At 12:07 PM 9/4/2009, Steven Krivit wrote:
I was unable to make contact with Wikipedia Administrator JzG (Guy Chapman), but some of his fan club has some things about him at encyclopediadramatica.com. Just type in jzg in the search box. Don't go to encyclopediadramatica.com if you are easily offended by words or pictures.
ED is pretty much an attack site, or parody. There is a more serious criticism site at Wikipediareview.com. This has participation by administrators and even arbitrators. It's not censored, it also gets a bit wild and wooly, but there is also thoughful writing there, from some highly experienced editors, people who have been around Wikipedia much longer than I.
JzG, who originally blacklisted your site, Steven, stopped editing entirely during the Request for Arbitration that I caused to be filed. His last edits were the beginning of May. He has now started to edit again; I welcomed him back, sincerely, and he deleted it with a weird comment. Too bad. It seems he took it all personally....
Writers here may, if they like, take an interest in the article; but I'm not necessarily recommending it. As I wrote, if anyone wants advice from me as to what can and cannot be done on Wikipedia, ask me by email, probably better not to ask here. I don't subscribe to the "the worse the better" argument from Rothwell et al, but neither am I very hopeful for accomplishing much in the short term. My work was primarily with site structure, overall, and I've managed to accomplish a great deal that way, but not a great deal with the Wikipedia article itself. Still, what I did may have made it a little easier for others to come.
The Cab won't be quite so able to sit on the article as they once did. The ACS Sourcebook just got a serious thumbs-up from the Reliable Source Noticeboard. Of course. The idea that this wasn't usable was totally preposterous, but the arbitrators haven't put two and two together, they need to consult an expert. Or find a reliable source, to figure out what was going on when attempts to propose the Sourcebook as a source were being so seriously opposed because you were an editor. Totally stupid, the kind of thing that can't survive being exposed, laid out in the open.
Something you should understand about Wikipedia. The level of education among senior editors is fairly high. The level of skepticism about cold fusion among them is also high. My proposal that cold fusion is "mainstream" is based, not on the general opinion of people, including scientists, who think of themselves as "mainstream," but on what happens when you sit an expert down, give the expert a special opportunity to become informed, and *then* collect the opinions. However, most senior Wikipedia editors are, in fact, dedicated to neutral point of view, and dislike repression of legitimate sources even if they disagree with the perceived POV of those sources. The ScienceApologist approach is still popular among an active faction, but that faction is quite unpopular when the circle of discussion becomes large, they have power mostly because they are very active, as you noticed with SA. You might notice that ScienceApologist was also banned and blocked.
Wikipedia is not *entirely* stacked, and the problem the CF community faces is how to convince the great unwashed, so to speak, how to move beyond that barrier of rejection. It's deep, it's persistent. And it's not based on science. I've been debating cold fusion on Wikipedia Review, and
(1) Apparently knowledgeable (as to general science) editors make outrageous claims on the negative side, with no evidence.
(2) I make positive claims with evidence, acknowledging whatever is true about the negative, and point to the known problems.
(3) Those claims are rejected or ignored and new negative claims made without evidence, often becoming very personal about CF researchers being deluded, greedy, etc.
(4) I respond to all the negative claims with evidence, and the evidence is derided, but no negative evidence is presented except very old canards, i.e., "That was conclusively shown to be false by an MIT study in 1989." Right. They really don't know! I described that study, citing it, recounting the problems, and I might as well have been copying the local phone book, in one ear and out the other. Actually, not even in one ear. They aren't actually interested, which is fine with me; I'm taking the opportunity to practice responding to certain arguments. It will likely go nowhere, visibly. Invisibly, there is other value.
(5) At least one of the editors arguing against cold fusion is one that I've considered one of the "good guys." I've been pretty hard on him. But he should know better, and he obviously doesn't.
(6) The likelihood is that, for most of these editors, I'm twice their age. Some are old and should know better....
(7) The discussion there and here has been taken onto Wikipedia in an attempt to further impeach me for being Bad and Unrepentant. I think they hope that ArbComm will do something really serious, but there is a limit to ArbComm's power. Delete, oversight (which means *really* delete, ordinary administrative deletion still leaves the material in the database), and salt my barnstars? What? There isn't anything they can do to me, in fact. Jed Rothwell knows that. I'm not going to violate an ArbComm ban, but there is plenty that I can do that will be more effective, in the long run. And they will read this, let their imaginations run wild, and then complain about the nefarious plot. But, Steven, ArbComm concluded that There Is No Cabal, which, given the nature of human organization, must mean that they think Wikipedia is immune to them. It is almost an Official Essay, were there such a thing. (WP:TINC). Watch as certain administrators conclude that behind every IP vandal is Abd.... And especially behind everyone who edits Cold fusion with a positive POV, as well. As you know, that won't be at all true. One of the results of this arbitration and the attention I raised is that the idea of banning people for POV, claiming that they are "proxying" for banned editors, got thoroughly trounced.
I was attacked for restoring talk page edits from Jed Rothwell. I never confronted this, I'd just come back, usually, with a link to page history. But they brought it up in trying to show how disruptive I was. It backfired, it has now been well established that editors may, on their own responsibility, bring back in material from a banned editor. If it's disruptive, the editor bringing it in is responsible. If it is helpful or harmless, that it came from a banned editor only means that it can be removed without proof of disruption, it's presumed that it might be subtly disruptive. But once someone who is not banned takes responsibility for it, it can stay. Hence, if I wanted to, I could make edits to the cold fusion article, essentially as proposals. The result would be that my ban, if I'm banned, would be extended for "ban or block violation." I'm not going there, but I could. The Cab could not stop it. But I really don't care about the CF article that much. It's only one article, after all, on one web site.
