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

Wed Oct 8 20:38:31 UTC 2003

Jimbo,

Thank you for your response.  I think I agree with most of what you 
said.  Here are a few comments:

>> So the editor who's trying to delete something has to do, say, 100
>>times the work of the person who added it.
> 
> 
> I don't think that's true.  If it is, then we should engage in a
> concerted effort to be conscious of it and make it not so. 

The best example of an article where I was not involved personally is 
"Rocketdyne Santa Susana Field Laboratory Contamination."  Here we have 
an article written by someone who clearly has an axe to grind.  It has 
been listed on VfD but kept.  In the words of User:ThereIsNoSteve, "The 
tiny amount of research I've done on this topic shows that most of the 
claims are greatly exaggerated and some might be outright false. The 
whole article is essentially an editorial..."

No one has tried to remove the outrageous claims because there wouldn't 
be much of anything left and the community frowns so heavily on just 
blanking things.  And no one is willing to do the research for the 
_correcting_ and _improving_ that are probably called for.  So the 
article remains in its present form.

I'm willing to bet that if I walked in and started editing, that there 
wouldn't be much support for removing the outrageous claims (or 
restating them as opinion rather than fact), even if I had some 
well-researched factual material debunking them.

This isn't so much a matter of policy as a matter of culture, and 
perhaps it has drifted since the early days.

> But you don't have to refute it.  It isn't necessary to prove a
> negative in order to remove something.  All that you have to do is say
> something like, in your own delightful wording, "moving unsourced
> material to talk pages".  And then put a note on the talk page saying
> something like "This is interesting about Count Leonard III, however I
> was unable to confirm it.  Can someone post a source before we put it
> back in the article?"
> 
> I'm sure that would carry plenty of weight.

I think you might find it interesting to log in under a pseudonym and 
try exactly that in a couple places.

> One issue here is whether or not it belongs in the article, and that's
> a tough one to treat.  I suspect an article about Roundup could more
> easily cover that controversy, and that the throwaway statement on the
> vegetable crops article is likely best just left out completely.
> 
> For example, it would likely be best to avoid "Roundup, generally
> considered safe, has seen increasingly..." too.  If there's ongoing
> genuine controversy, then perhaps it's necessary for even the
> vegetable crops article to say something like "Roundup has seen
> increasingly widespread use on fruit and vegetable crops each year
> since 1995.  There has been some resulting controversy, which is
> covered in more detail in the article on [[Roundup]]."

Yes.  I chose an example where the attempt to ''load the language'' was 
blatently obvious, so it's an easy case.  Real article disputes are more 
opaque.

>>I don't think that banning users solves anything, and did not suggest 
>>it in my post.
> 
> 
> Do you think it never solves anything?  I agree completely that
> banning has an uneven track record.  Sometimes it works!  Other times,
> it just generates monsters from people who would have otherwise merely
> been annoyances.

Banning a user is like divorcing a spouse or firing an employee:

- It is not a problem solving tool, but rather an outcome when problem 
solving tools fail.

- Though it is the largest hammer in the toolbox, it is not 100% 
effective.  Just like ex-wives and ex-employees, banned users can 
continue to make nuisances of themselves.

- If we were truly wise, we would make an effort to learn in what 
fashion the community failed to serve the banned member (realizing that 
in some cases there was probably nothing to be done).

- When it is inevitable, it should be done promptly, and with respect 
and proper follow-through.

> One of the things that my strong 'libertarian' political views tell me
> is that "there ought to be a law" is a constant temptation, but often
> a siren's song.  People misbehaving on the Wikipedia?  Ban 'em!

I continue to believe that most bad behavior on Wikipedia by established 
users grows out of disputes over articles.  With a better method to 
address these disputes, the number of users where a ban is contemplated 
is sure to drop.

Louis