I agree with Yuri on this. The policy about negligible fringe view is
used sometimes not to eliminate real nonsense, but to eliminate
minority views of which one disapproves--especially pernicious when
it's a group of editors owning an article and eliminating the views
they personally would prefer to not exist.
It's very easy to say that a small group is negligible, or that one
academic isn't important, no matter how much attention he may have
gotten, or that one strange medical view has not gotten more than
insignificant attention, by one's own idea of what to call
insignificant.
I don't think people reliably make the distinction right on this when
its things they care about very much; instead of relying on
exceptional objectivity, it would be better to take people as they are
and have the rule than any published view must be included.
On 8/10/07, Yury Tarasievich <yury.tarasievich(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 10/08/07, Andre Engels
<andreengels(a)gmail.com> wrote:
2007/8/10, Yury Tarasievich
<yury.tarasievich(a)gmail.com>om>:
> I was rather asking about whether the oft-encountered attitude of
> "this author represents a side-taking-group which is "wrong" to
quote
> in context of this article and so should not be included" is
> justifiable by the Five Pillars of Gods?
...
I think it is justifiable, yes. The alternative
would be to give every
fringe theory 'equal representation' on Wikipedia. The only
...
I wasn't talking about fringe (freakish) theories here, and anyway I
see no definition of fringe theory on en:wp.
What's troubling me now is that what you say seems to me
likecontradicting the following pieces in the WP:OR:
* The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth.
* In many cases, there are multiple established views of any given
topic. In such cases, no single position, no matter how well
researched, is authoritative. It is not the responsibility of any one
editor to research all points of view. But when incorporating research
into an article, it is important that editors provide context for this
point of view, by indicating how prevalent the position is, and
whether it is held by a majority or minority.
---
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