The other point was that WP is (or wants to be) an encyclopaedia, and that some POVs have to be excluded. The way we do that is by assessing how much (academic) support they have, in terms of the context and subject matter. There's no need for content committees, as long as consensus decisions on WP:NPOV can be acheieved (mediation) and enforced (arbitration).
-- Stephen Bain
If the decision on excluded POVs is made on the basis of how much support they have, we will quickly turn toward a regime of censorhip of unpopular views.
* We won't even be able to MENTION that a minority of scientists contacted by the UN's climate panel (IPCC) disagree with the "consensus" that anthropogenic emissions are causing excessive atmospheric warming.
* If a religion is branded a "cult" (and enough people share this view), then the "excluded POVs policy" would forbid ANY mention of reasons why some people think the religion is bona fide.
In short, Wikipedia would become the "liberal encyclopedia", replacing the NPOV *policy* with the liberal *POV*. I don't think Jimbo would like that.
Jimbo, please comment.
Ed Poor
On 6/9/05, Poor, Edmund W Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com wrote:
The other point was that WP is (or wants to be) an encyclopaedia, and that some POVs have to be excluded. The way we do that is by assessing how much (academic) support they have, in terms of the context and subject matter. There's no need for content committees, as long as consensus decisions on WP:NPOV can be acheieved (mediation) and enforced (arbitration).
-- Stephen Bain
If the decision on excluded POVs is made on the basis of how much support they have, we will quickly turn toward a regime of censorhip of unpopular views.
- We won't even be able to MENTION that a minority of scientists contacted by the UN's climate panel (IPCC) disagree with the "consensus" that anthropogenic emissions are causing excessive atmospheric warming.
That's not what I meant. I'll quote Jimbo again (as appearing on WP:NPOV):
* 1 If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts; * If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents; * If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia (except perhaps in some ancillary article) regardless of whether it's true or not; and regardless of whether you can prove it or not.
So using your example, the majority of the IPCC adivsers say anthropogenic emissions cause global warming, and they come under #1. The minority who disagree come under #2, as long as you can name them, and for practical purposes, perhaps cite a source in which they made this claim. If just one scientist came out and said that that global warming is caused by aliens, for example, then that would fall under #3, since one scientist is a vastly limited minority.
I've never said that only one POV should be represented, only that extreme minority POVs shouldn't be.
The idea that a NPOV policy based on "significance" (however fuzzy) would necessarily translate into one based on "majority rule" (as if only one POV could be represented in any given article, anyway) would lead to a destruction of all articles on religion and the creation of a wholly "liberal POV Wikipedia" is a pretty sad strawman...
FF
On 6/9/05, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/9/05, Poor, Edmund W Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com wrote:
The other point was that WP is (or wants to be) an encyclopaedia, and that some POVs have to be excluded. The way we do that is by assessing how much (academic) support they have, in terms of the context and subject matter. There's no need for content committees, as long as consensus decisions on WP:NPOV can be acheieved (mediation) and enforced (arbitration).
-- Stephen Bain
If the decision on excluded POVs is made on the basis of how much support they have, we will quickly turn toward a regime of censorhip of unpopular views.
- We won't even be able to MENTION that a minority of scientists contacted by the UN's climate panel (IPCC) disagree with the "consensus" that anthropogenic emissions are causing excessive atmospheric warming.
That's not what I meant. I'll quote Jimbo again (as appearing on WP:NPOV):
- 1 If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to
substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts;
- If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be
easy to name prominent adherents;
- If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited)
minority, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia (except perhaps in some ancillary article) regardless of whether it's true or not; and regardless of whether you can prove it or not.
So using your example, the majority of the IPCC adivsers say anthropogenic emissions cause global warming, and they come under #1. The minority who disagree come under #2, as long as you can name them, and for practical purposes, perhaps cite a source in which they made this claim. If just one scientist came out and said that that global warming is caused by aliens, for example, then that would fall under #3, since one scientist is a vastly limited minority.
I've never said that only one POV should be represented, only that extreme minority POVs shouldn't be.
-- Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Stephen Bain wrote:
On 6/9/05, Poor, Edmund W Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com wrote:
The other point was that WP is (or wants to be) an encyclopaedia, and that some POVs have to be excluded. The way we do that is by assessing how much (academic) support they have, in terms of the context and subject matter. There's no need for content committees, as long as consensus decisions on WP:NPOV can be acheieved (mediation) and enforced (arbitration).
-- Stephen Bain
If the decision on excluded POVs is made on the basis of how much support they have, we will quickly turn toward a regime of censorhip of unpopular views.
- We won't even be able to MENTION that a minority of
scientists contacted by the UN's climate panel (IPCC) disagree with the "consensus" that anthropogenic emissions are causing excessive atmospheric warming.
That's not what I meant. I'll quote Jimbo again (as appearing on WP:NPOV):
- 1 If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to
substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts;
- If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be
easy to name prominent adherents;
- If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited)
minority, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia (except perhaps in some ancillary article) regardless of whether it's true or not; and regardless of whether you can prove it or not.
So using your example, the majority of the IPCC adivsers say anthropogenic emissions cause global warming, and they come under #1. The minority who disagree come under #2, as long as you can name them, and for practical purposes, perhaps cite a source in which they made this claim. If just one scientist came out and said that that global warming is caused by aliens, for example, then that would fall under #3, since one scientist is a vastly limited minority.
So who is claiming that it is caused by aliens? It's easy to invent an argument that is supported by no-one and use that as an argument that the position is not verifiable.
I've never said that only one POV should be represented, only that extreme minority POVs shouldn't be.
This is still treating truth as a numbers game. Sometimes great scientific discoveries have come from people who stubbornly maintained their opinions on a discovery. Verifiability is a more important criterion than being the position of a small minority. Some people who held the ridiculous minority notion that the earth went around the sun were severely persecuted at one time.
Ec
Additionally, I, and assumably many others, read encyclopedias, and esp. the wikipedia, as a source of extremely obscure and bizarre info not to be found elsewhere.
Jack (Sam Spade)
On 6/10/05, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Stephen Bain wrote:
On 6/9/05, Poor, Edmund W Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com wrote:
The other point was that WP is (or wants to be) an encyclopaedia, and that some POVs have to be excluded. The way we do that is by assessing how much (academic) support they have, in terms of the context and subject matter. There's no need for content committees, as long as consensus decisions on WP:NPOV can be acheieved (mediation) and enforced (arbitration).
-- Stephen Bain
If the decision on excluded POVs is made on the basis of how much support they have, we will quickly turn toward a regime of censorhip of unpopular views.
- We won't even be able to MENTION that a minority of
scientists contacted by the UN's climate panel (IPCC) disagree with the "consensus" that anthropogenic emissions are causing excessive atmospheric warming.
That's not what I meant. I'll quote Jimbo again (as appearing on WP:NPOV):
- 1 If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to
substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts;
- If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be
easy to name prominent adherents;
- If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited)
minority, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia (except perhaps in some ancillary article) regardless of whether it's true or not; and regardless of whether you can prove it or not.
So using your example, the majority of the IPCC adivsers say anthropogenic emissions cause global warming, and they come under #1. The minority who disagree come under #2, as long as you can name them, and for practical purposes, perhaps cite a source in which they made this claim. If just one scientist came out and said that that global warming is caused by aliens, for example, then that would fall under #3, since one scientist is a vastly limited minority.
So who is claiming that it is caused by aliens? It's easy to invent an argument that is supported by no-one and use that as an argument that the position is not verifiable.
I've never said that only one POV should be represented, only that extreme minority POVs shouldn't be.
This is still treating truth as a numbers game. Sometimes great scientific discoveries have come from people who stubbornly maintained their opinions on a discovery. Verifiability is a more important criterion than being the position of a small minority. Some people who held the ridiculous minority notion that the earth went around the sun were severely persecuted at one time.
Ec
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Jack Lynch wrote:
Additionally, I, and assumably many others, read encyclopedias, and esp. the wikipedia, as a source of extremely obscure and bizarre info not to be found elsewhere.
Absolutely! And I hope we can add much more. If it's verified as having been proposed by somebody (which does not mean verifying that the guy's theories make any sense), and properly sourced what more can we ask for.
I just acquired a volume of "Popular Science" from1872. Wow!!
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Jack Lynch wrote:
Additionally, I, and assumably many others, read encyclopedias, and esp. the wikipedia, as a source of extremely obscure and bizarre info not to be found elsewhere.
Absolutely! And I hope we can add much more. If it's verified as having been proposed by somebody (which does not mean verifying that the guy's theories make any sense), and properly sourced what more can we ask for.
What ever happened to [[WP:WIN#Wikipedia_is_not_an_indiscriminate_collection_of_information]]? I thought that was official policy.
Andrew Venier wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Jack Lynch wrote:
Additionally, I, and assumably many others, read encyclopedias, and esp. the wikipedia, as a source of extremely obscure and bizarre info not to be found elsewhere.
Absolutely! And I hope we can add much more. If it's verified as having been proposed by somebody (which does not mean verifying that the guy's theories make any sense), and properly sourced what more can we ask for.
What ever happened to [[WP:WIN#Wikipedia_is_not_an_indiscriminate_collection_of_information]]? I thought that was official policy.
I said nothing about being indiscriminate with the various available nutcases.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Andrew Venier wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Jack Lynch wrote:
Additionally, I, and assumably many others, read encyclopedias, and esp. the wikipedia, as a source of extremely obscure and bizarre info not to be found elsewhere.
Absolutely! And I hope we can add much more. If it's verified as having been proposed by somebody (which does not mean verifying that the guy's theories make any sense), and properly sourced what more can we ask for.
What ever happened to [[WP:WIN#Wikipedia_is_not_an_indiscriminate_collection_of_information]]? I thought that was official policy.
I said nothing about being indiscriminate with the various available nutcases.
Ec
"If it's verified as having been proposed by somebody... and properly sourced" is a standard that many, many nutjobs can meet. Worthiness to be included in an encyclopedia is "what more we can ask for."
"Andrew Venier" avenier@venier.net wrote in message news:42AF8877.4070305@venier.net...
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Andrew Venier wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Jack Lynch wrote:
Additionally, I, and assumably many others, read encyclopedias, and esp. the wikipedia, as a source of extremely obscure and bizarre info not to be found elsewhere.
Absolutely! And I hope we can add much more. If it's verified as having been proposed by somebody (which does not mean verifying that the guy's theories make any sense), and properly sourced what more can we ask for.
What ever happened to [[WP:WIN#Wikipedia_is_not_an_indiscriminate_collection_of_information]]? I thought that was official policy.
I said nothing about being indiscriminate with the various available nutcases.
"If it's verified as having been proposed by somebody... and properly sourced" is a standard that many, many nutjobs can meet. Worthiness to be included in an encyclopedia is "what more we can ask for."
If it's the kind of nut-job-ness that the average person is likely to be taken in by, then we have a responsibility to at least mention it, together with (presumably ample) evidence that the guy **is** a nut-job and why people should **not** be taken in.
On Friday, June 10, 2005, at 07:28, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Stephen Bain wrote:
On 6/9/05, Poor, Edmund W Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com wrote:
[> Stephen Bain wrote:]
The other point was that WP is (or wants to be) an encyclopaedia, and that some POVs have to be excluded.
[Snip]
If the decision on excluded POVs is made on the basis of how much support they have, we will quickly turn toward a regime of censorhip of unpopular views.
- We won't even be able to MENTION that a minority of
scientists contacted by the UN's climate panel (IPCC) disagree with the "consensus" that anthropogenic emissions are causing excessive atmospheric warming.
That's not what I meant.
[Snip]
So using your example, the majority of the IPCC adivsers say anthropogenic emissions cause global warming, and they come under #1. The minority who disagree come under #2, as long as you can name them, and for practical purposes, perhaps cite a source in which they made this claim. If just one scientist came out and said that that global warming is caused by aliens, for example, then that would fall under #3, since one scientist is a vastly limited minority.
So who is claiming that it is caused by aliens? It's easy to invent an argument that is supported by no-one and use that as an argument that the position is not verifiable.
OK, perhaps a different argument (and this is, as ever, subject to context):
The identity of 'the God', 'a god', or 'the gods' is one that a great number of people have differing views upon. A sub-example of this is the concept of the rôle of 'the God' - a large number of people consider the Palestinian Jew "Jesus" to have been this figure. Other religions and traditions have different views - "Rastafarians believe that Haile Selassie is both God the Father and God the Son", to quote our article [[God]]. Yet further ones insist that he is yet to come forth, but will do at some point - Jews, for instance (IIRC). All of these are opinions held by (at least) millions of people, and we would (and do) given them time in an article on the subject (we would probably go through them in rough descending order of believers, by past memory - this gives more prominence to widely-held opinions without prejudicing the readers' opinions of or promoting some judgement on them). OTOH, [[Sollog]] believes himself to be the son of God (AIUI, or God himself, or something), and there are very few, perhaps no, people who hold this opinions of him; thus, we would not mention his claim in the article, as it is inappropriately giving time and hence credence to a cause that does not warrant it. This, indeed, is exactly what we do do. Common sense seems to have triumphed. :-)
I've never said that only one POV should be represented, only that extreme minority POVs shouldn't be.
This is still treating truth as a numbers game. Sometimes great scientific discoveries have come from people who stubbornly maintained their opinions on a discovery. Verifiability is a more important criterion than being the position of a small minority. Some people who held the ridiculous minority notion that the earth went around the sun were severely persecuted at one time.
So? It's not our job to trumpet minor views "just in case" they turn out to be correct all along. Yes, we're "treating truth as a numbers game": it's called showing editorial judgement.
Yours,
James D. Forrester wrote:
[[Sollog]] believes himself to be the son of God (AIUI, or God himself, or something), and there are very few, perhaps no, people who hold this opinions of him; thus, we would not mention his claim in the article, as it is inappropriately giving time and hence credence to a cause that does not warrant it. This, indeed, is exactly what we do do. Common sense seems to have triumphed. :-)
I've never said that only one POV should be represented, only that extreme minority POVs shouldn't be.
This is still treating truth as a numbers game. Sometimes great scientific discoveries have come from people who stubbornly maintained their opinions on a discovery. Verifiability is a more important criterion than being the position of a small minority. Some people who held the ridiculous minority notion that the earth went around the sun were severely persecuted at one time.
So? It's not our job to trumpet minor views "just in case" they turn out to be correct all along. Yes, we're "treating truth as a numbers game": it's called showing editorial judgement.
If Sollog is the only source of evidence for his being God he has a verifiability problem. Under those circumstances being a part of a minority is moot.
Ec
[BTW, please don't strip attributions; it makes understanding who said what ('blame' ;-)) significantly harder.]
On Friday, June 10, 2005 11:46 PM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
James D. Forrester wrote:
[[Sollog]] believes himself to be the son of God
[Snip]
If Sollog is the only source of evidence for his being God he has a verifiability problem. Under those circumstances being a part of a minority is moot.
The Christians are the only source of "evidence" that their words about a "the God" are true; similarly, the Jews, the Muslims, the Hindus, the Ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Celtic tribes of South-West Wales, etc. ad infinitum, or at least to the limit of human imagination of the supernatural, which is almost as vast. Don't be obtuse. :-)
Yours,
James D. Forrester wrote:
Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
James D. Forrester wrote:
[[Sollog]] believes himself to be the son of God
[Snip]
If Sollog is the only source of evidence for his being God he has a verifiability problem. Under those circumstances being a part of a minority is moot.
The Christians are the only source of "evidence" that their words about a "the God" are true; similarly, the Jews, the Muslims, the Hindus, the Ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Celtic tribes of South-West Wales, etc. ad infinitum, or at least to the limit of human imagination of the supernatural, which is almost as vast. Don't be obtuse. :-)
Sounds like a good enough reason to eliminate all articles about God. :-)
Ec
From: "James D. Forrester" james@jdforrester.org
The identity of 'the God', 'a god', or 'the gods' is one that a great number of people have differing views upon. A sub-example of this is the concept of the rôle of 'the God' - a large number of people consider the Palestinian Jew "Jesus" to have been this figure. Other religions and traditions have different views - "Rastafarians believe that Haile Selassie is both God the Father and God the Son", to quote our article [[God]]. Yet further ones insist that he is yet to come forth, but will do at some point - Jews, for instance (IIRC).
This is getting a bit off topic, but Jews are not waiting for God to come forth, since they already believe they have received a great deal of revelation from him. Rather, they are waiting for the Messiah. Your confusion probably arises from the fact that Christianity equates the two.
All of these are opinions held by (at least) millions of people, and we would (and do) given them time in an article on the subject (we would probably go through them in rough descending order of believers, by past memory - this gives more prominence to widely-held opinions without prejudicing the readers' opinions of or promoting some judgement on them). OTOH, [[Sollog]] believes himself to be the son of God (AIUI, or God himself, or something), and there are very few, perhaps no, people who hold this opinions of him; thus, we would not mention his claim in the article, as it is inappropriately giving time and hence credence to a cause that does not warrant it. This, indeed, is exactly what we do do. Common sense seems to have triumphed. :-)
Exactly; those who claim that every single thing that everyone has said on a subject must be included in an article on that subject, so long as the statement can be cited, are trying to build some soft of general knowledge/trivia repository, not an encyclopedia.
I've never said that only one POV should be represented, only that extreme minority POVs shouldn't be.
This is still treating truth as a numbers game. Sometimes great scientific discoveries have come from people who stubbornly maintained their opinions on a discovery. Verifiability is a more important criterion than being the position of a small minority. Some people who held the ridiculous minority notion that the earth went around the sun were severely persecuted at one time.
So? It's not our job to trumpet minor views "just in case" they turn out to be correct all along. Yes, we're "treating truth as a numbers game": it's called showing editorial judgement.
Exactly.
Jay.
Nobody is talking about "truth" here. "Truth" is fought on the vanguards, in little communities which do nothing but spend their time producing "facts" and "knowledge" and "understanding", all fitting into their own sets of standards of what counts as valid and reliable ("regimes of truth"), some of which brutally disagree with each other.
We don't want to play *that* game. That's not the role of an encyclopedia. We digest those battles and report on them. We sit above it all. We don't take part in that battle.
You don't turn to Encyclopedia Brittanica to get cutting-edge information on the latest scientific research. You turn to it for the basics of what is reasonably established, or the range of opinions which the reasonably established people in the world consider possible. You also turn there for references to sources for further reading, if you want a more comprehensive view of things, or if you want to take part in those battles for truth.
Our advantages over EB? We can update things considerably easier and faster -- if tomorrow's patent clerk becomes today's Einstein, all the better! We'll update it when it happens, but not a moment sooner. And though I *loathe* the phrase "Wikipedia is not paper" (which never called out to defend anything I find truly interesting in the world), it is worth noting that another advantage we have is that we can say a whole lot about a whole lot more. The "cut" of notability to get into WP is significantly lower than with EB -- and I think that's a good thing. But that doesn't mean there shouldn't be a cut at all.
Paul Feyerabend's famous critique of the scientific method was that it -- and all "methods" -- restrained investigations into the truth, restrained the ways to which one could approach the world. On that observation, I think he was dead right. But I think he errs in thinking this a scandal: it's that way on purpose! Limiting inquiry to what are thought to be "solvable" problems at the time using "reliable" methods (however much they will be laughed at in the future) allows one to focus manpower, energy, and resources towards things which are likely to pan out.
Is it a "numbers game" of truth? No more than the world already is one -- it is about who says what, how much you trust them, and one hopes that if someone starts saying something "true", it will catch on with others (though it is generally only "others in their same regime of truth"). Does it work that way in real life? Only roughly. But Wikipedia's pretension should only be to accurately summarize and report on "real life" -- never to create "real life".
We need to ditch the pretension that Wikipedia is the place to negotiate "truth" -- it isn't, it never has been, it never will be. Time has shown it difficult enough to simply report on it!
FF
On 6/10/05, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
This is still treating truth as a numbers game. Sometimes great scientific discoveries have come from people who stubbornly maintained their opinions on a discovery. Verifiability is a more important criterion than being the position of a small minority. Some people who held the ridiculous minority notion that the earth went around the sun were severely persecuted at one time.
Ec
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