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