From: "Charlotte Webb" charlottethewebb@gmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia:Fringe noticeboards/Theory Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 01:20:46 -0500
Just when I thought the English Wikipedia had enough noticeboards, I happened to see this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard
I have to say I'm not optimistic about it. Looks like it could turn into the recruiting point for every content dispute slash witch hunt of the week.
I don't think it's very ethical, and definitely not in the project's interests to invite others to jump into edit wars involving events they know next to nothing about, particularly if it's something they had never heard of until ten minutes before they reverted back to some government's official explanation of it.
I'm not saying that doesn't happen already, but I doubt making it "part of the job" as an official wiki-process is going to help matters. Surely there are editors in good standing (and maybe even some admins) who really don't care who shot JFK or what happened that night in 1947. Just like there will be others like myself who, as readers, would prefer to learn about all the viewpoints and draw their own conclusions.
We should respect that, rather than pointing the "closet conspiracy theorist" finger around, if this is actually going to work.
The question should not be "lol, you mean you actually believe _____?", but more like "Is there a compelling reason not to acknowledge that many people do believe _____?".
Last warning though, if I see something like "How do you feel about WP:FRINGE theories, and will you <s>help patrol the following articles</s> assist us at WP:FTN if we support your RFA?" become a one of the 20 non-standard standard questions I will seriously cut myself.
C.W.
Crikey. Well, I did create the thing, so I guess it's my job to police it so that it doesn't turn into witchhunt forum.
In all honesty, I think you're underestimating just how bad a problem fringe theory pushing is. You go and have a look at some of our more obscure articles, particularly on "nationalist" topics. Then check what the academic literature (not government propaganda, academia) actually says about the subject matter. Often the disparity between what should be written at Wikipedia and what's actually there is vast. It's so easy for an article, particularly an obscure one, to be taken over by a crank who just shoves his lonely point-of-view non-stop, shouts loudly, and wins through apathy, or through lack of eyes. The notability of the crank's theory is not discussed at all: he just includes it as fact. Nothing wrong with notable fringe theories being discussed, but non-notable ones promoted as fact?
Some of our articles stay in this awful state for years.
We have good mechanism in place for dealing with vandals, but a non-existent one for dealing with trolls and cranks, which are much more of long-term threat. Particularly cranks, because we have no effective method that deals with someone that shouts hard enough and long enough, promoting some whacko craziness. If you revert them, unfortunately that's a "content dispute" and you're "involved". You can revert, block, and ignore a vandal. You can't do the same to a crank, no matter how awful the stuff he's pushing is. Hopefully, having a place to report incidences of such nutcasery will help, though the problem won't entirely go away until we get binding content arbitration.
So why the noticeboard? Well, I think that it's not a bad idea to have some more impartial eyes on disputes concerning fringe theories. Not to encourage edit wars, but to deal with promotion of fringe theories as mainstream opinion(the main problem), and as a central place to talk about when discussion of a fringe theory that may (or may not be) notable should be included.
That RfA scenario is surely a bit unlikely, no?
Cheers,
Moreschi
P.S: "We do need to centralise discussion on fringe theory pushing, since a lot of it happens on out-of-the-way articles (geostatistics and kriging are examples I've seen, in which it's taken forever to recruit someone knowledgeable enough to push back versus a monomaniacal crank) -- it'd be great to have a single place to post problems for attention by experts." - Antandrus
"But articles that implicitly assert some of these things DO exist on the project, and while this might be better suited as a Wikiproject, that can always be changed going forward if the noticeboard turns out to be something useful." - Chairboy
Look at MONGO, having to deal with exactly this kind of nonsense all day and night.
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