[WikiEN-l] Re: Anti-scientific bias has me hopping mad!

Wed Oct 8 16:24:00 UTC 2003

<<I-E Fork/sympathetic POV>>

I have seen some of their articles and don't believe that the slight 
change in perspective makes the core problems go away.  If they had the 
size and diversity of user community we have here, they would have the 
same problems.

<<Reasons people leave the project>>

 > No, people leave the project because of people like
 > RK, who claim they're doing something equivalent to
 > inclusivity bias

I agree that many of RK's edits were unhelpful, and the RK and people 
like him drive good editors away from the project.

But it was RK's vitriolic putdowns, allegations, and attempts to confuse 
the discussion by deleting portions of talk pages that made him so hard 
to accept.  To be sure, many of his edits were POV, but some of the crap 
he reverted out of hand, deserved to be reverted out of hand.  Had he 
done so in a caring, loving way, with an edit comment like "moving 
unsourced material to talk page," and then made a genuine attempt to 
work with the other contributor to get the article fixed, he would have 
accomplished great things here.

<<what's wrong with putting the burden of proof on the editor>>
> [...] Don't you have some kind of
> reason to delete content? If you don't think (and
> prove, if someone asks) that the content is
> inaccurate, why should you delete it?

Well, we have to decide on the bias.

Presently, if someone adds something to an article, they generally 
aren't expected to provide sources, though it is encouraged.

If another editor wants to delete something, they *are* expected to 
provide sources, at least if challenged.  Now, it is difficult and time 
consuming to try to refute facts one at a time.  So the editor who's 
trying to delete something has to do, say, 100 times the work of the 
person who added it.

That imbalance does not make for good articles,  It also makes people 
frustrated who would otherwise try to work through articles, removing 
the junk, and making them more NPOV.  That is especially true outside 
the sciences.  It's fairly easy to check the atomic weight of silver, 
but much harder to refute an assertion that Count Leonard III was a 
pivotal figure in British tactics used in the 100 years war.  He's not, 
I just made that up, now what do you suppose it would take to refute that?

>>And you need that community support, because you are
>>up against people 
>>with strong feelings, who want to paint subjects a
>>certain way.  You 
>>mention environmentalism, but that's just one of the
>>many areas where 
>>this is a problem.  The Israel/Palestine issues,
>>articles on different 
>>religions, articles on cults, politics, and world
>>trade all have the 
>>same problem.
> 
> 
> You're just going against NPOV. You just think that
> everything should be "right". Well, who's to say who's
> right? You? Someone from the other side? The concept
> of NPOV is to show all sides and let the reader
> decide.

Perhaps I'm not making myself clear.  I support NPOV, and don't think 
that it's the encyclopedia's job to take sides.  But having an NPOV 
policy does not prevent conflict, as we've seen.  NPOV is not a 
pallative for disagreements about articles.

With an NPOV policy, there are still problems in three areas:

1.  There are disagreements about the facts.

There are, for example, people who believe that Roundup (the herbicide) 
is carcinogenic.  It isn't, but based on a single irresponsibly written 
study (Ericson & Hardell), this belief persists.  Some people might 
consider statements like, "Roundup, a known carcinogen, has seen 
increasingly widespread use on fruit and vegetable crops each year since 
1995."  Someone might try to compromise by replacing "known carcinogen" 
with "suspected carcinogen," but even that view is fringe enough that it 
doesn't belong in an article about vegetable crops.

2.  There are disagreements about what is important and what is not, and 
hence, the relative amounts of emphasis something should be given.

This is a problem particularly outside the sciences.

3.  Closely related to #2, there is difficulty coming up with summary 
statements for difficult, involved problems.

Often such statements can be crafted, with careful participation of 
several writers over time.  When someone new to the article comes in, 
they may (inadvertently or deliberately) destroy a fragile consensus.

> What's your definition of neutrality? Is including
> other points of view that are "wrong" not neutral?

Having all points of view represented in the encyclopedia is great. 
Having points of view present that are not supported by facts ("wrong"), 
are great to have in context.

I think it's great to have articles on UFOs, the "Reciprocal System of 
Theory," and how G.W. Bush stole the presidency from the 
rightfully-elected Al Gore.

But none of these should pervade the article space.  We wouldn't want a 
UFO enthusiast to get a bot and edit all the city articles and add a 
list of UFO sightings for each city.  And we wouldn't want every article 
that has a reference to Al Gore to refer to him as "Al Gore, rightfully 
elected president of the United States."

>  But banning
> when you're in an edit war with someone for including
> their POVs is  going too far.

I don't think that banning users solves anything, and did not suggest it 
in my post.

Louis