QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Sun 5th February 2012, 11:41am)
There is a new debate about what might more accurately be described as POV Battleground articles, and it is to be found at
Wikipedia:Advocacy articles (T-H-L-K-D). The good news is that they are actually trying to formulate some sort of response to the problem, and among the suggestions are various types of disclaimer labels that warn the reader to expect opinion, not fact. That, IMO, would be a step in the right direction. In other words, abandon the pretense of being an "encyclopedia."
Some good stuff there. I wrote about this extensively, years ago. "POV-pushing" is practically inevitable, particularly because we can have trouble distinguishing our own POV, particularly when we believe that others share it.
The anti-fringe cabal was fairly open about this, claiming that the project should not have NPOV as a standard, but, at least with science articles, "SPOV," i.e, "scientific point of view." The problem was that there is no "scientific point of view." Science, as a method, rigorously avoids "point of view." SPOV was promoted by pseudo-skeptics, skeptics who believe that their own point of view is "scientific," while attacking "believers" who have differing points of view. Real skeptics are also skeptical of their own beliefs. Real skepticism is essential to science, and the maxim of real scientists is "don't fool yourself." Pseudoskeptics don't apply this to themselves, instead they cheerfully advise -- and demand -- others not to fool themselves by believing that nonsense.
Cold fusion was a test case, in fact, because it's a situation where the "majority of scientists" might still believe that cold fusion was conclusively rejected over twenty years ago. But that's an ordinary point of view, and it is not found in peer-reviewed secondary sources, i.e., peer-reviewed journals, in reviews of the field, written by the knowledgeable on the specific topic, and reviewed by experts on review panels. I became very familiar with the sources, and the skeptical point of view on cold fusion (i.e., total rejection, with a long list of very old arguments, many of which were never true, some of which were true for a time, but overtaken by events) has almost totally disappeared from peer-reviewed journals, with continuing publication, accelerating, of positive reviews that confirm that there is an anomaly, and, most importantly, from my point of view, that there is now conclusive evidence that the anomaly is nuclear in nature.
What I found was that editors who were willing to read the sources were generally friendly to the possibility of cold fusion, and this included scientists, such as Fritzpoll, who would understand the sources. But other editors, some of which were knowledgeable scientists *in their own fields*, wouldn't even look at the sources, yet were entirely convinced -- and acted on the belief -- that cold fusion was utter, impossible bogosity.
And the practical implications (Cheap Energy!) were a huge distraction. The pseudo-skeptics simply believed that anyone reporting positive results from cold fusion experimentation was distracted by visions of free energy. That has nothing to do with the science. It was obvious, from the first two years of work in this field, that cold fusion was a marginal phenomenon, at least at first, something very difficult to set up. The Japanese spent a great deal of money trying to make this commercializable, and failed, they gave up, not because the phenomenon did not exist, but because controlling it was quite elusive. Classic cold fusion phenomenon: one runs ten cells, all seemingly identical. One or two show clear anomalous heat, the rest show nothing.
(Over the years, techniques have been developed that show more reliable results, up to 100% pf attempts, and I've seen some work, under preparation for publication, by a major researcher, showing *accurate predictions of excess heat*, based on experimental conditions. That could lead to far better control than has been possible in the past. There is also the possibility that Andrea Rossi of Italy (
Energy Catalyzer) is not a con artist and that his results are real. I've cautioned researchers against lending any credibility to Rossi, beyond supporting independent testing. Which has not happened, as far as we can tell. Rossi looks like a con, that's obvious. But sometimes appearances are deceiving, and there are commercial reasons for him to, on the one hand, announce his results, and, on the other, to appear to be a liar. If that's his goal, he's succeeded brilliantly! Rossi is claiming results in the kilowatt range, whereas other work is lucky to find a watt. -- milliwatts can be measured.)
Now, would such an experimental series be a confirmation of cold fusion or a rejection? It would depend on the data. If the heat data was close to the noise, it might be negative. On the other hand, if the heat was unmistakeable, clear, it would be confirmation. What iced it was when it was discovered that, in an experimental series like this, accompanied by measurements of helium, the helium was only found in the cells producing excess heat, and the amount found was consistent with the heat of fusion of deuterium to helium. That's, by now, a massively confirmed result. It's unmistakeable, and had this been known in 1989-1990, the outcome of the reviews then would have been very different. Instead, lots of researchers looked for both helium and heat, and found neither. As expected! It turns out that, with what is now known about the reaction conditions, negative results would be expected. They did not achieve high enough loading ratio, and this is all now obvious. This was a very difficult experiment in electrochemistry, a field far more difficult than the nuclear physicists expected.
And it does not show, at all, that there is "free energy" here. That's from palladium deuteride experiments, the absolute amount of heat is low, the output/input power ratio is low, not nearly enough for self-sustain, and palladium is really expensive. There are Japanese demonstrations of excess power from gas-loading, apparently quite reliable, and I figured that with $100,000 worth of palladium, you could build a home hot water heater that might work for a few weeks. Shall we say, "not ready for prime time"?)
The conditions of cold fusion, the history, makes it easy for those who don't read the literature to conclude that this is bogus. But if Wikipedia were following the guidelines established for fringe science topics, there wouldn't be a problem. (I contended that cold fusion had actually moved out of the fringe science category, into "emerging science," but I never insisted on that.) The SPOV crowd, however, reject the guidelines, generally, and that's how they acted, consistently, working to exclude anything they didn't agree with. "SPOV," in practice, was "MPOV," majority point of view, with the "majority" group being them and those they could sway.
Yes, they did this with climate change articles as well. In that case, "SPOV" was the views of the cabal. I happen to support the general position of the cabal, i.e., that there is AGW, anthoropogenic global warming, and that it's a serious problem, but worked, still, with the Global Warming article, to show fairly what was in the sources. The cabal did not want interpretation left to the readers, they wanted to incorporate their own interpretation in the article. The IPCC panel, when it wrote that evidence for AGW was "strong" (I forget the actual word used, this could be found in archives for Talk:Global warming), had a list of definitions of the terms used for its conclusions. Since the meanings of the words were different from ordinary usage, those meanings were important to understanding the IPCC conclusions, yet adding explicit language from the IPCC document was reverted. Too much detail. It was blatant POV bias, causing the conclusions from the IPCC to appear stronger than they were.
Now, the basic problem. It should be clear that MPOV is not NPOV, though MPOV is more likely to be closer to neutral than "fringe point of view." If the decision-making structure is majoritarian, however, and given that a majority may think that its views are neutral, there is a problem. The problem is solved in workable social structures by creating rigorous precautions for the protection of minority views. I've concluded that the majority always has the right of decision, but any decision made by a mere majority cannot pretend to be "neutral." I've contended that neutrality is not an absolute condition of text, but rather neutrality is something that can be *measured,* at least roughly, by the percentage of a non-selected body of participants, informed, who support a position, vs those who oppose it. The higher the percentage, the higher the "measure" of neutrality. The goal should always be 100%, in an organization that values unity, or, in this case, neutrality.
That requires that discussion never be closed, not entirely, but it can be channeled, so that large numbers of participants don't need to discuss everything! Rather, discussions can take place in numbers as low as two.
What the design of the community should do is to set up unanimity as a goal, with majority rule as a decision-making method, with the goal of unanimity never being lost. Decisions made by mere majority are necessary, or else there is minority rule, in practice. Wikipedia incorporated a lot of ideas that made sense to those who didn't have experience with consensus organizations! So electing administrators by supermajority seemed a great idea, these administrators would "have the trust of the community." Unfortunately, this allowed a minority to consistently exclude anyone who would challenge them, so bias in the administrative community increased with time. Supermajority rules create minority rule whenever the status quo is opposed by a sufficiently powerful or motivated minority, and this is compounded by participation bias.
What I saw in confronting the cabal was that these administrators consistently rejected consensus as desirable, and they consistently opposed any move to firm up recusal policy. They were not at all aligned with a majority of Wikipedia editors, but they were able to keep discussions from showing this, usually. They could, by being better organized and better coordinated (which doesn't necessarily mean off-wiki coordination, it can simply be done with piles of watchlists, quite "naturally*) always defeat the creation of a consensus against them, and I saw discussions of alleged administrative abuse, where the actual voting was divided, cited by them as proof that there was no abuse. Since no conclusion of abuse, supported by a supermajority, was found. Looking at the votes, I'd see the same names as in many such discussions, whereas the votes on the other side mostly varied from discussion to discussion.... I documented a lot of this in RfAr/Abd-William M. Connolley. Ignored by ArbComm. Blanked. Ever wonder why that case was blanked? What was so horrible there, as to require that?
Lucky guess.
Structural problems, these people were just using the structure in ways that came naturally to them.
"Advocacy Articles"
Herschelkrustofsky "Advocacy Articles" 
