At 10:08 AM 10/17/2012, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]> wrote:
Jed, right now the strongest way to pass on the message that cold
fusion is real is not to point to a pile of thousands of papers.
My purpose is not to make the case that cold fusion is real. My
purpose is to bring people with technical knowledge (scientists and
engineers) to LENR-CANR when they can learn about the field
themselves. Frankly, I don't care much about the rest of the public.
They cannot be persuaded. They do not understand the technical
issues enough to judge. They will be dissuaded by Cude and Wikipedia
in any case.
The author of this article will never bother to read any papers so I
don't care about her, either.
To bring those people together, the human coulomb barrier must be overcome.
They will not come to lenr-canr.org unless they have some clear
reason to suspect that it's not a collection of nonsense, and if they
come without preparation, they are quite likely to think that,
depending on what they read.
They can be prepared in various ways, but one of the simplest is to
point to a reputable review, and that's precisely what Storms
Naturwissenschaften review, "Status of cold fusion (2010)" is.
If Wikipedia were following its own policies, that review would stand
as the basis of the article. If Cude is who I think he might be,
"Joshua," he's banned on Wikipedia.
If another editor came along like me, who cared about Wikipedia
neutrality policy and related policies, who also became informed
about cold fusion, who was patient and willing to go through due
process, it would be all over for the reign of pseudoskepicism at the
Wikipedia cold fusion article. The cabal that sat on it for years is
largely discredited, though it still has some power. If JzG came back
and did again what he did before with you, to others, he'd lose his privileges.
One thing I'll say: it can't be done alone. Cold fusion *looks* like
fringe science. It actually isn't. But neutral text *looks like*
fringe advocacy, and it's being asserted by only one editor, the
whole process looks like POV-pushing. (Pushing a biased point of
view, for those not familiar with Wikipedia acronyms.) And "wiki"
means "quick." Most decisions on Wikipedia are made quickly,
discussion in depth is ignored.
I was able to get the Naturwissenschaften review classified as
Reliable Source, on the Reliable Source noticeboard, in spite of the
efforts of Science Apologist. I was able to get lenr-canr.org taken
off the global blacklist. All this took a lot of writing, and
Wikipedians generally dislike "walls of text." I was banned from cold
fusion the second time, because of that (quite contrary to policy and
guidelines), within days of those successes. It's how that community
works. "Quick." It's the basic problem with wikis, in general. The
good news and bad news about them.
Everywhere it was considered in detail, the community decided to
allow convenience links to lenr-canr.org. But then the cabal simply
removed them, and the cabal editors get away with that, because few,
if any, established editors are watching. The removals are
accompanied by claims that have been rejected every time they have
been raised ("copyright violation" "site isn't neutral," "site
changes articles"), but the cabal gets away with it, because they get
away with it. Nobody knows how to stop that, other than editors who
have been banned, basically Pcarbonn and myself. (Pcarbonn is indef
banned from "fringe science topics," he is not blocked, but he hasn't
edited Wikipedia since 2010. Apparently he never appealed his topic
ban. There wasn't any sane basis for it, it was a pure wiki "quick"
decision, based on believed misrepresentations by JzG. There are far
too few editors who will actually investigate cases.
You want to see it up close, add a convenience link to the Storms
review to the Storms article in the bibliography, so that people can
actually read it. Just do it once and watch. Ask me first how to do
it, privately, so that it's impeccable. The lenr-canr.org preprint is
*not* the source, the Naturwissenschaften review is. All that
lenr-canr.org does for Wikipedia is offer convenience links, so that
people can read legal copies of the articles.
Since I left Wikipedia (and I did leave, I was totally banned *after*
I left), I've done some consulting for hire about how to deal with
Wikipedia. It's easy, really. In any case, if someone really wants to
take on cleaning up the Wikipedia article, write to me privately. I
can assist, so that it is successful. Unless you are really familiar
with how the Wikipedia process works, it could be almost suicidal.
The cabal editors are highly experienced, they will take positions
that you'll know are preposterous, and if you say so, you'll be dead
meat, unless you say it with great skill, matching Wikipedian
expectations like a key fits a lock.
I've been playing with RationalWiki (http://rationalwiki.org). It's
pure "quick." Pseudoskepticism reigns. Snark is Supreme. And, right
now, the RatWikians are savaging each other, which they do
periodically, it's called "Headless Chicken Mode," quite descriptive.
Imagine Wikipedia with no pretense of civility. JzG showed up and ran
away crying, mommy, they were rude to me! It was *really* funny.
RatWiki is lousy for building content, but, strange thing, setting
aside the expected snark, the Cold fusion page there is still better
in some ways than the Wikipedia article.
