[WikiEN-l] Fringecruft piles up

[Phil Sandifer]

On Jul 26, 2007, at 1:57 PM, Brock Weller wrote:

> I was looking at the RFK article, got to the article on his  
> assination (
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_assassination) and  
> in the
> process of doing some minor cleanup became astounded by the amount  
> of cruft
> in this article. Fully half of it is various conspiracy theories,  
> badly
> presented in varying manners, none of which comply with our  
> standard format
> and style guidelines, overstating proof and presenting opinion as fact
> ['television program on the Robert Kennedy case entitled  
> "Conspiracy Test:
> The RFK Assassination<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php? 
> title=Conspiracy_Test:_The_RFK_Assassination&action=edit>,"
> which provides powerful scientific evidence that Sirhan
> Sirhan<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirhan_Sirhan>did not act
> alone.'], and worse, it's spreading. The Sirhan Sirhan article (
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirhan_Sirhan) is swelling with  
> fringecruft as
> well, a third of that article devoted to conspiracy theories. We  
> have a
> full, extremely large page devoted to 9/11 conspiracy theories, all  
> of which
> have been rather fully debunked.
>
> Are articles with large kook sections an artifact of coverage, the  
> more
> literate 'pedia editors avoid them knowing their bunk and hence  
> dont get
> much cleanup, or are they being claimed by 'true believers' to box out
> everyone else?

If my "favorite" fringecruft article, [[2004 United States  
presidential election controversy and irregularities]] (with 8 sub- 
articles!), is any indication, it's the latter - a complete cesspool  
of hardcore anti-Bushies who are hell-bent on including any scrap of  
news that comes their way. I've twice tried to give these articles a  
thorough cleansing, but it's more or less no use. Maybe I'll go back  
through and see if I can BLP them to oblivion.

-Phil