On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 1:27 PM, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote:
2008/11/13 Jay Litwyn <brewhaha(a)edmc.net>et>:
Since I believe in global warming and I see a
contest between it and
economics, I see a very hot dispute that really should be off-loaded.
There
are so many other places for volatile information
to go. In other words,
if
someone did [[global warming]], I think they
should expect to end up on
another site, unless the article is restricted to history.
I think this is going to end in tears - where do we draw the line? Do
we just not talk about global warming; do we talk about it as
something that is believed to have happened up to and including last
week; do we talk about it and imply it may continue to happen; do we
talk about it in general terms in the future but give no numbers?
I'm not sure this approach is helpful; it tries to deal with a small
set of specific (percieved) problems by applying a draconian general
rule. I mean, take cosmology. We'd be a shoddy encyclopedia if we
didn't talk about the [[heat death of the universe]], a very
well-known concept... but it's entirely hypothetical, it exists as a
paper theory with some substantiating numbers, and it's several
billion years ahead.
Talking about the future is fine, as long as it is grounded in reliable
sources in the present. I think the original intent of WP:CRYSTAL was to
avoid original research and to avoid articles about future events becoming
too disconnected from the present and becoming "in-universe" (to borrow a
phrase from the debates about articles on fictional topics). In other words,
having an article about a future scenario, or an alternate history, or an
alternate reality, or a fictional topic, should always be securely grounded
in what people have said in the past and are saying now.
Carcharoth