[Foundation-l] The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia (from the Chronicle) + some citation discussions

[Ray Saintonge]

On 02/19/12 7:31 PM, Fred Bauder wrote:
>> Fred Bauder writes:
>>> I think it probably seems to climate change deniers that excluding
>>> political opinions from science-based articles on global warming is a
>>> violation of neutral point of view, and of basic fairness. That is just
>>> one example, but there are other similar situations.
>> This analogy is breathtakingly unpersuasive. Apart from the fact that
>> consensus about scientific theory is not analogous to consensus about
>> the historical records of particular events, climate-change-denial
>> theory is actually discussed quite thoroughly on Wikipedia. Plus, the
>> author of the op-ed in The Chronicle of Higher Education doesn't seem
>> at all like climate-change deniers.
>>
>> If there is something specific you want to suggest about the author --
>> that he's agenda-driven, that his work is unreliable, or that the
>> journal in which he published the article is not a reliable source --
>> then I think equity requires that you declare why you doubt or dismiss
>> his article.
>>
>> I read the article in the Chronicle pretty carefully. The author's
>> experience struck me as an example of a pattern that may account for
>> the flattening of the growth curve in new editors as well as for some
>> other phenomena. As you may rememember, Andrew Lih conducted a
>> presentation on "the policy thicket" at Wikimania almost five years
>> ago. The wielding of policy by long-term editors, plus the rewriting
>> of the policy so that it is used to undercut NPOV rather than preserve
>> it, strikes me as worth talking about. Dismissing it out of hand, or
>> analogizing it to climate-change denial, undercuts my trust in the
>> Wikipedian process rather than reinforces it.
> We're talking past one another. It is obvious to me that the author of
> the Chronicle article should have been able to add his research without
> difficulty, at least after it was published.
>
> We have material about climate change denial, but do not give political
> viewpoints the status we give scientific opinion in articles on the
> science, nor should we. What we would be looking for, and will not be
> able to find, is substantial work showing that climate warming does not
> result from an increase in greenhouse gases and other products of human
> activity. We can't simply say, "According to Rick Santorum, there is no
> scientific basis...."
>
> Yes, please, lets discuss.

If we're ever going to get past these problems of Wiki epistemology it 
won't be done by starting with such a heavily argued contemporary 
problem as climate change. It has too many active vested interests.  Too 
many people accept political statements as fact. NPOV started off as a 
great concept, but sometimes when we try to explain it we end up 
expanding beyond recognition.  Reliable sources are fine but deciding on 
the reliability of a source itself requires a point of view. Calling 
something original research ends up more a weapon than a valid criticism.

Ray