computer science, how the web currently works, and its potential as a teaching tool? How many millions of dollars are spent on creating public awareness of science, combating scientific illiteracy, and so forth. Here it's free! Somewhere above I read someone say that there's no incentive for scientists to contribute. Of course there is. -- Nealparr ( talk to me) 07:25, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
How many millions of dollars are spent on creating public awareness of science, combating scientific illiteracy, and so forth. Here it's free! Somewhere above I read someone say that there's no incentive for scientists to contribute. Of course there is. -- Nealparr ( talk to me) 07:25, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Once again, this diff shows why it's not free, and why there is no incentive (indeed, a disincentive). Until a few dollars from the millions being spent on programs to combat scientific illiteracy are diverted into a grant to pay for this guy contributing to Wikipedia, rather than being blamed for it by his Chair.
It's only free for cranks and trolls who have no hope of ever being published in an authoritative peer-reviewed journal. User:Renamed user 4
(Cross posted from my talk page).-- Filll ( talk) 16:23, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
The issues you're highlighting here are very much also a problem in other areas of Wikipedia - perhaps more so, if anything. Personally I think it's indicative of a general failure of governance across the project. You may be interested in seeing this: Wikipedia:Working group on ethnic and cultural edit wars. I wonder if there would be scope for something similar to address the problems with science articles? -- ChrisO ( talk) 08:35, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
<undent> Allow me to interject a little. I have recently engaged some with one of our admins here about this. This admin is actively and even almost frantically promoting pseudoscience here because it is "fair". As I have noted elsewhere here, well over half the US public believes in what we might call mystical or magical thinking, or pseudoscience. So is it any wonder that we get admins who let their own personal views color things and are amenable to the arguments that science has no place on Wikipedia, particularly in pseudoscience articles? -- Filll ( talk) 19:10, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Well the alarm bell has to be sounded, and reasonable alternatives to consider and try have to be presented. What I think most admins here is missing is that the POV pushers loathe NPOV, or do not understand it, or misinterpret it. And no amount of wikilove and explaining is going to change that to someone who is deluded, or even mentally ill.-- Filll ( talk) 22:21, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
It might be worthwhile to try something similar to
Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Macedonia, where discretionary sanctions include blocks for incivility, disruption, and edit-warring. --
Ronz (
talk) 22:42, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Unfortunately, being accommodating leads to the current mess, because we cannot accommodate all desires, particularly when everyone has a different idea of what is needed. And that was our mistake, for retreating from the conflict instead of finding ways to remove the unconstructive elements. It might feel good to WP:AGF and do whatever someone is asking, but it is ultimately bad for the articles, bad for Wikipedia, and bad for long term productivity of all contributors.
There is a reason that functioning societies have laws and the rule of law, and the police are empowered to act on the laws and we have courts and lawyers etc. It is folly to think that an environment that is more and more resembling society at large can not have a similar structure. We have laws here, but not the rule of law, and it is almost impossible for our "police" to enforce the rule of law. So therefore the citizens have to enforce things themselves and we get the rule of the jungle. It is pretty obvious.
Where would you rather live? Sweden or Afghanistan? Denmark or Colombia? Japan or Mexico? War zones or the Wild West exhibit the same characteristics that are developing on Wikipedia. If we refuse to enforce our laws, we will have problems. This does not mean we need to be authoritarian about it like North Korea. But we can find a better balance perhaps. -- Filll ( talk) 17:15, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I have had many tell me that WP:AGF is the only thing that matters, beyond all else. While I agree in principle, it depends on what one's adversaries are doing. If you just try to "wikilove" your opponents to death and they are dead set on pushing an anti-science agenda or some other nonsense, you will not always succeed, and if you do, it will take far longer than reasonable. What if the POV pusher resorts to meat puppetry or sock puppetry? What if they launch vexatious litigation? What if they curse you at every opportunity and refuse to discuss things rationally? Or in most cases, are literally unable to discuss things rationally? (After all, we have an immense number of people that are mentally disturbed and deficient in this world).
One could mount mediation requests and multiple RfCs and even go to Arbcomm or try other remedies. However, these consume hours and hours of time, and often have unsatisfactory results.
How willing is the community to waste many man hours of other volunteer workers? There are efficiency and productivity considerations here to be taken into account, and if the project does not think of these, it will suffocate in its own wastes.-- Filll ( talk) 19:05, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree. My first introduction to this problem was at black people. That article had a very bad problem with about 20 different POV groups that just talked past each other. I and a few others tried to get them to use a scientific approach, but it was hopeless.
I could not even get them to agree that they had different definitions of what a "black person" is. East Africa? West Africa? North or South of the Sahara? All of Africa? Only American? South Indians? Sri Lankan Tribes? Minority groups in China, Phillipines, Indonesia, Japan? Aboriginals in Australia? Different definitions of black in US law, Canadian Law, Australian law and UK law? Opinions of White Supremacists and Black Supremacists and PanAfricanists? Pseudohistory? NeoNazis? Are Jamaicans black? In The UK? In Jamaica? In the US? Is Obama black? Is Condaleeza Rice? Clarence Thomas? Does black have anything to do with color? Do you have to have a slave ancestry to be black? What about black Irish? Even the Caucasians are known locally in Asia as "black"? Are they? And so on and so forth.
Then other problems started to intrude, like some editors telling me to avoid discussing things with another because he was a Basque or something (Spanish separatist politics in a discussion like this???). Anyway, it was impossible, and I gave up and left. I am sure it is no better now, but at least I do not deal with it. If anyone thinks they can WP:AGF and get some science in the article, they are welcome to try. I would be extremely impressed, frankly.--- Filll ( talk) 23:33, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I wonder if all this long discussion can be boiled down to some sort of position paper when you're all done? There is so much discussion I'm finding it hard to monitor this talk. I recommend some or all of you start working on a combined essay with an associated Talk page. Or do you already have one? Wjhonson ( talk) 23:24, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Well, that is the whole point. If that doesn't happen to a very noticeable degree, this exercise will be in vain, and that mustn't happen.
A few points to consider:
One boycotted article isn't enough. Maybe five of the most controversial articles spanning various fields should be made the subjects of this experiment. I suggest that we vote on these (others may be suggested) and choose the five that get the most votes:
Snalwibma has already voiced these thoughts above, and I basically agree.
The boycott must be maintained for at least a month, or, if an obvious "jumble of nonsense" that violates multiple policies here hasn't resulted, then it should be extended longer. The media will likely notice the best (worst) examples of mob rule.
To make it sufficiently effective, it should be obvious that the more nonsensical the edit, the more certain that it should not be touched by us. So even while observing such editing, it is vitally important to refrain from instinctively reverting nonsense. Maybe keep private notes about it for future reference, but maintain the boycott.
This suggestion is designed as a boycott of certain editors. If they are allowed to edit unopposed, their actions will become more noticeable. THEY are a large part of the problem. The editing environment is because of their disruptions and failures to understand NPOV. Their actions need to be profiled by giving them their will. Hopefully changes will be made in the future that will help to more effectively deal with such editors.
Keep in mind that all this involves no acts that violate policy. It only requires our inaction. There is no violation of POINT, since editing here is a voluntary matter. It is not our obligation to edit, but it is the obligation of the Wikipedia community and upper echelon decision makers to create a more pleasant environment through policy changes and stricter enforcement policies of existing polices. Admins who violate policies and coddle tendentious and even banned editors need to be dealt with. Admins who unblock banned editors violate the community's trust and are party to the ensuing disruption which their actions cause. If their mentees cause problems, they should suffer the consequences (possible desysopping). -- Fyslee / talk 07:04, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Just place your sig once under five different articles. When voting, I suggesting choosing articles that are extremely contentious, often locked, and which are the targets of certain fringe editors who need to be noticed by others. (I'll start...;-)
NOTE: Since other suggestions may be added, it is allowable to change your votes. -- Fyslee / talk 07:04, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
What the Bleep Do We Know? might be a good candidate, from what I have observed. We should pick articles that have not already been abandoned by the science and rational communities; for example black people was long ago abandoned, as far as I can tell. It was so ugly and toxic I have not been back for months.-- Filll ( talk) 19:58, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
I added articles related to monetary crankery. To understand what I'm talking about, see this recent example. [4]
Also, I don't understand why Atheism, Evolution, and Intelligent design are up there, because they generally look pretty good. However, it's true, again, they probably only look good because of people like us. It might be a good idea to propose boycotts of them as well, again, just to see how they'd turn out. ☯ Zenwhat ( talk) 22:16, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
In case this movement gains the desired notice, here's an outline that could be proposed.
I see two problems being pointed out here. 1) Established material is easily degraded, and 2) Experts can easily be overwhelmed.
I do not like Zenwhat's idea of graylists, except as an informal feature that might be promoted. However, a solution that utilizes as much automation as possible would be best. One method that could work fairly well for Wikipedia would be to use better article "versioning." Wikipedia's freely collaborative nature is a boon, but as noted in this page, it also allows for degeneration of content. In order to help prevent article degeneration, page sections should become much more prominent units than articles themselves. Content-oriented edits (as opposed to minor typo/grammar corrections) of existing page sections should NOT be immediately posted in all cases. Editors who are truly interested in the Wikipedia content do not need "instant gratification" IMO. Therefore, it may help to give Wikipedia article sections some measure of "protection" based on some measure of the "acceptance" of the page-section's content. "Acceptance" would be somewhat tricky to quantify, but it would certainly be related to section age, number of recent modifications, total number of pageviews, number of logged-in user pageviews, and time of last modification to that page-section. For example, a page section that is visited regularly by logged-in users that received 2 edits in the past 60 days would be given a much higher "acceptance" level than a brand new article section that has received 10 'distinct' edits in the past hour.
With an "acceptance" metric available, article sections could be automatically protected in various ways; this leads to the question of how such protection should be implemented. One could imagine that content edits are "blocked" in some way. A truly collaborative method would then require a majority of votes in order for a new version to be approved, but most volunteer projects cannot be trusted to accomplish this successfully. So, this may be an option, but cannot be the only option. This points to a need for "assumption of acceptability." Such a requirement could be accomplished by simply using the "acceptance level" to determine a proportional time-delay that slows the propagation of content edits.
With such a "time-delay" system, edits to "Higly accepted" page sections could potentially be delayed for days, while edits to sections with a current "low acceptance" may not even be delayed at all. A good way to take advantage of this delay-time would be to allow opponents of the proposed content a one-time ability to further delay the propagation of content changes from an editor on that section. This extra time would ideally be used to resolve content disputes, instead of the current system whereby (in many cases) edit-warring is implicitly relied upon. During this resolution time, the editor of the delayed material would be able to alter his proposed changes .. if acceptable to the opposition, then the extended delay could be released. The ability to release a time-delay could be used as further leverage in gaining consensus with the editor whose content is, in some ways, being "held for ransom."
Generally, this should constitute a minimal impact to the editing process, in most common circumstances. However, this system could create a practical problem in the case of moderately "low acceptance" section edits. If a "dispute delay" is imposed on such a section, then it would lead to an extended edit-conflict situation. In allowing the time for dispute resolution, a section would effectively be locked from further edits; for any reasonable allotment of time for dispute resolution [2 hours, minimum ... though probably closer to 24 hours] this would consitute an intolerable lock time. Likely no clean solution would exist for this problem, but there are 2 saving graces: 1) page sections with *very* low acceptance would not even have this delay anyways, 2) the lock would only apply to a single section of a page, leaving the remainder of the page free. There are some options to mitigate this problem that I could detail, if needed.
One other use of the "acceptance" metric is that article sections could be tagged or even filtered by a user-preferred level of acceptance.
None of this specifically addresses the utilization of our Wikipedia subject experts, but for that I would suggest this simple change ... just allow editors the ability to have watch lists of article sections instead of just entire articles. Due to a new focus on article sections, this would allow experts to focus their efforts on particularly contentious material, or retain peace of mind that agreeable material still exists in the article (even if quality has degraded in other parts of the article). It would also be trivial to place some special designator on the watchlist when a proposed edit has been "dispute delayed," which could draw in more opinions and consensus to a discussion before the edit is even finalized.
Anyways, this is a rough outline. I run my own online community, but I'm still fairly new here, so take this with a grain of salt.
tl;dr ... let's acknowledge that some content deserves some special consideration in regard to preservation, and also make publicly-viewable edits a slower process when affecting long-standing subject material so that talk page discussion can pursued proactively. BigK HeX ( talk) 06:20, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Well, it seems to me that rather than helping to defuse the situation, all the article probation has done is to light the fuse on the inevitable catastrophe. Of course, I could be wrong here, but it seems like the controversy is just getting more and more widespread. Admins are hinting towards sides right now, and it won't be long until the battle just steps up a level.
With that in mind, I think this may be a good time for us to take our leave. The situation can't explode if one side simply gets up and leaves (at least in the same way). They prefer civil [term exempted as I couldn't think of anything that would pass civility and not get me banned from this page as well] to incivil [also have to exempt this as simple contrast could result in the implication of incivility]? Well, let them have it and see where it gets them. -- Infophile (Talk) (Contribs) 18:29, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Well at the very minimum, one can save one's own butt.-- Filll ( talk) 00:10, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes and no. It shows that admins are, in spite of the claims of wikilove, willing to kick butt when people start spewing nonsense. And I can hear the screaming from here. Plus see the lies and misrepresentations. But at least I am not involved.-- Filll ( talk) 00:58, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
As predicted here, [5] a boycott is not appropriate if for no other reason than that it can be too easily foiled. [6] I've quit editing that article for the sake of my own sanity, and if you want to do so for the same reason that's fine, but let's not pretend that a boycott will accomplish anything else. Raymond Arritt ( talk) 06:43, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
I have seen some POV pushers become reasonable and productive. Unfortunately this is quite rare. I think while the "ban hammer" is flying, one has to be exceptionally careful, and this if nothing else is a good reason to stay away from those pages.-- Filll ( talk) 14:36, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
From what I understand, this is a discussion on giving some sort of an increased power or weighting to editors who are experts in an area? Giving increased powers to any one group of people defeats the entire purpose of wikipedia, the socialist encyclopedia that anyone can edit, admins aside who attempt to keep to administrative duties only. This isn't citizendium, the reason wikipedia is so popular is that anyone can edit it, unfortunately experts must accept this but not let it get to them. If it gets to them to the point where they can't handle it, unfortunately wikipedia and the way it was designed to function/functions, then this place is not for them. If my interpretation of this issue is incorrect please advise. Timeshift ( talk) 08:28, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
Timeshift, you say "If my interpretation of this issue is incorrect please advise." OK. I'll do that. You mistake a method for a goal, a path for a destination, a means for an end. "Anyone can edit" is a means. "Encyclopedia" is the end result we are aiming at. To the extent that "anyone can edit" gets in the way of that goal, we adjust that means. You'll note that we block and ban people so "anyone" can not edit after all. To the extent that a means like empowering experts helps with the goal, we may use that means. See WP:IAR. We make and change and break rules as needed to achieve the end result of the best free encyclopedia we can create. So far, "anyone can edit" is a rule of thumb that has been very helpful toward that end. But we are getting to a point where an official role for experts might prove of value. I favor the idea of a content arbcom where experts from academia could play a part. But we are probably a couple years away from implementing any such thing. WAS 4.250 ( talk) 16:38, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
Actually, TS, I think you got it in one: "If it gets to them to the point where they can't handle it, unfortunately wikipedia and the way it was designed to function/functions, then this place is not for them." Which, is actually what is being discussed (Expert Withdrawal/rebellion/call-it-what-you-will) which for Wikipedia, is unfortunate - especially since the withdrawal is principally concerned with science and anti-science articles. Without expert participation in these articles, you end up with Medicine just being a redirect to Homeopathy, proof positive that MMR vaccine causes Autism - heck any vaccine is by the Illuminatii, and AIDS was caused by permissive drug use. There are lots of others, but here in the "socialist paradise", it's a paradise for the moronic uneducated who believe sincerely (but sincerely incorrectly) in these things. Because admins don't wish to be involved (and are prevented by policy) and are too disinterested to be informed, they end up rewarding civility over content. Something as you can appreciate doesn't happen in the real-world (tm) ... although there are admins so divorced from the real-world that they believe it does operate like Wikipedia. Shot info ( talk) 23:12, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
I like to be naive and think that admins are like speakers of parliaments, who stay out of issues and are there to maintain order. Timeshift ( talk) 05:37, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
[note after writing this: I refer to a 'strike,' but I don't mean to distinguish that from any other withdrawal]
I should start off by saying that I only read the first third or so of this discussion. It is long long long, is in need of re-organization and user-friendlifying, and I planned to leave the office two hours ago. So, what I say may already have been said, or other movements may have rendered them irrelevant. That said, here are my thoughts: Say there were a strike. For the editors of the NY Times to pay attention, let alone put the final damages on the front page, it would have to be publicized. This, I imagine, would be something like posting a sign on a warehouse saying "Dear grafitists [grafitiists?]: The police will not patrol this area from [this date] until [this date]." The police, there, would not come back to a brick wall covered in spray paint. They'd come back to a battered wall, deep piles of broken glass, litter, etc. For an expert WP editors strike (like any other strike) to be effective, it would have to be generally supported. I would suspect that many of the editors who keep WP in line generally (watching grammar, vandalism, etc) are also experts in something. So a strike of the experts would mean a strike of the watchdogs. The damage at the end of a month would be impermanent: there are the storage servers, and the History lists. But restoring order would not be a simple thing, by any means. Someone would have to go through and sort out of month's worth of "good" edits from "bad" edits, and those editors whose edits of that month were reverted would fight back, and WP might not recover. (Of course, maybe the expert/watchdog overlap isn't that big, but I can't think of any feasible way to find out ahead of time.)
And so on. But (and I for one haven't had any G&Ts) there was some thing I was going to address. But what? It will come to me.
Oh yes: Showing that significant damage was done to the quality of WP by a withdraw of experts would be a major research project. If someone here is looking for a —what? systems modelling in science, technology, and society, following dynamic databases in changing environments?— dissertation topic then a strike might be worthwhile (if we assume I'm wrong, in the previous paragraph, to picture WP as barely being kept afloat by, e.g. editors who happen to stumble on a page up for deletion just in time to contest an automated process (not that I did a bunch of that today…) (looking into that would make for a great dissertation too)). We'd need
Then we'd to analyze how quality of WP changed during the strike on measures of NPOV and ….; how did the strike affect the population of active editors; whether we can attribute the one to the other. Maybe someone knows how to do that, but the chances that they'll become part of this discussion without it being publicized are mighty slim. And again, with publicity would come that school of editors (maybe even hackers) excited by the idea of messin' with a big project.
For these reasons, I side with an early comment and argue for the opposite approach: fight non-expert edits with expert edits.
As for where the expert voice would go: my impression is that the internet paradigm is that each field can only have one Champ. In terms of consolidation and inter-user reliability, this is of one the great boons of the internet age. But another aspect introduces some problems. That aspect is the non-admittance of generics. Once someone has carved out their spot as The Prototype/The Best the competition becomes —for whatever host of reasons— insignificant. To use an awful it's-really-time-to-get-dinner metaphor: In terms of Citizendium or future similar projects, I think WP's already gone into the throne room and locked the door. I mean, people are calling WP "Wiki." If the goal is (and I hope it is) to disseminate NPOV/expert/etc knowledge broadly, and now, it must be done on WP. Experts' withdrawing from WP would not precipitate a crisis. Wikignomes and procrastinators, and the policies already in place, would keep WP generally stable (even if it took an initial (e.g. one-month) hit), and so new generations of experts will keep coming to WP. There'd be a dangerous period when either the newbies would rise quick enough to carry WP on, or controversial info would be entered to quickly for editors to keep it clean. In the former case the WP article on the valiant "Experts of '08" would be deemed non-notable. In the latter case, WP would plateau and, as it became more out of date, people would stop using it. That would definitely precipitate a crisis, but with the whole wiki-reference enterprise associated with WP I bet this would be as damaging to Citizendium et al. as it would be to WP.
Good lord. Did I really write all that? Is it really that late? If anyone wants to read the articles (journal, not WP) I was supposed to be reading and take notes on them for me, hit my talk page :p — eitc h 00:43, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
With the witchhunt that started all this, ArbCom member Paul August says "One good editor lost does far more harm to the project than dozens of disruptive editors not blocked at the first possible moment." I gather than this is said without a shred of irony given ArbCom's rampant persecution of VU. Shot info ( talk) 05:53, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
That is the problem. Arbcomm in this instance is viewing Matthew Hoffman as the good editor lost, not the disruptive editor not blocked. Now since I was the editor dealing with Matthew Hoffman, from my perspective, Matthew Hoffman was nothing but disruptive and contributed nothing to Wikipedia, and is unlikely to ever contribute anything to Wikipedia.
Matthew Hoffman was just one of an endless line of similar trolls who wanted to push his religious agenda; that is, that intelligent design should be promoted here on Wikipedia as the most brilliant scientific advance of the 20th century, proving that Charles Darwin was Satan himself. When we wanted to "make necessary assumptions" that intelligent design is part of creationism (and we have 5 or 10 reliable sources that say it is, including creationist sources), Matthew Hoffman threw a tantrum. When we suggested to Matthew Hoffman that the references at the intelligent design article should be sufficient, Matthew Hoffman threw a tantrum. He was obnxious, and pushy and nasty and threatening.
Matthew Hoffman was unblocked, and where has he contributed? Not one bit since he was unblocked months ago. Now granted, he is probably operating here as a sock puppet, but still...
It is ludicrous to hound VU out of here in the desperate hope that Matthew Hoffman would produce something. I would dearly love to make some of these wikilove advocates responsible for these trolls, and if they do not produce, then stick it to the wikilove advocates who are more in favor of volunteering someone else's time to deal with these POVandals than doing anything about it, in the frantic hope that one of these POVandals will actually have a conversion experience and become productive.
I notice that almost none of these POV pushers actually are interested in creating anything. They are mainly interested in disruption, as near as I can tell.-- Filll ( talk) 18:52, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
I got into a bit of a discussion about what's going on at Wikipedia offsite and made a post which details another problem around here which I think is part of the core problem. It might be hard, but I think it might be possible for us to actually make some headway on this issue if we push. Quoting straight from the post I made:
What I really hate over there is how the consensus among many casual editors seems to be that science is a point of view (”SPOV”), and as such, we have to appropriately balance it with other points of view to make articles Neutral Point of View (”NPOV”). They completely miss the point that science is a method, not a conclusion, and on top of that, it’s simply one of the best methods we have for gathering data. But it gets treated like a viewpoint over there, so it has to be balanced against pseudoscientific views. Now, there are clauses about not fringe giving views undue weight, but this doesn’t help much when there’s a ton of horrible research being done on a subject (as with Homeopathy and Chiropractic). It looks to the casual observer like there’s a lot of weight to the credulous views, because they can’t determine the quality of the research. Even second-order research, such as meta-analyses, is flooded with poor-quality reviews which again, make it look like the credulous viewpoint is more credible than it actually is.
So, what I think we need to push for is acceptance that science isn't a point of view. Rather, it's a means of determining reality, and scientific sources should be considered among the best reliable sources. We should also raise points about how it's best to judge the quality of a scientific paper - journal it's published in, citations, etc. - so that non-experts can check to see whether a certain paper is good or not. When it comes to sources, we want quality, not quantity. -- Infophile (Talk) (Contribs) 19:34, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
← Anthon1 making a very common mistake about NPOV. It requires that we describe evolutions in science after they happen. A lot of people seem to want Wikipedia to describe things that are just about to happen in science, or right around the corner, or beyond the cutting edge. And they invariably bring up things like Galileo and Semmelweiss. If Wikipedia were around when Semmelweiss was first mentioning handwashing, then it would quite properly have regarded it as a fringe view. After handwashing became accepted by experts in the field, Wikipedia would be updated to reflect that. Wikipedia is not the place to bring more attention or credibility to a fringe or protoscientific idea. If that idea becomes mainstream, then Wikipedia will reflect it, but it should never try to anticipate that an idea will be proven right or wrong in the future. Because for every Semmelweiss, there are 5,000 Lysenkos and Lamarcks - and that's a conservative estimate. MastCell Talk 00:09, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
The problem is that no one is charged with enforcing NPOV. Or rather, we all are. Admins don't have any special claim or role as standard-bearers of NPOV; they just have blunt tools for dealing with behavioral issues. There is no higher body or "content ArbCom" that will bestow victory to the "right" side. For better or worse, it's the community of uninvolved editors who need to be convinced that a given interpretation of NPOV, or a given source, or whatever is the most encyclopedic. Thye will listen to reason, but they will even more rapidly be put off by flagrant incivility or incessant bickering and negativity. Regardless of whether this is the "right" way to build an encyclopedia, it's reality. We (meaning people who would like the encyclopedia to be a useful reference work on scientific topics) need to recognize that the community ultimately upholds WP:NPOV and WP:V, and that in this environment rudeness, pettiness, or incivility can and do outweigh the "rightness" of the underlying argument. Some editors who are interested in emphasizing fringe or unscientific coverage of scientific topics have already recognized this, to their advantage. Admins are not going to suddenly start "enforcing" NPOV by blocking people (which is really the only extra tool they have available); we need to make a better case to the community. MastCell Talk 22:54, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
outdent. It would look like more or less what it does: evolution is a scientific theory. And nearly everything, including life after physical death, the existence of God etc., can be investigated scientifically. The problem is POV pushing: from the fringe, yes, but also from those who incite the fringe by trying to speak of people's false beliefs and fringy ideas in a manner which frankly shoves the scientific POV down their throats rather than simply makes it available. That not only screws the scientific POV by making everyone hate it, it is against current WP policy. —— Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 07:16, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
The SPOV (science point of view) is the point of view that the scientific community can be trusted to accurately represent present day understanding of logic and evidence and reality. Other points of view insist that the scientific community is biased in some way so that there is some aspect of reality that the scientific community is wrong about and some other person or community is right about. Personal revelation, subjective truths, revealed religion, secret truths, secret societies, belief in corruption in the scientific community (who pays their salaries?), mysticism, and emotion based certainty all play a part in people deciding to reject some specific scientific consensus and instead believing something else. WAS 4.250 ( talk) 18:31, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
AlexanderSaxton has been confirmed as a sockpuppet of Davkal. Details here. Raymond Arritt ( talk) 17:31, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
Hello. You see from my user page I just joined, though I have been lurking on this debate for a few months. I hope it is evident which 'side' I am on from my user page. What is the current view of the 'scientists' now? (The debate got so painful I haven't followed it in recent weeks). Best The Rationalist ( talk) 10:12, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
So what do you do with those parts of your life that are not verifiable, yet exist anyway? - Define "exist" and "verifiable" and "parts of your life". These kinds of philosophical questions are about confused terminology. WAS 4.250 ( talk) 18:44, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
outdent] The simple answer is to reinterpret those experiences. That's the scientific thing to do. We should be prepared to reevaluate our experiences and change our minds. That's the only way to make progress, and which is what happens in science all the time. Just recalibrate your mind. -- Fyslee / talk 21:14, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
Having to deal with issues like cranks and trolls diverts experts' time, and I think the large amount of policy in place to deal with conflicts can make experts feel helpless against Wikipedia's "system" (as evidenced by the call for a boycott — my initial reaction was, "why don't you just fix it?!"). Here's a proposed solution to this problem:
Identify experts, and if they want to, assign a "WikiHelper" to them (perhaps after verifying their credentials off-record to avoid diversion of volunteer time). A WikiHelper is like an assistant/clerk/mentor/lawyer to the expert; he or she supports the expert in making substantial contributions and helps keep cranks and other issues off the expert's back.
In particular, this is what a WikiHelper could do:
WikiHelpers will need some sensitivity to avoid being the expert's meatpuppet, but I think it's possible to handle this problem appropriately with some good common sense on the WikiHelper's side.
The idea behind this is that there are probably many users like me who don't have a substantial knowledge in any specific area (I'm a college student), but are well-acquainted with Wikipedia's policies/processes and are able to handle issues really quickly. For instance, I'd be happy to be the WikiHelper of one or several science experts. Any comments? -- Lea ( talk) 00:14, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
<undent>Actually in my experience, to state that almost no scientists believe in things like creationism is pretty close to correct. If you look at the general public, about half of the general public in the US subscribe to it. The more a person knows about the subject, however, the less likely they are to express a belief in creationism. So among engineers, it is no longer about 50%, but about 5%. If one moves to biologists, it is no longer 50% or 5%, but about 0.01% or less.
So it is not true that getting a PhD means you are immediately stupid and unskeptical about some of these fruitcake ideas; quite the opposite. However, a belief in such irrational things stands out in such sharp contrast that people notice it when someone with a PhD in science or engineering or mathematics states that creationism is superior to evolution. It is not the PhD that makes them have these stupid ideas, but it is the PhD that makes us notice them.
On remote viewing etc: I do believe that there is a place for describing this material from both a skeptical and a less critical point of view on a Wiki. It just is unreasonable to expect that one Wiki, this one, Wikipedia, can be all things to all people. This is clearly impossible. It is not possible to have one article that includes debunking material, and does not include debunking material at the same time. And this does not follow the rules of NPOV.
What happens is that purveyers of "fringe science" want there to be no debunking material in these fringe science articles. It is not possible to be a serious encyclopedia, and to follow NPOV. However, I personally enjoy reading about these fringe science areas from different perspectives. And I think that if we can organize this enterprise in a better way we can all be more effective and productive.
That is why I have suggested things like people trying the Paranormal Wiki (one of the Wikia Projects). It is dying for content. But none of the fringe science people want to consider the Paranormal Wiki, maybe because of the name, or maybe because it is some perceived slight. Maybe it should be called Alternapedia? Or some other name, to make it more palatable?
It is obvious that this Wiki cannot both include skeptical rational material, and not include it, at the same time. People try to redefine NPOV to get away from this. People wikilawyer things to death. Science Apologist is attacked over and over by purveyors of pseudoscience who want to get rid of him. This is a complete waste of time for all concerned. Either we change how we do business here, or we will continue to have trouble, and the trouble might even get worse.-- Filll ( talk) 16:58, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
JJ left a comment on my talk page which deserves a full reply. (He queried a comment of mine on account abuse). 1. Shotinfo said in a reply to a message I left on his page that 'I think those-that-should-know-better-but-don't probably have penciled you in as a sock'. I honestly have no idea what he means here, or who he is talking about. 2. I then noticed a comment by Martinphi asking 'And The Rationalist is a sock of whom?' on this page, which is quite explicit. All I can say is, most of the protagonists on the 'pro science' side seem actually to be scientists, and I'm not a scientist, so why am I being called a 'sock'? I have had nothing to do with this debate so far, except for studying it for a while, and, frankly, I'm still a little mystified about this whole thing. Clearly a lot more has been going on than I have been able to follow from this page alone. The Rationalist ( talk) 15:44, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
<undent>This is exactly the kind of trouble I am discussing above. We will have more and more of this if we cannot organize ourselves better. So I have stated over and over on this page and its talk page that we need to consider other more productive options. I am pleading with people; let's see if we can figure a way out of this mess.-- Filll ( talk) 17:04, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
In this case, a purportedly new user showed up at irreducible complexity. He was extremely combative and appeared quite knowledgable about Wikipedia, although he had supposedly not edited here before, so people were suspicious. He was blocked by an admin, first for a short period, and then for a longer period on suspicion that he was a banned sock puppet, and other admins signed off on this. This banned user wrote to be allowed back on, and his email was lost. Eventually someone on the Arbcomm was contacted and decided to make a test case out of the admin. The Arbcomm case went on for more than 2 months. Voting started even before there was any evidence, after less than 12 hours. Some of the Arbcomm members made negative statements about the editors on Wikipedia (we are supposedly "dogs" and worse) and the Arbcomm members did not distance themselves from these remarks. The admin asked for time off for his exams and for Christmas and this was only very grudgingly granted. This case did not follow normal procedure where an RfC was held first, so an RfC was created. The community overwhelmingly supported the admin, except for a group who push anti-science agendas who do not like this admin (for obvious reasons). Some of these anti-science editors opened a second RfC condemning the admin for calling one of them a "homeopathy promoter" and claiming that was uncivil and wanting him sanctioned or worse for using such uncivil language (this second RfC was not certified so it disappeared). The Arbcomm appeared to ignore the RfC where the community supported the admin and would not compromise on the wording of one or two of the findings. So finally after 8 or 9 weeks of sheer hell, the admin decided he had had enough and would leave.
There is a lot more to the story, but this is some of it.-- Filll ( talk) 19:12, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
You are hitting on another problem that is related; accessibility. Both pseudoscience proponents and science proponents have a tendency to use too much jargon in the LEAD and make the article hard to read for nonspecialists. For example, in homeopathy, no one but a homeopath is going to know what "potentization" or "succussion" or "trituration" or "remedies" are, or what 10X or 100C or 3M means. And the same is true of science types, who might want to go into great detail about metastatistics and double blind tests and hypothesis testing and confirmation bias and so on. In both cases, this kind of material makes the article inaccessible for the average reader.
In the case of "bleep", I have studied a lot of quantum mechanics, up through graduate level quantum field theory. I personally found the movie not that horrible, at least the first half an hour or hour or so. I think that the last part is just crazy, but that is ok; it does present a lot of interesting and state of the art physics to a general audience. We have to be able to produce articles that (1) include the mainstream views of the science community (2) are accessible (3) present the pseudoscience claims as clearly as possible. Unfortunately, we have various elements here that want to discard (1), (2) or (3), or possibly more than one of these requirements.-- Filll ( talk) 19:21, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
In response to the comment above that ends:
My perception was that an admin, who is part of a group of admins that uses bullying to maintain ownership of articles (but I almost always agree with the end result in terms of article content), responded to an aggressive new editor with equal aggression and in the end banned him for the thought crime of agreeing with other banned editors using the excuse of "sock/meat puppet". The problem is that we need a content arbcom, so we don't have to spend literally unlimited amounts of time arguing the exact same points with every new editor (or be forced to use bullying or thought crime to end the endless debates). It also would have helped if the admin had not ignored an arbcom member who questioned his indef block. WAS 4.250 ( talk) 10:56, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
My perception of the situation is closer to Jay*Jay's. I was the editor who was mainly dealing with this "newbie". I will eat my hat if that "newbie" is not some sort of sock of someone blocked. He was abusive and obnoxious and knew way too much about WP rules right from his first couple of edits. The Vanished User, the admin who blocked this "newbie", was protecting me, not bullying anyone. Frankly, this "newbie" was bullying me and being a complete jerk (I could say worse, but I will hold off).
Is protecting this "newbie" more important than protecting me? If so, why? I have over 25000 edits and have created well over 1000 articles in about 15 months. Am I not of any value here? Give me a break...
And after all this nonsense, where is the esteemed "newbie" MH? What has he contributed after begging and pleading to be allowed back on for months? And what has happened to the Arbcomm member who called the editors on Wikipedia dogs and worse?
I have started dealing with these sorts of disruptive editors by repeatedly inviting them to create some new articles or content. Almost always they vanish. They are usually not interested in creating anything, but just in destruction and obstruction.
We need to reorganize ourselves and new mechanisms. And that is the purpose of this page; to stimulate the creation of some new ideas that might be worth trying.-- Filll ( talk) 16:53, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Well to me it appears like a rewriting of history and creeping rule changes, or problems with unwritten rules. So the Vanished User had edited irreducible complexity and was involved in a content dispute in this instance? I think if he did edit that article, it was many months previously. And the same was true of the other complaints; if he had edited an article 10 or 12 months earlier, people were crying foul. But those who supported the Vanished User saw through these ridiculous trumped-up charges and supported him anyway.
Under those standards, FeloniousMonk and Raul654 should be immediately banned. Are you going to bring charges against them for this in front of Arbcomm? Go ahead. I dare you.
About the homeopathy articles: I have no problem with a couple of hundred articles and miniarticles about homeopathy. I think few do. What I am nervous about is giving the green light to allowing 10,000 miniarticles about Homeopathy or even 20,000 or more. And allowing them all to be glowing accounts of this wonderful treatment known as homeopathy. For example, in the Charles Darwin article, one homeopath wrote a large section about what wonderful homeopathic treatments Darwin had and how they had cured him. The actual sources showed that he probably had steam baths and baths mainly, and they did not work. And Darwin wrote extensively about what a crock of $%^& homeopathy is. But with admin support, Darwin's biography was turned into a vehicle for uncritical promotion of homeopathy, when the sources did not support this, and in fact support the opposite.
So, I have no problem with describing homeopathy clearly. But these pro-homeopathy elements are not interested in that. They want something far different; they want to promote their profession with the standard mumbo jumbo that is completely inaccessible and just serves to obscure the nature of the treatments. And so we come to my suggestion here; to let the pro-homeopathy editors go at it, and then evaluate the product after a few months. And see, is this what we want for Wikipedia, or not? Because with the current mechanisms that exist here, we have no way to stop a civil homeopath who wants 20,000 pro-homeopathy articles on Wikipedia. No recourse whatsoever. And anyone trying to stop him or slow him down will end up banned. That is our current situation.-- Filll ( talk) 18:24, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
And what about User:Raul654? -- Filll ( talk) 19:03, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Raul654 has done the same as FM and Vanished User. Over and over; believe me. -- Filll ( talk) 19:29, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
WP used to not encourage WP:SPA, but somehow there has been a change in culture on Wikipedia in the last year or so. And even though Jimbo made statements like "we will be cracking down around here" (and these statements sounded to me that we would be getting rid of disruptive editors), what has actually happened is a crackdown on established editors and admins (maybe this started with User: Durova?), not on WP:SPA and sockpuppets and newbies and POVandals and meat puppets and malcontents and so on. Somehow the mantra of "the encyclopedia that everyone can edit" has become stronger than everything else, to the point of even creating an environment so unpleasant that established productive editors want to leave.
I wonder if there is some nervousness about growth of Wikipedia. This seems silly to me, since the number of articles continues to grow, the number of GAs and FAs continue to grow, the standards for GAs and FAs are higher now than ever before, and most articles that I deal with seem to have more and more frequent edits. So I am basically puzzled here...-- Filll ( talk) 19:03, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
I am glad you like the evolution FAQ. It was my idea and I wrote the first version. It only works in combination with many other adjustments however. See my discussion at [11].
The thing about the SPAs is that the WikiLove Police are now favoring the SPAs over other editors.-- Filll ( talk) 19:29, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
After a bit of time on the 'What the bleep' page, I see where you guys are coming from. I had hitherto believed that no problem was too great for men & women of good faith to get round together to solve. Perhaps an idle dream. It is all fighting over little bits of sentences, with no sense of the thread of the article, of how the ideas fit together, of the order in which an article is presented. I wonder if the idea of 'anyone can edit an encyclopedia' really makes sense. Anyway, enough for today, friends. The Rationalist ( talk) 18:47, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Hey Rationalist, I'm a few days ahead of you; a similar thing happened to me last week on the same page, when I also started out trying to be reasonable and accommodating (as opposed to those unyielding and dogmatic science guys who weren't doing the cause of science any good by their attitude, I thought) and suddenly realized that my arguments were being twisted and repeated back to me as agreement with a point of view I didn't share and couldn't agree with. The problem with WP:AGF is that it only works if everyone really is acting in good faith. When the people on one side are fighting for an ideology, for legitimacy for ideas that can't possibly succeed on their own merits, for vested interests (there is an enormous amount of money in the new age industry), then assuming good faith only benefits those who are acting in bad faith.
I stopped trying to contribute to the discussion after that, and it was about that time that I came across, by accident, information that led me to believe that some of the vocal pushers of the pro-Bleep slant are on the faculty of [a new-age "college"] Many of the "experts" featured in that movie have been identified as faculty members at this institution, so it would be to the institution's advantage to have the movie presented as a reasonable representation of science. And surely no one is naive enough to think that the Ramtha interests don't have editors working on the article? JZ Knight may look a bit "out there," but as far as marketing and making money off her brand, she's no fool. As long as this is the state of affairs on Wikipedia: on one hand vested interests backed up with unlimited resources and the zeal of an army of true believers willing to work tirelessly for the cause, on the other hand a few exhausted people who think an encyclopedia should be an accurate and objective reflection of reality, and a regulatory bureacracy that gives both sides equal weight, I can't foresee a good outcome, either for the encyclopedia (which is considered a joke in the circles I frequent, and has certainly not presented itself in a positive light to me as a newbie) or for anyone but the special interests and ideologues who seem to be winning the battle. I can't think of any reason why it would make sense for me personally to become involved, when it's so obvious that it's a lost cause. Woonpton ( talk) 18:31, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
You are hitting on the basic problem, the reason we created these discussions on these pages. We need to think creatively of other ways to organize ourselves, or things will stay in this current mess, or get worse. -- Filll ( talk) 20:19, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
I do not think it is hopeless. What I think worked reasonably well on WP a year ago or two years ago does not work so well now because of all kinds of changes that happen when you get high visibility on the web and many more people using the web etc. I think we have to brainstorm about things to try to improve the situation. Just edit warring with people who are commercially driven or ideologically driven to make some unencyclopedia edits will not work. There are way too many of them, and the current situation where wikilove is the paramount consideration means we do not have the administrative structure behind us, for the most part, but against us. So we have to be creative about suggestions to put forward, and ways to bring attention to the problem.-- Filll ( talk) 19:13, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
There are a lot of accounts on here that do nothing but argue, and create nothing. Methods for discouraging those accounts would be great. Like topic bans, or page bans. It is a real problem to compile the evidence necessary for an RfC, let alone an Arbcomm proceeding, and even an AN/I alert can be problematic. Maybe accounts that have been productive at a certain level should be given more leeway than these driveby sock puppets and meat puppets that create nothing. If you needed 10,000 edits and 3 GAs to be taken seriously, that would slow a lot of them down. Then in some sort of dispute with an established user, someone who has 100 edits, all to talk pages arguing that man never landed on the moon and it is all an evil hoax by extraterrestrial aliens disguised as world leaders, would not carry much weight compared to the established user. I agree with avoiding WP:BITE, but if a new user is just being disruptive, let him work on a few articles and show he is productive first and keep him away from the articles where he is being disruptive. I am not sure if that would work, but we need to think of other ways to organize ourselves.-- Filll ( talk) 20:00, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Well, I figure this particular issue deserves to at least be brought up. We've seemed to skirt around it for quite a while. Anyways, I think we can all agree that there are a fair share of pro-science editors who have definite civility problems (not naming any names, though it is interesting that I don't see them around here). In my opinion, this often seems to make the overall problem worse, as admins see a definite problem on one side of the issue. I think one thing that might help would be for us to raise our concerns with these editors and see if we can get them to lighten up a bit. -- Infophile (Talk) (Contribs) 20:05, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
As for what to do when the frustration reaches that point, we need to offer clearer support regarding how to get backup, and we need to get in the habit of using back up long before we start feeling hot under the collar. There is very little excuse for arguing until one loses one's temper when one could go get three other people to repeat one's argument for one. - GTBacchus( talk) 02:49, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
I was thinking that we might need a new guideline to coach editors in judging the quality of scientific sources. As we know, with sources like, say, newspapers, it's relatively easy to judge whether a particular paper is reliable or not ( New York Times: Reliable. National Enquirer: More reliable if you take the opposite of everything they say). But for scientific papers, it's a fair bit more difficult. Peer review is a fickle mistress, so sometimes bad papers slip into good journals, while other times good papers can only get into poorer journals. There are ways to judge how good a paper is, but the average editor doesn't know them.
So, I'm bringing this up here as the editors browsing this page are most likely to be interested in this and capable of helping. Do you think we should try to write a guideline (or at least an essay) to help editors judge the quality of scientific sources? -- Infophile (Talk) (Contribs) 18:52, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
The best thing is to actually understand the content. You can find garbage even in Science and Nature and Cell and PNAS. But less garbage there than in more minor journals, and less garbage in minor peer-reviewed science journals than in mainstream respectable media like NYT, and so on. -- Filll ( talk) 19:28, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
In the area of guarding against pseudoscience, quackery, and cultism, Wikipedia is fundamentally irredeemable. The basic tenets of Wikipedia are that "expertise" and "fact" do not exist; rather, they are, first, that anyone--even the 15-year-old anime fans who comprise the majority of the editor base here--can have an equally valid opinion about how the world works as compared to a person who has studied chemistry for years, been awarded a PhD, been published in legitimate journals, or so forth. Second, that there is no such thing as "truth" and anyone who appeals to truth is breaking the rules; there is only "verifiability," and of course the Flat Earth Society and the Creationist Institute count just as much for citations as scientific journals do, since there is no such thing as expertise or objective fact. Such relativism and radical epistemological egalitarianism are the core principles of Wikipedia, and are of course in direct opposition to the scientific method and the Enlightenment philosophy that have brought us everything good in the world, and particularly have brought us a scientific understanding of physical reality. You can never change Wikipedia to acknowledge that science is the foremost, and only, legitimate method of understanding the physical universe, because then it would no longer be Wikipedia. All of the people who have drunk the Kool-Aid about Wikipedia being some sort of political or social achievement will resist a challenge to the fundamental principles of the encyclopedia--we see this in the administrators who the pseudoscientists already have in their pocket. In the unlikely event that a critical mass of admins ever understands that the project is doomed, the inside group, or Jimbo himself, will boot them out, because they will never admit that Wikipedia is founded on promoting a fundamentally anti-reason, anti-science, anti-truth philosophy. Randy Blackamoor ( talk) 22:00, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia is useful and every year more useful than the last. Wikipedia's rules do not remain the same; they have changed over time and will continue to do so. The basic tenets of Wikipedia are that "expertise" and "fact" do exist; but claims of expertise are not sufficient to tell everyone else to just shut up. We require evidence not authority based assertion. This is how science works. Second, there is such a thing as "truth" and appeals to truth to delete a claim from an article breaks no rule; but verifiability is required to add a claim to an article. Relativism and radical epistemological egalitarianism are not core principles of Wikipedia. WAS 4.250 ( talk) 12:21, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
I am a Ph.D. physicist, and I whole-heartedly support Wikipedia's core policies. In fact, I see them as the application of the scientific world view and method to a special regime. A good scientific paper may express an individual conclusion, but it will also be neutral in the sense of "writing for the enemy" and pointing out all the weaknesses of the hypothesis. A good scientific review article will present a balanced and neutral picture of the current state of the field, being very careful not to push the POV of the author or pretend to be a "crystal ball". I'll try not to let my Wiki activity get in the way of my job or my life, but I plan to stick around. -- Art Carlson ( talk) 12:57, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
← So the civility issue is a significant issue that pro-science and pro-pseudoscience (support the pseudoscience inclusion ad-infinitum) editors are often tripping themselves up on. Until they get it, we won't know if a more substantive solution is reachable. Anthon01 ( talk) 16:23, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
I think we should demand that either (1) Anthon01 rewrite WP:NPOV completely to suit himself and those of his fellows since they disagree with it or (2) we scrap WP:NPOV completely. Both of these would be completely permissable under the current environment that has been established at WP and I believe the current powers that be would favor either of these.-- Filll ( talk) 17:27, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
It might be time to take the essential points we all agree on and try to forumulate a plan of action. From what I am reading to date there are two main points.
1) Don't get drawn into drama.
2) Deal with SPA and COI editors.
David D. (Talk) 16:37, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
It seems to be that the solution is not to boycott the articles that attract fringe POV pushers. That would be giving them their fondest wish on a plate. The proper solution is to terminate the problem users - block them when they are disruptive or POV pushing, and escalate the blocks for subsequent relapses. And while it can be trying on your patience, be civil while doing it, so (as RA pointed out) as to not give them an important counter-claim of incivility. Raul654 ( talk) 19:57, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Well maybe...-- Filll ( talk) 01:00, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
In the current circumstances, disagreeing with those who are irrational or who have FRINGE views is discouraged or even forbidden, as is arguing against them. I think maybe the best option might be to let the FRINGE elements rewrite NPOV as they see fit. And for everyone else just to let them because that is the civil thing to do. Let them destroy Wikipedia as quickly as possible because that is the only civil thing to do.-- Filll ( talk) 07:33, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
Well you go ahead and disagree with them and see what happens. Ever come to the alternative medicine articles? Try it on homeopathy now. I would love to see how it goes.-- Filll ( talk) 14:04, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
-- Filll ( talk) 18:44, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
I have started an AN/I thread on this: [14]-- Filll ( talk) 15:52, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
I would doubt that, but the commercial part probably would work. I am going to try that approach a bit since we can nail at least a couple of the homeopaths on that one.-- Filll ( talk) 21:57, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
WP:COIN is for obvious conflicts of interest: Editors adding information about themselves or their specific interests. Specific interests include employers, friends, family members, etc. It does not apply to professions, areas of expertise, personal beliefs, etc. Look through WP:COIN and you'll see that if the coi isn't obvious, the discussion will be closed or referred to another venue. -- Ronz ( talk) 23:15, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
As one of the creators of WP:COI, I can assure everyone here that WP:COI is about not editing in a WP:NPOV way due to being too close to a subject. Both components are important. An editor editing in a NPOV way is not in violation of WP:COI; but if he is too close to the subject, then he is still not following its recommendations and he only has himself to blame if the appearance of COI gets him in trouble either at Wikipedia or in the real world. The second aspect, "too close to the subject" can refer to anything at all - it is about one's mind being biased - it is about thinking you are being NPOV yet you are not. AGF means that even someone deliberately POVing an article can be assumed to be biased rather than knowingly introducing a bias. Further, the right to anon means that we usually can't verify actual real life circumstances that cause bias, but use the actual edits to gather evidence of bias, which if when the bias is pointed out they are still blind to it becomes evidence of a WP:COI. Such persons are not supposed to edit those articles they have demonstrated that do not edit in a NPOV way. WAS 4.250 ( talk) 12:58, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Well, a few days ago I made this comment on the Homeopathy incidents page, meeting Jehochman's request for a supply of 3-5 diffs representing disruption. The case here is an obvious instance of stonewalling (with a little incivility thrown in). In the days since then, there's been zero action, or even discussion of it. If Jehochman (or any other admin) doesn't think it's worth banning over, they aren't even bothering to explain why. Even Dana's mentor hasn't replied to me about this problem when I raised it with her. It's as if they hope they can just ignore it and hope it goes away... -- Infophile (Talk) (Contribs) 23:31, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
Admin culture at the English language Wikipedia has over the last two years increasingly moved in the direction of treating Wikipedia as a multi-player game. But some admins still are more concerned with creating a credible encyclopedia. User:TimVickers is an excellent scientist, admin, and article writer. I'm sure he knows of others. When you need an admin that cares about the content policies, go to someone like Tim. WAS 4.250 ( talk) 13:11, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
At the bottom of [15], Shirahadasha states that Arbcomm has ruled that Science has no place on Wikipedia and some FRINGErs are just loving it:
As i understand it, Wikipedia has expressly rejected favoring scientific points of views as opposed to other points of views. Views are significant with respect to (a) sheer numbers (the most common popular viewpoint is generally significant) and (b) contribution to general culture/knowledge etc. Scientific points of view have made a major contribution to general culture and hence scientific points of view are essentially always significant, but religious, humanistic, philosophical, and other points of view are often significant as well. Viewpoints need to be represented as such. One good reason for including more than one viewpoint is that different viewpoints influence each other and can change each other over time. For example, half a century ago environmentalism was thought to be a non- or even anti-scientific point of view, whereas it is now commonly thought of as a scientific point of view. But non-scientific thought about the environment affected the cultural environment in which scientists did their work. The ArbCom ruling is limited to theories that purport to be scientific (if they claim to be scientific, then that claim must be backed up by mainstream science), and doesn't apply to general culture and other viewpoints that don't claim to be science-based. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 02:33, 3February 2008 (UTC)
. Hmm...Surely this isnt true? Or is it?--
Filll (
talk) 23:35, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
FYI, whilst user:Newyorkbrad has declined to post here, he is keeping an eye on this page. I asked him to comment as he is the ArbCom member for whom I have the most respect. Jay*Jay ( talk) 01:08, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
"Arbcom hates science" is going overboard. But tThe Paranormal arbcom left enough openings that many of the fringers interpreted it as a complete vindication. Wikipedia has problems with ideas that are so idiotic that science basically ignores them, leaving us with few reality-based sources to provide balance against proponents. Those are among the few instances where
WP:V breaks down: the fringers get to include lots of lousy, self-published and outlier-journal sources by true believers, because there isn't much else available.
Raymond Arritt (
talk) 01:58, 29 February 2008 (UTC) Addendum: Strikethrough added after reading the Paranormal arbcom case in detail. Things are much worse than I had imagined. Read it yourself, if you aren't easily nauseated.
Raymond Arritt (
talk) 04:27, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Well, since NYB is purportedly reading this, I'll post. Arritt is right that sometimes there are not enough mainstream sources. But surely the reader is intelligent enough to get a statement "X has been ignored by mainstream science." And "X is paranormal" or "X is defined as a psychic ability." How stupid are the readers? Can't they figure out what "has not been considered by mainstream science" and "Has not been published in mainstream scientific journals," etc. etc. etc. If you put a few of those phrases in an article, surely any intelligent reader will get it?
It has surprised me before that people on this page don't seem to get that 1) science is a POV, not NPOV: science is SPOV, and SPOV has been rejected as a policy by the community in favor of NPOV [16]. That's just the way it is, and most of your trouble stems directly not from any prejudice against science in the WP rules, and not from the fact that you can't be civil, and not even from the fact of fringe POV pushing. It stems from the refusal to accept that there are notable viewpoints other than science which must be presented to the reader in a neutral, rather than a derogatory, tone.
New York Brad: more than half of the POV pushing on the paranormal side comes from the sense of injustice when articles are obviously biased to present fringe views in a derogatory light. There is other POV pushing, of course, but a lot of it is simply motivated by justifiable outrage, especially among the regulars. Read the discussion here, and see who has it more correct [17] —— Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 04:48, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
←Seems to me that resolving this issue will put many of the current problems on fringe and minority articles to rest. Anthon01 ( talk) 05:45, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
"1a) Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, a fundamental policy, requires fair representation of significant alternatives to scientific orthodoxy. Significant alternatives, in this case, refers to legitimate scientific disagreement, as opposed to pseudoscience."
"4a) Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Reliable sources require that information included in an article have been published in a reliable source which is identified and potentially available to the reader. What constitutes a reliable source varies with the topic of the article, but in the case of a scientific theory, there is a clear expectation that the sources for the theory itself are reputable textbooks or peer-reviewed journals. Scientific theories promulgated outside these media are not properly verifiable as scientific theories and should not be represented as such."
"14) Serious and respected encyclopedias and reference works are generally expected to provide overviews of scientific topics that are in line with respected scientific thought. Wikipedia aspires to be such a respected work."
"Wikipedia:No original research applies to users who are experts in a field and who may be engaged in original research. The latest insights resulting from current research are often not acceptable for inclusion as established information as they have not yet been published."
These principles were not mentioned in any subsequent ArbCom decision. Users spend a large amount of time talking about these issues in the cases, but apart from in Psuedosience they're not explicitly considered in the rulings. Mostlyharmless ( talk) 06:39, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Arbcom does not make policy; it interprets policy with respect to a specific case and decides on what action best benefits wikipedia in that specific case. All comments are to be understood in the context of that case. In this decision arbcom agreed that:
What's the problem? WAS 4.250 ( talk) 13:28, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
The reason I ask for diffs is because my pro-encyclopedia position is often seen as pro-fringe and accusations on my position are made that cannot be supported by the diffs. The assumption is made that if I argue to remove the "pseudoscience" infobox in an articles lead, then I am fringe POV-pushing, when in fact I am considering WP;UNDUE, WP:LEAD, and WP:STYLE in a pro-encyclopedic fashion. Some extremists pro-science editors don't pay enough attention to WP:LEAD or WP:STYLE or even WP:V and WP:RS when it comes to fringe topics, in effect trumping the interests of the project. Two days ago, my attempts to have a civil conversation/debate about NPOV in minority articles, were frustrated by Filll's insistence that his POV on the issue was the only correct interpretation and his repeated assertion (~14 times in two hours) that it was too dangerous to disagree, [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] effectively stiffling any discussion. Last night, attempts to restart the conversation failed again. [24] Understandably, these topics are highly charged for some individuals. However, it is a conversations that needs to be had, and one that requires input not just from pro-science editors, but from the entire community, including non-science editors. Resolving this issue will eliminate most of the mainspace and talkpage edit-warring currently going on around the fringes and overlaps between science and non-science topics. Anthon01 ( talk) 14:11, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Now, just moments ago, it appears that my attempts to debate this issue are having the desired effect.
[25] Discussion.
Anthon01 (
talk) 14:18, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Let me try to clarify what I think of the situation. I believe that the "proportion in respect to their prominence" guideline is helpful, but should not be followed exclusively, as Dave Souza points out. This guideline alone would give maybe 98% or 99% percent of the homeopathy article to SPOV. Worldwide market for homeopathic medicines is about 0.3% of the total world medicine market, and there are many other ways to measure "prominence". For example, there are about 884,000 physicians in the US. There are about 315 professional homeopaths in the US, and about 1000 homeopaths if you count unlicensed amateur homeopaths. So the homeopaths in the US represent about 0.03%-0.1% of the allopathic doctors.
However, we should use this policy in conjunction with other policies. And when the article (in its last rewrite) was about 90% positive and pro-homeopathy, I was not happy. When it was 80% pro-homeopathy, I was not happy. When it started to get towards 70% pro-homeopathy, I was happier. When it reached 60% pro-homeopathy, I felt we were no longer giving short shrift to the mainstream SPOV, while still adequately describing the homeopathic QPOV (quackery POV).
There are other things in the article I am not wild about (the long boring discussion of where homeopathy is popular frankly belong in a daughter article, not the main article I think), but I was happy with a 60/40 split. So was User: Peter morrell, a world-renowned homeopathic authority. At that point, I switched and supported the article for GA status.
However, after the GA promotion we have had a huge flood of new pro-homeopathy editors (can anyone say canvassing?) like Dana Ullman and Anthon01 and Arion 3x3 and Whig and Area69 and on and on and on, hordes of socks and meats and trolls and so on. And in my opinion, most of these people HATE the 40% negative content. They appear to hate hate hate hate hate the current article. They seem to loathe it. My impression is that they loathe NPOV, or how we interpret it. They seem to be frantic. This is destroying their personal businesses if they are homeopaths. They act like they are desperate. They give the impression of wanting to change the article at ALL costs. They have put homeopathy sections in articles about Beethoven and Charles Darwin and any person that has ever tried homeopathy ever. And even if the person tried it and thought homeopathy was crap, like Darwin, they want to write the homeopathy section as a great paean to this amazing miracle cure. There have been moves to put minihomeopathy sections in articles about plants, and maybe eventually minerals and animals and any other substance involved with making homeopathic preparations. If left unbridled with controls or agreements, we will have literally thousands of minihomeopathy articles talking about how wonderful homeopathy is on Wikipedia. And I do not think that would be very helpful or encyclopedic, frankly.
I have tried to offer compromises where they can have a few dozen miniarticles and we can control them carefully. However, every offer of compromise I have made has been spat back in my face. Because they think if they hold out long enough, they can win the whole prize; unbridled license to create as many minihomeopathy articles as they like. How many is that? 1000? 5000? 20000? I do not know, but I do not think we want to go there.
These pro-homeopathy editors do not seem to understand why an article about homeopathy must have ANY material that is about the maintream view. So they fight. And fight. And fight. And argue. And forum shop. And game the system. Over and over and over and over. And that is why we are still fighting. And unless all SPOV editors leave the article and leave it to the QPOV editors to make the homeopathy article roughly 100% positive to homeopathy, we will have fighting. Either that, or until we start applying NPOV in an aggressive way, the way we do 3RR and WP:CIVIL and send a strong message that we are serious about NPOV. Because they do not believe that NPOV is a serious policy. And they think if they just whine for another 6 months or another 2 years, or another 5 years, they will get their way.
So we can either play this ridiculous game. Or we can try to think of how to change our way of doing business.-- Filll ( talk) 19:48, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Newsflash updates (1) We use NPOV here on WP (2) WP does not segregate criticism into a separate article. For that, try Wikinfo. (3) The reason there is fighting is right above, as Raymond Arritt notes. People come here, and demand that we change the rules for them because they say so. (4) Actually the article is about homeopathy. And what do we need to know about homeopathy? That it is a nonmainstream medical technique that used to be popular, but fell out of favor, and now the homeopathic pharmaceutical market is 0.3% of the regular pharmaceutical market, worldwide. And there is no solid evidence that it works. And no theory that gives us any reason to expect it to work, based on 150+ years of physics and chemistry. So, people do not want to accept this. And we have fighting. See?-- Filll ( talk) 04:10, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Also if I stand back and use my scientist hat for a second, there are a couple of amazing things about homeopathy from a scientific standpoint. The first is a bit negative, but it is amazing to me that people will subscribe to this philosophy when it clearly has so little substance to it. The second is that it is direct evidence of the power of the
placebo effect (and for that matter, the
nocebo effect; remember the witch doctor curses etc), which remains deeply mysterious. If we ever figure out what it is, and how to harness it, medicine will truly make a massive leap forward. That is the miraculous part of homeopathy and similar treatments. But not acknowledging that real effect and hiding behind mumbo jumbo obscures this true amazing mysterious feature of homeopathy; its use demonstrates the power of the human mind to cure the human body. And so, I do think there are some things that homeopathy can teach us; they just are not necessarily things that homeopathy promoters would like us to know or learn about the subject. For an encyclopedia, we do our readers no benefits by hiding any of the aspects of homeopathy away, and putting it behind a veil of happy talk and promotion and mysterious jargon that is not defined. We need to present it as it is, peel away the jargon and mystery, and present what the mainstream thinks as well as what the homeopathy community thinks. And we are not supposed to put the criticism in a criticism ghetto, like a separate section or separate article, or remove criticism from the LEAD. There are other places to promote homeopathy; Wikipedia is not one of them. Just like it is not here to sell cars of brand X, or computer operating systems of type Y, or campaign for politician Z, or justify war W, or condemn terrorist action Q.--
Filll (
talk) 05:04, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
A few points:
Martinphi, if you are so sure you are right, why do you not write us an essay describing what "in proportion to their prominence" means in the case of FRINGE articles, and how UNDUE and WEIGHT and NPOV should be applied in the case of FRINGE subjects and pseudoscience and see if the community agrees with your interpretation? We can have an RfC on it and see. We can ask for all kinds of input. Let's see. Maybe the scientific and rationalist community has it all wrong and WP has it wrong and we should ditch science from WP. Ok, lets find out.
I HEREBY THROW DOWN THE GAUNTLET AND CHALLENGE YOU. PUT UP OR SH*T UP. Direct enough for you? If you will not accept this challenge, I for one know what I will think of you. And it will not be particularly complimentary, let me assure you. And I will make sure you know it too. In a WP:CIVIL way of course.
In fact, maybe an editor can be banned for believing that "in proportion to their prominence" is actually in WP policy. Wouldn't you like that? Now remember, I am not saying that this is the only guideline that is relevant in this case; I believe we should take other passages and factors into account, which is why I thought 40/60 was not so bad. If 40/60 is the end of the world, or a complete violation of WP policy, try to get me banned for believing it is not an outrageously stupid ratio. I dare you. Do it. Try to get me sanctioned for actually believing that was correct. Really show me how wrong I am and rub my face in it. Why not? I deserve it, right?
That post has got to be some kind of record. Longest response I've ever seen, and I don't have time to answer all of it. But, the answer to a lot of your questions, is simply that SPOV was rejected as the guiding principle by the community. Go read whatever reasons they had there.
An answer to another is, WP:PROMINENCE means that we should follow the best sources, and present the article as a summary of the general information contained in the sum total of the sources which are reliable. The exceptions are that we use attribution, and that no matter what the sources do, we write in a neutral tone. Further, we flesh out the articles, especially on fringe topics, by using attributed in-universe sources- else we could often not give a real overview due to a lack of material.
"But on such pages, though a view may be spelled out in great detail, it must make appropriate reference to the majority viewpoint"
That means you get to talk about the minority view. It doesn't say "But on such pages, though a minority view may be spelled out in great detail, the majority view must receive about the same amount of space." You reference the majority view, but you don't give it a huge amount of the article.
In the case of Homeopathy, I recommended taking both the tone and content of the NIH and AMA and other really mainstream sources as a template for the article. That was totally rejected as being too soft on Homeopathy, and those sources were attacked, even though they are the very best ones- according to neutral editors.
Now, here's why I don't try to get you banned. There are three reasons: One, it's too much trouble, and two, it's too much trouble because admins are puffballs, just like SA says, and three you have friends who would get you out of trouble no matter how much you deserved it.
I'm not, nor have I ever, said that there aren't any fringe POV pushers. They are about as damaging as the SPOV pushers.
Here is what "neutral editor" means: DGG. And a whole lot of other people who just don't edit here because it is so nasty.
Oh, you're advocating NPOV as the others here have explained it to you? They think it is the same as SPOV- except when they don't really. No wonder you got it wrong. —— Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 07:12, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Amazing on how much nonsense I see here. I disagree with almost every bit of this. Maybe I should just quit. Yep, lets get science out of Wikipedia. Good idea.--
Filll (
talk) 07:21, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
I also say, for about the zillionth time, collect your interpretation of NPOV into a document and lets do an RfC on it. You are positive you are right. Let's see. Stop this nonsense and ridiculous undermining and attacks and making slurs and accusations. You claim NPOV means "A". I claim it does not. There is a way to test. Let's find out. Are you sure you are right? PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS. Let's see if you are right. Write out "A" in detail and let's put it to the test.--
Filll (
talk) 07:38, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Ok Martinphi, since you believe you have been told by the Arbcomm that you are correct, and everyone who disagrees with you has it wrong, why do you not enlighten us all by describing, in detail, in your own words, your interpretation of NPOV in FRINGE areas? How much material should be mainstream? How much should be SPOV?-- Filll ( talk) 17:12, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Guess you really want to stay here to cause chaos and disruption under any conditions, and are not really interested in helping us understand WP policy better. I thought you wanted to teach us how we were wrong.-- Filll ( talk) 14:32, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Having read the deleted guideline to POV pushing too Anthon01, this trick will not work on me; no I do not have a WP:COI problem here. However, you do have patients. Hmm... People in glass houses... How about that mote in your eye anyway?
So when will you write your interpretation of NPOV and tell everyone else how they are wrong and only you and your like-minded editors are correct? -- Filll ( talk) 16:36, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
I was not aware I was supposed to be answering any questions. I agree with Dave souza. You seem to be reading the policy differently than me. I see no such distinction between the two kinds of articles in the policy. I think we cannot have a special category of "comparing type of article" and a separate "noncomparing type of article". And I have said before dozens upon dozens of times (does no one read what I write? or are you all being difficult on purpose?), that the "in proportion to their prominence" phrase I believe has to be interpreted in conjunction with all the policies. Although if you took the "in proportion to their prominence" policy alone, in homeopathy it would be written 99.7% from the position of the mainstream (using the 0.3% marketshare figure for homeopathic medications), this is not helpful for the readers. When using this policy in conjunction with others, it is appropriate to have a much larger proportion of the article devoted to a description of homeopathy itself from a sympathetic or positive view. And the result of the consensus we forged was that 60/40 was about right. And so we promoted the article to GA. Now a huge horde of new editors, many of whom know absolutely nothing about WP policies and principles, most of who are editing only a very narrow range of topics, and most of who have almost no editing record or experience, have declared that consensus is wrong, and our understanding of WP policies are absolutely incorrect. And so I am asking, over and over and over, please let's document what you believe are the correct policies so we can query the community and find out. However, I will note that when the community was queried about such a document or set of documents almost a year ago that tried to redefine or reinterpret NPOV (for example look here), the community overwhelmingly rejected these novel or self-serving interpretations of NPOV in a very aggressive manner. So to change the interpretations in the way you suggest, you have to show me how you are right. You cannot just declare it because frankly you have zero evidence your interpretations are correct. Nada.-- Filll ( talk) 20:09, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Minority views can receive attention on pages specifically devoted to them— Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia. But on such pages, though a view may be spelled out in great detail, it must make appropriate reference to the majority viewpoint, and must not reflect an attempt to rewrite majority-view content strictly from the perspective of the minority view.
I think a lot of this confusion is because the policy is not written clearly enough. These apparent inconsistencies and loopholes and bits of confusion are not addressed in the text. There are not enough examples. I can sort of see where you might think there are two kinds of articles, a comparing kind and a noncomparing kind. But I think that is not a correct reading of the text.-- Filll ( talk) 13:19, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
I take it the value of my opinion will approach zero here, since I've been lurking on Wikipedia for about a month and have ONE edit to my name. However, I'll offer it anyway, on the chance that it might be useful to someone. I'm a person with graduate training and years of experience in research/statistics who came to Wikipedia to see if I could contribute anything, and the more I see, the less likely it appears that there's anything I could do here except waste a lot of time getting very frustrated. I'm sure many would say well, if the Wikipedia culture would frustrate me, I'm better off not being here, and I'm sure that's true, but at the same time, the quality of the product will continue to decline if qualified editors can't see a way to work here.
As I see it, there are two worldviews trying to coexist on Wikipedia that are simply incompatible, maybe even mutually exclusive, and the effort to accommodate them both in the same project has created a situation where only fighting can occur. On one hand, there's the rational/scientific worldview that approaches the evaluation of information by gathering and weighing evidence with an open and inquiring mind, and on the other hand, the anti-rational worldview that accepts information on faith or authority or wishful thinking, rather than on empirical evidence. If the two never overlapped, they could coexist nicely, but the problem is that they have to overlap when ideas unsupported by evidence are bolstered by an appeal to science, or a pseudoscientific layer on top, rather than being content with an appeal to faith. Then only warring can occur if there's not a clear priority given to which worldview decides disagreements.
One side reads the policies and ArbComm decisions to mean that the rational/scientific worldview is the overriding worldview of Wikipedia; the other side reads them to mean the opposite. I've read absolutely miles of article discussions, policy discussions, and ArbComm transcripts, and I don't see a clear direction either way; what I see is that Wikipedia is trying to have it both ways by giving lip service to both sides. This attempt to accommodate both sides cannot work, because it allows both sides to continue interpreting NPOV, WEIGHT, etc. in different ways (and believing they have the force of Wikipedia behind them in that interpretation) which is a situation that cannot be sustained. And the mantra "Wikipedia is about verifiability, not about truth" only acts to confuse the issue more, rather than clarifying it. Wikipedia needs to decide whether it's going to be a serious encyclopedia, where people can assume the information they get is factual, or whether it's going to be the internet version of something like Farmer's Almanac meets Whole Earth Catalog. Which would be an interesting place, I'm sure, as long as people understood that's what it is.
I admire the confidence of the science folks here who think that by boycotting disputed articles (where the two worldviews battle on and on) and letting the articles be written entirely according to the anti-rational worldview, they would show the world of Wikipedia how essential they are. I fear that's a naive belief, since if it's true that Wikipedia is becoming dominated by anti-rational worldview, the only reaction to their departure would be relief and huzzahs, and I fear that there would be a lot of people in the organization who wouldn't be able to tell the difference. The outside world does care; it is mostly made up, still, of people who expect to get factually correct information from an encyclopedia, but I've gathered in my wandering in these virtual corridors that the hopes and desires of the outside world don't carry much weight here. Woonpton (talk) 17:36, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, one would need to abandon all medical articles on Wikipedia then. And a good fraction of the science articles. The creationism articles are only editable because at the moment we have managed to prevail over the forces of superstition, much to their displeasure. This might be only temporary, however. In medicine, things are far uglier, for a variety of reasons.
Of course, when I want less stress, I just go back to editing in the creationism areas where we have developed procedures and infrastructure for dealing with these sorts of FRINGE problems and have been effective. However, I will note that even there, the Matthew Hoffman situation developed and one of our stalwarts went down in flames in an ugly fashion.
If I want even less stress, I go to my long term project of editing articles about the Isle of Wight or dictionary-related topics, or history topics. I edit a mix of articles, depending on what I want to do at the moment. However, I feel I can make a contribution by helping to clear up some of the confusion that exists over WP policy, and helping in some FRINGE and pseudoscience topics, such as alternative medicine. It would be very helpful for me to know, as I edit, exactly what the policies of WP are.
I will note that part of the reason that we have established a certain stability in evolution and creationism related articles is directly related to me. The FAQ on the evolution talk page and related talk pages? My idea and I wrote the first one. Organizing the talk page archive? I helped. Pushing for LEAD accessibility? I was involved. Introductory articles? I spearheaded the drive. Farming out controversial issues to subsiduary daughter articles? I pushed for it and wrote several and maintain a large number. Compiling data and statistics to establish and track prominence? I am the one who did it. Pushing intelligent design and evolution and introduction to evolution to FA? I was deeply involved. Meeting arguments head on on the talk pages and answering questions and deflecting trolls and POV warriors? I am one of the main editors doing this service (look at my edits to the talk pages of intelligent design or evolution or any related talk page, and what fraction of the talk page edits are mine). So this is something I have done, and a place I have made a contribution. I think if we can make similar attempts on other pages in similar trouble, we can also effect positive changes on those pages as well.-- Filll ( talk) 19:26, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Obviously I didn't make myself clear enough, so let me make one more (shorter, I hope) attempt. What I'm saying is that we have people who approach life and information in two incompatible ways, working together on a project. The difference between their worldviews is obscured but not eliminated by the veneer of "verifiability" and NPOV that define the search for sources and the writing of the articles. While they're working on the same project, using ostensibly the same tools, their thought patterns and their understanding of what useful information consists of are different, which results in endless battles on contested articles. I'm not suggesting the rules should be different, I'm just saying that Wikipedia should make a clear policy on how the rules should be interpreted. At the present time, it looks to me (admittedly an outsider) as if each group interprets NPOV and Weight differently, that the Pseudoscience arbitration is seen by scientists as vindication for their interpretation and the Paranormal arbitration is seen by anti-rationals as vindication for their interpretation, so each side believes that they have the force of Wikipedia behind their interpretation. There's no clear understanding who gets to break ties, so it's just a constant tug of war, and battles eventually end up at ArbComm where they are decided arbitrarily one way or another depending on the makeup of the committee and who the personalities in the dispute are. The decisions usually are punishments for infractions of civility, leaving the underlying problem untouched, but whichever side wins takes the decision as vindication of their wordview. It's not a tenable situation, is all I'm saying.
To answer your specific question, if Wikipedia came down on the side of the rational/scientific worldview, there would be no question that in the case of an impasse, the weight of scientific evidence and rationality would prevail in any disagreement. As it is now, what I'm hearing everywhere is that there's not that understanding among a lot of Wikipedians, that the scientific point of view is viewed as just another point of view and not a particularly valued one, and that in fact if the scientific evidence says one thing and a lot of people believe something else, then the nonscientific belief carries as much weight as the rational belief, or maybe more, if there's more literature supporting the antirational belief, or more people who hold to the anti-rational belief. In a lot of fringe areas, as I'm sure I'm not the first person to point out here, there's no scientific research attempting to replicate antirational claims because it's not something that scientists are going to bother with, like say the belief that you can alter the molecular structure of water by thinking unhappy or kind thoughts about it, or that you can change the output of a random number generator by focusing your attention. Sometimes there's no scientific literature refuting a claim, not because mainstream science is afraid of cutting-edge thought, but because you don't even need to do an experiment to see that the claim isn't worth testing; all you have to do is think about it for two seconds. If the structure of water were altered by unhappy thoughts, surely it would have been noticed in chemistry labs where disgruntled graduate students have toiled for decades, or happier graduate students have fallen in love. If nobody's noticed it before now, with all the analyses that have been done on water over the centuries, the rational conclusion is it just might be because there's no such effect, not because scientists haven't been smart enough to notice it in all this time. And if it were really true that intention could affect how random events distribute, wouldn't you think people would be cleaning up at the casinos constantly, given how much they want to win? A wise person once said it's a good thing to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out. Woonpton ( talk) 21:31, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
I think enforcement of NPOV would be a start, at least as I understand NPOV. Now I am told by pseudoscience people that I do not understand NPOV. Ok, if I do not understand NPOV, teach me.-- Filll ( talk) 19:29, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
I sort of understand and partially agree. However, how many Christians truly present the consumption of the eucharist as a literal eating of Christ's flesh? How many claim there is scientific proof or scientific evidence that the bread has magically turned into human flesh in the mouths of the supplicants? We do have several articles which do describe Jesus from various viewpoints, critical and uncritical. Perhaps they follow the NPOV rule properly and perhaps they do not. I have not studied the issue in detail. But it is wrong to say that there is no content here about how nonsensical some of these beliefs are. If these beliefs were presented as science, the way "
creation science" or
intelligent design are, then they are evaluated as science since that is how they are presented. The dominant form of medicine in the world today is allopathic medicine, which is science-based or evidence-based medicine. So if something purports to be medicine, it is evaluated according to that standard. I do not believe one should bash someone over the head constantly with the mainstream or allopathic viewpoint, but I also do not believe the mainstream of allopathic viewpoint should be absent either.
I did not state that the articles on quack medicine should mainly be about how wrong they are. I think you are misreading what I wrote. Perhaps on purpose? You might want to reread what I wrote. I have had quite a number of people now who repeat back to me what I wrote, and it is incorrect. You are another. So try to see if you can understand what I actually maintained.-- Filll ( talk) 20:43, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
You are missing something I am afraid. Who created
creation science and
intelligent design and how do the creators of these ideas and movements present them? It was not Wikipedia that created them; we just reflect what exists in the world. Those that are promoting these concepts and movements are purposely trying to position them as science, not as religion. If they were just types of Christianity or Islam, say, and there was an Intelligent Design Church or a Creation Science Mosque, science would pay little if any attention to them. How much attention does science pay to Christian Science, which does not purport to be much of a science? To Scientology? Astrology does not present itself as science, at least in most cases. And so it is not treated as such by scientists, or in Wikipedia. If Astrology claimed to be a science and demanded to be taught in science classes and astrology lobbyists tried to get laws passed to classify it as science and tried to get government science funding for astrology and astrologists sued astronomers constantly in court etc, then the story would be different, would it not? If Astrologists claimed there was scientific proof for their beliefs and tried to promote it on that basis (which some do, but it does not catch on), then it would be different, right? So we are only sort of in agreement. If homeopaths claim that they can cure ailments and are an alternative to allopathy, then their claims will be evaluated at least in part by allopathy. We do not have big sections on New Guinea witch doctor practices discussing what allopathy thinks of them, because they are not promoted in most of the world as medicine and a replacement for allopathy. And they are not particularly prominent. So it is different than prominent alternative medicine practices which are promoted as replacements for allopathy and are notable. If instead of being at the 0.1% or 1% prominence level, homeopathy was at the 0.00001% prominence level, we would not be even worrying about it. It might not even have an article at all. --
Filll (
talk) 21:22, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
I do not know if you have not noticed, but I have not made a single edit to a homeopathy article in months. It just is not worth it. There is too much tension and too much fighting. Even world renowned homeopathy expert User: Peter morrell has said the same thing; while things are so hostile, he cannot be bothered with editing any homeopathy article. That is a real shame, but this huge influx of SPAs has ruined the atmosphere and the SPAs are just furious about the principles of WP and want to change them.
However, what is a matter of concern is that this is not some isolated incident. This problem is spreading like a cancer. Now the SPAs are editing the NPOV policy pages to change them so that they do no have to put mainstream views in any pseudoscience or alternative medicine article. This is very similar to a recent event. Not long ago we had people editing the RS policy pages so they could include sources proving that Mormonism is correct and all its foundational myths are truth and everyone else is wrong and evil blah blah blah. It was an immense disruption to stop them and it took 6 months or longer and it was a viscious fight that wasted hundreds if not thousands of man hours. Then there are efforts to create literally hundreds if not thousands or tens of thousands of minihomeopathy articles in all plant articles and mineral articles and animal articles and biographies of people that might have tried homeopathy (like Beethoven and Darwin). I have tried to forge a compromise to limit these miniarticles to maybe the 150 or so most important cases, but this was rejected since they want no limits imposed and want to have the right to have as many homeopathy miniarticles as possible, maybe well up into the 10s of thousands. There have been repeated fights at AN/I and Arbcomm and AE on this and now at the new NPOV noticeboard, as well on the various homeopathy articles. If we do not actually define clearly what NPOV is, and make it clear we stand behind our NPOV policy, the NPOV policy will be gone, and so will we if we disagree. And WP will fail as an experiment to construct a respected resource.-- Filll ( talk) 01:15, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
What a helpful observation in the midst of constructive debate.
I'm not sure there is ever going to be a solution that combines the best of everything. I think that Wikipedia:Flagged_revisions/Quality_versions is a good proposal. There is no doubt that articles like global warming (for the most part) represent the "consensus" of the scientific community, and for that reason perhaps it should be flagged as a "quality version".
A travesty though would be the silencing of dissent. It is often *informed* and *educated* dissent that shifts the "consensus" in the right direction. Einstein's theory of relativity rightly brought an end to the scientific consensus of the static and eternal universe. If the "consensus" would have shouted him down or locked out his edit the Big Bang would be a big nothing.
Also, one of the greatest strengths of WP versus traditional encyclopedias is in the fact that WP never becomes dated, it is constantly being renewed and updated. I does seem that it would be nice to have one set of rules for certain types of articles, and different set for others. For example, basic, non-controversial articles could be locked down so that major edits must be approved by a certain group, whereas hot topics would have a more relaxed policy. This might seem — on the surface — to be backwards, because the controversial articles are those that are most open to hair-pulling edit wars. However, if articles known to be correct and excellent (with little dissent) were locked down, much more (rejuvenated) energy could be focused on the controversial articles maintaining quality and "consensus".
Wherever religion, politics and/or money collide there is going to be trouble, and dreaming of a catchall solution is just about as likely as peace in Palestine. There are certain articles that are always going to be fought over like the Temple Mount. This is particularly true when certain opinions factor largely in the interpretation of data and observation. Although we all can agree that references should be cited and of reputable sources, there is always going to be the tendency to ignore or minimize those that we disagree with or dislike. An outside observer with a fresh pair of eyes might be able to frame the debate more objectively. Plus, one doesn't need to be a scientist, philosopher or carpenter to be a good researcher, and a good surgeon might be a terrible editor. So it's unwise to discount the efforts of a layperson in a certain field when they might be just what the article needs vis-a-vis grammar, syntax and good citation.
Silencing constructive and informed dissent and building such a wall around certain articles that they languish from constructive editing isn't the answer. See below concerning my suggestion of protecting articles according to membership senority. Supertheman ( talk) 00:13, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
I think it might be about time we opened an RFC on some of these issues. Get the community input on which side NPOV supports. It seems obvious that the other side doesn't want to do this (at least yet). Perhaps we should do it ourselves then to see which way the community is leaning. -- Infophile (Talk) (Contribs) 19:04, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
As I dig through some of the past discussion on this, I see that the Martinphi RfC almost a year ago was partly on this topic, and he created "guides" to his version of NPOV which were overwhelmingly rejected [27]. I have not gone through all of it because there is a huge amount of it, but so far what I have read looks terrible for pseudoscience proponents. Just slammed.-- Filll ( talk) 19:37, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
I know this will not solve the underlying issues, but I have a suggestion that may help with the overall situation...
I've been watching this thread intently since it formed. I haven't participated until now because I'm not a particularly combative person and I was honest unsure of my stances on a few key issues. I'm relieved, personally, that the general idea of an all-out boycott seems to have lost its mojo, mostly because I'm an educator at heart and I can't bear to see promulgated misinformation. My proposal, however, can include those that are still active in the war zones (like homeopathy) and those that have avoided them (on principal or a general distaste for the endless arguments)...
Let's take a step back and refocus our efforts for a while on the important subtopics that inform the flimflam main articles. What I mean is, perhaps the overall situation on homeopathy would be improved if the lot of us would tread water there for a month--put aside improvement goals, but still actively prevent it getting worse--whilst overhauling articles like placebo and clinical trial. What good is it to argue over the inclusion of pseudoscience in the lead or as a categorization if that article is still "Rated Start-Class", is mediocre in readability, and has almost no information about why people believe in pseudoscience? I believe placebo is an excellent example of an article that needs to be informative at the "featured" level, but it's currently woefully written, filled with out-of-date citations, and promotes the misunderstanding that its an "effect based solely on the power of suggestion", which vastly understates the realities of self-limiting illness, post-hoc rationalization, the effect on the practitioner believing a treatment to be effective, etc.
My point is this: if we all spent as much effort in the next four weeks on improving placebo to FA as we spent the prior four weeks spinning our wheels on homeopathy (and every other CAM), it would provide a vastly more positive effect on the dissemination of scientifically-sound information. Every link to an improved placebo article would indirectly improve the ratio of science vs. pseudoscience/nonsense/superstition/quackery in every CAM modality article, right?
I will be out of town for a couple of days, but I thought I'd leave this here to get some feedback. I'm quite sympathetic to the frustrations of many of the editors here, sharing many of them, and I want to help resolve this issue for the benefit of everyone involved. — Scien tizzle 23:04, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
It is a good idea. All of the associated articles should be improved, no doubt about it.-- Filll ( talk) 00:36, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Folks, I have nominated placebo at both Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Collaboration of the Week & Wikipedia:WikiProject Pharmacology/Collaboration of the Week. I hope to devote some more time to it in the following weeks. (I had been working on it here, but got distracted...) — Scien tizzle 20:32, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Since that name has poped up so many times here with even Larry himself dropping by to try and recruit people, perhaps you should see what he has been saying about our hard working admins: Click Here In that little article he compares wikipedia admins to Nazis... No kidding... RIP-Acer ( talk) 23:10, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
And the actual quote is We actually require that people agree to our fundamental policies as a condition of their participation, which means that many of the most disruptive people, whose silly antics cause Wikipedia administrators to react like Nazis, aren’t involved. Maybe, just maybe, we’ve learned something from Wikipedia’s governance mistakes. Now, I don't know about you RIP, but one of Wikipedia's problems are it's civil POV pushers....in case you haven't read any of the discussion above. So perhaps you should have a read, then reread the blog. And then apply some context rather than applying some (poor) journalism and misquoting your source. Shot info ( talk) 23:33, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
I did read the blog, all of it, and in fact had replied to Mr. Sanger’s article only to have my reply removed without any explanation, in a very transparent fashion. As for Wikipedia’s admins being its greatest problem it should be pretty obvious that I do not agree with that. I agree with you that I probably should’ve better quoted the original text but I still find his comparison absurd. RIP-Acer ( talk) 23:52, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Just out of interest, what in your reply to the blog could have got it deleted? David D. (Talk) 09:10, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't know, you tell me:
I agree with Jens, comparing well meaning people, regardless of whether you believe their efforts worthy or not, to Nazis is absurd. It’s an affront not only to the Wikipedia editors but also to the millions that perished in WW2. Your follow up comment with a smiley is equally regrettable. I would expect somebody who stands for civility, repeatedly claiming that personal attacks are not acceptable in your project, to be more mindful of their words. Using the F*** word is not acceptable but making references to Nazis suddenly is? I guess your sense of proportion is way off…
It was the 12th reply and was a response to a sarcastic come back Mr.Sanger gave to another user. RIP-Acer ( talk) 12:32, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
I like Wikipedia precisely because I can edit and fix faults in articles, and other editors can do the same. I get tired of reading "authoritative" articles on "brand name" web sites and magazines that are badly written, imprecise, incomplete, unsourced, myopic, profoundly POV, and sometimes downright wrong. NPOV is hard to define and difficult to achieve, but utterly necessary. -- Una Smith ( talk) 01:02, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
(my comments here refer back to the earlier section on RfC, that got buried in subsequently incoming material but I think is worth further consideration)
Here's what I don't understand. Infophile says (above) that "it seems obvious that the other side doesn't want" [to open an RfC] but I'm not sure what's obvious about it. There's an active effort on the WP:NPOV policy page to change the wording of the policy to suit the "other side's" interpretation of NPOV better. In the discussions I've read, it seems clear that there are (happily) people watching the page who will revert such changes back to present policy, but reading the talk page, it seems that at least among the people working that page, there is a significant, if not dominant, group whose intent is to change policy to make NPOV suit them better, or if they're not allowed to actually change the policy, at least to keep repeating their interpretation on the discussion page until it's absorbed into the collective consciousness. So my question is, why would they bother with an RfC when they're busy working to influence policy directly?
There's even a section there called "Undue V Fringe" where it's argued that if there's something that a lot of people believe but that science has ignored (take for example my illustration above of the molecular structure of water being influenced by the quality of people's thoughts) then when it comes to covering that belief in the encyclopedia, science must be considered the tiny minority that is the fringe view according to the WEIGHT policy. For all I know that may be a legitimate interpretation of policy, but if it is, that just shows why Wikipedia is such a mess. (And BTW, after I submitted my piece yesterday, I got in the car and turned on the radio and heard a news/political commentator saying that when he does research for his show, he has to go to original sources rather than relying on Wikipedia to summarize topics, since he's learned that "more than half the time, Wikipedia has it wrong.")
My favorite comment from the WP:NPOV talk page: Here we go again, confusing objectivity & neutrality. I will repeat myself : objectivity is feasible but incompatible with the NPOV policy because objectivity implies judging the credibility of an idea and, hence, expressing a point of view. Emmanuelm (talk) 12:18, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
As to the Martinphi RfC Fill mentions above, I've read through that but am not sure what I should conclude from it, since it's an RfC, the RfC ended in the Paranormal ArbComm case which Martinphi seems in his comments here to read as a vindication of his interpretations of policy, and since it was a year ago. As I said in my earlier comments, it seems to me that the Rational/Science side reads the Pseudoscience case as vindication of their interpretation and the other side reads the Paranormal case as vindication of their interpretation. This is the core problem, as I see it and have said before, that each side reads the policy differently, and that there needs to be a determination as to which interpretation is going to be the ruling interpretation. If an RfC would result in such a determination, let's open an RfC. If all an RfC would or could do is air the same arguments on both sides with no resolution, what's the point? Woonpton ( talk) 16:52, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
If we do a more general RfC or community discussion on NPOV, I have compiled some more general questions I would like to see addressed
here. Bear in mind this is just some stuff off the top of my head and it probably needs editing and expanding.--
Filll (
talk) 21:18, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Fill, I do think it should be a general RfC participated in by the wider community. I think your list is a remarkable compilation, and certainly a great start for discussion. Is it possible to start a general RfC on the topic of WP:NPOV? Or does it have to be tied to a particular article or specific issue? Woonpton ( talk) 04:30, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
And NPOV and other policies. And engaging in page spamming. My gosh, they just repeat the same complaint over and over and over. It is ludicrous. We need to nail them for this, because it makes the talk page extremely unpleasant. I was pleased with myself for finding an error in a textbook ( Section 5.3, Beginning Algebra, 10/E, Margaret L. Lial, John Hornsby, Terry McGinnis, Addison-Wesley, Copyright: 2008, Published: 01/02/2007, ISBN 0321437268) and they have turned it into World War III. Now I think eventually the text will be much better and have more examples in it and better references and we will avoid the plagiarism that User: Wikidudeman seems to have fallen into, but it is still annoying. -- Filll ( talk) 17:11, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Under the open Wikipedia model, those editors most passionate about a topic, will tend to be the most persistent, most verbose, sometimes the most productive, and often the most disruptive. Passion has its place, but I would submit that editing an encyclopedia is not the place for place for excessive passion about individual topics. Conversely, I can't dispute that complex, obscure, arcane, specialized or highly technical topics need the input of knowledgeable editors who would not have achieved their level of expertise without some passion for the subject. How to balance these factors? I think uninvolved admins need to use a much heavier hand when stepping into a dispute. Intractable editors whose contributions are not consensus-building need to be topic banned. No one is indispensable especially with regards to an individual topic. This is not a problem that is limited to fringe and pseudoscience, it's a big problem all over the project. I think that in many cases, removing the two or four most disruptive, tendentious, intractable - in other words, passionate, editors from both sides of a dispute might go a long way.
Dlabtot (
talk) 23:22, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
The basic misunderstanding, Woonpton, is "don't fit with a rational, dispassionate evaluation." We as WP editors don't evaluate the truthiness of a subject, in logical or scientific or other ways. We follow the sources. As long as people are evaluating, then we are not writing NPOV articles, and this will go on, from both sides. But don't think that you're on the side of the truth and the light.... because if you are, then you aren't right for WP. —— Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 06:41, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
It looks likely that the ArbCom will accept an arbitration on 9/11 conspiracy theories which will raise issues of direct relevance to this discussion, specifically the treatment of fringe theories and editors. See Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#9/11 conspiracy theories. -- ChrisO ( talk) 02:02, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
We are here to constructively build, by the use of Internet technologies, an open informational resource, in encyclopedic format, for the free use of all people. Experts are critical to all resources.
Therefore, I issue a direct challenge to anybody who feels that experts should not have a definite, fair say in the building of this resource: shut up and go away, you're not helping at all. And I sympathise with all the experts out there who feel they can't edit the English Wikipedia and bring their knowledge to bear.
Let us all work together as a community dedicated to, in Jimmy Wales' words, "bringing the sum of human knowledge to every person on [and off] the planet, free, in their own language." — Thomas H. Larsen 08:21, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
I think the biggest problem is lack of common sense and lack of order. I've read several of the suggestions above, and many of them are intriguing. The wikipedia is in fact a big community and as such it's dynamics dictate where it's going. Without some kind of survey to know what is happening in this community is hard to come up with effective prescriptions. Under this uncertainty it seems logical to take positive action with the tools already available and engage on mediation. I know that the mediation cabal is looking for volunteers, and mediators can potentially have a big influence on how conflicts are resolved.
I'm not sure if what I this is already being addressed at the Cabal. But I think the lack of order in talk pages is a huge problem. I would think it wouldn't be too difficult to come up with discussion/mediation guidelines that would slowly build agreement based on common sense. And I have to stress the word build, knowledge builds on itself. And it's easier for people who are not as compromised with applying common sense to take a destructive attitude, ignoring any sense of order. If good mediators were available it would raise the standard of rationality on the discussion pages.
Interestingly, if an community oriented approach would work, it would also be a huge accomplishment for the internet community as a whole. As opposed to a system that relied on credentials like citizendium.
Paraphrasing the point I made before. I can appreciate how unorganized expression of ideas can be productive. But a little order does not hurt. I'm not sure if this page is the best example. But the disorganized nature of the talk pages is part of the problem. A technical solution would be to "make a mini-wiki" out of unorganized talk pages. The community based solution would be to have a mediator impart order based on agreed and well-understood guidelines.--
Dela Rabadilla (
talk) 04:29, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Has anyone noticed what is going on e.g. here
There were concerns expressed (by me, e.g.) at this admins RFA, and now a serious incident seems to have blown up concerning a senior academic who has now left the project. I looked at the article he was complaining about but not enough of an expert to judge. Another victory of civility over content? The Rationalist ( talk) 07:03, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I have not finished reading all of the deletion discussion. This reminds me of the recent AfD discussion of an article that was titled something like
Evolutionary Theory of Sex. Like this article, it was mainly notable in the Russian literature. Like this article, it was probably being promoted by its authors or a group close to the authors. Like this article, it was written in stilted English. I only commented at the Sex AfD, but this is part of a bigger question; at what point do we decide an article or an area is notable enough for inclusion when it is not widel known, but not really a
WP:FRINGE theory in the sense of pseudoscience? I am a bit of an inclusionist, so I lean towards keeping these, since WP is not paper, but I am less concerned by the notability than by the horrendous writing standards, and the difficulty in cleaning them up. I am not sure what we should do in these cases, but they are worth discussing for sure.--
Filll (
talk) 11:30, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
That is the troubling part. That is why I think we need something like a Science Guild here, as I have opined on these pages, anchored to an outside body for content. We need someplace where scientific experts can connect with a community to counter this sort of "CIVILity first, last and always" attitude and organize ourselves.
I notice that several of the pro-deletion editors used the phrase "self-promotion". A few weeks ago, Jimbo weighed in on the Administrator's Noticeboard that use of the phrase "self-promotion" on a talk page was prima facie evidence of unCIVIL behavior and a blockable offense! This is getting a bit crazy.
I also notice that out of frustration and lack of experience, R Physicist posted some long diatribes in the discussion that were removed or userfied. This is an example of what someone might do who does not understand Wikipedia; i.e., a newbie.
On science articles, and for all science-related editors, we need to invite them to participate in a Science Guild. Here is one idea of how it might work:
I might still have voted to Keep (although a very weak Keep, given the sloppy writing style of the article), but at least I am familiar enough with the culture that R Physicist comes from to be able to create a forum where he can have a discussion with peers and colleagues. This is far different than him talking to teenagers who are interested in documenting the Simpson's Episodes or Manga characters.-- Filll ( talk) 12:32, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Help me promote the idea of a Scientist Guild, and recruit people for it. Sign up for
WP:Not the Wikipedia Weekly and come discuss it.--
Filll (
talk) 15:46, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Both.-- Filll ( talk) 20:59, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
For a new editor, this environment can be a bit confusing and daunting. And one of the things a Science Guild could do is to socialize new editors who are pro-science. I have skimmed through some of R physicist's rants, and although these might be quite reasonable in some contexts, here they might be viewed a bit over the top in some places.
As for what policy changes are advisable, I think we should be very cautious about that, at this stage of Wikipedia's development. I would advocate small scale tests and experiments of policy changes to understand their effects. I would advocate a research-oriented approach. I would not advocate a wholesale change of any policy since we are much too big and too prominent; I would not want to break a system that has achieved such success, even if it is suboptimal and could be improved.-- Filll ( talk) 15:01, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I only recently came across this page, long after a great deal of discussion had gone by and finished. As a retired academic chemist, I am concerned about some of the issues raised, but I do not think this is the place to raise them. Maybe the talk page of Wikipedia:WikiProject Science would be better, and draw attention to the discussion there on all the other science project talk pages. I suspect a lot of science editors have not seen this discussion here. -- Bduke ( talk) 22:38, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
To my vast surprise and dripping sarcasm, the ANI thread on Dana Ullman resulted in nothing. The whole mess with his real-life identity and his past mentorship (along with the Wikilove brigade) has murked up the situation so much that no admin wants to wade in, even though a few seem to agree that he should be blocked, and only one ( Lara Love) opposes it (though note that even she seems to have washed her hands of him, wanting nothing more to do with the whole affair). So, the question is, what to do now? I raise this here because most people here are probably already aware of this situation, and have the same problems with Dana. The way I see it, there are three things we can do (before resorting to WP:IAR):
Basically, I'm just wavering between trying an RFC or going to RFAR first. What do you all think? -- Infophile (Talk) (Contribs) 16:47, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Maybe these issues have been addressed higher up the page, but the main problems I have come across dealing with pseudoscience nutters and POV pushers in the less popular areas of psychology are the fact that ArbCom is wet and only takes the minimum action after the most extreme and extended behaviour. Secondly, there isn't even an ArbCom equivalent for content. Its all very well admins and other people dipping in and reminding people of policies and dipping out again but what do POV pushers care for that? They will simply continue to declare a source says the opposite of what it actually says and without numbers there is little one can do. Some of the people indulging in this behaviour claim professional qualifications and expertise. The psychology section of Wiki is a moribund mess. Many knowledgeable psychs have simply been bullied off or been unwilling to waste their lives in perpetual pointless argument and edit wars against aggressive and offensive POV pushers. At least the big topics garner some support but the medium or smaller topics are a treacherous minefield. Requests for help from the project in respect of the most obvious abuses get no response. This isn't a plea for a panel of experts or a science guild or anything like that - but there needs to be some understanding of why existing policies are simply not enforced by admins or ArbCom. Fainites barley 22:15, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
I wonder if anyone has noticed the gigantic discussion going on around User:FT2's talk page, concerning User:Giano. I know Giano is not a science editor, but he is in my view a good editor, and not a particularly rude one (though his manner can be abrasive at time, I believe). This whole case seems to be cooked up to prove a point about Civility vs Content. If anyone has a concern about this (I do) perhaps they could register their concern on the page, or on AN/I. The Rationalist ( talk) 05:31, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
B. Mistler ( talk) 02:02, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
After having worked on many articles related to The Beatles, this user will never contribute again if one is forced to write "the Beatles". It looks stupid, and makes me feel ill. Castigate my attitude if you will, but it is mine, after all...-- andreasegde ( talk) 02:30, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
06-Sep-2008: I understand the frustrations about conflicting attitudes and edits, but I think there are several storage tactics which can be used to greatly avoid Wikipedia chaos:
In the broad ocean of Wikipedia articles, there is great potential to promote new, solid technologies and have a recovery of great ideas, formerly lost by social stigmas or other censorship factors. Again, seek a confederation of articles about a subject, to avoid " single point of failure" edit problems: it is rare for all articles, in a set, to be relentlessly slanted or censored (although it has happened to some extent). Next, on an article's talk-page, also click-link to a known, verified revision of the article: in a sense, the truth is hiding among the revisions, with safety in numbers. - Wikid77 ( talk) 08:18, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
Hecht
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).This has all been discussed before: Wikipedia:Expert retention, Wikipedia:Expert rebellion. Please also see the discussions taking place on the talk page: User talk:Raymond arritt/Expert withdrawal.
This was presented for the benefit of User:Tparameter at the talk page of User:Raymond arritt"
"Expert" was the best shorthand term I could think of for "rational, well-informed person." Although most of the people who have raised issues do have expertise relevant to the topics in which they're editing, they're more than happy to work with well-intentioned novices. I'll gladly help people whose knowledge has some gaps but are coming at an issue in a constructive way (see for example
this exchange). It's dealing with aggressive POV-pushers and Kozmik Kadetts who are convinced they have
The TruthTM that gives people fits.
Raymond Arritt (
talk) 02:06, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Tparameter, let's take another example, which is not exactly about "experts". Let's consider the abortion and pregnancy articles. Now we have a few doctors and nurses and choice and right to life advocates who are trying to construct an article or two that show all sides.
And one or two antiabortion editors come to the articles and unilaterally demand that the articles be written as they dictate, ignoring all sources that they dislike and deleting all material that they disagree with. And they are abusive and combative and uncivil and attack others repeatedly who are trying to have articles that include material from both the right to life and the right to choose sides of the argument, and from the medical perspective. They fight frantically to present the articles ONLY from the right to life view. When told about NPOV, they ignore it or twist the words tortuously to get their way. And many other editors give up and leave Wikipedia because it is too unpleasant to deal with these anti-abortion editors.
Then finally, RfCs and Arbcomm proceedings are started against the antiabortion editors. But they promise to do better, and get off and then act badly again, and the entire cycle repeats a half dozen times. Finally the anti-abortion editors are blocked, but then plead to come back and are allowed back, and start acting badly again. And more mainstream editors trying to operate within NPOV give up and leave. And to save one troublesome editor who is unwilling or unable to abide by NPOV, we drive off 5 or 10 others who are trying to abide by NPOV.
If there are experts in this picture, it is the doctors and nurses, who are discouraged from editing by these difficult editors. But the principles are the same as on many other articles.
This same behavior goes on over and over. My main concern and Raymond arritt's concern is on pseudoscience articles and science articles. Where one person claims that magic is real and the articles must be rewritten to include magic or else it is patently unfair. And they and their friends demand that science take a back seat in science articles to magic.
And our administrative structure of admins and arbcomm etc are unable or unwilling to do anything about this situation. And they get 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 10th, 20th, 50th, 100th chances to improve and they never improve. And just drive regular productive editors working within NPOV away, and these regular productive NPOV editors are given no 2nd chances as the disruptive trolls, sock puppets, meat puppets, POV warriors and tendentious disruptive editors are.
Is that clearer?-- Filll ( talk) 02:34, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Proposal:
Given the level of dysfunction that has come to prevail on Wikipedia, the most appropriate course for a principled scientist is to withdraw from the project.
* How about a one-week strike!!!! :) Let's see what Jimbo has at the end of the week.
OrangeMarlin
Talk•
Contributions 15:44, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Regarding defeatism: It is only defeatism if this proposal is created by a lack of conviction. Given the amount of work a lot of people have put into stopping fringe theories, I don't think anyone's conviction here ought to be in question.
It is not defeatism if the problems are based on experience, reason, and evidence. See Outside scientific studies confirming Wikipedia failure on WP:FAIL. This proposal is based on a rational response to these real observed problems, not mere emotional weakness.
As a few studies have noted, Wikipedia has the stability that it does because of a core group of editors regularly watching certain pages. Based on this, an "expert revolt" or "boycott" would definitely have a noticeable, meaningful impact on getting the issue of fringe sources clarified.
For those that do, however, wish to call this "defeatism," based on the University of Minnesota's recommendations, here is one suggestion other than a boycott: A " Greylist" of sources that are usually used as unreliable sources, since fringe-pushers tend to use sources from the same URLs, regularly. Regularly consulting this "greylist" possibly in combination with one of the pro-Science Wikiprojects suggested here may be a more effective way of dealing with fringe. ☯ Zenwhat ( talk) 17:21, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I can't agree with this. Comparing what Wikipedia was when I started, to what it is now, it is infinitely better now. And yes I mean not only the articles, but also the hierarchy. There have been useful steps taken to curb the most heinous abuses. And the community openness to introspection is only one of those. There will always be people on the edges, and we should not only include proponents of alternative medicine, but also proponents of the idea that our encyclopedia should only include peer-reviewed sources. That might be fine if we were writing the PDR or a Physics textbook, but we aren't. There are POV-pushers from *both* sides of this debate. To characterize it as a "We-are-right-you-are-wrong" avoids the central problem, which is, we do allow minority viewpoints. Hard scientists need to accept that or make an attempt to change policy. Only consensus will change policy. If consensus cannot be achieved, then the alternative is to accept the status quo even if it grates. Wjhonson ( talk) 04:47, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, I don't see much evidence to support the assertion that we're somehow failing. We're doing very well. If individual editors are getting burned out keeping things in shape, that's a small concern. They need to take a more relaxed approach, or take a break for a while. We'll keep going because there are plenty of other editors to step in and keep things in shape. I don't get this bit about withdrawing because you're "principled"- it just sounds like melodrama to me. Friday (talk) 16:58, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
It definitely needs tweaking and shortening, so make Proposal 3, 4, 5, etc... -- Fyslee / talk 06:35, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
As a way to draw attention and more eyeballs to this discussion, I have posted a version of the "notice" to my user and talk pages and invited others to do so as well, with a link back to this page. I think some other mechanisms, like a special Science Committee with administrative powers and input to the Senior levels of the Wiki hierarchy might be helpful. I am not sure a boycott will be necessary, but a widespread threat of a boycott might be enough to get someone's attention. We need to brainstorm to think of ideas on what to do. Here are some:
Here is my proposed viral marketing notice for this page. Please feel free to copy it to your user and talk pages:
Given the level of dysfunction that has come to prevail on Wikipedia, the most appropriate course for a principled scientist is to withdraw from the project.
The bureaucracy should either take corrective steps to fix this situation, or else suffer the eventual loss of huge amounts of valuable talent and volunteered resources.
If you agree with this statement, post it to your pages, and pass it on.
(discuss this here)
-- Filll ( talk) 14:22, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia eats its young, no doubt about that. I do not know if it will survive in the long term. I'm afraid I spend time at Wikipedia with a cheerful apathy and yet I'm endlessly surprised by the destructive behavior: if Wikipedia were a person, I'd say it had a severe personality disorder.
For instance, in order to address the problem of unreliable sources and fringe views, there could be the creation of a " greylist" which automatically generates a list of articles which likely contain inappropriate edits, based upon the likelihood of certain sources to be regularly misused again and again. This could more appropriately address extreme violations of WP:NPOV and WP:V, which are not captured by bots, while at the same time allowing humans to make the final decision as to what constitutes a "reliable source" or not.
and
...Wikipedia's ability to prevent obvious vandalism is intriguing, but that alone is not how Wikipedia's success is defined since the problems stem from system bias and erosion of good content, which, unlike random vandalism, cannot simply be addressed through the use of large networks of bots crawling Wikipedia and making automatic reverts according to a set algorithm.
Anyway, as always, there is a lot of typing going on, but will anything get done? The academics seem to see failure. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast ( talk) 16:36, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
A completely open wiki-process appears to fail because it makes the false assumption that a minority of bad editors (vandals, trolls, and just general nutcases) cannot overwhelm a majority of good editors. An open question: Can we make a similar assumption regarding the sample of "expert editors"?
The idea of supporting a more closed system like Citizendium or a "Science Guild" as proposed above seems to rely on the assumption that the proportion of bad average editors to good average editors is larger than the proportion of bad expert editors to good expert editors. If we have a more closed system, a Science Guild, etc., some theoretical problems that could arise in certain fields:
As a demonstration of how this problem might arise (and certainly would in rare cases), there is User:Pundit who is a visiting professor at Harvard (I verified his credentials), but at the same time he made this absolutely absurd edit [1] and has argued that Cannabis Culture magazine is a "reliable source."
Having an education, such as a Ph.D., generally grants a greater absolute degree of trustworthiness, but not a guaranteed degree of trustworthiness. (See quackwatch) More importantly, does the attainment of a degree ensure a greater relative degree of trustworthiness, compared with others of the same educational achievement? If not, then how could such a policy improve Wikipedia's margin of error?
And should expert editors have broad authority or only authority over their particular field? How narrowly should "their particular field" be? On one article I saw a debate where some people claimed that a professor wasn't a reliable source, because the article was on Islamic history, but he was a professor just on Islamic theology, not specifically on "Islamic history"! Is that too narrow? ☯ Zenwhat ( talk) 17:48, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I mentioned this above, but I feel like putting it in a blue-bordered box like everyone else:
Given the level of dysfunction that has come to prevail on Wikipedia, the most appropriate course for a principled scientist is to impress upon all of his or her colleagues the importance and value of participating in a medium like Wikipedia.
The reason that WP:WEIGHT is so hard to uphold is that minority views are represented on Wikipedia far in excess of their representation in the real world. This creates a skewed perspective, where ideas like AIDS denialism or secondhand-smoke-is-harmless are considered reasonable alternative views rather than discredited fringism. The solution is not to go on strike, which would dilute the accurate representation of these topics even further, but to convince scientists, researchers, and generally knowledgeable folk of the need to contribute. Such people tend to be skeptical of an encyclopedia that anyone can edit - for good reason - but with increased participation these problems will go away. MastCell Talk 18:04, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Absolutely. I work with Nobel Prizewinners, and I guarantee not a single one would put up with this nonsense. I personally refuse to even look at the articles related to my expertise, because it is so unpleasant to edit with morons. The only want I can edit here is to work on things that I have no background in; I also get to learn something while I am at it.
Look for example at poor User: Orangemarlin, a cardiologist. OM is completely tied into knots and frustrated when trying to edit medical articles, because of interference with a vast assortment of POV warriors, nincompoops, people with a grade 8 education, trolls, sock puppets, meat puppets, FRINGE proponents ~etc. And it is frustrating as all get out.-- Filll ( talk)
I was thinking that if the idea of a complete abandonment of Wikipedia (or the controversial areas at least) by experts seems a bit extreme at first, we might wish to try enacting it on a much smaller scale. For instance, we could start with one article. Encourage everyone who's been working on defending the expert POV on that article to give it a break for a week or two (both on the article and talk page), and then we'll see how quickly and how badly it deteriorates.
One article I think might be perfect for this is Homeopathy. If you've had any experience with it, the reasons why should go without saying. For those that haven't, it's an extremely controversial article that was eventually pushed up to Good Article status a while back. It's been protected for long bouts of time, and recently came off of one long protection. Now might be a good chance to see how it falls from its GA version (or even the last protected version) when the homeopaths have their way with it. -- Infophile (Talk) (Contribs) 18:26, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Rather than a month-long total wikipedia boycott, how about nominating 8 or 10 specific articles ( evolution, intelligent design, homeopathy, abortion, atheism - whatever) and letting just those articles succumb to mob rule for a month. Just as effective in terms of making a point, perhaps easier to make a "story" out of for the media, and a lot less of a mess to clean up eventually (which I'm sure is what would happen). Snalwibma ( talk) 18:21, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I have serious doubts about this. The fringers would soon get wind of the experiment. The saner ones would encourage the others to back off (or even make constructive edits) to foil it. We'd end up with egg on our face, and the fringers would get to say "See? They're whinging about nothing." Raymond Arritt ( talk) 18:48, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I have actually proposed this exact same scenario a few times to the "fringers" in homeopathy a few times over the last few weeks. The "fringers" I talked to were anxious to "give it a go" (like Whig for example), since they are positive that the pro-science people are just insane and do not really know what neutral means and NPOV. I am positive if we gave Whig a reprieve from his currently impending doom at his 3rd RfC, he and several others would jump on board to promote the "Truth".
Believe me, they are just as annoyed with the pro-science lobby as we are with them. They would revel in a chance to get rid of us so they could really write these articles the way they should be written. And why not give them a chance to see how they do? I had previously suggested a period of 6 months of unfettered editing.-- Filll ( talk) 19:12, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Given the level of dysfunction that has come to prevail on Wikipedia, the most appropriate course is for all editors to work together to fix it.
I'm not saying that fixing it will be easy though. If it were, we'd have already done so. -- Ronz ( talk) 18:36, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Exactly correct Baegis. That is why we need two things:
Given the level of dysfunction that has come to prevail on Wikipedia, and that anonymous volunteers’ - who do not benefit because of their good work – labor on Wikipedia, the most appropriate course for a principled scientist is to withdraw from all stress inducing work and maximize leisure time pleasure. The principled scientist should treat the project as a fun hobby.
The community of hobbyist-editors ought not to concern themselves with the success or failure of Wikipedia. Perhaps Wikipedia will squander the labor of valuable talented volunteers. Perhaps Wikipedia will squander the good will of readers as inferior and worthless articles predominate. Wikipedia is an experiment that may not succeed.
Be a
WikiSloth. Spend time with your family. Write real papers and real articles in the real world. On Wikipedia, enjoy yourself.
Given the dysfunction that now prevails in the Wikipedia community, and the fact that effort on Wikipedia is anonymous, unrecognized, and unrewarded, the most appropriate course for a scientist or other expert is to avoid all stress inducing aspects of the project and maximize leisure time pleasure. They should treat the project as a fun hobby and stay away from potentially stressful activities such as resolving disputes or enforcing policy.
These hobbyist-experts ought not to concern themselves with the success or failure of Wikipedia. Perhaps Wikipedia will squander the labor of talented volunteers. Perhaps Wikipedia will squander the good will of readers as inferior and biased articles increasingly predominate. Such matters are of no consequence to the hobbyist-expert.
Be a
WikiSloth. Spend time with your family. Write real papers and real articles in the real world. On Wikipedia, enjoy yourself.
I suspect that a good fraction of our problems is the name NPOV for the goal for how articles should be written. As Jimbo has said before (and I am looking for this quote), the word "neutral" in this name is misleading and creates a lot of confusion, because we do not want our articles to be "neutral" but "balanced" in a certain way, and not balanced so that WP:FRINGE views have equal weight to mainstream scientific views.
I think that NPOV should be renamed. Called it "Mainstream Point of View" or "Balanced Point of View" or "Conventional Point of View" or "Dominant Point of View" or something. NPOV is an awful name, and creates probably 75% of the problems, I have observed.-- Filll ( talk) 00:31, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
It would help. We need something that clearly says, the mainstream dominates. Period. If you don't like it, then, make like the birds and flock off.--- Filll ( talk) 01:40, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Unfortunately, UNDUE is part of NPOV, and from what I have observed (and Jimbo noted in some talk as I am trying to verify), the "N" for "neutral" in "NPOV" is seized on by people who do not want to read a lot of text and just want to edit. And they misinterpret the "N" to mean "neutral" and therefore nothing negative about their favorite subject.-- Filll ( talk) 19:06, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Nothing besides SPOV will do- and then only partially. With Dominant POV, most people don't believe, for example, in evolution. Even Scientific Dominant POV won't work here, as "science" is not clearly demarcated, and sometimes scientists ignore subjects. Only Skeptical POV will work for Fringe topics, and Mainstream Scientific POV for mainstream topics. You can't put it all under one roof. Under current rules, the skeptics, being an extreme minority on many things, should flock off. Further, you have to do OR in some subjects for this to work well. —— Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 02:10, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
If you hold wikipedia to the standard of reliable sources, then it's dysfunctional purely by its nature. But, it's not a reliable source. Basically, it's young, and it functions fairly well, and seems to be improving. It's a great place to get basic information on a variety of topics - a place to start studying a topic. Moreover, as a platform, it's very young. Some people aren't cut out for it, however - whether they are scientists or otherwise. Of course, everyone who leaves has their own reasons, but it seems like most of the vocal ones that I've seen tend to leave because they can't function without more control than they can garner. Tparameter ( talk) 00:43, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
We can either give up and accept things as they are, or we can try to improve things.-- Filll ( talk) 02:02, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Of course Wikipedia is dysfunctional. However, several things have changed in the last few years to reduce, or attempt to reduce, dysfunctionality at Wikipedia, such as BLP, OTRS, Arbcomm and many other policies.
It is naive and even silly to imagine that the current Wikipedia system cannot be improved further. After all, there are volumes of criticism in the academic literature, popular media and other online and blog communities about how awful Wikipedia is at X, or Y or Z, and ideas for how Wikipedia should change to improve itself.
So it is not completely ridiculous to at least contemplate how Wikipedia might possibly improve in some areas where it is obviously struggling. Because, you never know, we might have a positive impact. And if you never try to improve, you never will.-- Filll ( talk) 19:15, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
What about if some articles require you to pass an NPOV quiz first before you are "certified" to edit?-- Filll ( talk) 01:42, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
That is what gave me the idea. I am positive that almost all of the people I have seen having trouble with the mainstream consensus on creationism, intelligent design, homeopathy and similar kinds of articles does not know what NPOV is. I have seen this over and over and over. If these people had to demonstrate a knowledge of NPOV, and could be rapidly barred from editing even the talk page because of failure to understand NPOV, then things would be far less tense and pressured and we might actually do more creative productive work.
I suspect that most of these people are here only to fight. However, those that want to be productive but cannot work within NPOV are frustrated over and over and become embittered and it consumes a huge amount of community effort to get rid of them. It is not that their material is not interesting and entertaining, but it is not suitable for Wikipedia. That is why I am trying to find other creative outlets for them so they can be productive too.-- Filll ( talk) 01:57, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
There's a problem with that idea, Fill. [2] ☯ Zenwhat ( talk) 15:39, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Just brainstorming. Tparameter ( talk) 03:03, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I would tend to say something like "that position appears to lack substantive evidence". If I were to instead say "you are a loon", I don't think I'd get anywhere with my editorial comrade. Wjhonson ( talk) 07:53, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I can see both sides of this. The Pseudoscience category is a bit like waving a red flag in front of a bull. I know some are considering other names for it and have considered other names for this category, to be less upsetting to the proponents. On the other hand, I find the categories very handy for finding related articles and topics quickly and easily. So...-- Filll ( talk) 15:37, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I couldn't resist joining this one - please note I have been indefinitely blocked (see User talk:Renamed user 4), but this almost no bearing on what I say here.
1. I originally started the 'Expert Rebellion' page with Engineer Scotty years ago. I see the situation hasn't improved, indeed got worse.
2. I am amused to see, still, that each person regards only their own area of expertise as vulnerable to crank ideas. Look, every area has its cranks. Mathematics I was involved with a complete nut who belongs to the 'Cantor was wrong' school of thought, courtesy usenet. Mainstream science we know about. And philosophy, my area of expertise, got corrupted long ago. Check out my talk page for the tracking I am doing on the articles as they degrade. Philosophy, despite being the origin of all rationalism in ancient greek times, and which in academic circles is still a very difficult technical subject to master, as a natural target for bar-room 'philosophers' (and ganja smoking ones, natch).
3. And you are all missing the real elephant in the room, which is Neurolinguistic programming. Just check out the version as at the end of 2006, with what it is now. It got taken over by a bunch of these kooks, who are practising 'therapists', and moreover they have very powerful support here (mentioning no names - that's what got me blocked).
4. On the idea of small-scale strike, we tried that on the philosophy main article when it was attacked by two well-meaning but idiotic editors. They tore the article into pieces in about a week, feuding with each other. One thing you haven't picked up on is that cranks, while they have a common target (scientific conspiracy against them) will appear united. But of course cranks are only cranks because they have some peculiar idiosyncratic view of their own meaning by definition they disagree with all other cranks. They quickly start fighting. The reason experts are able to agree is because they have a well-defined and very sharp line between crank theories on the one hand, and minority but scientific positions on the other, and can unite against cranks. This happened on the Philosophy page, where there Anglo-analytic types united with the European Hegelian/Habermas types for a unique period in the history of the subject against the cranks.
5. The suggestion above for a system based on trust, that would not need credentials, is the obvious way to go. Or perhaps some credentials based on work at WP, not the outside world. The trust could be earned in all sorts of ways, not just scientific expertise.
5a. [later edit] I do think academics (not just scientists - the 'humanities' side of WP needs far more attention than the science side) should be encouraged, perhaps financially, to edit WP, but this makes it quite obvious why this will not happen User:Renamed user 4
6. Wish you all well, I have every support for what you are doing. Good luck. (Though I have to say, you need it. ) Again, apologies for butting in when I am no longer really part of WP. User:Renamed user 4
Not a bad idea. I presume you will add more here?-- Filll ( talk) 15:48, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I suggest that Universities be contacted for named highly credentialed and respected volunteers to man an English-language Wikipedia content arbcom in which our regular arbcom passes them issues for deciding once and for all (or maybe only a year or two?) content decisions on highly limited but significant questions of fact that can not be resolved though consensus except by wearing out one side or the other. I see this as starting small and limited and becoming larger and more important and useful over time, especially with flagged versions. Using named people, limiting their time involvement, and limiting the issues to be decided can make this a post people will feel is worth their time and possibly useful in their career. see also Wikiquality WAS 4.250 ( talk) 15:52, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
See http://www.ocwconsortium.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view%20%20&id=15&Itemid=29 for such institutions that share WikiMedia's ideals (and also a great source for high quality data). WAS 4.250 ( talk) 15:57, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I have had similar thoughts myself, although I prefer the term editorial board. Personally, for the sake of fairness, I would have a number of subcommittees (for example: Fine Arts and history; Film, television and contemporary music; Physics, mathematics, and engineering; and Biology and medicine), each of which would have a post for each of the five major continental regions. This does lead to committee creep, yes, but we need to make sure that cultural biases are reduced, and each area does tend to have a slightly different style of coverage (certainly I doubt that a mathematician, a media studies professor and a historian would all agree on what is notable and needed to be covered for their own areas). Content policies should be controlled also by such a board, for as we have seen, a degree of expert understanding is really needed to understand their original spirit. LinaMishima ( talk) 17:12, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I think both have a place here. Of course, we need more outside independent review, one way or another to have more credibility. And academia is a perfect place to look towards.
However, I think something like an internal Science Guild and/or science editorial board might be of some use. The Science Guild could consist both of individuals with verified credentials, and those invited into the Guild, possibly creating an organization with multiple levels accordingly. There are many day-to-day functions that could be dealt with a structure like this. Presumably we would only go outside for reviews or to mediate problems once or twice a year, and it would be unreasonable to ask an outside body to be more intimately involved. For day to day questions and decisions and advice, the internal body would be relied on. One might imagine the Science Guild as functioning like the US Presidential Science Advisor, or US National Academy of Sciences. Many content questions dealing with science are sent to Arbcomm, which usually has nothing to say, and the issue continues to brew or fester.-- Filll ( talk) 22:16, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Since you already have been thinking in this direction, that tells me we might be on the right track.
The difference between science and other areas is that it is much easier to distinguish mainstream from nonmainstream material in science, in most cases. Also, the material that is strongest on Wikipedia in general is science, and most professional scientists use Wikipedia in their work according to surveys. The opposite is true in the humanities where Wikipedia is almost universally viewed as a pile of crap, and a quick view at a few articles in the humanities suggests why.
On the other hand, if a system like this works, it could easily be extrapolated to all areas.-- Filll ( talk) 23:34, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Theres something about this proposal which I find quite unsettling. Such a content ArbCom would have a lot of power to shape the tone of the encyclopaedia. What we might find is powerful grouping emerge to get their own candidates onto the committee. In effect this could transform a lot of small disputes into one big "presidential" election with all its associated drama.
The obvious current equivalent is WP:RFC. Of the many discussion processes on wikipedia RFC's seem to be one of the weakest. Are there any ways in which the RFC system can be improved? Would fixed cut off dates, transcluded sub-pages (as in AfD), or a change in format help?. -- Salix alba ( talk) 11:07, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
After we have collected a suitable number of ideas on these pages, I propose that we draft a "suggestion paper" including a summary of the main ideas, and their advantages and disadvantages.-- Filll ( talk) 17:23, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I have wondered if there was a way to get more voting on Referenda or Plebiscites by Wikipedians, and to draw more attention to issues and get more input. We can get a fair amount of voting on Arbcomm votes and on RfAs. Can we get more voting on Referenda and Plebiscites? What about an announcement at the top of the watchlist page during the voting period? What about an announcement in the Wikipedia Signpost?
Some of these issues we are discussing here need more input and more publicizing.-- Filll ( talk) 23:23, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I dreamed this up last night. Haven't reflected very long on it though... But it seems workable. WAS 4.250 ( talk) 14:54, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
I've started User:Raymond arritt/Expert withdrawal/Draft where we can begin summarizing the main points from our discussion. You'll note that I've couched the issue in slightly different terms. My original choice of "expert" as a shorthand for "person grounded in reality" has led to some misunderstandings: we're not concerned with creating more deference to experts, but with creating less deference to those with fringe views. In this spirit I've chosen to title the essay "Challenges to the integrity of Wikipedia." (Some might prefer "Coping with kooks," but that's a bit over the top...) I think the essay will work best if it's concise and as non-confrontational as possible. Raymond Arritt ( talk) 15:37, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
In order to bring attention to this, I suggest creating a boilerplate to display on the article pages that indicate that experts in the subjects have refused to edit the article until the community helps resolve the problem. ScienceApologist ( talk) 16:56, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Various Wikipedian
experts are on strike from editing this article until an effective policy for dealing with
disruptive editors is implemented. Please note that content here may not be
verifiable nor
neutral. Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page. |
Any campaign to make wikipedia worse by encouraging experts to not contribute is an attempt not to help wikipedia, but to harm wikipedia. Spamming notices about the wiki trying to get good contributors to help less is and will be seen as disruption that must be deleted and the disruptors as traitors to be excommunicated. WAS 4.250 ( talk) 20:40, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
I disagree with:
See Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture for an article written by scientists who are experts on this subject and therefor wanted an article in wikipedia on it. I wikified it for them and they thanked me.
Working scientists should create useful content on specialized subjects that they are experts on, and then let others maintain the page, other than checking it every month or so. If it turns into a cesspool like Homeopathy, then abandon it to the warriors. The current effort to stop any editing by scientists is pointless drama by science-minded warriors at wikipedia. No scientist who does not get off on battling in cyberspace would engage in these endless turf wars on controversial articles. I'm glad they do, but I don't so I won't. If they don't enjoy the fighting anymore, they can just stop fighting on those articles. There are plenty of science subjects that need articles and won't require fighting to keep them accurate. WAS 4.250 ( talk) 16:45, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Piggybacking on the above idea, I would throw out there that we should have a article-talk-space tag indicating when an article has been the subject of documented off-wiki canvassing to promote a particular POV. For example:
There have been attempts to recruit editors of specific viewpoints to this article. If you've come here in response to such recruitment, please review
the relevant Wikipedia policy on recruitment of editors, as well as the
neutral point of view policy. Disputes on Wikipedia are resolved by
consensus, not by majority vote. |
Off-wiki canvassing is a frequent occurrence; this recent example on homeopathy comes to mind, but I could just as easily produce calls for motivated fringe-POV-pushers on AIDS denialism or intelligent design, among many others. It might be useful to tag high-risk articles with links to the off-wiki canvassing; if nothing else, the heightened visibility might lead to the canvassing postings being taken down. MastCell Talk 18:12, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
I would like to see a Wikipedia:Finished article policy. I believe this would go a long way towards solving some of the problems discussed above. No article is ever really "finished" at Wikipedia but it should be easier than it is to protect well written articles developed by consensus. Good, well rounded articles about fringe topics have been developed in the past and shouldn't require babysitting. For example Intelligent Design has reached Featured Article status. The paranormal-related Spring Heeled Jack used to be a Featured Article but was worn down over time. It shouldn't require old editors protecting it constantly from new editors who want to slant it. All that does is burn out established editors. If there were a "Finished Article" policy that pretty much locked "finished" articles and required consensus for substantial changes, editors wouldn't get burnt out by the constant back and forth among points of view. It would go a long way towards protecting science and medical related articles from this burnout effect. Once an article is developed to Featured Article status, it could apply as a "Finished Article", and then be somewhat locked down to prevent POV pushes in any direction. For a criteria that defines a "Finished Article", I'm thinking along the lines of WP:1.0. Let's face it, working on these articles, and working with the varying viewpoints involved, is hard work. Currently the only pay-off after months and months of hard work is that the article is stable for a few weeks until another jackass comes along. Wikipedia:Finished article would both solve the problems of denigration and also give editors some sort of pay-off for their time in the trenches. -- Nealparr ( talk to me) 01:59, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
How do you know when an article is truly "finished"? Especially with regard to science articles; every year science makes many discoveries that make a mockery of thinking that was previously orthodox. I've heard this idea before with regard to biographies of long-dead people, but even the dead have a curious habit of changing, with discoveries of long-lost correspondence, publication of new research about them, new reflections in popular culture etc etc. Not a workable option, I'm afraid. -- Dweller ( talk) 11:46, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Actually, all that is required is for admins lock down controversial pages more often and for longer periods. More and more wikipedia articles are getting so good that most changes are reverted as just making the article worse. It is time to treat well written articles with no recent history of improvement as free to lock down until a request is made on the talk page accompanied with a useful addition or change suggestion. WAS 4.250 ( talk) 16:56, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I believe the Wikipedia:Flagged revisions proposal would be the best way to approach this. Sχeptomaniac χαιρετε 20:48, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't suppose it's necessary for me to say that the scientists here--actually, everyone who can work within our modest rules--is welcome to join the Citizendium. Why not give it a try? Within a few years, we'll probably have grown exponentially (we're already growing at an accelerating rate), and there will then clearly be no reason to avoid us. -- Larry Sanger ( talk) 03:57, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Unless Wikipedia can recognize some of these problems and begin to address them, or experiment with other approaches, then it will fail in certain areas, clearly.
For example, if one lets anyone edit, one will get articles reading like anyone wrote them. And if you survey the general public in the US, only 35% do not believe in haunted houses, only 18% do not believe in psychic healing, only 32% do not believe in demonic possession, only 34% do not believe in ghosts, only 42% do not believe in telepathy, only 40% do not believe that extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth, only 43% do not believe in fortune telling and prophecy, 44% in communication with the dead, 54% do not believe in astrology, and 55% do not believe in reincarnation.
So how do you think the average American would write articles on science and pseudoscience? Let's face it, science is going to lose every time. A minority of the average potential editors rejects mysticism and magic. So guess what your average editor and average admin is going to do when faced with a choice between science and magic and/or mysticism?
And the same is true in all areas where expertise is required, because the average person editing will believe nonsense and then put nonsense in the article.
So we have to find better methods of combatting this, or else defect to Citizendium.-- Filll ( talk) 05:49, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Polls were conducted by Bryan Farha at Oklahoma City University and Gary Steward of the University of Central Oklahoma in 2006, and compared to the results of a Gallup poll in 2001. [1] They found fairly consistent results.
belief | not sure | belief | not sure | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Farha-Steward | Gallup | |||
psychic/ spiritual healing | 56 | 26 | 54 | 19 |
ESP | 28 | 39 | 50 | 20 |
haunted houses | 40 | 25 | 42 | 16 |
demonic possession | 40 | 28 | 41 | 16 |
ghosts/spirits of the dead | 39 | 27 | 38 | 17 |
telepathy | 24 | 34 | 36 | 26 |
extraterrestrials visited Earth in the past | 17 | 34 | 33 | 27 |
clairvoyance and prophecy | 24 | 33 | 32 | 23 |
communication with the dead | 16 | 29 | 28 | 26 |
astrology | 17 | 26 | 28 | 18 |
witches | 26 | 19 | 26 | 15 |
reincarnation | 14 | 28 | 25 | 20 |
channeling | 10 | 29 | 15 | 21 |
Other surveys by different organizations at different times have found very similar results. A 2001 Gallup Poll found that the general public embraced the following: 54% of people believed in psychic/ spiritual healing, 42% believed in haunted houses, 41% believed in satanic possession, 36% in telepathy, 25% in reincarnation, and 15% in channeling. [2] A survey by Jeffrey S. Levin, associate professor at Eastern Virginia Medical School, Norfolk found that over 2/3 of the U.S. population reported having at least one mystical experience. [3] [1]
A 1996 Gallup poll estimated that 71% of the people in the United States believed that the government was covering up information about UFOs. A 2002 Roper poll conducted for the Sci Fi channel reported that 56% thought UFOs were real craft and 48% that aliens had visited the Earth. [1]
A 2001 National Science Foundation survey found that 9 percent of people polled thought astrology was very scientific, and 31 percent thought it was somewhat scientific. About 32% of Americans surveyed stated that some numbers were lucky, while 46% of Europeans agreed with that claim. About 60% of all people polled believed in some form of Extra-sensory perception and 30% thought that UFOs were "some of the unidentified flying objects that have been reported are really space vehicles from other civilizations." [4] New Scientist reported in 2006 that almost 2/3 of Americans believe they share less than half their genes with " monkeys", when in fact the figure is much closer to 95-99%, depending on the primates involved and the study used. [5]-- Filll ( talk) 02:33, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Um this is trivial to find. Tons and tons of this stuff. If this is not enough for you, go to the NSF. And literally hundreds if not thousands of other places. This kind of information is unbelievably easy to find. People in general are as dumb as stumps and will believe anything any moron tells them.-- Filll ( talk) 04:32, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
I've seen editors here (and elsewhere) suggest that it may be a good idea to defect to a different wiki, one more science-focused. If I may, I'd like to offer my expertise on why those suggestions aren't good ideas, especially if you're trying to build a useful reference for science related topics, one that teaches science, helps inform the masses, and is the "de facto" reference source. I come from a web development background and while many may be aware of how Google and other popular search engines work, not everyone does. So here is the technical reasons why you shouldn't defect.
Those two factors are what causes Wikipedia pages to turn up first in search engine queries on topics. The second is less important if the alternate wiki is based on MediaWiki, for example Citizendium. The first is very important.
Everyone links to Wikipedia. Bloggers do it (Google sees blog linking habits as important). News articles sometimes do it (Google sees outbound links from news sources as important). Nearly every link to a wiki (and it is common to link to wikis for background info) is a link to Wikipedia. This is what has caused Wikipedia articles to surface as the first or second link in queries at Google.
Can you duplicate that at an alternate wiki, for example Citizendium? Probably not. Everyone will continue linking to Wikipedia regardless of the quality of the articles, and Wikipedia will continue being the de facto source for all topics. It is very unlikely that the masses in general, not necessarily scientists, will start linking somewhere other than Wikipedia. Instead, they'll just assume that an article on Wikipedia related to science is as good, or good enough, as an article on Britney Spears. Only experts will see a quality difference, consider that quality difference to be important, and experts are by definition always the minority.
An expert based wiki/encylopedia will never receive the inbound links required to rise to the top of search engine queries. In other words it ends up being an encyclopedia only for internal use, an encyclopedia by scientists for scientists and one that no one outside of science will read.
It won't solve the problems editors here are saying needs to be solved. That from-scientists-for-scientists article on Creationism will be buried, Wikipedia's article on Creationism will continue to be dominant in search engine queries, and the masses will continue to be scientifically illiterate on Creationism. If the goal of science is to teach and clear up misrepresentations of science, why would scientists ever want to abandon Wikipedia, considering it's technical position in terms of computer science, how the web currently works, and its potential as a teaching tool? How many millions of dollars are spent on creating public awareness of science, combating scientific illiteracy, and so forth. Here it's free! Somewhere above I read someone say that there's no incentive for scientists to contribute. Of course there is. -- Nealparr ( talk to me) 07:25, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
How many millions of dollars are spent on creating public awareness of science, combating scientific illiteracy, and so forth. Here it's free! Somewhere above I read someone say that there's no incentive for scientists to contribute. Of course there is. -- Nealparr ( talk to me) 07:25, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Once again, this diff shows why it's not free, and why there is no incentive (indeed, a disincentive). Until a few dollars from the millions being spent on programs to combat scientific illiteracy are diverted into a grant to pay for this guy contributing to Wikipedia, rather than being blamed for it by his Chair.
It's only free for cranks and trolls who have no hope of ever being published in an authoritative peer-reviewed journal. User:Renamed user 4
(Cross posted from my talk page).-- Filll ( talk) 16:23, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
The issues you're highlighting here are very much also a problem in other areas of Wikipedia - perhaps more so, if anything. Personally I think it's indicative of a general failure of governance across the project. You may be interested in seeing this: Wikipedia:Working group on ethnic and cultural edit wars. I wonder if there would be scope for something similar to address the problems with science articles? -- ChrisO ( talk) 08:35, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
<undent> Allow me to interject a little. I have recently engaged some with one of our admins here about this. This admin is actively and even almost frantically promoting pseudoscience here because it is "fair". As I have noted elsewhere here, well over half the US public believes in what we might call mystical or magical thinking, or pseudoscience. So is it any wonder that we get admins who let their own personal views color things and are amenable to the arguments that science has no place on Wikipedia, particularly in pseudoscience articles? -- Filll ( talk) 19:10, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Well the alarm bell has to be sounded, and reasonable alternatives to consider and try have to be presented. What I think most admins here is missing is that the POV pushers loathe NPOV, or do not understand it, or misinterpret it. And no amount of wikilove and explaining is going to change that to someone who is deluded, or even mentally ill.-- Filll ( talk) 22:21, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
It might be worthwhile to try something similar to
Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Macedonia, where discretionary sanctions include blocks for incivility, disruption, and edit-warring. --
Ronz (
talk) 22:42, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Unfortunately, being accommodating leads to the current mess, because we cannot accommodate all desires, particularly when everyone has a different idea of what is needed. And that was our mistake, for retreating from the conflict instead of finding ways to remove the unconstructive elements. It might feel good to WP:AGF and do whatever someone is asking, but it is ultimately bad for the articles, bad for Wikipedia, and bad for long term productivity of all contributors.
There is a reason that functioning societies have laws and the rule of law, and the police are empowered to act on the laws and we have courts and lawyers etc. It is folly to think that an environment that is more and more resembling society at large can not have a similar structure. We have laws here, but not the rule of law, and it is almost impossible for our "police" to enforce the rule of law. So therefore the citizens have to enforce things themselves and we get the rule of the jungle. It is pretty obvious.
Where would you rather live? Sweden or Afghanistan? Denmark or Colombia? Japan or Mexico? War zones or the Wild West exhibit the same characteristics that are developing on Wikipedia. If we refuse to enforce our laws, we will have problems. This does not mean we need to be authoritarian about it like North Korea. But we can find a better balance perhaps. -- Filll ( talk) 17:15, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I have had many tell me that WP:AGF is the only thing that matters, beyond all else. While I agree in principle, it depends on what one's adversaries are doing. If you just try to "wikilove" your opponents to death and they are dead set on pushing an anti-science agenda or some other nonsense, you will not always succeed, and if you do, it will take far longer than reasonable. What if the POV pusher resorts to meat puppetry or sock puppetry? What if they launch vexatious litigation? What if they curse you at every opportunity and refuse to discuss things rationally? Or in most cases, are literally unable to discuss things rationally? (After all, we have an immense number of people that are mentally disturbed and deficient in this world).
One could mount mediation requests and multiple RfCs and even go to Arbcomm or try other remedies. However, these consume hours and hours of time, and often have unsatisfactory results.
How willing is the community to waste many man hours of other volunteer workers? There are efficiency and productivity considerations here to be taken into account, and if the project does not think of these, it will suffocate in its own wastes.-- Filll ( talk) 19:05, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree. My first introduction to this problem was at black people. That article had a very bad problem with about 20 different POV groups that just talked past each other. I and a few others tried to get them to use a scientific approach, but it was hopeless.
I could not even get them to agree that they had different definitions of what a "black person" is. East Africa? West Africa? North or South of the Sahara? All of Africa? Only American? South Indians? Sri Lankan Tribes? Minority groups in China, Phillipines, Indonesia, Japan? Aboriginals in Australia? Different definitions of black in US law, Canadian Law, Australian law and UK law? Opinions of White Supremacists and Black Supremacists and PanAfricanists? Pseudohistory? NeoNazis? Are Jamaicans black? In The UK? In Jamaica? In the US? Is Obama black? Is Condaleeza Rice? Clarence Thomas? Does black have anything to do with color? Do you have to have a slave ancestry to be black? What about black Irish? Even the Caucasians are known locally in Asia as "black"? Are they? And so on and so forth.
Then other problems started to intrude, like some editors telling me to avoid discussing things with another because he was a Basque or something (Spanish separatist politics in a discussion like this???). Anyway, it was impossible, and I gave up and left. I am sure it is no better now, but at least I do not deal with it. If anyone thinks they can WP:AGF and get some science in the article, they are welcome to try. I would be extremely impressed, frankly.--- Filll ( talk) 23:33, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I wonder if all this long discussion can be boiled down to some sort of position paper when you're all done? There is so much discussion I'm finding it hard to monitor this talk. I recommend some or all of you start working on a combined essay with an associated Talk page. Or do you already have one? Wjhonson ( talk) 23:24, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Well, that is the whole point. If that doesn't happen to a very noticeable degree, this exercise will be in vain, and that mustn't happen.
A few points to consider:
One boycotted article isn't enough. Maybe five of the most controversial articles spanning various fields should be made the subjects of this experiment. I suggest that we vote on these (others may be suggested) and choose the five that get the most votes:
Snalwibma has already voiced these thoughts above, and I basically agree.
The boycott must be maintained for at least a month, or, if an obvious "jumble of nonsense" that violates multiple policies here hasn't resulted, then it should be extended longer. The media will likely notice the best (worst) examples of mob rule.
To make it sufficiently effective, it should be obvious that the more nonsensical the edit, the more certain that it should not be touched by us. So even while observing such editing, it is vitally important to refrain from instinctively reverting nonsense. Maybe keep private notes about it for future reference, but maintain the boycott.
This suggestion is designed as a boycott of certain editors. If they are allowed to edit unopposed, their actions will become more noticeable. THEY are a large part of the problem. The editing environment is because of their disruptions and failures to understand NPOV. Their actions need to be profiled by giving them their will. Hopefully changes will be made in the future that will help to more effectively deal with such editors.
Keep in mind that all this involves no acts that violate policy. It only requires our inaction. There is no violation of POINT, since editing here is a voluntary matter. It is not our obligation to edit, but it is the obligation of the Wikipedia community and upper echelon decision makers to create a more pleasant environment through policy changes and stricter enforcement policies of existing polices. Admins who violate policies and coddle tendentious and even banned editors need to be dealt with. Admins who unblock banned editors violate the community's trust and are party to the ensuing disruption which their actions cause. If their mentees cause problems, they should suffer the consequences (possible desysopping). -- Fyslee / talk 07:04, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Just place your sig once under five different articles. When voting, I suggesting choosing articles that are extremely contentious, often locked, and which are the targets of certain fringe editors who need to be noticed by others. (I'll start...;-)
NOTE: Since other suggestions may be added, it is allowable to change your votes. -- Fyslee / talk 07:04, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
What the Bleep Do We Know? might be a good candidate, from what I have observed. We should pick articles that have not already been abandoned by the science and rational communities; for example black people was long ago abandoned, as far as I can tell. It was so ugly and toxic I have not been back for months.-- Filll ( talk) 19:58, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
I added articles related to monetary crankery. To understand what I'm talking about, see this recent example. [4]
Also, I don't understand why Atheism, Evolution, and Intelligent design are up there, because they generally look pretty good. However, it's true, again, they probably only look good because of people like us. It might be a good idea to propose boycotts of them as well, again, just to see how they'd turn out. ☯ Zenwhat ( talk) 22:16, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
In case this movement gains the desired notice, here's an outline that could be proposed.
I see two problems being pointed out here. 1) Established material is easily degraded, and 2) Experts can easily be overwhelmed.
I do not like Zenwhat's idea of graylists, except as an informal feature that might be promoted. However, a solution that utilizes as much automation as possible would be best. One method that could work fairly well for Wikipedia would be to use better article "versioning." Wikipedia's freely collaborative nature is a boon, but as noted in this page, it also allows for degeneration of content. In order to help prevent article degeneration, page sections should become much more prominent units than articles themselves. Content-oriented edits (as opposed to minor typo/grammar corrections) of existing page sections should NOT be immediately posted in all cases. Editors who are truly interested in the Wikipedia content do not need "instant gratification" IMO. Therefore, it may help to give Wikipedia article sections some measure of "protection" based on some measure of the "acceptance" of the page-section's content. "Acceptance" would be somewhat tricky to quantify, but it would certainly be related to section age, number of recent modifications, total number of pageviews, number of logged-in user pageviews, and time of last modification to that page-section. For example, a page section that is visited regularly by logged-in users that received 2 edits in the past 60 days would be given a much higher "acceptance" level than a brand new article section that has received 10 'distinct' edits in the past hour.
With an "acceptance" metric available, article sections could be automatically protected in various ways; this leads to the question of how such protection should be implemented. One could imagine that content edits are "blocked" in some way. A truly collaborative method would then require a majority of votes in order for a new version to be approved, but most volunteer projects cannot be trusted to accomplish this successfully. So, this may be an option, but cannot be the only option. This points to a need for "assumption of acceptability." Such a requirement could be accomplished by simply using the "acceptance level" to determine a proportional time-delay that slows the propagation of content edits.
With such a "time-delay" system, edits to "Higly accepted" page sections could potentially be delayed for days, while edits to sections with a current "low acceptance" may not even be delayed at all. A good way to take advantage of this delay-time would be to allow opponents of the proposed content a one-time ability to further delay the propagation of content changes from an editor on that section. This extra time would ideally be used to resolve content disputes, instead of the current system whereby (in many cases) edit-warring is implicitly relied upon. During this resolution time, the editor of the delayed material would be able to alter his proposed changes .. if acceptable to the opposition, then the extended delay could be released. The ability to release a time-delay could be used as further leverage in gaining consensus with the editor whose content is, in some ways, being "held for ransom."
Generally, this should constitute a minimal impact to the editing process, in most common circumstances. However, this system could create a practical problem in the case of moderately "low acceptance" section edits. If a "dispute delay" is imposed on such a section, then it would lead to an extended edit-conflict situation. In allowing the time for dispute resolution, a section would effectively be locked from further edits; for any reasonable allotment of time for dispute resolution [2 hours, minimum ... though probably closer to 24 hours] this would consitute an intolerable lock time. Likely no clean solution would exist for this problem, but there are 2 saving graces: 1) page sections with *very* low acceptance would not even have this delay anyways, 2) the lock would only apply to a single section of a page, leaving the remainder of the page free. There are some options to mitigate this problem that I could detail, if needed.
One other use of the "acceptance" metric is that article sections could be tagged or even filtered by a user-preferred level of acceptance.
None of this specifically addresses the utilization of our Wikipedia subject experts, but for that I would suggest this simple change ... just allow editors the ability to have watch lists of article sections instead of just entire articles. Due to a new focus on article sections, this would allow experts to focus their efforts on particularly contentious material, or retain peace of mind that agreeable material still exists in the article (even if quality has degraded in other parts of the article). It would also be trivial to place some special designator on the watchlist when a proposed edit has been "dispute delayed," which could draw in more opinions and consensus to a discussion before the edit is even finalized.
Anyways, this is a rough outline. I run my own online community, but I'm still fairly new here, so take this with a grain of salt.
tl;dr ... let's acknowledge that some content deserves some special consideration in regard to preservation, and also make publicly-viewable edits a slower process when affecting long-standing subject material so that talk page discussion can pursued proactively. BigK HeX ( talk) 06:20, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Well, it seems to me that rather than helping to defuse the situation, all the article probation has done is to light the fuse on the inevitable catastrophe. Of course, I could be wrong here, but it seems like the controversy is just getting more and more widespread. Admins are hinting towards sides right now, and it won't be long until the battle just steps up a level.
With that in mind, I think this may be a good time for us to take our leave. The situation can't explode if one side simply gets up and leaves (at least in the same way). They prefer civil [term exempted as I couldn't think of anything that would pass civility and not get me banned from this page as well] to incivil [also have to exempt this as simple contrast could result in the implication of incivility]? Well, let them have it and see where it gets them. -- Infophile (Talk) (Contribs) 18:29, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Well at the very minimum, one can save one's own butt.-- Filll ( talk) 00:10, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes and no. It shows that admins are, in spite of the claims of wikilove, willing to kick butt when people start spewing nonsense. And I can hear the screaming from here. Plus see the lies and misrepresentations. But at least I am not involved.-- Filll ( talk) 00:58, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
As predicted here, [5] a boycott is not appropriate if for no other reason than that it can be too easily foiled. [6] I've quit editing that article for the sake of my own sanity, and if you want to do so for the same reason that's fine, but let's not pretend that a boycott will accomplish anything else. Raymond Arritt ( talk) 06:43, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
I have seen some POV pushers become reasonable and productive. Unfortunately this is quite rare. I think while the "ban hammer" is flying, one has to be exceptionally careful, and this if nothing else is a good reason to stay away from those pages.-- Filll ( talk) 14:36, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
From what I understand, this is a discussion on giving some sort of an increased power or weighting to editors who are experts in an area? Giving increased powers to any one group of people defeats the entire purpose of wikipedia, the socialist encyclopedia that anyone can edit, admins aside who attempt to keep to administrative duties only. This isn't citizendium, the reason wikipedia is so popular is that anyone can edit it, unfortunately experts must accept this but not let it get to them. If it gets to them to the point where they can't handle it, unfortunately wikipedia and the way it was designed to function/functions, then this place is not for them. If my interpretation of this issue is incorrect please advise. Timeshift ( talk) 08:28, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
Timeshift, you say "If my interpretation of this issue is incorrect please advise." OK. I'll do that. You mistake a method for a goal, a path for a destination, a means for an end. "Anyone can edit" is a means. "Encyclopedia" is the end result we are aiming at. To the extent that "anyone can edit" gets in the way of that goal, we adjust that means. You'll note that we block and ban people so "anyone" can not edit after all. To the extent that a means like empowering experts helps with the goal, we may use that means. See WP:IAR. We make and change and break rules as needed to achieve the end result of the best free encyclopedia we can create. So far, "anyone can edit" is a rule of thumb that has been very helpful toward that end. But we are getting to a point where an official role for experts might prove of value. I favor the idea of a content arbcom where experts from academia could play a part. But we are probably a couple years away from implementing any such thing. WAS 4.250 ( talk) 16:38, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
Actually, TS, I think you got it in one: "If it gets to them to the point where they can't handle it, unfortunately wikipedia and the way it was designed to function/functions, then this place is not for them." Which, is actually what is being discussed (Expert Withdrawal/rebellion/call-it-what-you-will) which for Wikipedia, is unfortunate - especially since the withdrawal is principally concerned with science and anti-science articles. Without expert participation in these articles, you end up with Medicine just being a redirect to Homeopathy, proof positive that MMR vaccine causes Autism - heck any vaccine is by the Illuminatii, and AIDS was caused by permissive drug use. There are lots of others, but here in the "socialist paradise", it's a paradise for the moronic uneducated who believe sincerely (but sincerely incorrectly) in these things. Because admins don't wish to be involved (and are prevented by policy) and are too disinterested to be informed, they end up rewarding civility over content. Something as you can appreciate doesn't happen in the real-world (tm) ... although there are admins so divorced from the real-world that they believe it does operate like Wikipedia. Shot info ( talk) 23:12, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
I like to be naive and think that admins are like speakers of parliaments, who stay out of issues and are there to maintain order. Timeshift ( talk) 05:37, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
[note after writing this: I refer to a 'strike,' but I don't mean to distinguish that from any other withdrawal]
I should start off by saying that I only read the first third or so of this discussion. It is long long long, is in need of re-organization and user-friendlifying, and I planned to leave the office two hours ago. So, what I say may already have been said, or other movements may have rendered them irrelevant. That said, here are my thoughts: Say there were a strike. For the editors of the NY Times to pay attention, let alone put the final damages on the front page, it would have to be publicized. This, I imagine, would be something like posting a sign on a warehouse saying "Dear grafitists [grafitiists?]: The police will not patrol this area from [this date] until [this date]." The police, there, would not come back to a brick wall covered in spray paint. They'd come back to a battered wall, deep piles of broken glass, litter, etc. For an expert WP editors strike (like any other strike) to be effective, it would have to be generally supported. I would suspect that many of the editors who keep WP in line generally (watching grammar, vandalism, etc) are also experts in something. So a strike of the experts would mean a strike of the watchdogs. The damage at the end of a month would be impermanent: there are the storage servers, and the History lists. But restoring order would not be a simple thing, by any means. Someone would have to go through and sort out of month's worth of "good" edits from "bad" edits, and those editors whose edits of that month were reverted would fight back, and WP might not recover. (Of course, maybe the expert/watchdog overlap isn't that big, but I can't think of any feasible way to find out ahead of time.)
And so on. But (and I for one haven't had any G&Ts) there was some thing I was going to address. But what? It will come to me.
Oh yes: Showing that significant damage was done to the quality of WP by a withdraw of experts would be a major research project. If someone here is looking for a —what? systems modelling in science, technology, and society, following dynamic databases in changing environments?— dissertation topic then a strike might be worthwhile (if we assume I'm wrong, in the previous paragraph, to picture WP as barely being kept afloat by, e.g. editors who happen to stumble on a page up for deletion just in time to contest an automated process (not that I did a bunch of that today…) (looking into that would make for a great dissertation too)). We'd need
Then we'd to analyze how quality of WP changed during the strike on measures of NPOV and ….; how did the strike affect the population of active editors; whether we can attribute the one to the other. Maybe someone knows how to do that, but the chances that they'll become part of this discussion without it being publicized are mighty slim. And again, with publicity would come that school of editors (maybe even hackers) excited by the idea of messin' with a big project.
For these reasons, I side with an early comment and argue for the opposite approach: fight non-expert edits with expert edits.
As for where the expert voice would go: my impression is that the internet paradigm is that each field can only have one Champ. In terms of consolidation and inter-user reliability, this is of one the great boons of the internet age. But another aspect introduces some problems. That aspect is the non-admittance of generics. Once someone has carved out their spot as The Prototype/The Best the competition becomes —for whatever host of reasons— insignificant. To use an awful it's-really-time-to-get-dinner metaphor: In terms of Citizendium or future similar projects, I think WP's already gone into the throne room and locked the door. I mean, people are calling WP "Wiki." If the goal is (and I hope it is) to disseminate NPOV/expert/etc knowledge broadly, and now, it must be done on WP. Experts' withdrawing from WP would not precipitate a crisis. Wikignomes and procrastinators, and the policies already in place, would keep WP generally stable (even if it took an initial (e.g. one-month) hit), and so new generations of experts will keep coming to WP. There'd be a dangerous period when either the newbies would rise quick enough to carry WP on, or controversial info would be entered to quickly for editors to keep it clean. In the former case the WP article on the valiant "Experts of '08" would be deemed non-notable. In the latter case, WP would plateau and, as it became more out of date, people would stop using it. That would definitely precipitate a crisis, but with the whole wiki-reference enterprise associated with WP I bet this would be as damaging to Citizendium et al. as it would be to WP.
Good lord. Did I really write all that? Is it really that late? If anyone wants to read the articles (journal, not WP) I was supposed to be reading and take notes on them for me, hit my talk page :p — eitc h 00:43, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
With the witchhunt that started all this, ArbCom member Paul August says "One good editor lost does far more harm to the project than dozens of disruptive editors not blocked at the first possible moment." I gather than this is said without a shred of irony given ArbCom's rampant persecution of VU. Shot info ( talk) 05:53, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
That is the problem. Arbcomm in this instance is viewing Matthew Hoffman as the good editor lost, not the disruptive editor not blocked. Now since I was the editor dealing with Matthew Hoffman, from my perspective, Matthew Hoffman was nothing but disruptive and contributed nothing to Wikipedia, and is unlikely to ever contribute anything to Wikipedia.
Matthew Hoffman was just one of an endless line of similar trolls who wanted to push his religious agenda; that is, that intelligent design should be promoted here on Wikipedia as the most brilliant scientific advance of the 20th century, proving that Charles Darwin was Satan himself. When we wanted to "make necessary assumptions" that intelligent design is part of creationism (and we have 5 or 10 reliable sources that say it is, including creationist sources), Matthew Hoffman threw a tantrum. When we suggested to Matthew Hoffman that the references at the intelligent design article should be sufficient, Matthew Hoffman threw a tantrum. He was obnxious, and pushy and nasty and threatening.
Matthew Hoffman was unblocked, and where has he contributed? Not one bit since he was unblocked months ago. Now granted, he is probably operating here as a sock puppet, but still...
It is ludicrous to hound VU out of here in the desperate hope that Matthew Hoffman would produce something. I would dearly love to make some of these wikilove advocates responsible for these trolls, and if they do not produce, then stick it to the wikilove advocates who are more in favor of volunteering someone else's time to deal with these POVandals than doing anything about it, in the frantic hope that one of these POVandals will actually have a conversion experience and become productive.
I notice that almost none of these POV pushers actually are interested in creating anything. They are mainly interested in disruption, as near as I can tell.-- Filll ( talk) 18:52, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
I got into a bit of a discussion about what's going on at Wikipedia offsite and made a post which details another problem around here which I think is part of the core problem. It might be hard, but I think it might be possible for us to actually make some headway on this issue if we push. Quoting straight from the post I made:
What I really hate over there is how the consensus among many casual editors seems to be that science is a point of view (”SPOV”), and as such, we have to appropriately balance it with other points of view to make articles Neutral Point of View (”NPOV”). They completely miss the point that science is a method, not a conclusion, and on top of that, it’s simply one of the best methods we have for gathering data. But it gets treated like a viewpoint over there, so it has to be balanced against pseudoscientific views. Now, there are clauses about not fringe giving views undue weight, but this doesn’t help much when there’s a ton of horrible research being done on a subject (as with Homeopathy and Chiropractic). It looks to the casual observer like there’s a lot of weight to the credulous views, because they can’t determine the quality of the research. Even second-order research, such as meta-analyses, is flooded with poor-quality reviews which again, make it look like the credulous viewpoint is more credible than it actually is.
So, what I think we need to push for is acceptance that science isn't a point of view. Rather, it's a means of determining reality, and scientific sources should be considered among the best reliable sources. We should also raise points about how it's best to judge the quality of a scientific paper - journal it's published in, citations, etc. - so that non-experts can check to see whether a certain paper is good or not. When it comes to sources, we want quality, not quantity. -- Infophile (Talk) (Contribs) 19:34, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
← Anthon1 making a very common mistake about NPOV. It requires that we describe evolutions in science after they happen. A lot of people seem to want Wikipedia to describe things that are just about to happen in science, or right around the corner, or beyond the cutting edge. And they invariably bring up things like Galileo and Semmelweiss. If Wikipedia were around when Semmelweiss was first mentioning handwashing, then it would quite properly have regarded it as a fringe view. After handwashing became accepted by experts in the field, Wikipedia would be updated to reflect that. Wikipedia is not the place to bring more attention or credibility to a fringe or protoscientific idea. If that idea becomes mainstream, then Wikipedia will reflect it, but it should never try to anticipate that an idea will be proven right or wrong in the future. Because for every Semmelweiss, there are 5,000 Lysenkos and Lamarcks - and that's a conservative estimate. MastCell Talk 00:09, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
The problem is that no one is charged with enforcing NPOV. Or rather, we all are. Admins don't have any special claim or role as standard-bearers of NPOV; they just have blunt tools for dealing with behavioral issues. There is no higher body or "content ArbCom" that will bestow victory to the "right" side. For better or worse, it's the community of uninvolved editors who need to be convinced that a given interpretation of NPOV, or a given source, or whatever is the most encyclopedic. Thye will listen to reason, but they will even more rapidly be put off by flagrant incivility or incessant bickering and negativity. Regardless of whether this is the "right" way to build an encyclopedia, it's reality. We (meaning people who would like the encyclopedia to be a useful reference work on scientific topics) need to recognize that the community ultimately upholds WP:NPOV and WP:V, and that in this environment rudeness, pettiness, or incivility can and do outweigh the "rightness" of the underlying argument. Some editors who are interested in emphasizing fringe or unscientific coverage of scientific topics have already recognized this, to their advantage. Admins are not going to suddenly start "enforcing" NPOV by blocking people (which is really the only extra tool they have available); we need to make a better case to the community. MastCell Talk 22:54, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
outdent. It would look like more or less what it does: evolution is a scientific theory. And nearly everything, including life after physical death, the existence of God etc., can be investigated scientifically. The problem is POV pushing: from the fringe, yes, but also from those who incite the fringe by trying to speak of people's false beliefs and fringy ideas in a manner which frankly shoves the scientific POV down their throats rather than simply makes it available. That not only screws the scientific POV by making everyone hate it, it is against current WP policy. —— Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 07:16, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
The SPOV (science point of view) is the point of view that the scientific community can be trusted to accurately represent present day understanding of logic and evidence and reality. Other points of view insist that the scientific community is biased in some way so that there is some aspect of reality that the scientific community is wrong about and some other person or community is right about. Personal revelation, subjective truths, revealed religion, secret truths, secret societies, belief in corruption in the scientific community (who pays their salaries?), mysticism, and emotion based certainty all play a part in people deciding to reject some specific scientific consensus and instead believing something else. WAS 4.250 ( talk) 18:31, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
AlexanderSaxton has been confirmed as a sockpuppet of Davkal. Details here. Raymond Arritt ( talk) 17:31, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
Hello. You see from my user page I just joined, though I have been lurking on this debate for a few months. I hope it is evident which 'side' I am on from my user page. What is the current view of the 'scientists' now? (The debate got so painful I haven't followed it in recent weeks). Best The Rationalist ( talk) 10:12, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
So what do you do with those parts of your life that are not verifiable, yet exist anyway? - Define "exist" and "verifiable" and "parts of your life". These kinds of philosophical questions are about confused terminology. WAS 4.250 ( talk) 18:44, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
outdent] The simple answer is to reinterpret those experiences. That's the scientific thing to do. We should be prepared to reevaluate our experiences and change our minds. That's the only way to make progress, and which is what happens in science all the time. Just recalibrate your mind. -- Fyslee / talk 21:14, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
Having to deal with issues like cranks and trolls diverts experts' time, and I think the large amount of policy in place to deal with conflicts can make experts feel helpless against Wikipedia's "system" (as evidenced by the call for a boycott — my initial reaction was, "why don't you just fix it?!"). Here's a proposed solution to this problem:
Identify experts, and if they want to, assign a "WikiHelper" to them (perhaps after verifying their credentials off-record to avoid diversion of volunteer time). A WikiHelper is like an assistant/clerk/mentor/lawyer to the expert; he or she supports the expert in making substantial contributions and helps keep cranks and other issues off the expert's back.
In particular, this is what a WikiHelper could do:
WikiHelpers will need some sensitivity to avoid being the expert's meatpuppet, but I think it's possible to handle this problem appropriately with some good common sense on the WikiHelper's side.
The idea behind this is that there are probably many users like me who don't have a substantial knowledge in any specific area (I'm a college student), but are well-acquainted with Wikipedia's policies/processes and are able to handle issues really quickly. For instance, I'd be happy to be the WikiHelper of one or several science experts. Any comments? -- Lea ( talk) 00:14, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
<undent>Actually in my experience, to state that almost no scientists believe in things like creationism is pretty close to correct. If you look at the general public, about half of the general public in the US subscribe to it. The more a person knows about the subject, however, the less likely they are to express a belief in creationism. So among engineers, it is no longer about 50%, but about 5%. If one moves to biologists, it is no longer 50% or 5%, but about 0.01% or less.
So it is not true that getting a PhD means you are immediately stupid and unskeptical about some of these fruitcake ideas; quite the opposite. However, a belief in such irrational things stands out in such sharp contrast that people notice it when someone with a PhD in science or engineering or mathematics states that creationism is superior to evolution. It is not the PhD that makes them have these stupid ideas, but it is the PhD that makes us notice them.
On remote viewing etc: I do believe that there is a place for describing this material from both a skeptical and a less critical point of view on a Wiki. It just is unreasonable to expect that one Wiki, this one, Wikipedia, can be all things to all people. This is clearly impossible. It is not possible to have one article that includes debunking material, and does not include debunking material at the same time. And this does not follow the rules of NPOV.
What happens is that purveyers of "fringe science" want there to be no debunking material in these fringe science articles. It is not possible to be a serious encyclopedia, and to follow NPOV. However, I personally enjoy reading about these fringe science areas from different perspectives. And I think that if we can organize this enterprise in a better way we can all be more effective and productive.
That is why I have suggested things like people trying the Paranormal Wiki (one of the Wikia Projects). It is dying for content. But none of the fringe science people want to consider the Paranormal Wiki, maybe because of the name, or maybe because it is some perceived slight. Maybe it should be called Alternapedia? Or some other name, to make it more palatable?
It is obvious that this Wiki cannot both include skeptical rational material, and not include it, at the same time. People try to redefine NPOV to get away from this. People wikilawyer things to death. Science Apologist is attacked over and over by purveyors of pseudoscience who want to get rid of him. This is a complete waste of time for all concerned. Either we change how we do business here, or we will continue to have trouble, and the trouble might even get worse.-- Filll ( talk) 16:58, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
JJ left a comment on my talk page which deserves a full reply. (He queried a comment of mine on account abuse). 1. Shotinfo said in a reply to a message I left on his page that 'I think those-that-should-know-better-but-don't probably have penciled you in as a sock'. I honestly have no idea what he means here, or who he is talking about. 2. I then noticed a comment by Martinphi asking 'And The Rationalist is a sock of whom?' on this page, which is quite explicit. All I can say is, most of the protagonists on the 'pro science' side seem actually to be scientists, and I'm not a scientist, so why am I being called a 'sock'? I have had nothing to do with this debate so far, except for studying it for a while, and, frankly, I'm still a little mystified about this whole thing. Clearly a lot more has been going on than I have been able to follow from this page alone. The Rationalist ( talk) 15:44, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
<undent>This is exactly the kind of trouble I am discussing above. We will have more and more of this if we cannot organize ourselves better. So I have stated over and over on this page and its talk page that we need to consider other more productive options. I am pleading with people; let's see if we can figure a way out of this mess.-- Filll ( talk) 17:04, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
In this case, a purportedly new user showed up at irreducible complexity. He was extremely combative and appeared quite knowledgable about Wikipedia, although he had supposedly not edited here before, so people were suspicious. He was blocked by an admin, first for a short period, and then for a longer period on suspicion that he was a banned sock puppet, and other admins signed off on this. This banned user wrote to be allowed back on, and his email was lost. Eventually someone on the Arbcomm was contacted and decided to make a test case out of the admin. The Arbcomm case went on for more than 2 months. Voting started even before there was any evidence, after less than 12 hours. Some of the Arbcomm members made negative statements about the editors on Wikipedia (we are supposedly "dogs" and worse) and the Arbcomm members did not distance themselves from these remarks. The admin asked for time off for his exams and for Christmas and this was only very grudgingly granted. This case did not follow normal procedure where an RfC was held first, so an RfC was created. The community overwhelmingly supported the admin, except for a group who push anti-science agendas who do not like this admin (for obvious reasons). Some of these anti-science editors opened a second RfC condemning the admin for calling one of them a "homeopathy promoter" and claiming that was uncivil and wanting him sanctioned or worse for using such uncivil language (this second RfC was not certified so it disappeared). The Arbcomm appeared to ignore the RfC where the community supported the admin and would not compromise on the wording of one or two of the findings. So finally after 8 or 9 weeks of sheer hell, the admin decided he had had enough and would leave.
There is a lot more to the story, but this is some of it.-- Filll ( talk) 19:12, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
You are hitting on another problem that is related; accessibility. Both pseudoscience proponents and science proponents have a tendency to use too much jargon in the LEAD and make the article hard to read for nonspecialists. For example, in homeopathy, no one but a homeopath is going to know what "potentization" or "succussion" or "trituration" or "remedies" are, or what 10X or 100C or 3M means. And the same is true of science types, who might want to go into great detail about metastatistics and double blind tests and hypothesis testing and confirmation bias and so on. In both cases, this kind of material makes the article inaccessible for the average reader.
In the case of "bleep", I have studied a lot of quantum mechanics, up through graduate level quantum field theory. I personally found the movie not that horrible, at least the first half an hour or hour or so. I think that the last part is just crazy, but that is ok; it does present a lot of interesting and state of the art physics to a general audience. We have to be able to produce articles that (1) include the mainstream views of the science community (2) are accessible (3) present the pseudoscience claims as clearly as possible. Unfortunately, we have various elements here that want to discard (1), (2) or (3), or possibly more than one of these requirements.-- Filll ( talk) 19:21, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
In response to the comment above that ends:
My perception was that an admin, who is part of a group of admins that uses bullying to maintain ownership of articles (but I almost always agree with the end result in terms of article content), responded to an aggressive new editor with equal aggression and in the end banned him for the thought crime of agreeing with other banned editors using the excuse of "sock/meat puppet". The problem is that we need a content arbcom, so we don't have to spend literally unlimited amounts of time arguing the exact same points with every new editor (or be forced to use bullying or thought crime to end the endless debates). It also would have helped if the admin had not ignored an arbcom member who questioned his indef block. WAS 4.250 ( talk) 10:56, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
My perception of the situation is closer to Jay*Jay's. I was the editor who was mainly dealing with this "newbie". I will eat my hat if that "newbie" is not some sort of sock of someone blocked. He was abusive and obnoxious and knew way too much about WP rules right from his first couple of edits. The Vanished User, the admin who blocked this "newbie", was protecting me, not bullying anyone. Frankly, this "newbie" was bullying me and being a complete jerk (I could say worse, but I will hold off).
Is protecting this "newbie" more important than protecting me? If so, why? I have over 25000 edits and have created well over 1000 articles in about 15 months. Am I not of any value here? Give me a break...
And after all this nonsense, where is the esteemed "newbie" MH? What has he contributed after begging and pleading to be allowed back on for months? And what has happened to the Arbcomm member who called the editors on Wikipedia dogs and worse?
I have started dealing with these sorts of disruptive editors by repeatedly inviting them to create some new articles or content. Almost always they vanish. They are usually not interested in creating anything, but just in destruction and obstruction.
We need to reorganize ourselves and new mechanisms. And that is the purpose of this page; to stimulate the creation of some new ideas that might be worth trying.-- Filll ( talk) 16:53, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Well to me it appears like a rewriting of history and creeping rule changes, or problems with unwritten rules. So the Vanished User had edited irreducible complexity and was involved in a content dispute in this instance? I think if he did edit that article, it was many months previously. And the same was true of the other complaints; if he had edited an article 10 or 12 months earlier, people were crying foul. But those who supported the Vanished User saw through these ridiculous trumped-up charges and supported him anyway.
Under those standards, FeloniousMonk and Raul654 should be immediately banned. Are you going to bring charges against them for this in front of Arbcomm? Go ahead. I dare you.
About the homeopathy articles: I have no problem with a couple of hundred articles and miniarticles about homeopathy. I think few do. What I am nervous about is giving the green light to allowing 10,000 miniarticles about Homeopathy or even 20,000 or more. And allowing them all to be glowing accounts of this wonderful treatment known as homeopathy. For example, in the Charles Darwin article, one homeopath wrote a large section about what wonderful homeopathic treatments Darwin had and how they had cured him. The actual sources showed that he probably had steam baths and baths mainly, and they did not work. And Darwin wrote extensively about what a crock of $%^& homeopathy is. But with admin support, Darwin's biography was turned into a vehicle for uncritical promotion of homeopathy, when the sources did not support this, and in fact support the opposite.
So, I have no problem with describing homeopathy clearly. But these pro-homeopathy elements are not interested in that. They want something far different; they want to promote their profession with the standard mumbo jumbo that is completely inaccessible and just serves to obscure the nature of the treatments. And so we come to my suggestion here; to let the pro-homeopathy editors go at it, and then evaluate the product after a few months. And see, is this what we want for Wikipedia, or not? Because with the current mechanisms that exist here, we have no way to stop a civil homeopath who wants 20,000 pro-homeopathy articles on Wikipedia. No recourse whatsoever. And anyone trying to stop him or slow him down will end up banned. That is our current situation.-- Filll ( talk) 18:24, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
And what about User:Raul654? -- Filll ( talk) 19:03, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Raul654 has done the same as FM and Vanished User. Over and over; believe me. -- Filll ( talk) 19:29, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
WP used to not encourage WP:SPA, but somehow there has been a change in culture on Wikipedia in the last year or so. And even though Jimbo made statements like "we will be cracking down around here" (and these statements sounded to me that we would be getting rid of disruptive editors), what has actually happened is a crackdown on established editors and admins (maybe this started with User: Durova?), not on WP:SPA and sockpuppets and newbies and POVandals and meat puppets and malcontents and so on. Somehow the mantra of "the encyclopedia that everyone can edit" has become stronger than everything else, to the point of even creating an environment so unpleasant that established productive editors want to leave.
I wonder if there is some nervousness about growth of Wikipedia. This seems silly to me, since the number of articles continues to grow, the number of GAs and FAs continue to grow, the standards for GAs and FAs are higher now than ever before, and most articles that I deal with seem to have more and more frequent edits. So I am basically puzzled here...-- Filll ( talk) 19:03, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
I am glad you like the evolution FAQ. It was my idea and I wrote the first version. It only works in combination with many other adjustments however. See my discussion at [11].
The thing about the SPAs is that the WikiLove Police are now favoring the SPAs over other editors.-- Filll ( talk) 19:29, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
After a bit of time on the 'What the bleep' page, I see where you guys are coming from. I had hitherto believed that no problem was too great for men & women of good faith to get round together to solve. Perhaps an idle dream. It is all fighting over little bits of sentences, with no sense of the thread of the article, of how the ideas fit together, of the order in which an article is presented. I wonder if the idea of 'anyone can edit an encyclopedia' really makes sense. Anyway, enough for today, friends. The Rationalist ( talk) 18:47, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Hey Rationalist, I'm a few days ahead of you; a similar thing happened to me last week on the same page, when I also started out trying to be reasonable and accommodating (as opposed to those unyielding and dogmatic science guys who weren't doing the cause of science any good by their attitude, I thought) and suddenly realized that my arguments were being twisted and repeated back to me as agreement with a point of view I didn't share and couldn't agree with. The problem with WP:AGF is that it only works if everyone really is acting in good faith. When the people on one side are fighting for an ideology, for legitimacy for ideas that can't possibly succeed on their own merits, for vested interests (there is an enormous amount of money in the new age industry), then assuming good faith only benefits those who are acting in bad faith.
I stopped trying to contribute to the discussion after that, and it was about that time that I came across, by accident, information that led me to believe that some of the vocal pushers of the pro-Bleep slant are on the faculty of [a new-age "college"] Many of the "experts" featured in that movie have been identified as faculty members at this institution, so it would be to the institution's advantage to have the movie presented as a reasonable representation of science. And surely no one is naive enough to think that the Ramtha interests don't have editors working on the article? JZ Knight may look a bit "out there," but as far as marketing and making money off her brand, she's no fool. As long as this is the state of affairs on Wikipedia: on one hand vested interests backed up with unlimited resources and the zeal of an army of true believers willing to work tirelessly for the cause, on the other hand a few exhausted people who think an encyclopedia should be an accurate and objective reflection of reality, and a regulatory bureacracy that gives both sides equal weight, I can't foresee a good outcome, either for the encyclopedia (which is considered a joke in the circles I frequent, and has certainly not presented itself in a positive light to me as a newbie) or for anyone but the special interests and ideologues who seem to be winning the battle. I can't think of any reason why it would make sense for me personally to become involved, when it's so obvious that it's a lost cause. Woonpton ( talk) 18:31, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
You are hitting on the basic problem, the reason we created these discussions on these pages. We need to think creatively of other ways to organize ourselves, or things will stay in this current mess, or get worse. -- Filll ( talk) 20:19, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
I do not think it is hopeless. What I think worked reasonably well on WP a year ago or two years ago does not work so well now because of all kinds of changes that happen when you get high visibility on the web and many more people using the web etc. I think we have to brainstorm about things to try to improve the situation. Just edit warring with people who are commercially driven or ideologically driven to make some unencyclopedia edits will not work. There are way too many of them, and the current situation where wikilove is the paramount consideration means we do not have the administrative structure behind us, for the most part, but against us. So we have to be creative about suggestions to put forward, and ways to bring attention to the problem.-- Filll ( talk) 19:13, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
There are a lot of accounts on here that do nothing but argue, and create nothing. Methods for discouraging those accounts would be great. Like topic bans, or page bans. It is a real problem to compile the evidence necessary for an RfC, let alone an Arbcomm proceeding, and even an AN/I alert can be problematic. Maybe accounts that have been productive at a certain level should be given more leeway than these driveby sock puppets and meat puppets that create nothing. If you needed 10,000 edits and 3 GAs to be taken seriously, that would slow a lot of them down. Then in some sort of dispute with an established user, someone who has 100 edits, all to talk pages arguing that man never landed on the moon and it is all an evil hoax by extraterrestrial aliens disguised as world leaders, would not carry much weight compared to the established user. I agree with avoiding WP:BITE, but if a new user is just being disruptive, let him work on a few articles and show he is productive first and keep him away from the articles where he is being disruptive. I am not sure if that would work, but we need to think of other ways to organize ourselves.-- Filll ( talk) 20:00, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Well, I figure this particular issue deserves to at least be brought up. We've seemed to skirt around it for quite a while. Anyways, I think we can all agree that there are a fair share of pro-science editors who have definite civility problems (not naming any names, though it is interesting that I don't see them around here). In my opinion, this often seems to make the overall problem worse, as admins see a definite problem on one side of the issue. I think one thing that might help would be for us to raise our concerns with these editors and see if we can get them to lighten up a bit. -- Infophile (Talk) (Contribs) 20:05, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
As for what to do when the frustration reaches that point, we need to offer clearer support regarding how to get backup, and we need to get in the habit of using back up long before we start feeling hot under the collar. There is very little excuse for arguing until one loses one's temper when one could go get three other people to repeat one's argument for one. - GTBacchus( talk) 02:49, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
I was thinking that we might need a new guideline to coach editors in judging the quality of scientific sources. As we know, with sources like, say, newspapers, it's relatively easy to judge whether a particular paper is reliable or not ( New York Times: Reliable. National Enquirer: More reliable if you take the opposite of everything they say). But for scientific papers, it's a fair bit more difficult. Peer review is a fickle mistress, so sometimes bad papers slip into good journals, while other times good papers can only get into poorer journals. There are ways to judge how good a paper is, but the average editor doesn't know them.
So, I'm bringing this up here as the editors browsing this page are most likely to be interested in this and capable of helping. Do you think we should try to write a guideline (or at least an essay) to help editors judge the quality of scientific sources? -- Infophile (Talk) (Contribs) 18:52, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
The best thing is to actually understand the content. You can find garbage even in Science and Nature and Cell and PNAS. But less garbage there than in more minor journals, and less garbage in minor peer-reviewed science journals than in mainstream respectable media like NYT, and so on. -- Filll ( talk) 19:28, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
In the area of guarding against pseudoscience, quackery, and cultism, Wikipedia is fundamentally irredeemable. The basic tenets of Wikipedia are that "expertise" and "fact" do not exist; rather, they are, first, that anyone--even the 15-year-old anime fans who comprise the majority of the editor base here--can have an equally valid opinion about how the world works as compared to a person who has studied chemistry for years, been awarded a PhD, been published in legitimate journals, or so forth. Second, that there is no such thing as "truth" and anyone who appeals to truth is breaking the rules; there is only "verifiability," and of course the Flat Earth Society and the Creationist Institute count just as much for citations as scientific journals do, since there is no such thing as expertise or objective fact. Such relativism and radical epistemological egalitarianism are the core principles of Wikipedia, and are of course in direct opposition to the scientific method and the Enlightenment philosophy that have brought us everything good in the world, and particularly have brought us a scientific understanding of physical reality. You can never change Wikipedia to acknowledge that science is the foremost, and only, legitimate method of understanding the physical universe, because then it would no longer be Wikipedia. All of the people who have drunk the Kool-Aid about Wikipedia being some sort of political or social achievement will resist a challenge to the fundamental principles of the encyclopedia--we see this in the administrators who the pseudoscientists already have in their pocket. In the unlikely event that a critical mass of admins ever understands that the project is doomed, the inside group, or Jimbo himself, will boot them out, because they will never admit that Wikipedia is founded on promoting a fundamentally anti-reason, anti-science, anti-truth philosophy. Randy Blackamoor ( talk) 22:00, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia is useful and every year more useful than the last. Wikipedia's rules do not remain the same; they have changed over time and will continue to do so. The basic tenets of Wikipedia are that "expertise" and "fact" do exist; but claims of expertise are not sufficient to tell everyone else to just shut up. We require evidence not authority based assertion. This is how science works. Second, there is such a thing as "truth" and appeals to truth to delete a claim from an article breaks no rule; but verifiability is required to add a claim to an article. Relativism and radical epistemological egalitarianism are not core principles of Wikipedia. WAS 4.250 ( talk) 12:21, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
I am a Ph.D. physicist, and I whole-heartedly support Wikipedia's core policies. In fact, I see them as the application of the scientific world view and method to a special regime. A good scientific paper may express an individual conclusion, but it will also be neutral in the sense of "writing for the enemy" and pointing out all the weaknesses of the hypothesis. A good scientific review article will present a balanced and neutral picture of the current state of the field, being very careful not to push the POV of the author or pretend to be a "crystal ball". I'll try not to let my Wiki activity get in the way of my job or my life, but I plan to stick around. -- Art Carlson ( talk) 12:57, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
← So the civility issue is a significant issue that pro-science and pro-pseudoscience (support the pseudoscience inclusion ad-infinitum) editors are often tripping themselves up on. Until they get it, we won't know if a more substantive solution is reachable. Anthon01 ( talk) 16:23, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
I think we should demand that either (1) Anthon01 rewrite WP:NPOV completely to suit himself and those of his fellows since they disagree with it or (2) we scrap WP:NPOV completely. Both of these would be completely permissable under the current environment that has been established at WP and I believe the current powers that be would favor either of these.-- Filll ( talk) 17:27, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
It might be time to take the essential points we all agree on and try to forumulate a plan of action. From what I am reading to date there are two main points.
1) Don't get drawn into drama.
2) Deal with SPA and COI editors.
David D. (Talk) 16:37, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
It seems to be that the solution is not to boycott the articles that attract fringe POV pushers. That would be giving them their fondest wish on a plate. The proper solution is to terminate the problem users - block them when they are disruptive or POV pushing, and escalate the blocks for subsequent relapses. And while it can be trying on your patience, be civil while doing it, so (as RA pointed out) as to not give them an important counter-claim of incivility. Raul654 ( talk) 19:57, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Well maybe...-- Filll ( talk) 01:00, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
In the current circumstances, disagreeing with those who are irrational or who have FRINGE views is discouraged or even forbidden, as is arguing against them. I think maybe the best option might be to let the FRINGE elements rewrite NPOV as they see fit. And for everyone else just to let them because that is the civil thing to do. Let them destroy Wikipedia as quickly as possible because that is the only civil thing to do.-- Filll ( talk) 07:33, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
Well you go ahead and disagree with them and see what happens. Ever come to the alternative medicine articles? Try it on homeopathy now. I would love to see how it goes.-- Filll ( talk) 14:04, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
-- Filll ( talk) 18:44, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
I have started an AN/I thread on this: [14]-- Filll ( talk) 15:52, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
I would doubt that, but the commercial part probably would work. I am going to try that approach a bit since we can nail at least a couple of the homeopaths on that one.-- Filll ( talk) 21:57, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
WP:COIN is for obvious conflicts of interest: Editors adding information about themselves or their specific interests. Specific interests include employers, friends, family members, etc. It does not apply to professions, areas of expertise, personal beliefs, etc. Look through WP:COIN and you'll see that if the coi isn't obvious, the discussion will be closed or referred to another venue. -- Ronz ( talk) 23:15, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
As one of the creators of WP:COI, I can assure everyone here that WP:COI is about not editing in a WP:NPOV way due to being too close to a subject. Both components are important. An editor editing in a NPOV way is not in violation of WP:COI; but if he is too close to the subject, then he is still not following its recommendations and he only has himself to blame if the appearance of COI gets him in trouble either at Wikipedia or in the real world. The second aspect, "too close to the subject" can refer to anything at all - it is about one's mind being biased - it is about thinking you are being NPOV yet you are not. AGF means that even someone deliberately POVing an article can be assumed to be biased rather than knowingly introducing a bias. Further, the right to anon means that we usually can't verify actual real life circumstances that cause bias, but use the actual edits to gather evidence of bias, which if when the bias is pointed out they are still blind to it becomes evidence of a WP:COI. Such persons are not supposed to edit those articles they have demonstrated that do not edit in a NPOV way. WAS 4.250 ( talk) 12:58, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Well, a few days ago I made this comment on the Homeopathy incidents page, meeting Jehochman's request for a supply of 3-5 diffs representing disruption. The case here is an obvious instance of stonewalling (with a little incivility thrown in). In the days since then, there's been zero action, or even discussion of it. If Jehochman (or any other admin) doesn't think it's worth banning over, they aren't even bothering to explain why. Even Dana's mentor hasn't replied to me about this problem when I raised it with her. It's as if they hope they can just ignore it and hope it goes away... -- Infophile (Talk) (Contribs) 23:31, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
Admin culture at the English language Wikipedia has over the last two years increasingly moved in the direction of treating Wikipedia as a multi-player game. But some admins still are more concerned with creating a credible encyclopedia. User:TimVickers is an excellent scientist, admin, and article writer. I'm sure he knows of others. When you need an admin that cares about the content policies, go to someone like Tim. WAS 4.250 ( talk) 13:11, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
At the bottom of [15], Shirahadasha states that Arbcomm has ruled that Science has no place on Wikipedia and some FRINGErs are just loving it:
As i understand it, Wikipedia has expressly rejected favoring scientific points of views as opposed to other points of views. Views are significant with respect to (a) sheer numbers (the most common popular viewpoint is generally significant) and (b) contribution to general culture/knowledge etc. Scientific points of view have made a major contribution to general culture and hence scientific points of view are essentially always significant, but religious, humanistic, philosophical, and other points of view are often significant as well. Viewpoints need to be represented as such. One good reason for including more than one viewpoint is that different viewpoints influence each other and can change each other over time. For example, half a century ago environmentalism was thought to be a non- or even anti-scientific point of view, whereas it is now commonly thought of as a scientific point of view. But non-scientific thought about the environment affected the cultural environment in which scientists did their work. The ArbCom ruling is limited to theories that purport to be scientific (if they claim to be scientific, then that claim must be backed up by mainstream science), and doesn't apply to general culture and other viewpoints that don't claim to be science-based. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 02:33, 3February 2008 (UTC)
. Hmm...Surely this isnt true? Or is it?--
Filll (
talk) 23:35, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
FYI, whilst user:Newyorkbrad has declined to post here, he is keeping an eye on this page. I asked him to comment as he is the ArbCom member for whom I have the most respect. Jay*Jay ( talk) 01:08, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
"Arbcom hates science" is going overboard. But tThe Paranormal arbcom left enough openings that many of the fringers interpreted it as a complete vindication. Wikipedia has problems with ideas that are so idiotic that science basically ignores them, leaving us with few reality-based sources to provide balance against proponents. Those are among the few instances where
WP:V breaks down: the fringers get to include lots of lousy, self-published and outlier-journal sources by true believers, because there isn't much else available.
Raymond Arritt (
talk) 01:58, 29 February 2008 (UTC) Addendum: Strikethrough added after reading the Paranormal arbcom case in detail. Things are much worse than I had imagined. Read it yourself, if you aren't easily nauseated.
Raymond Arritt (
talk) 04:27, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Well, since NYB is purportedly reading this, I'll post. Arritt is right that sometimes there are not enough mainstream sources. But surely the reader is intelligent enough to get a statement "X has been ignored by mainstream science." And "X is paranormal" or "X is defined as a psychic ability." How stupid are the readers? Can't they figure out what "has not been considered by mainstream science" and "Has not been published in mainstream scientific journals," etc. etc. etc. If you put a few of those phrases in an article, surely any intelligent reader will get it?
It has surprised me before that people on this page don't seem to get that 1) science is a POV, not NPOV: science is SPOV, and SPOV has been rejected as a policy by the community in favor of NPOV [16]. That's just the way it is, and most of your trouble stems directly not from any prejudice against science in the WP rules, and not from the fact that you can't be civil, and not even from the fact of fringe POV pushing. It stems from the refusal to accept that there are notable viewpoints other than science which must be presented to the reader in a neutral, rather than a derogatory, tone.
New York Brad: more than half of the POV pushing on the paranormal side comes from the sense of injustice when articles are obviously biased to present fringe views in a derogatory light. There is other POV pushing, of course, but a lot of it is simply motivated by justifiable outrage, especially among the regulars. Read the discussion here, and see who has it more correct [17] —— Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 04:48, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
←Seems to me that resolving this issue will put many of the current problems on fringe and minority articles to rest. Anthon01 ( talk) 05:45, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
"1a) Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, a fundamental policy, requires fair representation of significant alternatives to scientific orthodoxy. Significant alternatives, in this case, refers to legitimate scientific disagreement, as opposed to pseudoscience."
"4a) Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Reliable sources require that information included in an article have been published in a reliable source which is identified and potentially available to the reader. What constitutes a reliable source varies with the topic of the article, but in the case of a scientific theory, there is a clear expectation that the sources for the theory itself are reputable textbooks or peer-reviewed journals. Scientific theories promulgated outside these media are not properly verifiable as scientific theories and should not be represented as such."
"14) Serious and respected encyclopedias and reference works are generally expected to provide overviews of scientific topics that are in line with respected scientific thought. Wikipedia aspires to be such a respected work."
"Wikipedia:No original research applies to users who are experts in a field and who may be engaged in original research. The latest insights resulting from current research are often not acceptable for inclusion as established information as they have not yet been published."
These principles were not mentioned in any subsequent ArbCom decision. Users spend a large amount of time talking about these issues in the cases, but apart from in Psuedosience they're not explicitly considered in the rulings. Mostlyharmless ( talk) 06:39, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Arbcom does not make policy; it interprets policy with respect to a specific case and decides on what action best benefits wikipedia in that specific case. All comments are to be understood in the context of that case. In this decision arbcom agreed that:
What's the problem? WAS 4.250 ( talk) 13:28, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
The reason I ask for diffs is because my pro-encyclopedia position is often seen as pro-fringe and accusations on my position are made that cannot be supported by the diffs. The assumption is made that if I argue to remove the "pseudoscience" infobox in an articles lead, then I am fringe POV-pushing, when in fact I am considering WP;UNDUE, WP:LEAD, and WP:STYLE in a pro-encyclopedic fashion. Some extremists pro-science editors don't pay enough attention to WP:LEAD or WP:STYLE or even WP:V and WP:RS when it comes to fringe topics, in effect trumping the interests of the project. Two days ago, my attempts to have a civil conversation/debate about NPOV in minority articles, were frustrated by Filll's insistence that his POV on the issue was the only correct interpretation and his repeated assertion (~14 times in two hours) that it was too dangerous to disagree, [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] effectively stiffling any discussion. Last night, attempts to restart the conversation failed again. [24] Understandably, these topics are highly charged for some individuals. However, it is a conversations that needs to be had, and one that requires input not just from pro-science editors, but from the entire community, including non-science editors. Resolving this issue will eliminate most of the mainspace and talkpage edit-warring currently going on around the fringes and overlaps between science and non-science topics. Anthon01 ( talk) 14:11, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Now, just moments ago, it appears that my attempts to debate this issue are having the desired effect.
[25] Discussion.
Anthon01 (
talk) 14:18, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Let me try to clarify what I think of the situation. I believe that the "proportion in respect to their prominence" guideline is helpful, but should not be followed exclusively, as Dave Souza points out. This guideline alone would give maybe 98% or 99% percent of the homeopathy article to SPOV. Worldwide market for homeopathic medicines is about 0.3% of the total world medicine market, and there are many other ways to measure "prominence". For example, there are about 884,000 physicians in the US. There are about 315 professional homeopaths in the US, and about 1000 homeopaths if you count unlicensed amateur homeopaths. So the homeopaths in the US represent about 0.03%-0.1% of the allopathic doctors.
However, we should use this policy in conjunction with other policies. And when the article (in its last rewrite) was about 90% positive and pro-homeopathy, I was not happy. When it was 80% pro-homeopathy, I was not happy. When it started to get towards 70% pro-homeopathy, I was happier. When it reached 60% pro-homeopathy, I felt we were no longer giving short shrift to the mainstream SPOV, while still adequately describing the homeopathic QPOV (quackery POV).
There are other things in the article I am not wild about (the long boring discussion of where homeopathy is popular frankly belong in a daughter article, not the main article I think), but I was happy with a 60/40 split. So was User: Peter morrell, a world-renowned homeopathic authority. At that point, I switched and supported the article for GA status.
However, after the GA promotion we have had a huge flood of new pro-homeopathy editors (can anyone say canvassing?) like Dana Ullman and Anthon01 and Arion 3x3 and Whig and Area69 and on and on and on, hordes of socks and meats and trolls and so on. And in my opinion, most of these people HATE the 40% negative content. They appear to hate hate hate hate hate the current article. They seem to loathe it. My impression is that they loathe NPOV, or how we interpret it. They seem to be frantic. This is destroying their personal businesses if they are homeopaths. They act like they are desperate. They give the impression of wanting to change the article at ALL costs. They have put homeopathy sections in articles about Beethoven and Charles Darwin and any person that has ever tried homeopathy ever. And even if the person tried it and thought homeopathy was crap, like Darwin, they want to write the homeopathy section as a great paean to this amazing miracle cure. There have been moves to put minihomeopathy sections in articles about plants, and maybe eventually minerals and animals and any other substance involved with making homeopathic preparations. If left unbridled with controls or agreements, we will have literally thousands of minihomeopathy articles talking about how wonderful homeopathy is on Wikipedia. And I do not think that would be very helpful or encyclopedic, frankly.
I have tried to offer compromises where they can have a few dozen miniarticles and we can control them carefully. However, every offer of compromise I have made has been spat back in my face. Because they think if they hold out long enough, they can win the whole prize; unbridled license to create as many minihomeopathy articles as they like. How many is that? 1000? 5000? 20000? I do not know, but I do not think we want to go there.
These pro-homeopathy editors do not seem to understand why an article about homeopathy must have ANY material that is about the maintream view. So they fight. And fight. And fight. And argue. And forum shop. And game the system. Over and over and over and over. And that is why we are still fighting. And unless all SPOV editors leave the article and leave it to the QPOV editors to make the homeopathy article roughly 100% positive to homeopathy, we will have fighting. Either that, or until we start applying NPOV in an aggressive way, the way we do 3RR and WP:CIVIL and send a strong message that we are serious about NPOV. Because they do not believe that NPOV is a serious policy. And they think if they just whine for another 6 months or another 2 years, or another 5 years, they will get their way.
So we can either play this ridiculous game. Or we can try to think of how to change our way of doing business.-- Filll ( talk) 19:48, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Newsflash updates (1) We use NPOV here on WP (2) WP does not segregate criticism into a separate article. For that, try Wikinfo. (3) The reason there is fighting is right above, as Raymond Arritt notes. People come here, and demand that we change the rules for them because they say so. (4) Actually the article is about homeopathy. And what do we need to know about homeopathy? That it is a nonmainstream medical technique that used to be popular, but fell out of favor, and now the homeopathic pharmaceutical market is 0.3% of the regular pharmaceutical market, worldwide. And there is no solid evidence that it works. And no theory that gives us any reason to expect it to work, based on 150+ years of physics and chemistry. So, people do not want to accept this. And we have fighting. See?-- Filll ( talk) 04:10, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Also if I stand back and use my scientist hat for a second, there are a couple of amazing things about homeopathy from a scientific standpoint. The first is a bit negative, but it is amazing to me that people will subscribe to this philosophy when it clearly has so little substance to it. The second is that it is direct evidence of the power of the
placebo effect (and for that matter, the
nocebo effect; remember the witch doctor curses etc), which remains deeply mysterious. If we ever figure out what it is, and how to harness it, medicine will truly make a massive leap forward. That is the miraculous part of homeopathy and similar treatments. But not acknowledging that real effect and hiding behind mumbo jumbo obscures this true amazing mysterious feature of homeopathy; its use demonstrates the power of the human mind to cure the human body. And so, I do think there are some things that homeopathy can teach us; they just are not necessarily things that homeopathy promoters would like us to know or learn about the subject. For an encyclopedia, we do our readers no benefits by hiding any of the aspects of homeopathy away, and putting it behind a veil of happy talk and promotion and mysterious jargon that is not defined. We need to present it as it is, peel away the jargon and mystery, and present what the mainstream thinks as well as what the homeopathy community thinks. And we are not supposed to put the criticism in a criticism ghetto, like a separate section or separate article, or remove criticism from the LEAD. There are other places to promote homeopathy; Wikipedia is not one of them. Just like it is not here to sell cars of brand X, or computer operating systems of type Y, or campaign for politician Z, or justify war W, or condemn terrorist action Q.--
Filll (
talk) 05:04, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
A few points:
Martinphi, if you are so sure you are right, why do you not write us an essay describing what "in proportion to their prominence" means in the case of FRINGE articles, and how UNDUE and WEIGHT and NPOV should be applied in the case of FRINGE subjects and pseudoscience and see if the community agrees with your interpretation? We can have an RfC on it and see. We can ask for all kinds of input. Let's see. Maybe the scientific and rationalist community has it all wrong and WP has it wrong and we should ditch science from WP. Ok, lets find out.
I HEREBY THROW DOWN THE GAUNTLET AND CHALLENGE YOU. PUT UP OR SH*T UP. Direct enough for you? If you will not accept this challenge, I for one know what I will think of you. And it will not be particularly complimentary, let me assure you. And I will make sure you know it too. In a WP:CIVIL way of course.
In fact, maybe an editor can be banned for believing that "in proportion to their prominence" is actually in WP policy. Wouldn't you like that? Now remember, I am not saying that this is the only guideline that is relevant in this case; I believe we should take other passages and factors into account, which is why I thought 40/60 was not so bad. If 40/60 is the end of the world, or a complete violation of WP policy, try to get me banned for believing it is not an outrageously stupid ratio. I dare you. Do it. Try to get me sanctioned for actually believing that was correct. Really show me how wrong I am and rub my face in it. Why not? I deserve it, right?
That post has got to be some kind of record. Longest response I've ever seen, and I don't have time to answer all of it. But, the answer to a lot of your questions, is simply that SPOV was rejected as the guiding principle by the community. Go read whatever reasons they had there.
An answer to another is, WP:PROMINENCE means that we should follow the best sources, and present the article as a summary of the general information contained in the sum total of the sources which are reliable. The exceptions are that we use attribution, and that no matter what the sources do, we write in a neutral tone. Further, we flesh out the articles, especially on fringe topics, by using attributed in-universe sources- else we could often not give a real overview due to a lack of material.
"But on such pages, though a view may be spelled out in great detail, it must make appropriate reference to the majority viewpoint"
That means you get to talk about the minority view. It doesn't say "But on such pages, though a minority view may be spelled out in great detail, the majority view must receive about the same amount of space." You reference the majority view, but you don't give it a huge amount of the article.
In the case of Homeopathy, I recommended taking both the tone and content of the NIH and AMA and other really mainstream sources as a template for the article. That was totally rejected as being too soft on Homeopathy, and those sources were attacked, even though they are the very best ones- according to neutral editors.
Now, here's why I don't try to get you banned. There are three reasons: One, it's too much trouble, and two, it's too much trouble because admins are puffballs, just like SA says, and three you have friends who would get you out of trouble no matter how much you deserved it.
I'm not, nor have I ever, said that there aren't any fringe POV pushers. They are about as damaging as the SPOV pushers.
Here is what "neutral editor" means: DGG. And a whole lot of other people who just don't edit here because it is so nasty.
Oh, you're advocating NPOV as the others here have explained it to you? They think it is the same as SPOV- except when they don't really. No wonder you got it wrong. —— Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 07:12, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Amazing on how much nonsense I see here. I disagree with almost every bit of this. Maybe I should just quit. Yep, lets get science out of Wikipedia. Good idea.--
Filll (
talk) 07:21, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
I also say, for about the zillionth time, collect your interpretation of NPOV into a document and lets do an RfC on it. You are positive you are right. Let's see. Stop this nonsense and ridiculous undermining and attacks and making slurs and accusations. You claim NPOV means "A". I claim it does not. There is a way to test. Let's find out. Are you sure you are right? PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS. Let's see if you are right. Write out "A" in detail and let's put it to the test.--
Filll (
talk) 07:38, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Ok Martinphi, since you believe you have been told by the Arbcomm that you are correct, and everyone who disagrees with you has it wrong, why do you not enlighten us all by describing, in detail, in your own words, your interpretation of NPOV in FRINGE areas? How much material should be mainstream? How much should be SPOV?-- Filll ( talk) 17:12, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Guess you really want to stay here to cause chaos and disruption under any conditions, and are not really interested in helping us understand WP policy better. I thought you wanted to teach us how we were wrong.-- Filll ( talk) 14:32, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Having read the deleted guideline to POV pushing too Anthon01, this trick will not work on me; no I do not have a WP:COI problem here. However, you do have patients. Hmm... People in glass houses... How about that mote in your eye anyway?
So when will you write your interpretation of NPOV and tell everyone else how they are wrong and only you and your like-minded editors are correct? -- Filll ( talk) 16:36, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
I was not aware I was supposed to be answering any questions. I agree with Dave souza. You seem to be reading the policy differently than me. I see no such distinction between the two kinds of articles in the policy. I think we cannot have a special category of "comparing type of article" and a separate "noncomparing type of article". And I have said before dozens upon dozens of times (does no one read what I write? or are you all being difficult on purpose?), that the "in proportion to their prominence" phrase I believe has to be interpreted in conjunction with all the policies. Although if you took the "in proportion to their prominence" policy alone, in homeopathy it would be written 99.7% from the position of the mainstream (using the 0.3% marketshare figure for homeopathic medications), this is not helpful for the readers. When using this policy in conjunction with others, it is appropriate to have a much larger proportion of the article devoted to a description of homeopathy itself from a sympathetic or positive view. And the result of the consensus we forged was that 60/40 was about right. And so we promoted the article to GA. Now a huge horde of new editors, many of whom know absolutely nothing about WP policies and principles, most of who are editing only a very narrow range of topics, and most of who have almost no editing record or experience, have declared that consensus is wrong, and our understanding of WP policies are absolutely incorrect. And so I am asking, over and over and over, please let's document what you believe are the correct policies so we can query the community and find out. However, I will note that when the community was queried about such a document or set of documents almost a year ago that tried to redefine or reinterpret NPOV (for example look here), the community overwhelmingly rejected these novel or self-serving interpretations of NPOV in a very aggressive manner. So to change the interpretations in the way you suggest, you have to show me how you are right. You cannot just declare it because frankly you have zero evidence your interpretations are correct. Nada.-- Filll ( talk) 20:09, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Minority views can receive attention on pages specifically devoted to them— Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia. But on such pages, though a view may be spelled out in great detail, it must make appropriate reference to the majority viewpoint, and must not reflect an attempt to rewrite majority-view content strictly from the perspective of the minority view.
I think a lot of this confusion is because the policy is not written clearly enough. These apparent inconsistencies and loopholes and bits of confusion are not addressed in the text. There are not enough examples. I can sort of see where you might think there are two kinds of articles, a comparing kind and a noncomparing kind. But I think that is not a correct reading of the text.-- Filll ( talk) 13:19, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
I take it the value of my opinion will approach zero here, since I've been lurking on Wikipedia for about a month and have ONE edit to my name. However, I'll offer it anyway, on the chance that it might be useful to someone. I'm a person with graduate training and years of experience in research/statistics who came to Wikipedia to see if I could contribute anything, and the more I see, the less likely it appears that there's anything I could do here except waste a lot of time getting very frustrated. I'm sure many would say well, if the Wikipedia culture would frustrate me, I'm better off not being here, and I'm sure that's true, but at the same time, the quality of the product will continue to decline if qualified editors can't see a way to work here.
As I see it, there are two worldviews trying to coexist on Wikipedia that are simply incompatible, maybe even mutually exclusive, and the effort to accommodate them both in the same project has created a situation where only fighting can occur. On one hand, there's the rational/scientific worldview that approaches the evaluation of information by gathering and weighing evidence with an open and inquiring mind, and on the other hand, the anti-rational worldview that accepts information on faith or authority or wishful thinking, rather than on empirical evidence. If the two never overlapped, they could coexist nicely, but the problem is that they have to overlap when ideas unsupported by evidence are bolstered by an appeal to science, or a pseudoscientific layer on top, rather than being content with an appeal to faith. Then only warring can occur if there's not a clear priority given to which worldview decides disagreements.
One side reads the policies and ArbComm decisions to mean that the rational/scientific worldview is the overriding worldview of Wikipedia; the other side reads them to mean the opposite. I've read absolutely miles of article discussions, policy discussions, and ArbComm transcripts, and I don't see a clear direction either way; what I see is that Wikipedia is trying to have it both ways by giving lip service to both sides. This attempt to accommodate both sides cannot work, because it allows both sides to continue interpreting NPOV, WEIGHT, etc. in different ways (and believing they have the force of Wikipedia behind them in that interpretation) which is a situation that cannot be sustained. And the mantra "Wikipedia is about verifiability, not about truth" only acts to confuse the issue more, rather than clarifying it. Wikipedia needs to decide whether it's going to be a serious encyclopedia, where people can assume the information they get is factual, or whether it's going to be the internet version of something like Farmer's Almanac meets Whole Earth Catalog. Which would be an interesting place, I'm sure, as long as people understood that's what it is.
I admire the confidence of the science folks here who think that by boycotting disputed articles (where the two worldviews battle on and on) and letting the articles be written entirely according to the anti-rational worldview, they would show the world of Wikipedia how essential they are. I fear that's a naive belief, since if it's true that Wikipedia is becoming dominated by anti-rational worldview, the only reaction to their departure would be relief and huzzahs, and I fear that there would be a lot of people in the organization who wouldn't be able to tell the difference. The outside world does care; it is mostly made up, still, of people who expect to get factually correct information from an encyclopedia, but I've gathered in my wandering in these virtual corridors that the hopes and desires of the outside world don't carry much weight here. Woonpton (talk) 17:36, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, one would need to abandon all medical articles on Wikipedia then. And a good fraction of the science articles. The creationism articles are only editable because at the moment we have managed to prevail over the forces of superstition, much to their displeasure. This might be only temporary, however. In medicine, things are far uglier, for a variety of reasons.
Of course, when I want less stress, I just go back to editing in the creationism areas where we have developed procedures and infrastructure for dealing with these sorts of FRINGE problems and have been effective. However, I will note that even there, the Matthew Hoffman situation developed and one of our stalwarts went down in flames in an ugly fashion.
If I want even less stress, I go to my long term project of editing articles about the Isle of Wight or dictionary-related topics, or history topics. I edit a mix of articles, depending on what I want to do at the moment. However, I feel I can make a contribution by helping to clear up some of the confusion that exists over WP policy, and helping in some FRINGE and pseudoscience topics, such as alternative medicine. It would be very helpful for me to know, as I edit, exactly what the policies of WP are.
I will note that part of the reason that we have established a certain stability in evolution and creationism related articles is directly related to me. The FAQ on the evolution talk page and related talk pages? My idea and I wrote the first one. Organizing the talk page archive? I helped. Pushing for LEAD accessibility? I was involved. Introductory articles? I spearheaded the drive. Farming out controversial issues to subsiduary daughter articles? I pushed for it and wrote several and maintain a large number. Compiling data and statistics to establish and track prominence? I am the one who did it. Pushing intelligent design and evolution and introduction to evolution to FA? I was deeply involved. Meeting arguments head on on the talk pages and answering questions and deflecting trolls and POV warriors? I am one of the main editors doing this service (look at my edits to the talk pages of intelligent design or evolution or any related talk page, and what fraction of the talk page edits are mine). So this is something I have done, and a place I have made a contribution. I think if we can make similar attempts on other pages in similar trouble, we can also effect positive changes on those pages as well.-- Filll ( talk) 19:26, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Obviously I didn't make myself clear enough, so let me make one more (shorter, I hope) attempt. What I'm saying is that we have people who approach life and information in two incompatible ways, working together on a project. The difference between their worldviews is obscured but not eliminated by the veneer of "verifiability" and NPOV that define the search for sources and the writing of the articles. While they're working on the same project, using ostensibly the same tools, their thought patterns and their understanding of what useful information consists of are different, which results in endless battles on contested articles. I'm not suggesting the rules should be different, I'm just saying that Wikipedia should make a clear policy on how the rules should be interpreted. At the present time, it looks to me (admittedly an outsider) as if each group interprets NPOV and Weight differently, that the Pseudoscience arbitration is seen by scientists as vindication for their interpretation and the Paranormal arbitration is seen by anti-rationals as vindication for their interpretation, so each side believes that they have the force of Wikipedia behind their interpretation. There's no clear understanding who gets to break ties, so it's just a constant tug of war, and battles eventually end up at ArbComm where they are decided arbitrarily one way or another depending on the makeup of the committee and who the personalities in the dispute are. The decisions usually are punishments for infractions of civility, leaving the underlying problem untouched, but whichever side wins takes the decision as vindication of their wordview. It's not a tenable situation, is all I'm saying.
To answer your specific question, if Wikipedia came down on the side of the rational/scientific worldview, there would be no question that in the case of an impasse, the weight of scientific evidence and rationality would prevail in any disagreement. As it is now, what I'm hearing everywhere is that there's not that understanding among a lot of Wikipedians, that the scientific point of view is viewed as just another point of view and not a particularly valued one, and that in fact if the scientific evidence says one thing and a lot of people believe something else, then the nonscientific belief carries as much weight as the rational belief, or maybe more, if there's more literature supporting the antirational belief, or more people who hold to the anti-rational belief. In a lot of fringe areas, as I'm sure I'm not the first person to point out here, there's no scientific research attempting to replicate antirational claims because it's not something that scientists are going to bother with, like say the belief that you can alter the molecular structure of water by thinking unhappy or kind thoughts about it, or that you can change the output of a random number generator by focusing your attention. Sometimes there's no scientific literature refuting a claim, not because mainstream science is afraid of cutting-edge thought, but because you don't even need to do an experiment to see that the claim isn't worth testing; all you have to do is think about it for two seconds. If the structure of water were altered by unhappy thoughts, surely it would have been noticed in chemistry labs where disgruntled graduate students have toiled for decades, or happier graduate students have fallen in love. If nobody's noticed it before now, with all the analyses that have been done on water over the centuries, the rational conclusion is it just might be because there's no such effect, not because scientists haven't been smart enough to notice it in all this time. And if it were really true that intention could affect how random events distribute, wouldn't you think people would be cleaning up at the casinos constantly, given how much they want to win? A wise person once said it's a good thing to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out. Woonpton ( talk) 21:31, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
I think enforcement of NPOV would be a start, at least as I understand NPOV. Now I am told by pseudoscience people that I do not understand NPOV. Ok, if I do not understand NPOV, teach me.-- Filll ( talk) 19:29, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
I sort of understand and partially agree. However, how many Christians truly present the consumption of the eucharist as a literal eating of Christ's flesh? How many claim there is scientific proof or scientific evidence that the bread has magically turned into human flesh in the mouths of the supplicants? We do have several articles which do describe Jesus from various viewpoints, critical and uncritical. Perhaps they follow the NPOV rule properly and perhaps they do not. I have not studied the issue in detail. But it is wrong to say that there is no content here about how nonsensical some of these beliefs are. If these beliefs were presented as science, the way "
creation science" or
intelligent design are, then they are evaluated as science since that is how they are presented. The dominant form of medicine in the world today is allopathic medicine, which is science-based or evidence-based medicine. So if something purports to be medicine, it is evaluated according to that standard. I do not believe one should bash someone over the head constantly with the mainstream or allopathic viewpoint, but I also do not believe the mainstream of allopathic viewpoint should be absent either.
I did not state that the articles on quack medicine should mainly be about how wrong they are. I think you are misreading what I wrote. Perhaps on purpose? You might want to reread what I wrote. I have had quite a number of people now who repeat back to me what I wrote, and it is incorrect. You are another. So try to see if you can understand what I actually maintained.-- Filll ( talk) 20:43, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
You are missing something I am afraid. Who created
creation science and
intelligent design and how do the creators of these ideas and movements present them? It was not Wikipedia that created them; we just reflect what exists in the world. Those that are promoting these concepts and movements are purposely trying to position them as science, not as religion. If they were just types of Christianity or Islam, say, and there was an Intelligent Design Church or a Creation Science Mosque, science would pay little if any attention to them. How much attention does science pay to Christian Science, which does not purport to be much of a science? To Scientology? Astrology does not present itself as science, at least in most cases. And so it is not treated as such by scientists, or in Wikipedia. If Astrology claimed to be a science and demanded to be taught in science classes and astrology lobbyists tried to get laws passed to classify it as science and tried to get government science funding for astrology and astrologists sued astronomers constantly in court etc, then the story would be different, would it not? If Astrologists claimed there was scientific proof for their beliefs and tried to promote it on that basis (which some do, but it does not catch on), then it would be different, right? So we are only sort of in agreement. If homeopaths claim that they can cure ailments and are an alternative to allopathy, then their claims will be evaluated at least in part by allopathy. We do not have big sections on New Guinea witch doctor practices discussing what allopathy thinks of them, because they are not promoted in most of the world as medicine and a replacement for allopathy. And they are not particularly prominent. So it is different than prominent alternative medicine practices which are promoted as replacements for allopathy and are notable. If instead of being at the 0.1% or 1% prominence level, homeopathy was at the 0.00001% prominence level, we would not be even worrying about it. It might not even have an article at all. --
Filll (
talk) 21:22, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
I do not know if you have not noticed, but I have not made a single edit to a homeopathy article in months. It just is not worth it. There is too much tension and too much fighting. Even world renowned homeopathy expert User: Peter morrell has said the same thing; while things are so hostile, he cannot be bothered with editing any homeopathy article. That is a real shame, but this huge influx of SPAs has ruined the atmosphere and the SPAs are just furious about the principles of WP and want to change them.
However, what is a matter of concern is that this is not some isolated incident. This problem is spreading like a cancer. Now the SPAs are editing the NPOV policy pages to change them so that they do no have to put mainstream views in any pseudoscience or alternative medicine article. This is very similar to a recent event. Not long ago we had people editing the RS policy pages so they could include sources proving that Mormonism is correct and all its foundational myths are truth and everyone else is wrong and evil blah blah blah. It was an immense disruption to stop them and it took 6 months or longer and it was a viscious fight that wasted hundreds if not thousands of man hours. Then there are efforts to create literally hundreds if not thousands or tens of thousands of minihomeopathy articles in all plant articles and mineral articles and animal articles and biographies of people that might have tried homeopathy (like Beethoven and Darwin). I have tried to forge a compromise to limit these miniarticles to maybe the 150 or so most important cases, but this was rejected since they want no limits imposed and want to have the right to have as many homeopathy miniarticles as possible, maybe well up into the 10s of thousands. There have been repeated fights at AN/I and Arbcomm and AE on this and now at the new NPOV noticeboard, as well on the various homeopathy articles. If we do not actually define clearly what NPOV is, and make it clear we stand behind our NPOV policy, the NPOV policy will be gone, and so will we if we disagree. And WP will fail as an experiment to construct a respected resource.-- Filll ( talk) 01:15, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
What a helpful observation in the midst of constructive debate.
I'm not sure there is ever going to be a solution that combines the best of everything. I think that Wikipedia:Flagged_revisions/Quality_versions is a good proposal. There is no doubt that articles like global warming (for the most part) represent the "consensus" of the scientific community, and for that reason perhaps it should be flagged as a "quality version".
A travesty though would be the silencing of dissent. It is often *informed* and *educated* dissent that shifts the "consensus" in the right direction. Einstein's theory of relativity rightly brought an end to the scientific consensus of the static and eternal universe. If the "consensus" would have shouted him down or locked out his edit the Big Bang would be a big nothing.
Also, one of the greatest strengths of WP versus traditional encyclopedias is in the fact that WP never becomes dated, it is constantly being renewed and updated. I does seem that it would be nice to have one set of rules for certain types of articles, and different set for others. For example, basic, non-controversial articles could be locked down so that major edits must be approved by a certain group, whereas hot topics would have a more relaxed policy. This might seem — on the surface — to be backwards, because the controversial articles are those that are most open to hair-pulling edit wars. However, if articles known to be correct and excellent (with little dissent) were locked down, much more (rejuvenated) energy could be focused on the controversial articles maintaining quality and "consensus".
Wherever religion, politics and/or money collide there is going to be trouble, and dreaming of a catchall solution is just about as likely as peace in Palestine. There are certain articles that are always going to be fought over like the Temple Mount. This is particularly true when certain opinions factor largely in the interpretation of data and observation. Although we all can agree that references should be cited and of reputable sources, there is always going to be the tendency to ignore or minimize those that we disagree with or dislike. An outside observer with a fresh pair of eyes might be able to frame the debate more objectively. Plus, one doesn't need to be a scientist, philosopher or carpenter to be a good researcher, and a good surgeon might be a terrible editor. So it's unwise to discount the efforts of a layperson in a certain field when they might be just what the article needs vis-a-vis grammar, syntax and good citation.
Silencing constructive and informed dissent and building such a wall around certain articles that they languish from constructive editing isn't the answer. See below concerning my suggestion of protecting articles according to membership senority. Supertheman ( talk) 00:13, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
I think it might be about time we opened an RFC on some of these issues. Get the community input on which side NPOV supports. It seems obvious that the other side doesn't want to do this (at least yet). Perhaps we should do it ourselves then to see which way the community is leaning. -- Infophile (Talk) (Contribs) 19:04, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
As I dig through some of the past discussion on this, I see that the Martinphi RfC almost a year ago was partly on this topic, and he created "guides" to his version of NPOV which were overwhelmingly rejected [27]. I have not gone through all of it because there is a huge amount of it, but so far what I have read looks terrible for pseudoscience proponents. Just slammed.-- Filll ( talk) 19:37, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
I know this will not solve the underlying issues, but I have a suggestion that may help with the overall situation...
I've been watching this thread intently since it formed. I haven't participated until now because I'm not a particularly combative person and I was honest unsure of my stances on a few key issues. I'm relieved, personally, that the general idea of an all-out boycott seems to have lost its mojo, mostly because I'm an educator at heart and I can't bear to see promulgated misinformation. My proposal, however, can include those that are still active in the war zones (like homeopathy) and those that have avoided them (on principal or a general distaste for the endless arguments)...
Let's take a step back and refocus our efforts for a while on the important subtopics that inform the flimflam main articles. What I mean is, perhaps the overall situation on homeopathy would be improved if the lot of us would tread water there for a month--put aside improvement goals, but still actively prevent it getting worse--whilst overhauling articles like placebo and clinical trial. What good is it to argue over the inclusion of pseudoscience in the lead or as a categorization if that article is still "Rated Start-Class", is mediocre in readability, and has almost no information about why people believe in pseudoscience? I believe placebo is an excellent example of an article that needs to be informative at the "featured" level, but it's currently woefully written, filled with out-of-date citations, and promotes the misunderstanding that its an "effect based solely on the power of suggestion", which vastly understates the realities of self-limiting illness, post-hoc rationalization, the effect on the practitioner believing a treatment to be effective, etc.
My point is this: if we all spent as much effort in the next four weeks on improving placebo to FA as we spent the prior four weeks spinning our wheels on homeopathy (and every other CAM), it would provide a vastly more positive effect on the dissemination of scientifically-sound information. Every link to an improved placebo article would indirectly improve the ratio of science vs. pseudoscience/nonsense/superstition/quackery in every CAM modality article, right?
I will be out of town for a couple of days, but I thought I'd leave this here to get some feedback. I'm quite sympathetic to the frustrations of many of the editors here, sharing many of them, and I want to help resolve this issue for the benefit of everyone involved. — Scien tizzle 23:04, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
It is a good idea. All of the associated articles should be improved, no doubt about it.-- Filll ( talk) 00:36, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Folks, I have nominated placebo at both Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Collaboration of the Week & Wikipedia:WikiProject Pharmacology/Collaboration of the Week. I hope to devote some more time to it in the following weeks. (I had been working on it here, but got distracted...) — Scien tizzle 20:32, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Since that name has poped up so many times here with even Larry himself dropping by to try and recruit people, perhaps you should see what he has been saying about our hard working admins: Click Here In that little article he compares wikipedia admins to Nazis... No kidding... RIP-Acer ( talk) 23:10, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
And the actual quote is We actually require that people agree to our fundamental policies as a condition of their participation, which means that many of the most disruptive people, whose silly antics cause Wikipedia administrators to react like Nazis, aren’t involved. Maybe, just maybe, we’ve learned something from Wikipedia’s governance mistakes. Now, I don't know about you RIP, but one of Wikipedia's problems are it's civil POV pushers....in case you haven't read any of the discussion above. So perhaps you should have a read, then reread the blog. And then apply some context rather than applying some (poor) journalism and misquoting your source. Shot info ( talk) 23:33, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
I did read the blog, all of it, and in fact had replied to Mr. Sanger’s article only to have my reply removed without any explanation, in a very transparent fashion. As for Wikipedia’s admins being its greatest problem it should be pretty obvious that I do not agree with that. I agree with you that I probably should’ve better quoted the original text but I still find his comparison absurd. RIP-Acer ( talk) 23:52, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Just out of interest, what in your reply to the blog could have got it deleted? David D. (Talk) 09:10, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't know, you tell me:
I agree with Jens, comparing well meaning people, regardless of whether you believe their efforts worthy or not, to Nazis is absurd. It’s an affront not only to the Wikipedia editors but also to the millions that perished in WW2. Your follow up comment with a smiley is equally regrettable. I would expect somebody who stands for civility, repeatedly claiming that personal attacks are not acceptable in your project, to be more mindful of their words. Using the F*** word is not acceptable but making references to Nazis suddenly is? I guess your sense of proportion is way off…
It was the 12th reply and was a response to a sarcastic come back Mr.Sanger gave to another user. RIP-Acer ( talk) 12:32, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
I like Wikipedia precisely because I can edit and fix faults in articles, and other editors can do the same. I get tired of reading "authoritative" articles on "brand name" web sites and magazines that are badly written, imprecise, incomplete, unsourced, myopic, profoundly POV, and sometimes downright wrong. NPOV is hard to define and difficult to achieve, but utterly necessary. -- Una Smith ( talk) 01:02, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
(my comments here refer back to the earlier section on RfC, that got buried in subsequently incoming material but I think is worth further consideration)
Here's what I don't understand. Infophile says (above) that "it seems obvious that the other side doesn't want" [to open an RfC] but I'm not sure what's obvious about it. There's an active effort on the WP:NPOV policy page to change the wording of the policy to suit the "other side's" interpretation of NPOV better. In the discussions I've read, it seems clear that there are (happily) people watching the page who will revert such changes back to present policy, but reading the talk page, it seems that at least among the people working that page, there is a significant, if not dominant, group whose intent is to change policy to make NPOV suit them better, or if they're not allowed to actually change the policy, at least to keep repeating their interpretation on the discussion page until it's absorbed into the collective consciousness. So my question is, why would they bother with an RfC when they're busy working to influence policy directly?
There's even a section there called "Undue V Fringe" where it's argued that if there's something that a lot of people believe but that science has ignored (take for example my illustration above of the molecular structure of water being influenced by the quality of people's thoughts) then when it comes to covering that belief in the encyclopedia, science must be considered the tiny minority that is the fringe view according to the WEIGHT policy. For all I know that may be a legitimate interpretation of policy, but if it is, that just shows why Wikipedia is such a mess. (And BTW, after I submitted my piece yesterday, I got in the car and turned on the radio and heard a news/political commentator saying that when he does research for his show, he has to go to original sources rather than relying on Wikipedia to summarize topics, since he's learned that "more than half the time, Wikipedia has it wrong.")
My favorite comment from the WP:NPOV talk page: Here we go again, confusing objectivity & neutrality. I will repeat myself : objectivity is feasible but incompatible with the NPOV policy because objectivity implies judging the credibility of an idea and, hence, expressing a point of view. Emmanuelm (talk) 12:18, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
As to the Martinphi RfC Fill mentions above, I've read through that but am not sure what I should conclude from it, since it's an RfC, the RfC ended in the Paranormal ArbComm case which Martinphi seems in his comments here to read as a vindication of his interpretations of policy, and since it was a year ago. As I said in my earlier comments, it seems to me that the Rational/Science side reads the Pseudoscience case as vindication of their interpretation and the other side reads the Paranormal case as vindication of their interpretation. This is the core problem, as I see it and have said before, that each side reads the policy differently, and that there needs to be a determination as to which interpretation is going to be the ruling interpretation. If an RfC would result in such a determination, let's open an RfC. If all an RfC would or could do is air the same arguments on both sides with no resolution, what's the point? Woonpton ( talk) 16:52, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
If we do a more general RfC or community discussion on NPOV, I have compiled some more general questions I would like to see addressed
here. Bear in mind this is just some stuff off the top of my head and it probably needs editing and expanding.--
Filll (
talk) 21:18, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Fill, I do think it should be a general RfC participated in by the wider community. I think your list is a remarkable compilation, and certainly a great start for discussion. Is it possible to start a general RfC on the topic of WP:NPOV? Or does it have to be tied to a particular article or specific issue? Woonpton ( talk) 04:30, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
And NPOV and other policies. And engaging in page spamming. My gosh, they just repeat the same complaint over and over and over. It is ludicrous. We need to nail them for this, because it makes the talk page extremely unpleasant. I was pleased with myself for finding an error in a textbook ( Section 5.3, Beginning Algebra, 10/E, Margaret L. Lial, John Hornsby, Terry McGinnis, Addison-Wesley, Copyright: 2008, Published: 01/02/2007, ISBN 0321437268) and they have turned it into World War III. Now I think eventually the text will be much better and have more examples in it and better references and we will avoid the plagiarism that User: Wikidudeman seems to have fallen into, but it is still annoying. -- Filll ( talk) 17:11, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Under the open Wikipedia model, those editors most passionate about a topic, will tend to be the most persistent, most verbose, sometimes the most productive, and often the most disruptive. Passion has its place, but I would submit that editing an encyclopedia is not the place for place for excessive passion about individual topics. Conversely, I can't dispute that complex, obscure, arcane, specialized or highly technical topics need the input of knowledgeable editors who would not have achieved their level of expertise without some passion for the subject. How to balance these factors? I think uninvolved admins need to use a much heavier hand when stepping into a dispute. Intractable editors whose contributions are not consensus-building need to be topic banned. No one is indispensable especially with regards to an individual topic. This is not a problem that is limited to fringe and pseudoscience, it's a big problem all over the project. I think that in many cases, removing the two or four most disruptive, tendentious, intractable - in other words, passionate, editors from both sides of a dispute might go a long way.
Dlabtot (
talk) 23:22, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
The basic misunderstanding, Woonpton, is "don't fit with a rational, dispassionate evaluation." We as WP editors don't evaluate the truthiness of a subject, in logical or scientific or other ways. We follow the sources. As long as people are evaluating, then we are not writing NPOV articles, and this will go on, from both sides. But don't think that you're on the side of the truth and the light.... because if you are, then you aren't right for WP. —— Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 06:41, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
It looks likely that the ArbCom will accept an arbitration on 9/11 conspiracy theories which will raise issues of direct relevance to this discussion, specifically the treatment of fringe theories and editors. See Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#9/11 conspiracy theories. -- ChrisO ( talk) 02:02, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
We are here to constructively build, by the use of Internet technologies, an open informational resource, in encyclopedic format, for the free use of all people. Experts are critical to all resources.
Therefore, I issue a direct challenge to anybody who feels that experts should not have a definite, fair say in the building of this resource: shut up and go away, you're not helping at all. And I sympathise with all the experts out there who feel they can't edit the English Wikipedia and bring their knowledge to bear.
Let us all work together as a community dedicated to, in Jimmy Wales' words, "bringing the sum of human knowledge to every person on [and off] the planet, free, in their own language." — Thomas H. Larsen 08:21, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
I think the biggest problem is lack of common sense and lack of order. I've read several of the suggestions above, and many of them are intriguing. The wikipedia is in fact a big community and as such it's dynamics dictate where it's going. Without some kind of survey to know what is happening in this community is hard to come up with effective prescriptions. Under this uncertainty it seems logical to take positive action with the tools already available and engage on mediation. I know that the mediation cabal is looking for volunteers, and mediators can potentially have a big influence on how conflicts are resolved.
I'm not sure if what I this is already being addressed at the Cabal. But I think the lack of order in talk pages is a huge problem. I would think it wouldn't be too difficult to come up with discussion/mediation guidelines that would slowly build agreement based on common sense. And I have to stress the word build, knowledge builds on itself. And it's easier for people who are not as compromised with applying common sense to take a destructive attitude, ignoring any sense of order. If good mediators were available it would raise the standard of rationality on the discussion pages.
Interestingly, if an community oriented approach would work, it would also be a huge accomplishment for the internet community as a whole. As opposed to a system that relied on credentials like citizendium.
Paraphrasing the point I made before. I can appreciate how unorganized expression of ideas can be productive. But a little order does not hurt. I'm not sure if this page is the best example. But the disorganized nature of the talk pages is part of the problem. A technical solution would be to "make a mini-wiki" out of unorganized talk pages. The community based solution would be to have a mediator impart order based on agreed and well-understood guidelines.--
Dela Rabadilla (
talk) 04:29, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Has anyone noticed what is going on e.g. here
There were concerns expressed (by me, e.g.) at this admins RFA, and now a serious incident seems to have blown up concerning a senior academic who has now left the project. I looked at the article he was complaining about but not enough of an expert to judge. Another victory of civility over content? The Rationalist ( talk) 07:03, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I have not finished reading all of the deletion discussion. This reminds me of the recent AfD discussion of an article that was titled something like
Evolutionary Theory of Sex. Like this article, it was mainly notable in the Russian literature. Like this article, it was probably being promoted by its authors or a group close to the authors. Like this article, it was written in stilted English. I only commented at the Sex AfD, but this is part of a bigger question; at what point do we decide an article or an area is notable enough for inclusion when it is not widel known, but not really a
WP:FRINGE theory in the sense of pseudoscience? I am a bit of an inclusionist, so I lean towards keeping these, since WP is not paper, but I am less concerned by the notability than by the horrendous writing standards, and the difficulty in cleaning them up. I am not sure what we should do in these cases, but they are worth discussing for sure.--
Filll (
talk) 11:30, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
That is the troubling part. That is why I think we need something like a Science Guild here, as I have opined on these pages, anchored to an outside body for content. We need someplace where scientific experts can connect with a community to counter this sort of "CIVILity first, last and always" attitude and organize ourselves.
I notice that several of the pro-deletion editors used the phrase "self-promotion". A few weeks ago, Jimbo weighed in on the Administrator's Noticeboard that use of the phrase "self-promotion" on a talk page was prima facie evidence of unCIVIL behavior and a blockable offense! This is getting a bit crazy.
I also notice that out of frustration and lack of experience, R Physicist posted some long diatribes in the discussion that were removed or userfied. This is an example of what someone might do who does not understand Wikipedia; i.e., a newbie.
On science articles, and for all science-related editors, we need to invite them to participate in a Science Guild. Here is one idea of how it might work:
I might still have voted to Keep (although a very weak Keep, given the sloppy writing style of the article), but at least I am familiar enough with the culture that R Physicist comes from to be able to create a forum where he can have a discussion with peers and colleagues. This is far different than him talking to teenagers who are interested in documenting the Simpson's Episodes or Manga characters.-- Filll ( talk) 12:32, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Help me promote the idea of a Scientist Guild, and recruit people for it. Sign up for
WP:Not the Wikipedia Weekly and come discuss it.--
Filll (
talk) 15:46, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Both.-- Filll ( talk) 20:59, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
For a new editor, this environment can be a bit confusing and daunting. And one of the things a Science Guild could do is to socialize new editors who are pro-science. I have skimmed through some of R physicist's rants, and although these might be quite reasonable in some contexts, here they might be viewed a bit over the top in some places.
As for what policy changes are advisable, I think we should be very cautious about that, at this stage of Wikipedia's development. I would advocate small scale tests and experiments of policy changes to understand their effects. I would advocate a research-oriented approach. I would not advocate a wholesale change of any policy since we are much too big and too prominent; I would not want to break a system that has achieved such success, even if it is suboptimal and could be improved.-- Filll ( talk) 15:01, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I only recently came across this page, long after a great deal of discussion had gone by and finished. As a retired academic chemist, I am concerned about some of the issues raised, but I do not think this is the place to raise them. Maybe the talk page of Wikipedia:WikiProject Science would be better, and draw attention to the discussion there on all the other science project talk pages. I suspect a lot of science editors have not seen this discussion here. -- Bduke ( talk) 22:38, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
To my vast surprise and dripping sarcasm, the ANI thread on Dana Ullman resulted in nothing. The whole mess with his real-life identity and his past mentorship (along with the Wikilove brigade) has murked up the situation so much that no admin wants to wade in, even though a few seem to agree that he should be blocked, and only one ( Lara Love) opposes it (though note that even she seems to have washed her hands of him, wanting nothing more to do with the whole affair). So, the question is, what to do now? I raise this here because most people here are probably already aware of this situation, and have the same problems with Dana. The way I see it, there are three things we can do (before resorting to WP:IAR):
Basically, I'm just wavering between trying an RFC or going to RFAR first. What do you all think? -- Infophile (Talk) (Contribs) 16:47, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Maybe these issues have been addressed higher up the page, but the main problems I have come across dealing with pseudoscience nutters and POV pushers in the less popular areas of psychology are the fact that ArbCom is wet and only takes the minimum action after the most extreme and extended behaviour. Secondly, there isn't even an ArbCom equivalent for content. Its all very well admins and other people dipping in and reminding people of policies and dipping out again but what do POV pushers care for that? They will simply continue to declare a source says the opposite of what it actually says and without numbers there is little one can do. Some of the people indulging in this behaviour claim professional qualifications and expertise. The psychology section of Wiki is a moribund mess. Many knowledgeable psychs have simply been bullied off or been unwilling to waste their lives in perpetual pointless argument and edit wars against aggressive and offensive POV pushers. At least the big topics garner some support but the medium or smaller topics are a treacherous minefield. Requests for help from the project in respect of the most obvious abuses get no response. This isn't a plea for a panel of experts or a science guild or anything like that - but there needs to be some understanding of why existing policies are simply not enforced by admins or ArbCom. Fainites barley 22:15, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
I wonder if anyone has noticed the gigantic discussion going on around User:FT2's talk page, concerning User:Giano. I know Giano is not a science editor, but he is in my view a good editor, and not a particularly rude one (though his manner can be abrasive at time, I believe). This whole case seems to be cooked up to prove a point about Civility vs Content. If anyone has a concern about this (I do) perhaps they could register their concern on the page, or on AN/I. The Rationalist ( talk) 05:31, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
B. Mistler ( talk) 02:02, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
After having worked on many articles related to The Beatles, this user will never contribute again if one is forced to write "the Beatles". It looks stupid, and makes me feel ill. Castigate my attitude if you will, but it is mine, after all...-- andreasegde ( talk) 02:30, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
06-Sep-2008: I understand the frustrations about conflicting attitudes and edits, but I think there are several storage tactics which can be used to greatly avoid Wikipedia chaos:
In the broad ocean of Wikipedia articles, there is great potential to promote new, solid technologies and have a recovery of great ideas, formerly lost by social stigmas or other censorship factors. Again, seek a confederation of articles about a subject, to avoid " single point of failure" edit problems: it is rare for all articles, in a set, to be relentlessly slanted or censored (although it has happened to some extent). Next, on an article's talk-page, also click-link to a known, verified revision of the article: in a sense, the truth is hiding among the revisions, with safety in numbers. - Wikid77 ( talk) 08:18, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
Hecht
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).