Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > I gave up. Eventually I came across a controversial topic that > particularly interested me, where I had the background to understand > the sources and where my research radically changed my mind. So I > started working on it, I even bought a pile of books about it (on all > sides of the controversy), and a major recent and very expensive > mainstream work on it was donated to me, and I became much more > vulnerable as a result, since I now had an opinion and a POV, based > on reading the sources, and I started asserting content based on the > most reliable of the sources, especially peer-reviewed secondary source. > > The information necessary for my major shift of POV is much more than > most editors could absorb with some light reading. There exist > secondary sources that cover the field that, if editors would trust > them, would make it easy, but .... they don't trust these sources, > even when published by independent, non-fringe publishers, since what > they say contradicts the easy positions of ignorance. After all, > doesn't everybody with a background in science know....? Reliable > source guidelines, if followed, would address the problem, but are > useless against entrenched opinion, because editors will invent this > or that excuse for disregarding them, so that the article doesn't > fall into their view of undue weight. > > So ... I'm no longer a Wikipedia editor, I'm now working off-wiki, > with real knowledge and research in the field that interested me, > and, as well, on the kind of voluntary structure that I see as the > only way out of trap that Wikipedia has fallen into. It's much > easier, though, of course, it all takes time. I still have an > account, and the block will expire, and I'm not burning any bridges, > but .... once I realize that a wall definitely exists, I don't butt > my head against it. I walk around it or dig under it or climb over > it, if I actually want to get to the other side, or I do something else. > So rather than address the problems inherent in this narrative so as to retain editors, we have a "Bookshelf project" to recruit cannon fodder.
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