[WikiEN-l] Pseudoscience and pseudohistory

Thu Jun 30 18:21:39 UTC 2005

>From: Haukur Þorgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is>
>
> > 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.

Indeed; for example, there have been persistent attempts by a small number 
of editors to remove Wikipedia all instances of the phrase "Conspiracy 
theory", particularly in titles, in the name of "NPOV", and replace them 
with various circumlocutions.  Having generally failed at that, in some 
cases they have restored to creating POV forks of articles which, for 
example, list the commonly understood view of 9/11 (Al Qaeda hijackers) as 
just another "conspiracy theory", on the grounds that it is a theory about a 
conspiracy.

Jay.