Sam Korn wrote: How so? It's pretty well established that editors who think they're here to write an encyclopedia but are clearly far too batshit insane to work with others on the task will be shown the door in short order, e.g. Plautus Satire. When I say WIN therapy, I mean in the sense that WIN is not an experiment in Internet democracy; it can be, but that's not its purpose and if it conflicts with writing an encyclopedia, then writing an encyclopedia wins every time. (Or did you mean it is in fact Thorazine?) - d.

After reading a couple on this thread, I went to the 'Kennedy assassination theories' article and found that Fred had just AFD it, claiming it was a nest for "vandals and kooks." Here is my response: Hardly a good reason to delete a page. Both JFK and his assassination are reasonably encyclopedic topics about one of the more prominent politicians in the last century and how he died. Stemming from that are the various theories about how it came about, and its not original research to point out what the various points of view. Because the 'official version' does not have very broad support, NPOV requires that the various other theories be explained, albeit in a general and condensed way. Are these theories "conspiratorial" theories? Of course, and this should be explained, albeit in a way which does not rely on a pejorative interpretation of the term "conspiracy." I do agree however that 'vandals and kooks' would feel more at home on some Wikipedia fork. ;) -Ste|vertigo __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

On 16/12/05, stevertigo <vertigosteve(a)yahoo.com> wrote: I was only complaining about the (now-redirected) list. However, the article its been redirect to is actually pretty awful and should be wiped and started again, but only allowing non-crazy people to edit. I don't know that it should be deleted from history though. The phenomenon of Kennedy conspiracy theories is interesting, so if we were writing about it we'd want to date the outlandish claims of conspiracy theorists and trace when books were published, when movies were made, and suchforth. But the article there now is junk and doesn't try to do this at all, it just presents point/counterpoints, with very little sourcing. -- Abi

Of course not, one of my neighbors believes the US is responsible for 9/11, explosives planted in the building etc. I trust him rather than the media and common sense. Fred On Dec 16, 2005, at 4:02 PM, Delirium wrote:

David Gerard wrote: In those cases, one approach is to bypass AfD and just replace the article with a stub, insisting that any of the removed claims be referenced before being readded. -Mark

Even speculation and conspiracy theories have sources. Fred On Dec 17, 2005, at 11:59 AM, stevertigo wrote:

On Sat, 17 Dec 2005, David Gerard wrote: I just checked: we lack articles on either Gary Allen or _None Dare Call It Conspiracy_. Seeing how many articles there are from the off-their-medication-fringe, I'm honestly surprised we don't have an article about the book or the author. (Yet he _does_ mention the threat of the Bavarian Illuminati, years before Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson ever thought of putting pen to paper.) For those of you who don't know why I say this, take a look at the Amazon entry. (Yes, I understand not everyone reading this lives in the U.S., & some were born after it was first published. And yet we are diescussing the Kennedy assassination.) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0899666612/qid=1134869843/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_… Geoff

On Sun, 18 Dec 2005, David Gerard wrote: Well, my non-canonical stement would have been along the lines of "I didn't see an article on this, so I went ahead & wrote a stub. But I'm surprized that it hadn't been written yet." Feh. I should have remembered that expeirnce has proven that the best way to get an information hole fixed on Wikipedia is to loudly announce that "This topic is indisputably non-noteable & I will SPEEDILY DELETE any articles about it." Within 6 weeks not only will the article exist, but will often be considered as a FAC. Geoff

I know it seems drastic, but there was not one source cited. Basically it was just the sort of chatting we used to do in the Navy. We called it scuddlebutt. Fred On Dec 17, 2005, at 1:35 PM, Bryan Derksen wrote:

G'day Steve, <snip /> YAKWAICM5GBP. -- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.371 / Virus Database: 267.14.1/206 - Release Date: 16/12/2005