Even jenerally accepted projections, among economists, are open to dispute on magnitude and applicability. Economics projections, like weather projections, get more erroneous as future becomes more distant. Graphic weather simulations are fiction after about five days, mostly because of information that either wasn't measured or doesn't fit in a machine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:CRYSTAL explicitly opens a door for discussion, which really isn't supposed to be on the encyclopedia. I realize that putting a template in or even being bold and deleting text or nominating a whole article for deletion are disputes. And perhaps you see that if policy is tightly worded, then projections are less likely to be created in the first place, on the encyclopedia. The horrible thing about economic simulations is that they're used to buy and sell things, so they have a problem in the department of self reference, too. In the good old days, if you bought shares in a company, it would be because you knew how to improve their yield or you saw some good decisions go into that company.
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.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Fred Bauder" fredbaud@fairpoint.net To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2008 6:05 AM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] A definite version of WP:CRYSTAL
I have been editing regarding the global economic crisis. The outstanding projection is that (unless something is effective is done) the current crisis will result in a crisis similar to the Great Depression. That this warning has been repeatedly made is not subject to dispute, but the question arises as to the validity of the underlying projection. A more minor matter is the more or less reliable projection that the rate of unemployment will rise to 8% (or so) during 2009 in the United States. There are a number of sources for this. We report generally accepted economic projections. That is part of what economists do. To a certain extent the validity for our purposes of publishing depends on appropriate attribution.
Projections of global warming present the same problem.
The specific problem for Wikipedia is not publishing of generally accepted projections but of original research which often has little or no rational basis.
Fred
== Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. ==
<nowiki>{{speculation}} and {{prophecy}}</nowiki> are not welcome on wikipedia. No articles about anticipated events are verifiable, because anticipated events are not reliable. They are not reliable, because they are not testable. Exceptional claims require exceptional references. [[:category:Reliable Modern Prophets and Agencies of Prediction]] is very small. Forward-looking documents and statements should be restricted to events that are almost certain to happen in the obvious sense, considering how many times it has happened in the past and the resources devoted to making it happen again.
[http://future.wikia.com/ Wiki-future], [[WP:IRC]], [[WP:TALK]], [[WP:E-MAIL]] and [[USENET]] are fine venues for writing about the future, and it does not belong here until it is a fact, so look out for sentences that contain words like "would", "could", "may", and "might", because they should tell you what makes them likely, almost now.
$continue with exceptions...no, because as WP:CRYSTAL is now, there hav already been a lot of exceptions and that's probably why I ended up with so much static when I tried to take the [[weasel words]] out of it. I'm sure there are people who took and take this policy by the name of the section heading, like I did. I don't know a more sensible and pivotal rule than this to divide wikipedia from the rest of the media.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l