On 18/09/2007, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
This can be dangerous. For instance, putting pet pseudo-scientific theories on Wikipedia gives them a certan credence that they would not get anywhere else. Often, those articles will be better sourced than the more conventional, standard entries on accepted scientific theories. People seeking information, who are not quite discerning, will turn to the net, see the article, see the copious references, and come to accept that as normative scientific fact, when actually the vast majority of scientists may well reject it.
This is indeed a real problem. We generally accept that we should give "due weight" to topics - relatively obscure theories, don't get treated at the same length as their more widely supported brethren, which is fair and even the fringe theorists mostly accept it (if only for a quiet life). Much the same applies to real things; we would feel it greatly inappropriate for [[History of London]] to be a tenth the size of [[History of Basingstoke]].
But there are things which are *so* obscure that, whilst they exist, covering them "as topics" at all can be argued as giving them undue weight. So what do we do with those?