[WikiEN-l] Re: Categories and NPOV

Thu Jun 30 17:38:11 UTC 2005

The important insertion that Wikipedia is not making in this debate  
is that pseudoscience is wrong.

That most reasonable people do believe pseudoscience to be wrong is  
incidental. The term itself does not necessarily imply the value  
judgment that "satanic lies" does.

-Snowspinner

On Jun 30, 2005, at 10:33 AM, Timwi wrote:

> Fastfission wrote:
>
>> [[Category:Pseudoscience]] is one which gets objections at fairly
>> regular intervals. The reasons for the objections are pretty
>> straightforward -- the users making such objections are almost always
>> either Creationists or Eugenicists or other people who believe in
>> bodies of thought labeled as "pseudoscience" -- and the response is
>> generally pretty straightforward as well: Wikipedia is not claiming
>> these so-labeled articles are actually "pseudoscience", but rather
>> that they are labeled *by the mainstream scientific community* as
>> "pseudoscience".
>>
>
>
> It is the year 2047.
>
> After a plentiful dinner, Bob and Stan have somehow got into this  
> discussion that doesn't seem to want to come to an end. Bob is a  
> Creationist, firmly believing in the truth of the Bible. Stan is a  
> scientist and defends Darwin's theory of evolution.
>
> To settle the dispute, Stan gets up and grabs a book from the  
> shelf. The front cover reads, "Wikipedia 1.0 - Category Index".  
> Knowing that if there's one thing he and Bob can agree on, it's the  
> reliability of the world-renowned Wikipedia, he browses through it  
> and eventually presents to Bob a page led by the heading  
> "Category:Pseudoscience". His finger points to the place where  
> Creationism is listed.
>
> "See, Creationism is pseudoscience," he explains.
>
> Bob snaps the book out of Stan's hands and browses forward a fair  
> chunk of pages. Under "Category:Satanic lies", he shows to Stan, we  
> find a reference to the entry on "Evolution".
>
> "See, Evolution is a Satanic lie."
>
>
> 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.
>
> I am happy to have [[Creationism]] listed under  
> [[Category:Pseudoscience]], but only because it happens to agree  
> with my POV.
>
> Maybe the only way out of this is to call the categories something  
> unwieldy-but-NPOV like [[Category:Theories or beliefs widely  
> considered pseudoscience]]...
>
> Timwi
>
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