Wikipedia Fallacy : Fantasies About Research, Reality Chucking : Care And Feeding Of Bubble World Options

[Jonny Cache]

I feel some sense of scholarly duty to call attention to this, though I'm losing the energy to do much about it under current conditions in this Forum. Maybe someone else who reads this will pick up the ball another time — maybe I'll feel less dispirited tomorrow.

There was a time when Wikipediot policies and guidelines on Sourced Research and Reliable Sources were roughly in accord with the way that those concepts have long been understood and put in practice in the Real World. That is far from being the case today, in no small part due to the relentless and ruthless efforts of SlimVirgin, Slrubenstein, and others to warp Wikipediot policies to their own private Fantasies About Research (WP:FAR) and to eliminate from site anyone who says boo about it.

It is no accident that ongoing developments in the state of WP:FAR make it far more difficult with every passing day to puncture the Self-Sealing Bubble World of the Wikipediot Web Of Maya with any and all poignant prickings of External Reality Checking.

One of the things that external researchers will eventually need to do, as they slowly, all too slowly come to recognize the kind of threat that Wikipedia poses to the minds of previously untrained intellects, is to pick over the time devolution of Wikipedia's ever shifting policies on Sourced Research and Reliable Sources. These are currently found tucked away under such acronyms as WP:ATT, WP:COI, WP:NOR, WP:NPOV, WP:RS, WP:VER — though, of course, even the names are constantly changed to protect their ignorance.

Jon Awbrey

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache:

[Somey]

So if I understand this correctly, he's saying that traditional definitions of the word "neutrality" might not sufficiently support the efforts of high-ranking Wikipedians to pursue their no-doubt highly specific agendas, so it must be redefined to better fit their needs?

And this quote, "it shouldn't surprise us if some of our policies are unique and use words ideosynratically," is certainly a fine example of unintentional irony.

[Jonny Cache]

So if I understand this correctly, he's saying that traditional definitions of the word "neutrality" might not sufficiently support the efforts of high-ranking Wikipedians to pursue their no-doubt highly specific agendas, so it must be redefined to better fit their needs?

Gee, where did I read that line before? — was it Huxley or Orwell?

The self-contradiction at the root of the policy rot is this — they ceremoniously boot Unsourced Assertions out the front door, while surreptitiously sneaking Unsourced Assertions in the back door.

But the distinction between assertions in article space and assertions in policy space is a distinction without a difference. For instance, consider an important concept like consensus. Since the increasingly Original definition of consensus that some people have forced on policy pages is the one that some people will insist on keeping, the formerly Grounded or Sourced definition of consensus in article space will gradually have to be warped to fit. That makes Wikipedia, or some anonymous editors thereof, the primary source for that novel definition of consensus. All of which is supposed to be strictly verboten on Wikipedia's espoused principles, of course.

And this quote, "it shouldn't surprise us if some of our policies are unique and use words ideosynratically", is certainly a fine example of unintentional irony.

Yeah, I always put myself in a ticklish situation remarking on anyone else's spelling, so I'm glad that someyone else caught that precious bit of ideo-syn-raticism.

Jonny (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/cool.gif)

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache:

[JohnA]

So if I understand this correctly, he's saying that traditional definitions of the word "neutrality" might not sufficiently support the efforts of high-ranking Wikipedians to pursue their no-doubt highly specific agendas, so it must be redefined to better fit their needs?

Gee, where did I read that line before? — was it Huxley or Orwell?

The self-contradiction at the root of the policy rot is this — they ceremoniously boot Unsourced Assertions out the front door, while surreptitiously sneaking Unsourced Assertions in the back door.

I think the word you're looking for is "doublethink"

The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them . . . . To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.