G'day Andrew,
2008/11/13 Jay Litwyn :
Since I believe in global warming and I see a
contest between it
and
economics, I see a very hot dispute that really
should be
off-loaded. There
are so many other places for volatile information
to go. In other
words, if
someone did [[global warming]], I think they
should expect to end
up on
another site, unless the article is restricted to
history.
I think this is going to end in tears - where do we draw the line?
Do
we just not talk about global warming; do we talk about it as
something that is believed to have happened up to and including last
week; do we talk about it and imply it may continue to happen; do we
talk about it in general terms in the future but give no numbers?
I'm not sure this approach is helpful; it tries to deal with a small
set of specific (percieved) problems by applying a draconian general
rule. I mean, take cosmology. We'd be a shoddy encyclopedia if we
didn't talk about the [[heat death of the universe]], a very
well-known concept... but it's entirely hypothetical, it exists as a
paper theory with some substantiating numbers, and it's several
billion years ahead.
I seem to recall WP:CRYSTAL's original purpose was to stop people writing about
predicted future events years before they occurred (e.g. [[Playstation 9]]). Actually,
most examples I can think of come from computer games, film, or music. Call WP:CRYSTAL
just one of many tools to defend against overwhelming geekgasm.
The point was to prevent Wikipedians from making predictions (Playstation 9 will come out
in 2017, and it will be AWESOME!!!; Star Wars XVII will come out, and it will SUCK DONKEY
BALLS!!!), not to stop us from reporting on others' predictions. So it's entirely
appropriate to have an article on [[Heat death of the universe]], [[Global warming]], and
even [[2012 London Olympics]]. Indeed, to ask the question --- is it appropriate to talk
about global warming, heat death of the universe, whatever --- is to be elevating a
badly-written policy above common sense. Again.
--
Mark Gallagher
0439 704 975
http://formonelane.net/
"Even potatoes have their bad days, Igor." --- Count Duckula