G'day Andrew, > 2008/11/13 Jay Litwyn : > > Since I believe in global warming and I see a contest between it > and > > economics, I see a very hot dispute that really should be > off-loaded. There > > are so many other places for volatile information to go. In other > words, if > > someone did [[global warming]], I think they should expect to end > up on > > another site, unless the article is restricted to history. > I think this is going to end in tears - where do we draw the line? > Do > we just not talk about global warming; do we talk about it as > something that is believed to have happened up to and including last > week; do we talk about it and imply it may continue to happen; do we > talk about it in general terms in the future but give no numbers? > I'm not sure this approach is helpful; it tries to deal with a small > set of specific (percieved) problems by applying a draconian general > rule. I mean, take cosmology. We'd be a shoddy encyclopedia if we > didn't talk about the [[heat death of the universe]], a very > well-known concept... but it's entirely hypothetical, it exists as a > paper theory with some substantiating numbers, and it's several > billion years ahead.
I seem to recall WP:CRYSTAL's original purpose was to stop people writing about predicted future events years before they occurred (e.g. [[Playstation 9]]). Actually, most examples I can think of come from computer games, film, or music. Call WP:CRYSTAL just one of many tools to defend against overwhelming geekgasm. The point was to prevent Wikipedians from making predictions (Playstation 9 will come out in 2017, and it will be AWESOME!!!; Star Wars XVII will come out, and it will SUCK DONKEY BALLS!!!), not to stop us from reporting on others' predictions. So it's entirely appropriate to have an article on [[Heat death of the universe]], [[Global warming]], and even [[2012 London Olympics]]. Indeed, to ask the question --- is it appropriate to talk about global warming, heat death of the universe, whatever --- is to be elevating a badly-written policy above common sense. Again. -- Mark Gallagher 0439 704 975 http://formonelane.net/ "Even potatoes have their bad days, Igor." --- Count Duckula _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
