Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, More nonsense Options

[Peter Damian]

General background is here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2011/02/general-...l-nonsense.html . Same story - find something that is really and badly wrong, make a correction, and wait for some stupid c--t to reverse it. "HelloAnnyong (talk | contribs)" is the latest useful idiot.

I was asked by some linguists at the University of Sheffield (and some other places) to help out with this one.

I had an email from a member of Arbcom about that but all empty promises as usual. [blanked] Useful idiots or liars. Who can tell.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian: Fri 11th February 2011, 6:45pm

[Peter Damian]

More nonsense here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Peter_Damian_VIII .

[EricBarbour]

Damn, you are still a glutton for punishment.

Just give it up. (he said wearily)
Post it on your blog and tell others, leave it at that.

(Better yet, put out a book about your experiences on wiki.
That would be a major embarrassment for them.)

This post has been edited by EricBarbour: Thu 10th February 2011, 11:09pm

[Peter Damian]

Damn, you are still a glutton for punishment.

Just give it up. (he said wearily)
Post it on your blog and tell others, leave it at that.

(Better yet, put out a book about your experiences on wiki.
That would be a major embarrassment for them.)

Why? I choose these battles carefully. As I said, there are a whole group of qualified linguists who are watching this with incredulity. I've said this again and again: people like you, Eric, know exactly how Wikipedia works. 99.999% of humanity believe otherwise. Why exactly give it up? Just fight the battle, one trench at a time. And don't shoot people in the back. My blog has a massive readership now, and there has to be a story. Am I wrong to bring the problems of Wikipedia to the world? Answer me.

[edit] There is a parallel business going on with the Arbcom and others right now. Desperate to stop this, and trying to persuade me to come back if only I'll agree to this and that. To which I say: fuck you. Keep fighting the fight. Who is with me?

This post has been edited by Peter Damian: Thu 10th February 2011, 11:22pm

[jayvdb]

Damn, you are still a glutton for punishment.

Just give it up. (he said wearily)
Post it on your blog and tell others, leave it at that.

(Better yet, put out a book about your experiences on wiki.
That would be a major embarrassment for them.)

It would be good for someone to write an academic article which critically analyses Wikipedia content. Criticism of Wikipedia has 190 citations, with only a few academic journal articles and conference publications. Is that all there is?

[Peter Damian]

Damn, you are still a glutton for punishment.

Just give it up. (he said wearily)
Post it on your blog and tell others, leave it at that.

(Better yet, put out a book about your experiences on wiki.
That would be a major embarrassment for them.)

It would be good for someone to write an academic article which critically analyses Wikipedia content. Criticism of Wikipedia has 190 citations, with only a few academic journal articles and conference publications. Is that all there is?

I'm building up all my material, together with other stuff, which eventually will end up in a book. As you know, John, I have another book on Scotus which I am working on. I need to get that out of the way before this project. Most books have a phase of collecting material, probably only 10% of which ends up outside the waste bin.

How are the lies coming on in the liars committee, John? Make no mistake, there is some interesting and nasty stuff you are all sitting on there, indeed.

[edit] Eh fuck me even more nonsense. Someone is bottom wiping my own page. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=413195672 .

This post has been edited by Peter Damian: Thu 10th February 2011, 11:34pm

[EricBarbour]

As I said, there are a whole group of qualified linguists who are watching this with incredulity.

Ah, that wasn't quite clear. Sorry.

By all means, use these battles to demonstrate to your colleagues how Wikipedia doesn't work.
That would be a good adjunct to publication on paper, although I don't think it would be quite a
replacement. Running it thru a printing press confers weight that anything posted on a website
doesn't have--still, even after 20 years of the web's existence.

[edit] Eh fuck me even more nonsense. Someone is bottom wiping my own page. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=413195672 .

Make certain your fellow academics see that--write up a timeline.

[Silver seren]

[edit] Eh fuck me even more nonsense. Someone is bottom wiping my own page. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=413195672 .

I undid the reversion. It was unfounded and the user didn't even leave an edit summary.

I'll see what else I can do.



Edit: Okay, I read the talk page and your comments. Here's what I have to say on them. I have no comment on the Overview and Summary section and whether it properly represents the views expressed in the book. I haven't read it, so I can't say anything about that.

However, I actively disagree with your opinion on what should be included in a criticism section. Criticism is criticism. As long as it is coming from reputable sources and not a blogger or a random individual, it doesn't matter if the critic is misrepresenting or misunderstanding the words of the author. That is the critic's fault, but we are not here to censor or pick and choose what words to say from the critic. We include it as a whole and if the critic is wrong, that is their issue.

This post has been edited by Silver seren: Fri 11th February 2011, 1:53am

[thekohser]

As long as it is coming from reputable sources and not a blogger or a random individual...

So, my non-random news articles published on Examiner.com are reputable, right?

[Silver seren]

The Examiner is written, for the most part, by random people. You know that.

This post has been edited by Silver seren: Fri 11th February 2011, 3:54am

[Jon Awbrey]

Periodic Reminder

Someone please tell me, and keep reminding me, that anyone who gets involved with this project is fundamentally insane. Thank You.

[Silver seren]

But see, now you have to prove that everyone else is not insane, which is clearly impossible to do, since everyone is insane.

[mikeu]

Damn, you are still a glutton for punishment.

Just give it up. (he said wearily)
Post it on your blog and tell others, leave it at that.

(Better yet, put out a book about your experiences on wiki.
That would be a major embarrassment for them.)

Why? I choose these battles carefully. As I said, there are a whole group of qualified linguists who are watching this with incredulity. I've said this again and again: people like you, Eric, know exactly how Wikipedia works. 99.999% of humanity believe otherwise. Why exactly give it up? Just fight the battle, one trench at a time. And don't shoot people in the back. My blog has a massive readership now, and there has to be a story. Am I wrong to bring the problems of Wikipedia to the world? Answer me.

[edit] There is a parallel business going on with the Arbcom and others right now. Desperate to stop this, and trying to persuade me to come back if only I'll agree to this and that. To which I say: fuck you. Keep fighting the fight. Who is with me?

I also have an interest in the coverage of fringe and pseudoscience topics at wp. To give you a little background... I'm a staff astronomer at an historic observatory where I am involved in public outreach and education. I'm also a visiting scholar in the dept. of physics at a major university where my research is in the history of science. I've also encountered a number of frustrations with editing at wp. See Astronomer vs Amateur for an idea of the kinds of intereactions that sometimes occur in my field, or take a look at the history of edits at Moon landing conspiracy theories for an example of just how ridiculous things can get. Today I've adopted Meteorological astrology, which despite the atrocious state of the page and the long standing crap that has been inserted, has a fascinating history. (cf. Kepler and Weather Prediction and A History and Test of Planetary Weather Forecasting)

I'd like to invite you to Wikiversity, a sister WMF project of WP, to discuss the coverage of topics such as these and document the problems that are frequently seen in the development of articles at wp.

[radek]

General background is here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2011/02/general-...l-nonsense.html . Same story - find something that is really and badly wrong, make a correction, and wait for some stupid c--t to reverse it. "HelloAnnyong (talk | contribs)" is the latest useful idiot.

I was asked by some linguists at the University of Sheffield (and some other places) to help out with this one.

I had an email from a member of Arbcom about that but all empty promises as usual. 'Cool Hand Luke' - a liar and a fool. Iridescent - another fool. Do not believe these people. Useful idiots or liars. Who can tell.

Don't want to hijack the thread but just want to say that there's all kinds of stuff like that in Economics related articles as well. The "mild fringe" consists of stuff like supply-side economics or the peak-oil folks and their derivatives. Then you get into the folks who think the Fed Res is a global conspiracy to keep somebody down (they don't always agree who), then you have high school kids writing stuff they half-remembered from their basic econ classes and fighting to keep it in the articles, etc. (note that most of these do have some kernel of truth to them but then that's how pseudo science usually works).

Off the top of my head I give you Binary Economics for your viewing pleasure. The tags are mine, and recent (and I just had to put them back after some fan removed them). At one point an effort was made to make something decent of the article but it went down in spectacular flames. Basically, keeping it tagged is the best outcome one can hope for. Make sure to check out the talk page for more hilarious insanity.

[Peter Damian]

However, I actively disagree with your opinion on what should be included in a criticism section. Criticism is criticism. As long as it is coming from reputable sources and not a blogger or a random individual, it doesn't matter if the critic is misrepresenting or misunderstanding the words of the author.

If you had read the talk page carefully you would have seen that the source was not reliable. So the criticism was both seriously misplaced, and from an unreliable and biased source http://www.generalsemantics.org/store/37-kodish-books (basically self-published).

That is the critic's fault, but we are not here to censor or pick and choose what words to say from the critic. We include it as a whole and if the critic is wrong, that is their issue.

And that is just the problem with Wikipedia, and amateurs like you who are writing it. You can easily cherry-pick even reliable sources to make it seem as though some reputable scholar is wrong. That is exactly what the Wikipedia junk scientists do. To write properly about a subject you need to take a balanced view that involves both a wide and deep knowledge of it, and an understanding of what matters. A mere list of quotes to prove ‘boo’ or ‘hurray’ is not the right way.

Don't want to hijack the thread but just want to say that there's all kinds of stuff like that in Economics related articles as well. The "mild fringe" consists of stuff like supply-side economics or the peak-oil folks and their derivatives. Then you get into the folks who think the Fed Res is a global conspiracy to keep somebody down (they don't always agree who), then you have high school kids writing stuff they half-remembered from their basic econ classes and fighting to keep it in the articles, etc. (note that most of these do have some kernel of truth to them but then that's how pseudo science usually works).

Off the top of my head I give you Binary Economics for your viewing pleasure. The tags are mine, and recent (and I just had to put them back after some fan removed them). At one point an effort was made to make something decent of the article but it went down in spectacular flames. Basically, keeping it tagged is the best outcome one can hope for. Make sure to check out the talk page for more hilarious insanity.

You're not hijacking the thread this is exactly what it should be about.

I also have an interest in the coverage of fringe and pseudoscience topics at wp. To give you a little background... I'm a staff astronomer at an historic observatory where I am involved in public outreach and education. I'm also a visiting scholar in the dept. of physics at a major university where my research is in the history of science. I've also encountered a number of frustrations with editing at wp. See Astronomer vs Amateur for an idea of the kinds of intereactions that sometimes occur in my field, or take a look at the history of edits at Moon landing conspiracy theories for an example of just how ridiculous things can get. Today I've adopted Meteorological astrology, which despite the atrocious state of the page and the long standing crap that has been inserted, has a fascinating history. (cf. Kepler and Weather Prediction and A History and Test of Planetary Weather Forecasting)

I'd like to invite you to Wikiversity, a sister WMF project of WP, to discuss the coverage of topics such as these and document the problems that are frequently seen in the development of articles at wp.

Isn't Wikiversity also a bit mad? I maintain a page here http://www.wikipediareview.com/Directory:The_Wik...a_Point_of_View documenting some of the stuff - the only problem is that it doesn't allow shared accounts.

Something to think about. For a long time I've thought the only way to do this is to carefully document the whole thing.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian: Fri 11th February 2011, 6:53pm

[Peter Damian]

Off the top of my head I give you Binary Economics for your viewing pleasure. The tags are mine, and recent (and I just had to put them back after some fan removed them). At one point an effort was made to make something decent of the article but it went down in spectacular flames. Basically, keeping it tagged is the best outcome one can hope for. Make sure to check out the talk page for more hilarious insanity.

That is truly excellent, and the talk page is a gem.

Perhaps take a subject and blog about it. Introduce the subject in such a way that it is obvious the average reader that it is bunkum, without patronising them. Then a permalink to the Wikipedia article about it, then some gentle fun at the expense of the main characters. E.g. who is Comrade Marek?

[edit] Another possible way. Create another parallel wiki that only contains articles about the weird stuff, but with enlightenment. Do it in an amusing and entertaining way, and you will get many readers. Perhaps Wikipedia will end up linking to it.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian: Fri 11th February 2011, 7:13pm

[radek]

Off the top of my head I give you Binary Economics for your viewing pleasure. The tags are mine, and recent (and I just had to put them back after some fan removed them). At one point an effort was made to make something decent of the article but it went down in spectacular flames. Basically, keeping it tagged is the best outcome one can hope for. Make sure to check out the talk page for more hilarious insanity.

That is truly excellent, and the talk page is a gem.

Perhaps take a subject and blog about it. Introduce the subject in such a way that it is obvious the average reader that it is bunkum, without patronising them. Then a permalink to the Wikipedia article about it, then some gentle fun at the expense of the main characters. E.g. who is Comrade Marek?

Volunteer Marek is me. Or actually I took my name after him.

[mikeu]

I also have an interest in the coverage of fringe and pseudoscience topics at wp. To give you a little background... I'm a staff astronomer at an historic observatory where I am involved in public outreach and education. I'm also a visiting scholar in the dept. of physics at a major university where my research is in the history of science. I've also encountered a number of frustrations with editing at wp. See Astronomer vs Amateur for an idea of the kinds of intereactions that sometimes occur in my field, or take a look at the history of edits at Moon landing conspiracy theories for an example of just how ridiculous things can get. Today I've adopted Meteorological astrology, which despite the atrocious state of the page and the long standing crap that has been inserted, has a fascinating history. (cf. Kepler and Weather Prediction and A History and Test of Planetary Weather Forecasting)

I'd like to invite you to Wikiversity, a sister WMF project of WP, to discuss the coverage of topics such as these and document the problems that are frequently seen in the development of articles at wp.

Isn't Wikiversity also a bit mad? I maintain a page here http://www.wikipediareview.com/Directory:The_Wik...a_Point_of_View documenting some of the stuff - the only problem is that it doesn't allow shared accounts.

Something to think about. For a long time I've thought the only way to do this is to carefully document the whole thing.

Mad as a hatter. (Don't get me started on cold fusion...)

But, it is environment where we could pursue such a project,. I'm an admin and 'crat there.

Also, you might be interested in participating in the new wikimedia Expert involvement survey.

[Detective]

'Cool Hand Luke' - a liar and a fool. Iridescent - another fool. Do not believe these people. Useful idiots or liars. Who can tell.

But they're about the best people on ArbCom; surely everyone else is worse ... oh ...

[Peter Damian]

Mad as a hatter.

You have Ottava and Abd popping round to your talk page? How nice. I must pop in for a cup of tea.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian: Fri 11th February 2011, 9:40pm