I was looking at the RFK article, got to the article on his assination ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_assassination) and in the process of doing some minor cleanup became astounded by the amount of cruft in this article. Fully half of it is various conspiracy theories, badly presented in varying manners, none of which comply with our standard format and style guidelines, overstating proof and presenting opinion as fact ['television program on the Robert Kennedy case entitled "Conspiracy Test: The RFK Assassinationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Conspiracy_Test:_The_RFK_Assassination&action=edit," which provides powerful scientific evidence that Sirhan Sirhanhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirhan_Sirhandid not act alone.'], and worse, it's spreading. The Sirhan Sirhan article ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirhan_Sirhan) is swelling with fringecruft as well, a third of that article devoted to conspiracy theories. We have a full, extremely large page devoted to 9/11 conspiracy theories, all of which have been rather fully debunked.
Are articles with large kook sections an artifact of coverage, the more literate 'pedia editors avoid them knowing their bunk and hence dont get much cleanup, or are they being claimed by 'true believers' to box out everyone else?
On Thu, 2007-07-26 at 13:57 -0400, Brock Weller wrote:
Are articles with large kook sections an artifact of coverage, the more literate 'pedia editors avoid them knowing their bunk and hence dont get much cleanup, or are they being claimed by 'true believers' to box out everyone else?
Yes and yes. Cases in point: [[2004 United States presidential election controversy and irregularities]], [[Allegations of state terrorism by the United States]].
On Jul 26, 2007, at 1:57 PM, Brock Weller wrote:
I was looking at the RFK article, got to the article on his assination ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_assassination) and in the process of doing some minor cleanup became astounded by the amount of cruft in this article. Fully half of it is various conspiracy theories, badly presented in varying manners, none of which comply with our standard format and style guidelines, overstating proof and presenting opinion as fact ['television program on the Robert Kennedy case entitled "Conspiracy Test: The RFK Assassination<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php? title=Conspiracy_Test:_The_RFK_Assassination&action=edit>," which provides powerful scientific evidence that Sirhan Sirhanhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirhan_Sirhandid not act alone.'], and worse, it's spreading. The Sirhan Sirhan article ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirhan_Sirhan) is swelling with fringecruft as well, a third of that article devoted to conspiracy theories. We have a full, extremely large page devoted to 9/11 conspiracy theories, all of which have been rather fully debunked.
Are articles with large kook sections an artifact of coverage, the more literate 'pedia editors avoid them knowing their bunk and hence dont get much cleanup, or are they being claimed by 'true believers' to box out everyone else?
If my "favorite" fringecruft article, [[2004 United States presidential election controversy and irregularities]] (with 8 sub- articles!), is any indication, it's the latter - a complete cesspool of hardcore anti-Bushies who are hell-bent on including any scrap of news that comes their way. I've twice tried to give these articles a thorough cleansing, but it's more or less no use. Maybe I'll go back through and see if I can BLP them to oblivion.
-Phil
Why don't you not spend your effort attacking the work of others?
On 7/26/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Jul 26, 2007, at 1:57 PM, Brock Weller wrote:
I was looking at the RFK article, got to the article on his assination ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_assassination) and in the process of doing some minor cleanup became astounded by the amount of cruft in this article. Fully half of it is various conspiracy theories, badly presented in varying manners, none of which comply with our standard format and style guidelines, overstating proof and presenting opinion as fact ['television program on the Robert Kennedy case entitled "Conspiracy Test: The RFK Assassinationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php? title=Conspiracy_Test:_The_RFK_Assassination&action=edit," which provides powerful scientific evidence that Sirhan Sirhanhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirhan_Sirhandid not act alone.'], and worse, it's spreading. The Sirhan Sirhan article ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirhan_Sirhan) is swelling with fringecruft as well, a third of that article devoted to conspiracy theories. We have a full, extremely large page devoted to 9/11 conspiracy theories, all of which have been rather fully debunked.
Are articles with large kook sections an artifact of coverage, the more literate 'pedia editors avoid them knowing their bunk and hence dont get much cleanup, or are they being claimed by 'true believers' to box out everyone else?
If my "favorite" fringecruft article, [[2004 United States presidential election controversy and irregularities]] (with 8 sub- articles!), is any indication, it's the latter - a complete cesspool of hardcore anti-Bushies who are hell-bent on including any scrap of news that comes their way. I've twice tried to give these articles a thorough cleansing, but it's more or less no use. Maybe I'll go back through and see if I can BLP them to oblivion.
-Phil _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 7/26/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
Why don't you not spend your effort attacking the work of others?
Such articles tend to not follow Wikipedia core policies such as NPOV very well. Arguably this is cause for a rewrite rather than deletion, but sometimes ...
-Matt
On 7/26/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/26/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
Why don't you not spend your effort attacking the work of others?
Such articles tend to not follow Wikipedia core policies such as NPOV very well. Arguably this is cause for a rewrite rather than deletion, but sometimes ...
-Matt
There's clearly no intention of rewriting at least one of these neutrally. Neutrality when it comes to American political parties does not seem to be well done on Wikipedia, and I avoid these articles.
Also, these articles could be written neutrally, would be much better articles, and would not reek of what they are, abuse of Wikipedia as a soapbox. But, while many of these and related articles are so overtly biased, they do tend to look like just what they are.
A disclaimer, I've only read the one, and a handful of others, and don't intend to go back to it--and the owners know their biases quite well.
KP