At 20:21 17/09/2007, you wrote:
On 9/17/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Similarly, neutrality does not imply any need for long-winded debunkings, nor does it require labeling with such epithets as "pseudoscience". Certain avenues of scientific investigation eventually failed when more information became available, and eventually faded from public consciousness. It is grossly disingenuous to attach retroactive value judgements on these failed theories. That these avenues were once pursued remains as an historical fact deserving of a proper explanation. Anyone reading old material will encounter literary references to these concepts, and should be able to find an explanation about what the author is saying without wading through a lot of polemics. The failure of many of these theories can often be stated in one short paragraph that undermines a fundamental premise for the theory.
Ray;
With all due respect, quite a number of these "theories" are never sufficiently credible to be properly called scientific in the first place.
In which case we do not describe them as such.
I do not believe in being so neutral and open minded that our brains fall out and we fail to distinguish between serious science that turned out in the end to be wrong on one side, and interplanetary billiards a la Velikovsky, creationism, and the like on the other.
The credibility of Velikovsky's ideas have nothing to do with the Pensée series. And Velikovsky never described planetary "billiards".
Regards,
Ian Tresman www.plasma-universe.com
On 9/17/07, Ian Tresman ian2@knowledge.co.uk wrote:
The credibility of Velikovsky's ideas have nothing to do with the Pensée series. And Velikovsky never described planetary "billiards".
My grandparents' library had some of his first editions. I'm using one of the modern euphamisms, but I'm intimately familiar with his work. It has no scientific credibility in the modern sense.
On 17/09/2007, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/17/07, Ian Tresman ian2@knowledge.co.uk wrote:
The credibility of Velikovsky's ideas have nothing to do with the Pensée series. And Velikovsky never described planetary "billiards".
My grandparents' library had some of his first editions. I'm using one of the modern euphamisms, but I'm intimately familiar with his work. It has no scientific credibility in the modern sense.
I guess we are going way off topic here, but didn't Velikovsky lay the seeds of what eventually became the asteroid theory of the extinction of the dinosaurs? A couple of decades back it was all ... could it have been disease? could it have been global warming?... now many scientists think that an asteroid strike is the most likely scenario. Although Velikovskys ideas seem crazy with hindsight... well I'll skip the polemic.
This debate is so much more interesting than those on the BBS, because at the end of the day we produce something for the world to share! WP is great!
-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Dan Bolser wrote:
On 17/09/2007, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/17/07, Ian Tresman ian2@knowledge.co.uk wrote:
The credibility of Velikovsky's ideas have nothing to do with the Pensée series. And Velikovsky never described planetary "billiards".
My grandparents' library had some of his first editions. I'm using one of the modern euphamisms, but I'm intimately familiar with his work. It has no scientific credibility in the modern sense.
I guess we are going way off topic here, but didn't Velikovsky lay the seeds of what eventually became the asteroid theory of the extinction of the dinosaurs? A couple of decades back it was all ... could it have been disease? could it have been global warming?... now many scientists think that an asteroid strike is the most likely scenario.
This kind of presaging is not an unusual phenomenon. Some people had great insights, but the means of testing their hypotheses did not exist yet for them. That made it too easy for the ideas to be misapplied.
Although Velikovskys ideas seem crazy with hindsight...
But that's true enough.
Ec
On 9/17/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/17/07, Ian Tresman ian2@knowledge.co.uk wrote:
The credibility of Velikovsky's ideas have nothing to do with the Pensée series. And Velikovsky never described planetary "billiards".
My grandparents' library had some of his first editions. I'm using one of the modern euphamisms, but I'm intimately familiar with his work. It has no scientific credibility in the modern sense.
I think you mean "dysphemism" or more colloquially "brickbat" here, not "euphemism".
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
Deletionism worsens systemic bias. As a young Singaporean who contributes to articles pertaining to the Little Red Dot, I was dismayed to find out that many articles on notable Singaporean topics have been nominated for deletion (or even speedy deleted) by Wikipedians who know nothing about Singapore. I could provide many examples, but I believe the four below would suffice:
Last year, Nehwyn nominated many articles on Singaporean shopping malls for deletion. These included [[Suntec City Mall]] (which holds the world's largest fountain).
After a bitter dispute with an SGpedian on [[Singapore Airlines]], Russavia nominated many articles on Singaporean hotels for deletion. These included [[Shangri-La Hotel Singapore]] (the flagship hotel of the Shangri-La group).
Xiaxue - Singapore's top blogger. Claims to notability: 1. At the 2005 Bloggies, she won the Best Asian Weblog Award. 2. She has worked as a columnist for The New Paper, STOMP, Maxim magazine and Snag magazine. 3. She hosted her own TV show named Girls Out Loud, which was aired on MediaCorp Channel 5. 4. Several of her blog posts have sparked national controversies. Wikipedia's article on her was speedy deleted. I managed to persuade an admin to undelete it, but someone nominated it for deletion. With my convincing arguments to keep the article, and a fellow SGpedian searching LexisNexis for newspaper articles about her, the deletion debate closed with Keep as the result.
Chen Liping - one of Singapore's top actresses. Claims to notability: 1. Her record at MediaCorp's Star Awards - the Lion City's only major annual award ceremony for excellence in television. Since 2001, she has been nominated for the Best Actress award thrice. In 2003, she won the Best Actress and Most Unforgettable Character (a special award, only awarded on that year) awards. She is one of only three Singaporean actresses to be honoured with the All-Time Favourite award. 2. She starred in the 2004 Jack Neo movie The Best Bet (very few Singaporean actresses have made it to silver screen). 3. She was involved in the Slim 10 controversy. Wikipedia's article on her was speedy deleted, and has not been recreated since.
Before nominating an article for deletion, or speedy deleting an article, on the grounds of non-notability, please do a quick Internet search (which may reveal sources that establish its notability) and ask a relevant WikiProject (which may know more than you do).
-- Written with passion, J.LW.S. The Special One
2007/9/18, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com:
On 9/17/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/17/07, Ian Tresman ian2@knowledge.co.uk wrote:
The credibility of Velikovsky's ideas have nothing to do with the Pensée series. And Velikovsky never described planetary "billiards".
My grandparents' library had some of his first editions. I'm using one of the modern euphamisms, but I'm intimately familiar with his work. It has no scientific credibility in the modern sense.
I think you mean "dysphemism" or more colloquially "brickbat" here, not "euphemism".
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On Sep 18, 2007, at 12:49 AM, J.L.W.S. The Special One wrote:
Deletionism worsens systemic bias. As a young Singaporean who contributes to articles pertaining to the Little Red Dot,
No idea what that is....
I was dismayed to find out that many articles on notable Singaporean topics have been nominated for deletion (or even speedy deleted) by Wikipedians who know nothing about Singapore. I could provide many examples, but I believe the four below would suffice: Last year, Nehwyn nominated many articles on Singaporean shopping malls for deletion. These included [[Suntec City Mall]] (which holds the world's largest fountain).
Uhm, do you have encyclopedias there (I assume so), and do they list shopping malls?
After a bitter dispute with an SGpedian on [[Singapore Airlines]], Russavia nominated many articles on Singaporean hotels for deletion. These included [[Shangri-La Hotel Singapore]] (the flagship hotel of the Shangri-La group).
Does your encyclopedia list hotels, too?
Xiaxue - Singapore's top blogger. Claims to notability:
Does your encyclopedia list bloggers, too?
Chen Liping - one of Singapore's top actresses. Claims to notability:
Does your encyclopedia list actresses, too?
Before nominating an article for deletion, or speedy deleting an article, on the grounds of non-notability, please do a quick Internet search (which may reveal sources that establish its notability) and ask a relevant WikiProject (which may know more than you do).
Something I'm curious about, does the concept of "encyclopedia" mean mean things in many cultures, where in some, a blogger or hotel or shopping mall is information to be preserved for hundreds of years?
-Bop
On 9/18/07, Ronald Chmara ron@opus1.com wrote:
Something I'm curious about, does the concept of "encyclopedia" mean mean things in many cultures, where in some, a blogger or hotel or shopping mall is information to be preserved for hundreds of years?
I think the original poster's point was that similar in, say, New York would not be deleted in en.wikipedia. We are not necessarily bound by the limits of previous print encyclopedias.
-Matt
On Tue, Sep 18, 2007 at 01:23:29AM -0700, Ronald Chmara ron@Opus1.COM wrote a message of 49 lines which said:
Xiaxue - Singapore's top blogger. Claims to notability:
Does your encyclopedia list bloggers, too?
Chen Liping - one of Singapore's top actresses. Claims to notability:
Does your encyclopedia list actresses, too?
I completely fail to see what's so magic in "encyclopedias" that they must not list bloggers or actresses. Specially when they are not bound by the limits of the paper.
I'm completely uninterested by Ms. Chen Liping or Mr. Xiaxue but the fact they have an article does not change anything for the articles which do interest me. So, they are not a problem.
Let's go back to the original issue: "non-notability" is used way too much and it is strongly biased towards a particular country (nobody suggested to delete [[en:Julia Stiles]] or [[en:Elizabeth Mitchell]]). And there was never strong reasons given *why* useless articles should be deleted. Because they take hard disk space?
I completely fail to see what's so magic in "encyclopedias" that they must not list bloggers or actresses. Specially when they are not bound by the limits of the paper.
Indeed. There are already encyclopedias on:
Pseudoscience http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_of_Pseudoscience
Star Trek http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Star_Trek_Encyclopedia
Ideas http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Ideas-Inventions-Concepts-Discoveries/dp/...
African Americans At War http://used.addall.com/SuperRare/url.cgi?=~=http://www.powells.com/partner/5...
Homicidal Poisonings http://used.addall.com/SuperRare/url.cgi?=~=http://dogbert.abebooks.com/abe/...
Magical spells http://used.addall.com/SuperRare/url.cgi?=~=http://newbibliophile.ammonet-se...
World Shopping http://used.addall.com/SuperRare/url.cgi?=~=http://dogbert.abebooks.com/abe/...
Asteroid Names http://used.addall.com/SuperRare/url.cgi?=~=http://dogbert.abebooks.com/abe/...
Singapore Business http://used.addall.com/SuperRare/url.cgi?=~=http://dogbert.abebooks.com/abe/...
Regards,
Ian Tresman www.plasma-universe.com
Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
Ronald Chmara ron@Opus1.COM wrote
Xiaxue - Singapore's top blogger. Claims to notability:
Does your encyclopedia list bloggers, too?
Chen Liping - one of Singapore's top actresses. Claims to notability:
Does your encyclopedia list actresses, too?
I completely fail to see what's so magic in "encyclopedias" that they must not list bloggers or actresses. Specially when they are not bound by the limits of the paper.
I'm completely uninterested by Ms. Chen Liping or Mr. Xiaxue but the fact they have an article does not change anything for the articles which do interest me. So, they are not a problem.
If articles about Singaporeans are going to interest Singaporeans who can complain?
Let's go back to the original issue: "non-notability" is used way too much and it is strongly biased towards a particular country (nobody suggested to delete [[en:Julia Stiles]] or [[en:Elizabeth Mitchell]]). And there was never strong reasons given *why* useless articles should be deleted. Because they take hard disk space?
Many deletion debates use up far more disk space than the subject articles themselves.
Ec
Ronald Chmara wrote:
On Sep 18, 2007, at 12:49 AM, J.L.W.S. The Special One wrote:
Before nominating an article for deletion, or speedy deleting an article, on the grounds of non-notability, please do a quick Internet search (which may reveal sources that establish its notability) and ask a relevant WikiProject (which may know more than you do).
Something I'm curious about, does the concept of "encyclopedia" mean mean things in many cultures, where in some, a blogger or hotel or shopping mall is information to be preserved for hundreds of years?
If you had said "mean many things" (as I first misread it) I would say, "Absolutely!" in a simple one word answer. If your second "mean" was intentional I would have no hesitation in saying, "No!" It would be unjust to suggest that any of us are intent on having an an encyclopedia of low quality.
Ec
Ronald Chmara wrote:
On Sep 18, 2007, at 12:49 AM, J.L.W.S. The Special One wrote:
After a bitter dispute with an SGpedian on [[Singapore Airlines]], Russavia nominated many articles on Singaporean hotels for deletion. These included [[Shangri-La Hotel Singapore]] (the flagship hotel of the Shangri-La group).
Does your encyclopedia list hotels, too?
Chen Liping - one of Singapore's top actresses. Claims to notability:
Does your encyclopedia list actresses, too?
It hardly requires any sort of radical "Wikipedia isn't paper" justification to include hotels and actresses in an encyclopedia. Even the most staid, old-fashioned encyclopedias of eras past, like Britannica's famous 1911 edition, included both. What exactly is the objection here?
-Mark
It hardly requires any sort of radical "Wikipedia isn't paper" justification to include hotels and actresses in an encyclopedia. Even the most staid, old-fashioned encyclopedias of eras past, like Britannica's famous 1911 edition, included both. What exactly is the objection here?
Different people have their own ideas as to what is "encyclopedic", and what is "notable".
So if they want to exclude something, they claim it is "unencyclopedic" or not notable. Since neither of these are objective, there's no rational argument for or against.
So some of us spend more time in "discussions" over notability of policy, than on time adding or improving articles.
Regards,
Ian Tresman www.plasma-universe.com
Since traditional encyclopedias have articles on hotels and actresses, why can't Wikipedia?
If an article on an American actress as notable as Chen Liping was nominated for deletion, the nominator would probably be admonished - or even blocked - for disruption. That the American Wikipedian who nominated the article for deletion (or speedy deleted) has not heard of it does not mean it is notable. Notability does not depend on the country the actress/blogger/hotel is from, but on whether there is significant coverage of the actress/blogger in reliable sources.
Instead of fighting to get an article deleted on the grounds of "non-notability", why not go and write some GAs?
P.S. Ian and I are discussing different issues. Ian's complaint is that controversial articles are deleted on the grounds of "non-notability", while I am addressing the problem of articles on Singaporean topics being deleted on the grounds of "non-notability". Perhaps we should create another thread about systemic bias and notability? Sorry for hijacking your thread, Ian.
-- Written with passion, J.L.W.S. The Special One
2007/9/20, Ian Tresman <ian2@knowledge.co.uk >:
It hardly requires any sort of radical "Wikipedia isn't paper" justification to include hotels and actresses in an encyclopedia. Even the most staid, old-fashioned encyclopedias of eras past, like Britannica's famous 1911 edition, included both. What exactly is the objection here?
Different people have their own ideas as to what is "encyclopedic", and what is "notable".
So if they want to exclude something, they claim it is "unencyclopedic" or not notable. Since neither of these are objective, there's no rational argument for or against.
So some of us spend more time in "discussions" over notability of policy, than on time adding or improving articles.
Regards,
Ian Tresman www.plasma-universe.com
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
2007/9/20, J.L.W.S. The Special One hildanknight@gmail.com:
If an article on an American actress as notable as Chen Liping was nominated for deletion, the nominator would probably be admonished - or even blocked - for disruption. That the American Wikipedian who nominated the article for deletion (or speedy deleted) has not heard of it does not mean it is notable. Notability does not depend on the country the actress/blogger/hotel is from, but on whether there is significant coverage of the actress/blogger in reliable sources.
Whether I agree with that depends on your definition of 'significant' (and 'reliable' as well). Basically, it's just shifting the discussion from relevancy to something that is almost as badly defined. Just like there is a level between "can be seen in one scene of a small movie" and "won an Oscar for best actress" where an actress becomes notable enough, there is a level between "got her name mentioned in two different articles in the Smalltown Weekly" and "had a biography about her published by a mainstream publisher" where her coverage gets 'significant'.
What I see as a major problem in this point is that people tend to have widely diverging opinions on where to draw the line, which means that there are quite a number people who for any issue that actually comes under discussion, they will have the same opinion. Thus, the outcome would often more depend on who happen to be the people involved in the debate than the actual pros and cons of the specific subject. How to resolve this I do not know, though, since any attempt at objective criteria would need so many exceptions that it would soon lead us back to the current situation.
So, Andre, in your opinion, the question should be: "Where do we draw the line?"
That's why we need notability criteria that are objective, not subjective.
-- Written with passion, J.L.W.S. The Special One
2007/9/20, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com:
2007/9/20, J.L.W.S. The Special One hildanknight@gmail.com:
If an article on an American actress as notable as Chen Liping was nominated for deletion, the nominator would probably be admonished - or even blocked - for disruption. That the American Wikipedian who nominated the article for deletion (or speedy deleted) has not heard of it does not mean it is notable. Notability does not depend on the country the actress/blogger/hotel is from, but on whether there is significant coverage of the actress/blogger in reliable sources.
Whether I agree with that depends on your definition of 'significant' (and 'reliable' as well). Basically, it's just shifting the discussion from relevancy to something that is almost as badly defined. Just like there is a level between "can be seen in one scene of a small movie" and "won an Oscar for best actress" where an actress becomes notable enough, there is a level between "got her name mentioned in two different articles in the Smalltown Weekly" and "had a biography about her published by a mainstream publisher" where her coverage gets 'significant'.
What I see as a major problem in this point is that people tend to have widely diverging opinions on where to draw the line, which means that there are quite a number people who for any issue that actually comes under discussion, they will have the same opinion. Thus, the outcome would often more depend on who happen to be the people involved in the debate than the actual pros and cons of the specific subject. How to resolve this I do not know, though, since any attempt at objective criteria would need so many exceptions that it would soon lead us back to the current situation.
-- Andre Engels, andreengels@gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
2007/9/20, J.L.W.S. The Special One hildanknight@gmail.com:
So, Andre, in your opinion, the question should be: "Where do we draw the line?"
That's why we need notability criteria that are objective, not subjective.
Yes, but the big problem, as I wrote, is that it's hard or impossible to find objective criteria so that you don't have A and B, such that A would be 'notable enough', B not 'notable enough', and at the same time subjectively one would consider B to be 'higher' in notability than A.
Even if we don't draw an exact line, we can reduce the range of values for which a reasonable Wikipedian would draw it at.
"One-size-fits-all" notability criteria are impossible to set. We need topic-specific notability guidelines that could determine notability, or lack thereof, in at least 90% of cases (exceptions will always exist). Moreover, notability criteria should not be systemically biased. For example, the notability criteria for films states that a film which wins a "major award" is notable. In a footnote, the Academy Awards and Cannes are listed as examples of "major awards". However, what about Chinese films? Shouldn't the Golden Horse Awards be considered "major"?
-- Written with passion, J.L.W.S. The Special One
2007/9/20, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com:
2007/9/20, J.L.W.S. The Special One hildanknight@gmail.com:
So, Andre, in your opinion, the question should be: "Where do we draw
the
line?"
That's why we need notability criteria that are objective, not
subjective.
Yes, but the big problem, as I wrote, is that it's hard or impossible to find objective criteria so that you don't have A and B, such that A would be 'notable enough', B not 'notable enough', and at the same time subjectively one would consider B to be 'higher' in notability than A.
-- Andre Engels, andreengels@gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
J.L.W.S. The Special One wrote:
Even if we don't draw an exact line, we can reduce the range of values for which a reasonable Wikipedian would draw it at.
"One-size-fits-all" notability criteria are impossible to set. We need topic-specific notability guidelines that could determine notability, or lack thereof, in at least 90% of cases (exceptions will always exist). Moreover, notability criteria should not be systemically biased. For example, the notability criteria for films states that a film which wins a "major award" is notable. In a footnote, the Academy Awards and Cannes are listed as examples of "major awards". However, what about Chinese films? Shouldn't the Golden Horse Awards be considered "major"?
Notability lists should always be whitelists. At least that's what we tried to do on it.wp. We still get a lot of criticism because scientists are whitelisted if they win a Nobel prizes and footballers if they have played in the top league (Serie A, Premiership...). This doesn't mean that a scientist that hasn't won a Nobel prize is non-notable, but that we couldn't find consensus on wider criteria that wouldn't have been too wide. Explaining that whatever does not fit a whitelist doesn't necessarily fit a blacklist is hard, very hard.
Cruccone
"One-size-fits-all" notability criteria are impossible to set. We need topic-specific notability guidelines that could determine notability, or lack thereof, in at least 90% of cases (exceptions will always exist). Moreover, notability criteria should not be systemically biased. For example, the notability criteria for films states that a film which wins a "major award" is notable. In a footnote, the Academy Awards and Cannes are listed as examples of "major awards". However, what about Chinese films? Shouldn't the Golden Horse Awards be considered "major"?
A film that wins a major award is notable for one thing: it's won a notable award. But a film might be notable for a ton of other reasons, notable directory, scene, newsworthiness, etc etc.
But notability is not a criteria for inclusion. We include films because the information about then is verifiable, and SECONDLY, we mention whether the is anything notable about them.
Notability is a characteristic, not an inclusion criteria.
Regards,
Ian Tresman www.plasma-universe.com
J.L.W.S. The Special One wrote:
Even if we don't draw an exact line, we can reduce the range of values for which a reasonable Wikipedian would draw it at.
"One-size-fits-all" notability criteria are impossible to set. We need topic-specific notability guidelines that could determine notability, or lack thereof, in at least 90% of cases (exceptions will always exist). Moreover, notability criteria should not be systemically biased. For example, the notability criteria for films states that a film which wins a "major award" is notable. In a footnote, the Academy Awards and Cannes are listed as examples of "major awards". However, what about Chinese films? Shouldn't the Golden Horse Awards be considered "major"?
India is the country which produces the most films, but very few of them are known.
Ec
I presume you mean "very few of them are known outside India". What are the most prestigious awards for Indian films? Shouldn't they count as major awards as well?
2007/9/21, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net:
J.L.W.S. The Special One wrote:
Even if we don't draw an exact line, we can reduce the range of values
for
which a reasonable Wikipedian would draw it at.
"One-size-fits-all" notability criteria are impossible to set. We need topic-specific notability guidelines that could determine notability, or lack thereof, in at least 90% of cases (exceptions will always exist). Moreover, notability criteria should not be systemically biased. For example, the notability criteria for films states that a film which wins
a
"major award" is notable. In a footnote, the Academy Awards and Cannes
are
listed as examples of "major awards". However, what about Chinese films?
Shouldn't the Golden Horse Awards be considered "major"?
India is the country which produces the most films, but very few of them are known.
Ec
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
J.L.W.S. The Special One wrote:
So, Andre, in your opinion, the question should be: "Where do we draw the line?"
That's why we need notability criteria that are objective, not subjective.
You're asking for the impossible. "Notable", "significant" and "reliable" can only find agreement at either extreme of the scale, and they are not identical from subject to subject. There's a big fuzzy middle where we need to begin by assuming that the person posting the information is acting in good faith, and often approaching the content from a different perspecive. This won't save all the questioned articles, but it may bring peace. perhaps we should begin treating simple "nn" deletion requests as a breach of good faith.
Ec
2007/9/20, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com:
Whether I agree with that depends on your definition of 'significant' (and 'reliable' as well). Basically, it's just shifting the discussion from relevancy to something that is almost as badly defined. Just like there is a level between "can be seen in one scene of a small movie" and "won an Oscar for best actress" where an actress becomes notable enough, there is a level between "got her name mentioned in two different articles in the Smalltown Weekly" and "had a biography about her published by a mainstream publisher" where her coverage gets 'significant'.
What I see as a major problem in this point is that people tend to have widely diverging opinions on where to draw the line, which means that there are quite a number people who for any issue that actually comes under discussion, they will have the same opinion. Thus, the outcome would often more depend on who happen to be the people involved in the debate than the actual pros and cons of the specific subject. How to resolve this I do not know, though, since any attempt at objective criteria would need so many exceptions that it would soon lead us back to the current situation.
There's a big fuzzy middle where we need to begin by assuming that the person posting the information is acting in good faith, and often approaching the content from a different perspecive. This won't save all the questioned articles, but it may bring peace. perhaps we should begin treating simple "nn" deletion requests as a breach of good faith.
Ec
That would be nice. I think this is the correct attitude.
George Herbert wrote:
On 9/17/07, Ian Tresman ian2@knowledge.co.uk wrote:
The credibility of Velikovsky's ideas have nothing to do with the Pensée series. And Velikovsky never described planetary "billiards".
My grandparents' library had some of his first editions. I'm using one of the modern euphamisms, but I'm intimately familiar with his work. It has no scientific credibility in the modern sense.
I can go along with the qualification "in the modern sense," but we are talking about a set of theories from the 1950s, and that makes the modern sense anachronistic.
Ec
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