At 11:28 AM 11/19/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Mauro Lacy wrote:
And also raising the question of how to deal with government documents
which are unclassified, but not published on the internet. A good point to
be made in Wikipedia, I think, for this and future cases.
As far as I know, the ERAB report is not available on any government
agency web site, and the 2004 DoE report was removed by the DoE
years ago. But the skeptics would never remove these references just
because they are not published in official web sites!
The ERAB report is from the "National Capital Area Skeptics (NCAS)
organization." Apparently, that is official enough for the skeptics.
You're beating a dead horse, Jed. The principle of excluding copies
from lenr-canr.org because it's supposedly a fringe web site was
totally trounced. It was contrary to policy in the first place, and
to Arbitration Committee decisions. I wasn't out on a limb when I
objected to the blacklisting, I was just following policy, and ran
into obstinate refusal to comply. They got burned, I got liberated.
Funny story: I copied it from NCAS and noted that fact on the first
page of my version. They went ballistic because I inserted a page in
front of the thing telling where I got it, and what I think of it.
They accused me of forging and possibly changing the content.
"They" was JzG. A few people repeated the argument, later, but, Jed,
this was thoroughly considered and that argument was rejected. It is
cited from NCAS because it's a more original source. If it were
hosted directly on a government web site, it would be cited from
there, or sometimes documents are linked to the Internet Archive. The
convenience copy is not the source. Your introduction did not make
the document unusuable, but it did deprecate its use, because of the
(slight) editorializing. If the NCAS site went dark, I'm sure that
your copy would be used.
Sure, the skeptics will make this or that fuss, but they lost. And
they are continuing to lose, because they are not aligned with basic
Wikipedia policy. The problem with Wikipedia isn't the guidelines and
policies. While they aren't perfect, they are pretty good. The
problem is implementation, how policies and guidelines are applied.
It's a political problem, a problem that I knew how to solve, and the
solution would destabilize the existing oligarchy (though less than
they fear, it would really only balance things better and make
finding balance more efficient), and they were long out to find a
reason to ban me. Heh! They didn't succeed, I'm only temporarily
banned, a brief vacation. When I filed the Request for Comment on
JzG, two-thirds of editors commenting supported banning me. It was an
RfC on JzG, not me! But the Arbitration Committee basically confirmed
every point I'd made.... but it also created and prepared an
impression of me as a "troublemaker."
Nobody likes troublemakers, eh?
That's preposterous, because the link to the original is RIGHT
THERE, on the page, first thing at the top. What kind of forger
would give you a link back to the original?!? That would be like
going into a bank to cash a check and saying: "By the way, I just
mugged that old lady in the parking lot, stole her checkbook, and
forged her signature. Is that okay with you?"
Dead horse, Jed. That battle was won. Yes, it was preposterous.
That's why we won.
But so what? The big problem with Wikipedia is that it's
frighteningly inefficient. You can spend hours upon hours working on
one sentence, finally find agreement on it. Then weeks later someone
comes along and removes it or drastically alters it. Imagine writing
a book where you must continually defend every word.
There are solutions, some of them are coming, some may or may not come.
