| Revision as of 08:32, 14 January 2015 view sourceMomento (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users8,864 edits →Is there a mechanism to keep majorities from running amok?: reply← Previous edit | Revision as of 10:00, 14 January 2015 view source Jimbo Wales (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users, Founder14,538 edits →Is there a mechanism to keep majorities from running amok?Next edit → | ||
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| :::::::::::{{U|Momento}}'s version of those events is highly skewed, in my opinion. Who truly knows "the truth" and who adjudicated that? Yes, WillBeback made mistakes and was subjected to an exceptionally harsh penalty. He lost his administrative privileges. He is now free to edit again, but is not currently editing, as far as I know. I believe that a careful examination of the work he did will show that it was mostly positive, though he made errors in dealing with aggressive POV pushers. He paid his price. Let's move on. ] ] 06:15, 13 January 2015 (UTC) | :::::::::::{{U|Momento}}'s version of those events is highly skewed, in my opinion. Who truly knows "the truth" and who adjudicated that? Yes, WillBeback made mistakes and was subjected to an exceptionally harsh penalty. He lost his administrative privileges. He is now free to edit again, but is not currently editing, as far as I know. I believe that a careful examination of the work he did will show that it was mostly positive, though he made errors in dealing with aggressive POV pushers. He paid his price. Let's move on. ] ] 06:15, 13 January 2015 (UTC) | ||
| ::::::::::::If my version was just an opinion or even just slightly skewed it might be difficult for an inexperienced editor to show it. But since you say it is "highly skewed" it should be easy for a Senior editor like yourself to point out the flaws. I look forward to your corrections.] (]) 08:31, 14 January 2015 (UTC) | ::::::::::::If my version was just an opinion or even just slightly skewed it might be difficult for an inexperienced editor to show it. But since you say it is "highly skewed" it should be easy for a Senior editor like yourself to point out the flaws. I look forward to your corrections.] (]) 08:31, 14 January 2015 (UTC) | ||
| :Well, this was entertaining. Starting from an interesting concern about very large majorities and large ethnic or national groups of people, we have actually had an illustration of the problem that I think is more real: extreme minorities such as the followers of an Indian guru who has been called a "cult leader" manage to tediously battle to keep out negative information about their beloved guru. Or, as in the Cultural Marxism example, we reach what is an obviously wrong conclusion because again an extreme minority of people cares enough to "!vote" while most everyone else just ignores it. (And yes, I'm saying that the conclusion of the Cultural Marxism thing was clearly wrong, not NPOV, and in fact just wrong. If anyone wants to talk about that, we should discuss it in a separate thread.) | |||
| :My point here is this: I'm intrigued in a philosophical way as to whether eventually English Misplaced Pages will tend to reflect an Indian perspective everywhere (if for example the rate of English usage in India doubles or triples from 10% of the population to 30%) and Indians become our largest number of participants. That's years away and it's an interesting and fun thing to contemplate. | |||
| :But I think the problem we have much more often right now is situations in which only a tiny extreme minority cares enough about an issue to weigh in on it, while everyone else is worrying about more important things.--] (]) 10:00, 14 January 2015 (UTC) | |||
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"Lunatic charlatans" and MEDRS
(This is followup to the discussion above. That section has gotten way too long, so I am starting a new one.)
The discussion has gone way off the mark, probably due to the fact that most of the people who are commenting are not very familiar with Misplaced Pages's medical domain. Many of the comments are not helpful.
The main difference between medical articles and other types of articles is that the medical literature -- even the reputable literature -- is enormous and very variable. It is possible to take nearly any bizarre assertion and find some peer-reviewed paper that seems to support it. Because of this, we have had to come up with more stringent sourcing principles than are applied in most parts of Misplaced Pages. Those rules are embodied in WP:MEDRS. Basically the rules say that in order to make it into Misplaced Pages, assertions have to appear in high-quality review papers, not just in papers that directly present experimental research.
The point is that sourcing quality makes up a continuum. At one end lie lunatics and charlatans, who present their claims on web pages, self-published books, and unreviewed journals such as Medical Hypotheses. At the other end lie authoritative review papers in high-quality medical journals. But there is a huge gap in between, filled largely with peer-reviewed primary research articles in journals that cover the whole range from crappy to excellent.
Many, many papers on holistic healing and alternative medicine fall into that intermediate range. They don't reach the level of source quality that WPMED looks for, but the authors are not by any means lunatics and charlatans.
At WPMED we have gotten pretty good at dealing with this problem. Our solution is simple: we consistently apply WP:MEDRS, which is very carefully written. When we say that something doesn't belong in an article, we aren't saying that it is wrong, and certainly not that it is lunatic, we are only saying that it has not yet reached the level of source quality that we need.
It does not help for people to go around flinging wild insults. I doubt that any of us believes that everybody who advocates massage therapy, acupuncture, chiropractic, or other forms of alternative medicine is a lunatic or charlatan. Making us look like fanatics does not help our project.
This applies particularly to the matter that started this discussion. We don't want to argue about whether the material that user:A1candidate would like to add is lunatic charlatanry. That isn't in the picture at all. What we should be arguing about is whether it is consistent with WP:MEDRS, and, if we want to take the discussion to a more "meta" level, whether the rules in WP:MEDRS are the right ones for us to be using. Looie496 (talk) 15:32, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
- I think MEDRS is the right approach. There are plenty of peer-reviewed papers on autogynephilia, but it doesn't mean it's not psuedoscience (regardless of how hard certain editors are arguing). Sceptre 16:32, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
- Sounds like a fine approach, especially in such a surrounding, where giving false information to sick people can do real harm. ♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 16:54, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
- MEDRS is an outstanding policy, and this presents an excellent argument against a point that's not being made. The point that's being made is that our article misrepresents the AHA report. I don't agree with that point in the slightest, but it's got little to do with adherence to MEDRS. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 17:00, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
- The point that's being made by who? Different people are making different points, as far as I can tell. Looie496 (talk) 17:17, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
- The actual use of MEDRS is often overbearing and deeply damaging, because our articles should not be written solely for "home consumer use". They should serve people with many different backgrounds and intents. An article about a disease should not be written in a condescending way to tell a newly diagnosed patient what to do next - it should serve, among others, the biology student, researcher, technician, and legislator evaluating next year's budget. (This is also often a flaw with business articles, that are written solely as consumer guides rather than from the viewpoint of the investor, competitor, or supplier) That means that often research leads which are speculative should be discussed. We should not present them as consensus medical practice, but we should not conceal when they are judged worthy enough of study that governments are paying to test them and reputable journals see fit to publish them. Wnt (talk) 23:34, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
- My experience of WP medical articles is that their most common fault, in terms of style, balance etc, is that (in defiance of WP:MEDMOS) they are full of undiluted medical jargon, and read like notes written by medical students, which they perhaps often are in part. It's my impression that most regulars at WikiProject Medicine share this perception and concern to some degree. MEDMOS allows for research sections, but these need to be clearly segregated from "Management" and other sections higher up, and should be very firmly sourced only per WP:MEDRS, even at the expense of some conservatism. Many research sections don't do that, and cover primary sources, and since they are often mainly written several years ago, examination may prove that none of the "breakthroughs" reported led very far. Especially in my field of cancer, governments fund, and reputable journals publish, VAST amounts of research that we should not trouble Misplaced Pages's readers with in disease articles until it approaches actual use a decade or two later. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 16:34, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
- @Wiki CRUK John: Well, that's the attitude I'm opposed to. Don't worry your pretty little head about it. Just take two green pills twice a day. Misplaced Pages articles aren't just for patients trying to learn a little about the treatment they've been prescribed. They should serve the researchers who are trying to decide whether a line of research has been going somewhere recently. They should serve the patient advocacy group that wants people to petition Congress for more funding to pursue that line of research. They should serve the student who needs to know what an angiogenesis inhibitor is and eventually understand why it works differently in a mouse, even if only for academic reasons. An article that encourages you to examine what happened with the research it cited is far more useful than one that provides you with nothing. Wnt (talk) 15:04, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
- We certainly are opposed, but your caricature does not reflect my attitude at all. Broad lines of research should be covered by specific articles, as many are (but many are not). So yes "They should serve the student who needs to know what an angiogenesis inhibitor is", by that article, and indeed the 17 articles in Category:Angiogenesis inhibitors. But these seem to be rather a good example of why we should be cautious in adding research lines to disease articles, looking at the dates of the references on specific articles in the category - eg endostatin - so where are we with that in 2015, exactly? Those articles should also be where WP "should serve the researchers who are trying to decide whether a line of research has been going somewhere recently", or the few articles that tackle research into a specific disease. But most of these are becoming increasingly out of date, and WP is mostly useless for this function, unfortunately. Concerns over COI editing in my present role have led me to avoid doing anything much with the laughably bad cancer research; perhaps this rather daunting subject is untypically poor. Articles on diseases should not include every research possibility that has been mentioned somewhere, using either primary sources or news reports just concerned with one line of research. Bu that is what most of the existing coverage we have is. Balanced WP:MEDRS-friendly reviews of where current research is going are fine to include in a "research directions" section, and I have been putting in considerable effort pursuading experts to write these. But first you have clear out the clutter of newspaper reports of single studies in mice etc., stuck into the main management sections. Your characterization of WP disease articles as overly patient-directed and simple is so at variance with everything I see that I can only conclude you don't read many disease articles. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 15:16, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
- The research is not temporary, and in fact is ongoing . I think the slow pace reflects technical and especially commercial and bureaucratic considerations. There was no reason why in 1994 we couldn't try putting endostatin in a naked plasmid or a viral vector for episomal expression, tried it on some dying cancer patients, and seen what happened. But though medicine is a very broad field everything has to pass through a very narrow aperature; it has to be made cheaply, sold expensively under patent, and above all standardized and regulated in a way that admits no possible threat of gradual competition by optimization. Nothing moves till the racketeer gets paid, that is carved in stone. Things like phage therapy or even the use of low-dose interferons for influenza - the U.S. will never catch up to the 1950s Soviet Union with these things (though there might be at last some signs of progress on the latter), because they seem to be bureaucratically or commercially inconvenient. But as Misplaced Pages puts it "notability is not temporary". If MEDRS has not imposed a patient's perspective on the articles we have, mostly, it's because there is still considerable resistance to it. Wnt (talk) 17:41, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
- No it's because so much of our medical editing is (was) done by people with some level of medical training who haven't read MEDRS & don't know that articles aren't supposed to read like a medical/biological textbook, or who just can't write on technical topics any other way (which is a difficult skill), or are effectively working up their revision notes. Our articles on general medical research issues, and medical research economics are pretty rudimentary & should certainly be improved. They are also getting increasingly out of date: "In Australia, in 2000/01 (the most recent data available), about $1.7B was spent on biomedical research,..." I read in medical research! Wiki CRUK John (talk) 03:56, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
- I should add that the most-viewed articles on major diseases are typically better, because more edited by the regular medical editors. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 13:48, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
- I agree " Articles on diseases should not include every research possibility that has been mentioned"withWiki CRUK John logic dictates it , practicality obligates it--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:22, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
- For articles on diseases, narrowly construed, there is indeed a threshold of relevance to be demonstrated; however, there are or should be many other articles on concepts and approaches involved that can cover more specialized content. Wnt (talk) 19:21, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
- Accurate but readable coverage of medicine and anatomy is also a passion of mine. The fast majority of our readers are not jargon-ready professionals but lay readers, students, and well-meaning doctors (many of whom are probably not conversant in full technical terms) and as stated we should try very hard to write in an engaging and understandable manner. CRUK John's 16:34 sums up many of my feelings about why this is the case at the moment. I edit anatomy articles with several others and have created an essay for this purpose in our field: WP:ANATSIMPLIFY. --Tom (LT) (talk) 20:48, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
- I think that the value of an article is equally partitioned between its text on one hand and its references, links, and file inclusions on the other. I recognize that text often needs to be made shorter and simpler; but references are best hoarded. In practice the imbalance has been against references: it is all too common to complain an article is unreferenced, but I don't believe most readers ever really find the list of sources to be just too long to stand. So when I speak of including research papers that MEDRS frowns upon, I'm thinking more of keeping the numbers at the end of the line than making any long detour into arcane medical terminology. That said, I can't fully support ANATSIMPLIFY because replacing terms like "posterior to" with "behind" can at times be confusing. For example, "behind" might be taken to mean "deeper into the body", and for the arms/hands the standard anatomical position is not all that obvious. I think jargon should be used sparingly, and explained always, but not avoided when it carries a useful payload of information. Wnt (talk) 00:25, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
- Yes, that is the purpose of this essay. It is not advocating wholesale removal of jargon, but substitution of lay terms when appropriate -- and that's quite often. --Tom (LT) (talk) 21:30, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
- I think that the value of an article is equally partitioned between its text on one hand and its references, links, and file inclusions on the other. I recognize that text often needs to be made shorter and simpler; but references are best hoarded. In practice the imbalance has been against references: it is all too common to complain an article is unreferenced, but I don't believe most readers ever really find the list of sources to be just too long to stand. So when I speak of including research papers that MEDRS frowns upon, I'm thinking more of keeping the numbers at the end of the line than making any long detour into arcane medical terminology. That said, I can't fully support ANATSIMPLIFY because replacing terms like "posterior to" with "behind" can at times be confusing. For example, "behind" might be taken to mean "deeper into the body", and for the arms/hands the standard anatomical position is not all that obvious. I think jargon should be used sparingly, and explained always, but not avoided when it carries a useful payload of information. Wnt (talk) 00:25, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
- Accurate but readable coverage of medicine and anatomy is also a passion of mine. The fast majority of our readers are not jargon-ready professionals but lay readers, students, and well-meaning doctors (many of whom are probably not conversant in full technical terms) and as stated we should try very hard to write in an engaging and understandable manner. CRUK John's 16:34 sums up many of my feelings about why this is the case at the moment. I edit anatomy articles with several others and have created an essay for this purpose in our field: WP:ANATSIMPLIFY. --Tom (LT) (talk) 20:48, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
- For articles on diseases, narrowly construed, there is indeed a threshold of relevance to be demonstrated; however, there are or should be many other articles on concepts and approaches involved that can cover more specialized content. Wnt (talk) 19:21, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
- I agree " Articles on diseases should not include every research possibility that has been mentioned"withWiki CRUK John logic dictates it , practicality obligates it--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:22, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
- I should add that the most-viewed articles on major diseases are typically better, because more edited by the regular medical editors. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 13:48, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
- No it's because so much of our medical editing is (was) done by people with some level of medical training who haven't read MEDRS & don't know that articles aren't supposed to read like a medical/biological textbook, or who just can't write on technical topics any other way (which is a difficult skill), or are effectively working up their revision notes. Our articles on general medical research issues, and medical research economics are pretty rudimentary & should certainly be improved. They are also getting increasingly out of date: "In Australia, in 2000/01 (the most recent data available), about $1.7B was spent on biomedical research,..." I read in medical research! Wiki CRUK John (talk) 03:56, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
- The research is not temporary, and in fact is ongoing . I think the slow pace reflects technical and especially commercial and bureaucratic considerations. There was no reason why in 1994 we couldn't try putting endostatin in a naked plasmid or a viral vector for episomal expression, tried it on some dying cancer patients, and seen what happened. But though medicine is a very broad field everything has to pass through a very narrow aperature; it has to be made cheaply, sold expensively under patent, and above all standardized and regulated in a way that admits no possible threat of gradual competition by optimization. Nothing moves till the racketeer gets paid, that is carved in stone. Things like phage therapy or even the use of low-dose interferons for influenza - the U.S. will never catch up to the 1950s Soviet Union with these things (though there might be at last some signs of progress on the latter), because they seem to be bureaucratically or commercially inconvenient. But as Misplaced Pages puts it "notability is not temporary". If MEDRS has not imposed a patient's perspective on the articles we have, mostly, it's because there is still considerable resistance to it. Wnt (talk) 17:41, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
- We certainly are opposed, but your caricature does not reflect my attitude at all. Broad lines of research should be covered by specific articles, as many are (but many are not). So yes "They should serve the student who needs to know what an angiogenesis inhibitor is", by that article, and indeed the 17 articles in Category:Angiogenesis inhibitors. But these seem to be rather a good example of why we should be cautious in adding research lines to disease articles, looking at the dates of the references on specific articles in the category - eg endostatin - so where are we with that in 2015, exactly? Those articles should also be where WP "should serve the researchers who are trying to decide whether a line of research has been going somewhere recently", or the few articles that tackle research into a specific disease. But most of these are becoming increasingly out of date, and WP is mostly useless for this function, unfortunately. Concerns over COI editing in my present role have led me to avoid doing anything much with the laughably bad cancer research; perhaps this rather daunting subject is untypically poor. Articles on diseases should not include every research possibility that has been mentioned somewhere, using either primary sources or news reports just concerned with one line of research. Bu that is what most of the existing coverage we have is. Balanced WP:MEDRS-friendly reviews of where current research is going are fine to include in a "research directions" section, and I have been putting in considerable effort pursuading experts to write these. But first you have clear out the clutter of newspaper reports of single studies in mice etc., stuck into the main management sections. Your characterization of WP disease articles as overly patient-directed and simple is so at variance with everything I see that I can only conclude you don't read many disease articles. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 15:16, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
- @Wiki CRUK John: Well, that's the attitude I'm opposed to. Don't worry your pretty little head about it. Just take two green pills twice a day. Misplaced Pages articles aren't just for patients trying to learn a little about the treatment they've been prescribed. They should serve the researchers who are trying to decide whether a line of research has been going somewhere recently. They should serve the patient advocacy group that wants people to petition Congress for more funding to pursue that line of research. They should serve the student who needs to know what an angiogenesis inhibitor is and eventually understand why it works differently in a mouse, even if only for academic reasons. An article that encourages you to examine what happened with the research it cited is far more useful than one that provides you with nothing. Wnt (talk) 15:04, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
- My experience of WP medical articles is that their most common fault, in terms of style, balance etc, is that (in defiance of WP:MEDMOS) they are full of undiluted medical jargon, and read like notes written by medical students, which they perhaps often are in part. It's my impression that most regulars at WikiProject Medicine share this perception and concern to some degree. MEDMOS allows for research sections, but these need to be clearly segregated from "Management" and other sections higher up, and should be very firmly sourced only per WP:MEDRS, even at the expense of some conservatism. Many research sections don't do that, and cover primary sources, and since they are often mainly written several years ago, examination may prove that none of the "breakthroughs" reported led very far. Especially in my field of cancer, governments fund, and reputable journals publish, VAST amounts of research that we should not trouble Misplaced Pages's readers with in disease articles until it approaches actual use a decade or two later. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 16:34, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
FYI
Given the above, this seems applicable:
Please carefully read this information:
The Arbitration Committee has authorised discretionary sanctions to be used for pages regarding Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a topic which you have edited. The Committee's decision is here.
Discretionary sanctions is a system of conduct regulation designed to minimize disruption to controversial topics. This means uninvolved administrators can impose sanctions for edits relating to the topic that do not adhere to the purpose of Misplaced Pages, our standards of behavior, or relevant policies. Administrators may impose sanctions such as editing restrictions, bans, or blocks. This message is to notify you sanctions are authorised for the topic you are editing. Before continuing to edit this topic, please familiarise yourself with the discretionary sanctions system. Don't hesitate to contact me or another editor if you have any questions.
This message is informational only and does not imply misconduct regarding your contributions to date.—HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:34, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
November 2014 participation numbers
A new set of official participation statistics are up, these for November 2014. These show the two key metrics for En-WP as essentially stable, with Very Active Editors steady at 2910 against 2897 for November 2013 and Average Number of New Articles Per Day falling 3.8% to 893 from a previous year figure of 928. The sky is still not falling. Carrite (talk) 11:37, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
- It occurred to me this morning that much of the month-to-month variation in the count of Very Active Editors is directly attributable to the number of days in the month. If somebody is bored and wants to play with a project, it should be pretty simple to adjust the series to account for fewer days in February, April, June, September, and November. Carrite (talk) 17:04, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
Is there a mechanism to keep majorities from running amok?
I've noticed in some articles and entire topics, it is hard, even with our policies on NPOV, OR, and RS to have a fundamental NPOV regarding historical facts. Either you have the argument "those sources are not reliable because they are white people POV and 'outdated'" (which is a legitimate argument) or you have the flip-side "those are not reliable because they are propaganda from anti-Western sources trying to push a geopolitical agenda". I don't want us to get bogged down into specifics but you can find many in our history articles (eg- China and its relations towards Tibet when edited can cause an uproar; Israel/Palestine is another). When one group is a majority they often get upset about articles regarding the history of the people they "represent", it's human nature, and it can cause problems either in absolute numbers such as over 1 billion Chinese or in Misplaced Pages terms because that group happens to be over-represented on the internet (WASP men would be an example, maybe? I dont know, just guessing. I'm Jewish, perhaps we're they ones that are more than our .2% of the world population when it comes to editors on Misplaced Pages, we've never had a census). So, basically my question to Mr. Wales et al is this- do our policies really stand up to large majorities who wish to incorporate a POV from sources that want to rewrite history for geopolitical purposes? I ask this because history is written by the winners; China is just one example of a recent winner who, rightfully or wrongly, does now get to write history from its perspective, just as the "American Century" is full of history books written from their perspective and are still incorporated into Misplaced Pages (again, wrongly or rightly is debatable). As their secondary sources become more numerous, there are likely to be versions of history that may not be correct from a loser's perspective. Just looking for some philosophical perspectives on how Misplaced Pages is set up to handle this.Camelbinky (talk) 21:41, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
- I get the idea of many eyes/opinions on articles but, ultimately, is 'Misplaced Pages is set up to handle this'? My answer is no. AnonNep (talk) 21:54, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
- Another good example that Jimbo was also recently involved in the the Cultural Marxism spat, which I think was led by self-proclaimed Marxists and cultural Marxists -- who probably didn't believe in abolishing money like Marx did. Raquel Baranow (talk) 21:58, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
- I agree with AnonNep. There is, though, a slight oddity wrt Indian/Pakistan/Bangladesh history articles, where many people get upset even though they are in the statistical majority. This may be the reverse of Camelbinky's experience as in those articles, aside from our policies not being favourable to oral history and ancient primary sources, the statistical majority fall foul of the policies when it comes to the geopolitical mess that was created by Raj ethnographers etc who slavishly accepted as truth what has often since been determined to be fantasy, wild speculation or boosterism/puffery. The rewriting of history in relation to those articles is generally regarded as having happened in the period roughly extending from 1820 to 1931, rather than in the present day. James Tod is a classic early example of it and this subject area might be the exception to the rule that Camelbinky raises. - Sitush (talk) 22:08, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
- Most issues with systematic bias can be boiled down to editor demographics and the need to welcome new editors with more diverse backgrounds and POVs. CorporateM (Talk) 22:37, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
- Regrettably Jimbo is part of the problem. His claim to be an atheist and his tendency to break all of Misplaced Pages's policies in order to promote his views sets an appalling example to any editor who comes across his edits and free reign for those editors who either share his view or want to ingratiate themselves with Jimbo. Perhaps one of the most notable examples was the site banning of TimidGuy by Jimbo. TimidGuy was a long term victim of WillBeBack, an admin who was able to bully, stalk and out editors who didn't share his POV with impunity; despite numerous examples of POV editing, harassment, gaming the system, battleground conduct and appeals for help from numerous editors who suffered at his hands. Eventually it got too much for even ARB COM, who had a history of rubber stamping the numerous Arbitration requests brought by WillBeBack to harass and eliminate his victims and TimidGuy's ban was overturned and WillBeback desysopped and banned. Unfortunately ARB COM has done nothing since and numerous editors remain blocked and banned as a result of WillBeBack and ARB COM compliance whilst WillBeBack has been welcomed back to the fold and his editing rights returned. Misplaced Pages is indeed the encyclopedia any one can edit and that means minorities will always be marginalised and that is unlikely to change as long as Jimbo, ARB COM and admins think their views are more important than the truth.MOMENTO (talk) 05:13, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
- "His claim to be an atheist..."? Are you suggesting he isn't one? I've seen Jimbo accused of lots of things, but lying about non-belief is a new one. Why would he 'claim' it if it wasn't true? Not that it actually seems to have any bearing on the rest of your diatribe... AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:47, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
- I'm not trying to derail this discussion, but I wanted to point out that atheism is not a "non-belief". Since the non-existence of God is unprovable, that means that atheism is a belief. It is a belief that God does not exist. That's why atheism should probably be categorized as a religion within WP, if it isn't already. Cla68 (talk) 06:06, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
- Atheism is a religion in the same way that not collecting stamps is a hobby. Kindly take your train-wreck logic elsewhere. AndyTheGrump (talk) 06:09, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
- Momento's version of those events is highly skewed, in my opinion. Who truly knows "the truth" and who adjudicated that? Yes, WillBeback made mistakes and was subjected to an exceptionally harsh penalty. He lost his administrative privileges. He is now free to edit again, but is not currently editing, as far as I know. I believe that a careful examination of the work he did will show that it was mostly positive, though he made errors in dealing with aggressive POV pushers. He paid his price. Let's move on. Cullen Let's discuss it 06:15, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
- If my version was just an opinion or even just slightly skewed it might be difficult for an inexperienced editor to show it. But since you say it is "highly skewed" it should be easy for a Senior editor like yourself to point out the flaws. I look forward to your corrections.MOMENTO (talk) 08:31, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
- Momento's version of those events is highly skewed, in my opinion. Who truly knows "the truth" and who adjudicated that? Yes, WillBeback made mistakes and was subjected to an exceptionally harsh penalty. He lost his administrative privileges. He is now free to edit again, but is not currently editing, as far as I know. I believe that a careful examination of the work he did will show that it was mostly positive, though he made errors in dealing with aggressive POV pushers. He paid his price. Let's move on. Cullen Let's discuss it 06:15, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
- Atheism is a religion in the same way that not collecting stamps is a hobby. Kindly take your train-wreck logic elsewhere. AndyTheGrump (talk) 06:09, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
- I'm not trying to derail this discussion, but I wanted to point out that atheism is not a "non-belief". Since the non-existence of God is unprovable, that means that atheism is a belief. It is a belief that God does not exist. That's why atheism should probably be categorized as a religion within WP, if it isn't already. Cla68 (talk) 06:06, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
- "His claim to be an atheist..."? Are you suggesting he isn't one? I've seen Jimbo accused of lots of things, but lying about non-belief is a new one. Why would he 'claim' it if it wasn't true? Not that it actually seems to have any bearing on the rest of your diatribe... AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:47, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
- Regrettably Jimbo is part of the problem. His claim to be an atheist and his tendency to break all of Misplaced Pages's policies in order to promote his views sets an appalling example to any editor who comes across his edits and free reign for those editors who either share his view or want to ingratiate themselves with Jimbo. Perhaps one of the most notable examples was the site banning of TimidGuy by Jimbo. TimidGuy was a long term victim of WillBeBack, an admin who was able to bully, stalk and out editors who didn't share his POV with impunity; despite numerous examples of POV editing, harassment, gaming the system, battleground conduct and appeals for help from numerous editors who suffered at his hands. Eventually it got too much for even ARB COM, who had a history of rubber stamping the numerous Arbitration requests brought by WillBeBack to harass and eliminate his victims and TimidGuy's ban was overturned and WillBeback desysopped and banned. Unfortunately ARB COM has done nothing since and numerous editors remain blocked and banned as a result of WillBeBack and ARB COM compliance whilst WillBeBack has been welcomed back to the fold and his editing rights returned. Misplaced Pages is indeed the encyclopedia any one can edit and that means minorities will always be marginalised and that is unlikely to change as long as Jimbo, ARB COM and admins think their views are more important than the truth.MOMENTO (talk) 05:13, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
- Most issues with systematic bias can be boiled down to editor demographics and the need to welcome new editors with more diverse backgrounds and POVs. CorporateM (Talk) 22:37, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
- I agree with AnonNep. There is, though, a slight oddity wrt Indian/Pakistan/Bangladesh history articles, where many people get upset even though they are in the statistical majority. This may be the reverse of Camelbinky's experience as in those articles, aside from our policies not being favourable to oral history and ancient primary sources, the statistical majority fall foul of the policies when it comes to the geopolitical mess that was created by Raj ethnographers etc who slavishly accepted as truth what has often since been determined to be fantasy, wild speculation or boosterism/puffery. The rewriting of history in relation to those articles is generally regarded as having happened in the period roughly extending from 1820 to 1931, rather than in the present day. James Tod is a classic early example of it and this subject area might be the exception to the rule that Camelbinky raises. - Sitush (talk) 22:08, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
- Another good example that Jimbo was also recently involved in the the Cultural Marxism spat, which I think was led by self-proclaimed Marxists and cultural Marxists -- who probably didn't believe in abolishing money like Marx did. Raquel Baranow (talk) 21:58, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
- Well, this was entertaining. Starting from an interesting concern about very large majorities and large ethnic or national groups of people, we have actually had an illustration of the problem that I think is more real: extreme minorities such as the followers of an Indian guru who has been called a "cult leader" manage to tediously battle to keep out negative information about their beloved guru. Or, as in the Cultural Marxism example, we reach what is an obviously wrong conclusion because again an extreme minority of people cares enough to "!vote" while most everyone else just ignores it. (And yes, I'm saying that the conclusion of the Cultural Marxism thing was clearly wrong, not NPOV, and in fact just wrong. If anyone wants to talk about that, we should discuss it in a separate thread.)
- My point here is this: I'm intrigued in a philosophical way as to whether eventually English Misplaced Pages will tend to reflect an Indian perspective everywhere (if for example the rate of English usage in India doubles or triples from 10% of the population to 30%) and Indians become our largest number of participants. That's years away and it's an interesting and fun thing to contemplate.
- But I think the problem we have much more often right now is situations in which only a tiny extreme minority cares enough about an issue to weigh in on it, while everyone else is worrying about more important things.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:00, 14 January 2015 (UTC)