QUOTE(Moulton @ Tue 25th May 2010, 4:23pm)
There are two separable issues intertwined in this thread.
One issue has to do with the merits of the cases being made on editorial considerations for the articles on climate change.
The other issue has to do with the tactics and practices of competing editorial factions as they work through their conflicting points of view.
To my mind, this latter issue (which is independent of the subject matter or the editorial factions involved in the dispute) is the larger and more pervasive issue. We've seen it in Climate Change, in Intelligent Design, in Cold Fusion, in Israel-Palestine, in Scientology, and in other contentious subjects.
We really need to zoom out to the larger cultural question of editorial conflict, problematic tactics of competing editorial factions, and the lack of a functional conflict resolution process for content disputes. The way things stand now, content disputes morph into behavior disputes, some of which go to ArbCom, but most of which just serve to transform WP into a fractious MMPORG free-for-all.
However, this illustrates much of the problem. Lumping climate change together with Intelligent Design and Cold Fusion, or even scientology for that matter, is not useful. It is so completely different that it becomes a joke even trying to compare it and doing so is indicative of the misconceptions of the whole area. The Israel Pallestine issue is a very separate type of issue and is far closer to the Balkans situation on wikipedia.