On 7/6/07, Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk wrote:
Crikey. Well, I did create the thing, so I guess it's my job to police it so that it doesn't turn into witchhunt forum.
In all honesty, I think you're underestimating just how bad a problem fringe theory pushing is. You go and have a look at some of our more obscure articles, particularly on "nationalist" topics.
Once I had CVU-like people telling me I underestimated how bad vandalism can be. Of course I wanted to say I'd been around longer and reverted more vandalism than they, and I'd never panicked about it, but I didn't think it was worth arguing. Then there was the spam-fighter generation who would prefer to delete an article about a product, or a company, or a shopping mall and ban the author. For implying that both potential assets could be salvaged, I was accused of underestimating the evilness of "spammers".
Conversely it has been asserted that I over-estimate the dangers of copyright infringement because I'm so... paranoid, you know?
Then check what the academic literature (not government propaganda, academia) actually says about the subject matter.
As most academia is subsidized by state governments, at least in the United States, this distinction might not be a gaping one.
It's so easy for an article, particularly an obscure one, to be taken over by a crank who just shoves his lonely point-of-view non-stop, shouts loudly, and wins through apathy, or through lack of eyes.
Please, Christiano, teach me how to do this. I always wanted to write a featured article. :)
The notability of the crank's theory is not discussed at all: he just includes it as fact. Nothing wrong with notable fringe theories being discussed, but non-notable ones promoted as fact?
Theories, even mainstream ones, shouldn't exactly be presented ("in-universe") as fact. For a more balanced article, assume everything is fictional, describe it to the best of your ability, and cite your sources. I try to avoid using the N-word whenever possible.
We have good mechanism in place for dealing with vandals, but a non-existent one for dealing with trolls and cranks, which are much more of long-term threat. Particularly cranks, because we have no effective method that deals with someone that shouts hard enough and long enough, promoting some whacko craziness. If you revert them, unfortunately that's a "content dispute" and you're "involved". You can revert, block, and ignore a vandal. You can't do the same to a crank, no matter how awful the stuff he's pushing is. Hopefully, having a place to report incidences of such nutcasery will help, though the problem won't entirely go away until we get binding content arbitration.
"Binding content arbitration" is the last thing we need.
So why the noticeboard? Well, I think that it's not a bad idea to have some more impartial eyes on disputes concerning fringe theories. Not to encourage edit wars, but to deal with promotion of fringe theories as mainstream opinion(the main problem), and as a central place to talk about when discussion of a fringe theory that may (or may not be) notable should be included.
Impartial eyes, if they exist, belong to people who really don't know or care about the content dispute, but they'll help you anyway because they think you're generally a good guy, and they can see that you're under a lot of stress and they just want you to be happy again. Recruitment.
That RfA scenario is surely a bit unlikely, no?
Not hardly. I've seen quite a bit of single-issue voting. Do you not remember when Doc Glasgow opposed over a dozen RFA candidates for being "too soft on BLP issues", or when Zoe voted in the arbcom elections based entirely on the candidates' view of the Seabhcan/MONGO remedies?
P.S: "We do need to centralise discussion on fringe theory pushing, since a lot of it happens on out-of-the-way articles (geostatistics and kriging are examples I've seen, in which it's taken forever to recruit someone knowledgeable enough to push back versus a monomaniacal crank) -- it'd be great to have a single place to post problems for attention by experts." - Antandrus
Let's not kid ourselves here. The person or people being recruited need not be "knowledgeable" when "agreeable" will do just fine. Where are you going to find "experts" who are not already editing the article? You would have to start recruiting off-site!
Look at MONGO, having to deal with exactly this kind of nonsense all day and night.
MONGO has been relieved of that "duty" as of 17 December 2006, despite the campaigning of Zoe and others on his behalf. Check out the evidence page for that if you ever get a chance.
—C.W.