[WikiEN-l] Pseudoscience and pseudohistory

Thu Jun 30 16:00:40 UTC 2005

> No matter how many people you can convince that listing Article X under
> [[Category:Pseudoscience]] does /not/ mean that Wikipedia takes the
> stance that Topic X is a pseudoscience, the vast majority will assume
> that it does.
>
> And that is why people are complaining about those categorisations.
>
> [snip]
>
> Maybe the only way out of this is to call the categories something
> unwieldy-but-NPOV like [[Category:Theories or beliefs widely considered
> pseudoscience]]...

Once again. Do you object to [[Holocaust denial]]
being in the [[Pseudohistory]] category? Would you
prefer to have something "NPOV" like [[Category:Theories
or beliefs widely considered pseudohistory]]?

Such over-qualifications with the good intention
of being as NPOV as possible is something which
Wikipedia has too much of already.

My favorite example is this sentence which I found
on the [[Britney Spears]] article about two months
ago:

"Britney Spears is often regarded by many as
a controversial sexual figure"

In my opinion the following sentences are fine:

1. Britney Spears is a controversial sexual figure.
2. Holocaust denial is pseudohistory.
3. Creationism is pseudoscience.

And if someone uses Wikipedia in 50 years to demonstrate
to her friend that Creationism is pseudo-science that's
fine too. Because it is.

Regards,
Haukur