At 01:40 AM 9/4/2009, Steven Krivit wrote:
Steve and Vortex,
About a year ago, I think it was, the Wikipedia "cold fusion" haters
blacklisted New Energy Times because I added some links to - heaven
forbid - the NET site which I thought would be useful. You know, the
Internet is good for Wiki, it's good for NET too - we're both
vehicles that ride on the same highway, founded on the same
principles of open information, I thought.
It was in December.
Not so, apparently. Somehow, the Wikipedians think they're the
smartest cats on the Internet. (Shhh....let them keep thinking that.)
The strange thing is - since OR (Original Research) is verbotten on
Wikipedia, you have to ask, well then, where do they get their facts
from? Answer: They take (steal) it from other people who have done
OR. But they reword it so it doesn't appear to be plagiarism. Nifty, eh?
This isn't an accurate description. Explaining Wikipedia to someone
who hasn't extensively edited it is a bit like trying to explain cold
fusion to someone who hasn't read the literature, but who has some
strong opinions.
The hype is "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, the sum of all
human knowledge." The reality is that those words must be understood
in certain ways, or they are very misleading.
Also, so long as OR is verbotten on Wiki, it will ALWAYS been behind
the leading edge as other publications who do use OR diligently will
maintain the leading edge. That's where it's at for me.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a description of the bleeding edge.
It's not "news." The model has to have some standard of notability,
for starters, it isn't going to describe what's in your refrigerator.
And the basic policy is Verifiability. Which means that, in theory,
what is in the project should be verifiable by anyone who does the
research. "Research" doesn't mean "experiment," that's "original research."
Wikipedia is a tertiary source, which means that it is based on
secondary sources. Wikipedia depends on independent publication for
"reliable source," if something appears in "reliable source" -- which
means little about the ordinary meaning of reliability, some reliable
sources aren't "reliable" -- it is considered "notable," thus it
belongs in the project. *how* it is included is a matter for
editorial consensus to determine, but the other basic policy is
Neutral Point of View. And the theory of this was never well worked
out; I do know how to get what was intended, but the oligarchy that
formed dislikes it.
My view is that you can measure NPOV by the degree of consensus that
it enjoys. The more the better. If you have complete consensus, you
have neutrality, absolutely. As long as you haven't excluded people.
Complete consensus may not be attainable, so certainty about
neutrality may not be attainable, but we can get close. Most editors
think of NPOV as an absolute, and imagine that they can determine it
by themselves. It's impossible, for nearly all of us, if not
absolutely all, because we can't see our own limitations, we may
think that something is perfectly neutral and, in fact, it shows a
strong point of view, which will be recognized by someone with a
different point of view. That's why we need consensus for neutrality.
It's in how things are said. "Bush was a jerk." POV. "According to
Randi Rhodes, Bush was a jerk." Might be neutral, especially if
balanced by other information that one might need for context. You
could verify the second statement. The first isn't a fact, it's a
complex judgment. I learned to do this stuff with interreligious debates....
I ended up interviewing ScienceApologist (perhaps the most
destructive "contributor" to the cf page) a while back and was
planning on publishing a comprehensive investigation. My sense after
tracking him (Joshua Schroeder, Columbia Univ. student), watching a
video of him conducting one of his science-hating meetings and
speaking with him on the interview (yes, he consented and we both
recorded it) was that I was dealing with someone who was hell-bent
on a censorship and book-burning crusade. Real scary siht. I won't
make any analogies here - use your imaginations. I've not compiled
and pub'd the investigation yet...fortunately I've had better and
more important things to do.
It would be interesting. I may meet him at some point. He is a
student at Columbia? That is a little different from what I'd been
led to believe.... but maybe I wasn't paying attention.
He has called himself an NPOV-pusher (which is an oxymoron, it
depends on believing that one owns the neutral point of view -- while
it's possible to advocate for NPOV, which is what I've done, it
cannot be determined alone.) He has said that he'd be on the side of
the church against Galileo; he is basically pushing for what some
might call "constituted authority." Very anti-fringe, and cold fusion
is somewhat of a peripheral issues for him, he was more concerned
about homeopathy, psychics, etc.
While SA was pretty bad, in certain ways, I've worked with him
successfully. I consider him more of a scapegoat for the Cab (I took
the al off the end to reflect that this isn't a "secret conspiracy,"
it functions quite openly). I think Pcarbonn was mostly able to work
with him. JzG was worse, in fact. Revenge. Not nice.
So after the blacklist, I said, enough - these clowns are hopelessly
immature and any efforts on my part to help them will be just
wasted. I didn't even bother asking them to remove NET from the
blacklist. Someone else eventually ended up doing that, I think ABD.
That's right. At least I asked for it and got it. I wasn't an
administrator, and didn't want to be one. (I was nominated, and I
accepted, but that's because I normally consider myself obligated to
help when asked. I made no effort to win the 75% vote required. I got
50%, with most of the opposition saying, you only have 1300 edits,
come back when it's over 3000. I now have over 13,000 and no chance
at all of being accepted, because, while I made many friends and
helped many editors, I also attracted some very expected opposition.
Ironically, my work is building consensus, and having the power to
block people isn't helpful for that. You'd think that people would
like the idea of consensus. They don't. I also understand why, but
that's a huge topic.
He's a noble warrior. Wikipedia is too easy for aggressive,
singular-interests to manipulate.
Thanks. I agree, and that's what I think I know how to fix. But I
can't do it alone. I do have some support, so now the question is how
to proceed. I think I know what to do, in an intuitive sense. But I'm
not sure how much I'll be doing with Wikipedia. It will now be
off-wiki, which is where the structures that will make it work need
to be built. Counter-intuitive.
It is also often used as a last-ditch battleground for losers of
conflicts in the real world. I'm all for the progress of science and
communication and I don't have a 20-year axe to grind like some of
these players. So playing cat and mouse with the Wikipedia losers is
pointless for me. Jed is right, let them fester in their own cess.
This way the gap between Wiki and reality will stink so bad, grow so
wide, the dysfunction of Wiki will become ever more self-evident.
It's an old argument that doesn't usually cause good results....
I watch the Wiki CF page and the discussion page now and then to see
what is going on. The most prolific and aggressive recent Wikipedia
editor on the "cold fusion" page lurks on this (Vortex) list and is
probably reading all of these messages. If he weren't such a coward
he would uncloak. He probably couldn't withstand the (mostly)
intelligent scrutiny that he would have to subject himself here. If
he wants to control the Wiki cf page with his POV, he can go ahead
knock himself out. He and his heels-in-the-mud buddies can have Wikipedia.
Well, I think I know whom you mean. I'll agree, he's not very
knowledgeable about the science. But he means well and it is possible
to work with him, he just takes it very personally when he's told he
doesn't understand. Some people are like that. I feel sorry for him,
he will have to live with what he's done, he got pretty vicious. Over
a few words on a wiki!
Me, I'll put my attention and efforts in real encyclopedias and
peer-reviewed journals thank you very much have a nice day.
I've been watching and appreciate your work, Steve. I hope to see you
at the ACS meeting in San Francisco next year. I have children and
grandchildren living in Marin County and I'll make it an occasion to
visit them....
