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

Wed Oct 8 00:03:24 UTC 2003

> Welcome to the club, Ed.  Let's call it the club of
> people frustrated 
> with ''inclusivity bias''.  You're in good company
> here, so put up your 
> feet and have the barmaid bring you a glass of good
> [[Scotch]].

I think this type of thing was one of the reasons for
the I-E fork. They use the sympathetic point of view,
unless they're wrong, in which case they say the right
point of view.
> 
> You have hit upon the number one reason why good,
> evenhanded 
> contributors leave the Wiki, and why many of those
> who stay become 
> frustrated and limit their edits to mechanical
> changes and work on a few 
> pet subject areas.  It is also the reason why most
> credentialled people 
> have left the project.
> 
No, people leave the project because of people like
RK, who claim they're doing something equivalent to
inclucivity bias, saying that the other people are
wrong and they're using the only reasonable point of
view; the other people are
neo-nazis/environmentalists.

> ''Inclusivity bias'' is my term for the pattern of
> putting the [[burden 
> of proof]] on editors making content changes in
> broad areas.  The 
> trouble is that the Wikipedia culture is
> deletion-adverse and 
> reversion-adverse.  Wikipedia culture is to include
> things until they 
> are proven unmeritous.  If you cut paragraphs,
> revert bad edits to an 
> article, or try to have an article deleted--unless
> you have proof, you 
> get NO support from the community.

So what's wrong with that? 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?
> 
> 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.
> 
> I think the culture has to change.  I don't know how
> to do it.  I've 
> tried, and it is *excruciatingly* hard to walk into
> an article that has 
> bias, that clearly has a problem with facts and with
> neutrality, and 
> accomplish anything good.  The usual outcome is
> outpouring of anger, 
> edit wars, and hard feelings all around, and the
> well-meaning editor 
> just ends up making enemies.  What *should* happen,
> is that the 
> community should rise up and *support* people who
> are trying to help out 
> in these situations.

What's your definition of neutrality? Is including
other points of view that are "wrong" not neutral?
> 
> What kind of support?  Well, people should be
> rushing to your side to 
> reinstate your edits when some POV writer keeps
> reverting you.  Other 
> people should be coming to the discussion, and not
> just adding and 
> refactoring ad nauseum, but actually trying to push
> the process towards 
> a decision.  What we need more of are editors who
> are willing to 
> approach a controversial topic that they don't feel
> strongly about, and 
> staying there with tenacity, requiring sources for
> questionable edits, 
> flat-out reverting inappropriate garbage, and doing
> their own 
> cross-checking.

Is the POV writer deleting other people's points of
view or in any way making his POV the only one there?
Is he asserting that he's right while leaving other
POVs there (although asserting that they're wrong)? If
it's one of the first two, then you have a case, but
since Wikipedia is a wiki, it's easy to change (but if
you get into an edit war, you can report it to the
list). If it's the third one, then it's very easy to
fix; just make minor changes in the language (eg. some
say that..., proponents claim..., etc.).
> 
>
 This is all going to get worse as Wikipedia becomes
> more important in 
> the real world.  When its #90 at alexa.com, you can
> bet that somebody 
> from Monsanto and somebody from Greenpeace will both
> be here trying to 
> steer the articles around on GM food.
> 
> Louis

The article on GM food should reflect both points of
view. If the Greenpeace and Monsanto people read the
Wikipedia policies, they can have their opinions and
not be trolls. If they are trolls, and reason is found
that they are trolls (instead of assuming that all
edits should be reverted until proven otherwise), and
an edit war starts, then the involved parties can
write to the list for discussion of banning, or they
can use the planned arbitration pannel. But banning
when you're in an edit war with someone for including
their POVs is  going too far.
LDan

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