[WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

Wed Dec 13 13:24:55 UTC 2006

On Wed, 13 Dec 2006 01:23:53 -0800, "George Herbert"
<george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

>We can't make the lunacy go away; if we really want to minimize the
>encouragement we give them, let the light of neutral open review of
>their ideas expose them as garbage.  People are much less likely to
>believe conspiracy theories when the whole situation is laid
>dispassionately out for them to see what kooks the kooks are.
>Anything else ends up encouraging them.

Obviously I am putting it badly, because that is precisely what I am
suggesting.  Instead of the mass of what looks suspiciously like OR in
the (long) article on controlled demolition hypothesis, for example,
we should say that this is a hypothesis of Steve Jones, that it has
been authoritatively rebutted by respected experts (including
demolition experts), that his claims is such-and-such, and *leave it
at that*.  The problems start when we start allowing the parties to
start arguing their case in Wikipedia.  That is not what Wikipedia is
for, is it? 

The references list for the article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_demolition_hypothesis_for_the_collapse_of_the_World_Trade_Center
is informative.  Where are the reliable sources for the hypothesis?
Not for its having been advanced, but for the hypothesis itself?  That
is a recurrent problem.  We can sometimes fix it, as with Time Cube,
by showing that it's a meme not a valid theory, but we don't seem to
be doing that with the 9/11 conspiracy meme.

Guy (JzG)
-- 
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG