[WikiEN-l] My views on policies and debates over content

[James D. Forrester]

On Friday, June 10, 2005, at 07:28, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
wrote:

> Stephen Bain wrote:
> 
> > On 6/9/05, Poor, Edmund W <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> > 
> > [> Stephen Bain wrote:]
> > > > The other point was that WP is (or wants to be) an
> > > > encyclopaedia, and that some POVs have to be excluded.

[Snip]

> > > If the decision on excluded POVs is made on the basis of how much
> > > support they have, we will quickly turn toward a regime of censorhip
> > > of unpopular views. 
> > > 
> > > * We won't even be able to MENTION that a minority of
> > >  scientists contacted by the UN's climate panel (IPCC)
> > >  disagree with the "consensus" that anthropogenic emissions
> > >  are causing excessive atmospheric warming.
> > > 
> > 
> > That's not what I meant.

[Snip]

> > So using your example, the majority of the IPCC adivsers say
> > anthropogenic emissions cause global warming, and they come under #1.
> > The minority who disagree come under #2, as long as you can name them,
> > and for practical purposes, perhaps cite a source in which they made
> > this claim. If just one scientist came out and said that that global
> > warming is caused by aliens, for example, then that would fall under
> > #3, since one scientist is a vastly limited minority.
> 
> So who is claiming that it is caused by aliens?  It's easy to invent an
> argument that is supported by no-one and use that as an argument that
> the position is not verifiable.

OK, perhaps a different argument (and this is, as ever, subject to context):

The identity of 'the God', 'a god', or 'the gods' is one that a great number
of people have differing views upon. A sub-example of this is the concept of
the rôle of 'the God' - a large number of people consider the Palestinian
Jew "Jesus" to have been this figure. Other religions and traditions have
different views - "Rastafarians believe that Haile Selassie is both God the
Father and God the Son", to quote our article [[God]]. Yet further ones
insist that he is yet to come forth, but will do at some point - Jews, for
instance (IIRC). All of these are opinions held by (at least) millions of
people, and we would (and do) given them time in an article on the subject
(we would probably go through them in rough descending order of believers,
by past memory - this gives more prominence to widely-held opinions without
prejudicing the readers' opinions of or promoting some judgement on them).
OTOH, [[Sollog]] believes himself to be the son of God (AIUI, or God
himself, or something), and there are very few, perhaps no, people who hold
this opinions of him; thus, we would not mention his claim in the article,
as it is inappropriately giving time and hence credence to a cause that does
not warrant it. This, indeed, is exactly what we do do. Common sense seems
to have triumphed. :-)

> > I've never said that only one POV should be represented, only that
> > extreme minority POVs shouldn't be.
> 
> This is still treating truth as a numbers game.  Sometimes great
> scientific discoveries have come from people who stubbornly maintained
> their opinions on a discovery.  Verifiability is a more important
> criterion than being the position of a small minority.  Some
> people who held the ridiculous minority notion that the earth went
> around the sun were severely persecuted at one time.

So? It's not our job to trumpet minor views "just in case" they turn out to
be correct all along. Yes, we're "treating truth as a numbers game": it's
called showing editorial judgement.

Yours,
-- 
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
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