WikiEN-l June 2005

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

137 participants
234 discussions

Re: Pseudoscience category - GSPOV
by Haukur Þorgeirsson 30 Jun '05

30 Jun '05

>On the one hand, "Pseudo-science" embraces more than just fakery that >is being passed off as medicine. Other examples of subjects that I >think would be fairly categorized as pseudo-science would include >Ley lines, the teleological theory of cultural evolution, the theories >of Immanuel Velekovsky, & as someone mentioned upthread ghosts. I >guess you could say that it is any hypothesis that cannot be proven >experimentally, but the least controversial examples are the ones >that _have_ been disproven -- yet still have their true believers. I fully agree. >On the other hand, "quackery" is more properly applied to medicine >that either does not work, or is harmful. I fully agree. >One can graduate from a >mainstream, accredited medical school, receive a medical degree, & >even be board-certified -- & yet still be a quack. I fully agree. Some doctors with education in scientific medicine are quacks. The discipline itself, however, isn't quackery. Homeopathy, on the other hand, is pseudo-medicine. Everyone who practices homeopathy is a quack while she's doing it, in the sense that she is providing medicine that doesn't work. I keep coming back to homeopathy because it is probably the pseudo-medicine discipline with the greatest mainstream popularity. It even has some degree of official recognition in some countries. And yet it has been shown beyond any reasonable doubt not to work. >But if it really doesn't hurt anything if we call it "Alternative >medicine", & creates a bit of WikiLove to do so, then shouldn't we >accept the term & move on to other things? I am arguing that the term is misleading for the articles that category currently holds (I won't repeat my argument here, see my earlier posts). I suggest we replace it with "Pseudo-medicine" and will do so myself if objections are not raised. >I see that we have 5 >candidates for the Wikimedia Foundation who are all well qualified, >but we can only elect two: isn't that problem worth at least as >many posts as this one? Certainly. I wish them the best of luck. If this discussion is overly burdening the mailing list I suggest we continue it on the talk page of Category:Alternative medicine. Regards, Haukur

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Re: Proposal: Requests for rollback
by Michael Snow 29 Jun '05

29 Jun '05

Michael Turley wrote: >The blocking feature makes newbie biting much easier, which is not a >good thing. >... >Regarding "domination". I chose the word to best express why *I* am >uninterested in a particular subset of admin tools. I prefer >persuasion to force. I have no current interest in tools of force >here at Wikipedia; I intend to test the boundaries of wikilove, good >reason, and persuasion. >... >Finally, the rollback feature, as far as I can tell, is unique, in >that it is a very valuable editing enhancement, but is the only one >that doesn't have any powers of enforcement behind it. > The rollback feature *is* a power of enforcement, just like blocking is, in the rhetorical framework you're using (other people prefer the rhetoric of janitorial tools). Blocking doesn't have any additional powers of enforcement behind it either, as we regularly find when dealing with vandals who can edit from multiple IP addresses. Rollback is just as susceptible to use in biting newbies as blocking, although people may differ on the degree of seriousness involved. Reverting is widely considered a "slap in the face" to the person being reverted. If we are to use your rhetoric, then I don't see how we can avoid considering it an instrument of force. If you really are such a wiki-pacifist as you claim, and prefer persuasion to force in all circumstances, then you shouldn't be interested in having the rollback function either. --Michael Snow

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New user, blocked indefinitely?
by Kurita Ryohan 29 Jun '05

29 Jun '05

Can someone please tell me what I have done wrong? So far I have edited only a few articles. I cleaned up a vandal at SNES and added a small section to NES. I added an article and image for the Eyeshield 21 anime and added a link to the manga's page. I read the primer sent to me by Spangineer and the Wikipedia policy pages. I became involved in the discussion at Jihad because it seems to show up a lot, and I tried to calm it down by removing some personal attacks. I removed personal attacks from the discussion by striking them through because policy on Remove Personal Attacks says that we're supposed to refactor without removing the context. I thought that would be the best way to do it. I got a bunch of nasty messages back claiming that my removal of personal messages was "vandalism" when it's clearly policy to remove them. Now an admin named Carbonite has blocked me indefinitely claiming I am a sockpuppet of someone named Enviroknot. Carbonite isn't responding to my emails. Can someone please explain this? Thanks, Kurita77 _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/

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Homeopathy and syllogism
by Haukur Þorgeirsson 29 Jun '05

29 Jun '05

> I have not had occasion to use them, but If I look at the prices of > homeopathic medicines I find them rather modest. Compare that with the > prices of heavily patented medicines sold by major pharmaceutical > companies. The improved efficacy of some of these is often only > incremental over that of the drug whose patent has expired. Some of > these producers are quite happy to withhold medicines from those who > can't pay. It isn't the homeopaths who are failing to send AIDS drugs > to Africa, or are using their patent powers to restrict domestic > African production of these drugs. Completely true and completely irrelevant. > If indeed homeopathic medicine doesn't work as you allege, there is at > least no recent claims of it doing direct harm. (Direct harm involves > far more than any allegation of negligence for failing to send the > victims to a "real" doctor.) The recent problems over Vioxx/Celebrex > did not come from the homeopathic community. True enough, I suppose, and also irrelevant. I don't think there's direct harm done by homeopathy beyond that which selling any completely useless product under false pretenses would entail. That the product's advertised effects are medical makes the practice all the more repellant. > Your use of "beyond reasonable doubt" is too > categorical. The popularity of homeopathy alone > is not be enough to establish that the medicines > work, but it is a clear expression of reasonable doubt. Here I must disagree with you. To repeat an earlier example I don't think the popularity of Holocaust denial is a clear expression of reasonable doubt that the Holocaust occurred. Nor do I think that the popularity of Mormonism is a clear expression of reasonable doubt that America was colonized by a Hebrew tribe in 600 B.C. To compare with something at hand I'd say that there is more doubt that Kurita77 is Enviroknot than there is about homeopathy being useless. And I hope you agree that that case is beyond any *reasonable* doubt. And yet, unlike homeopathy, the hypothesis that Kurita77 is a user with no connection to Enviroknot does not break any *physical* laws. It's *conceivable* that all the facts linking the two are coincidences. It is, however, so unlikely that we can dismiss the possibility for practical purposes. There is ample information on homeopathy available on the Internet. Please study it carefully for yourself and see what conclusion you come to on the efficacy of the discipline. > Healing involves more than medicines that produce the desired chemical > results. It can involve more than the syllogistic thinking that has > become so commonplace in the Western World ever since Aristotle. There is no useful alternative to syllogism. Regards, Haukur

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Protoscience category
by Haukur Þorgeirsson 29 Jun '05

29 Jun '05

>I raise an objection: that's not what it's called in English (my overriding >objection), and "pseudo-medicine" is an invented term hence original >research. Very well, you're probably right. I think I've said my piece on this topic and I've got a better idea of the various opinions of other community members. It seems we have reached the typical Wikipedian conclusion of calling a truce on a status quo which is unacceptable to everyone :) At any rate I will proceed with caution in any changes I make to these articles and categories. >The current article on [[Alternative medicine]] has suffered a bad case of >Gohde and could do with a lot of cleaning up, but the Category links to >Pseudoscience and Protoscience get the point across IMO (having as it does >both). Currently the Protoscience category includes such topics as String theory and Quantum gravity as well as Phrenology (old debunked non-sense) and Biorythm (recent debunked non-sense). To me it does not seem that these things have enough in common to be usefully included in the same category. Regards, Haukur

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: Requests for rollback
by Rebecca 29 Jun '05

29 Jun '05

On 6/30/05, Rebecca <misfitgirl(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On 6/29/05, Chris Jenkinson <chris(a)starglade.org> wrote: > > Let me remind you that I have never voted on requests for adminship > > before, and that I have never insulted or in any way had a confrontation > > with any Wikipedia admin. Do you have any proof of these accusations? > > > > The only person to make such ridiculous claims as an 'anti-admin lobby' > > and 'me whinging' is you. Maybe you have strong feelings about that - > > but that is certainly no reason to attack or insult others in this way. That was not specifically directed at you; rather, the previous poster. I apologise if I worded my point badly. The point is that if you want rollback, apply for adminship. Adminship should *not* be seen as some form of supreme power structure, as much as some users (and I don't count you as one of those) have tried very hard to make it so. It's simply a mop and a broom - and if you want that mop and broom, apply for it through the normal process rather than getting it by another name for no good reason. -- ambi

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RE: [WikiEN-l] Protoscience category
by Poor, Edmund W 29 Jun '05

29 Jun '05

Protoscience is anything scientists are still working on, which hasn't become really established. The problem is that Science itself has only just begun to tackle the really difficult problems. In Aristotle's time, they merely thought that "heavy things fall faster". It wasn't until 1600 or 1620 that it was definitively proven that heavy, dense objects (think cannonballs!) fall faster and faster - and that this is NOT related to their weight. That is, a 10-pound cannonball and a 20-pound cannonball, dropped from a tower at the same time, will hit the ground at the same time! It was not until the period 1860 - 1910 (or so) that the Germ Theory of Disease became well known, and there was considerable resistance among doctors to even LOOKING at the research results. Now we have psychology, political science, economics: these fields are still in their infancy. How can we describe them accurately and without bias? And what about climatology? The global warming theory is so _politically_ controversial (with liberals and conservatives evenly split on it) that we've been unable to take the NPOV-dispute tag off the article for the whole 3 years we've been trying to write it. I'm good friends with William Connolley, but he can't write NPOV for crap (sorry, Doc!). Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed

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Pseudoscience category - GSPOV
by Haukur Þorgeirsson 29 Jun '05

29 Jun '05

> And in the end, maybe what it comes down to is: Categories should not > serve as "warning" flags. They are meant to just be taxonomic devices. Agreed. If someone reads an article on, say, homeopathy and only realizes when she sees the categories at the bottom that the thing doesn't work then there's something wrong with the article (incidentally I think [[homeopathy]] makes the "doesn't work" part fairly clear as it is). I think rejecting this particular useful category on grounds of the NPOV-policy is a bit too much. Almost every category could be questioned by someone. For a random example I see that the article on the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints is in the "Christian denominations" category. There are Christians that think Mormons aren't Christians. As for the "alternative medicine" category then I suppose "medicine that has not been proven to work" or some such would be more accurate. I for one would actually prefer "quack medicine" since "alternative" has some undeserved positive connotations and implies that quackery is somehow a viable alternative to actual medicine. So, don't forget to take the Grumpy Scientist Point of View into account :) Regards, Haukur Þorgeirsson (User:Haukurth)

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Vandalism and quackery
by Haukur Þorgeirsson 29 Jun '05

29 Jun '05

> I still don't really like that idea, because it's strongly taking one > side in a dispute. Should we, for example, have a > [[Category:Pseudoscientists]] that we apply to [[Linus Pauling]] for his > wacked-out ideas on nutrition? (Of course, he could also get > [[Category:Scientists]] for his more respected work.) This sort of > derisive labelling I find troubling, even if it's derisive labelling > that's widely accepted. The term "Alternative medicine", by constrast, > doesn't carry nearly as much ideological baggage, because it can be read > as either good or bad depending on your perspective, so more accurately > simply labels a category of stuff without judging it. I would not object to classifying Pauling's ideas on nutrition (vast amounts of vitamin C etc.) as pseudo-science. The label is no more derisive than the topics under discussion deserve. We call vandalism vandalism. We don't call it "alternative editing". We call the trolls trolls. We don't call them "complementary editors". The labels are only derisive insofar as they are accurate. Such is the case with pseudoscience and quackery. Regards, Haukur

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29 Jun '05

The Issue Whether or not using the 2004 Encyclopedia Britannica to form a list of articles that Britannica has but Wikipedia doesn't constitutes a violation of Britannica's copyright? The list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:2004_Encyclopedia_topics Background The WikiProject:Missing encyclopedia articles currently uses four very large lists of topics that appear in other encyclopedias but do not appear in Wikipedia. Of these lists, two are from sources whose copyright has expired, one is a composite of multiple unnamed sources, and the last is based on the 2004 Encyclopedia Britannica (hereafter "EB"). On the talk page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedi…, there is an ongoing discussion of whether EB holds a copyright in the list of articles itself. Under US copyright law (e.g. Feist v. Rural), a mere list of facts, topics, names, etc. can be protected by copyright if the selection and/or arrangement of those items is, in and of itself, a creative expression. Since the selection of articles for an encyclopedia is certainly an act of creativity, this may grant EB a copyright over the list of articles in their encyclopedia. If true, then creating derivative works from their list of articles (i.e. by making a list of articles that they have but we don't) is likely to be a copyright violation. As can be seen from the talk page, not everyone agrees that this applies to the EB list. This includes conflicting opinions from users Jamesday and Postdlf, both of whom I respect for their legal acumen. Precedent In March 2004, a very similar situation occurred when someone created a list of missing topics based on the Columbia Encyclopedia. At that time, it was decided by community consensus to delete that list as a likely copyright violation. Archive of that discussion (look under March 2): http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Copyright_problems&oldi… In my opinion, the only real difference between the two cases is that the EB list has existed for four months without being challenged, whereas the Columbia list was challenged and removed almost immediately after its creation. So what now? Either we need to accept that such a list, though potentially useful, is too much of a copyright concern to keep around. OR We need to come to some agreement that such lists will be maintained despite the potential liability. In which case, Jimbo probably needs sign off since he is ultimately the one who is liable. Thoughts? Related links WikiProject: Missing encyclopedia articles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_art… Feist v. Rural: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service US Copyright Code: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/casecode/uscodes/17/toc.html -DF User:Dragons flight

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WikiEN-l June 2005