The ‘Undue Weight’ of Truth on Wikipedia, Chronicle of Higher Education Options

[Michaeldsuarez]

One argument that has so far been neglected is that the article in the Chronicle was a clear WP:CANVASSING violation. It was clearly a non-neutral message, and it was directed at a select audience – scholars – that might be supportive of the poster's stance, and has led to an influx of new editors who had no prior interest in the article.

Discussion is still rumbling on on the Foundation list. Mike Godwin has involved himself with a few posts.

WP:CANVASSING is Wikipedia's silliest policy. According to that policy, reporters may not report the news, bloggers may not express themselves, and forum users may not share ideas.

[EricBarbour]

Just a minor followup:

Here are the schmucks on Metafilter discussing the Messer-Kruse affair.

Wikipedia editors don't have any means to distinguish the minority expert that's correcting a majority error from the minority expert that's actually a moonbat crank. The only reasonable WP policy is to defer to the majority expert consensus, and sometimes that's going to be wrong, but they don't have any other defense mechanism against cranks trying to use Wikipedia to promote fringe theories.

There are a lot of times when Wikipedia editors are dogmatic bureaucratic idiots, but this isn't one of them.
posted by 0xFCAF at 5:11 PM on March 3 [21 favorites]

[lilburne]

Just a minor followup:

Here are the schmucks on Metafilter discussing the Messer-Kruse affair.

Wikipedia editors don't have any means to distinguish the minority expert that's correcting a majority error from the minority expert that's actually a moonbat crank. The only reasonable WP policy is to defer to the majority expert consensus, and sometimes that's going to be wrong, but they don't have any other defense mechanism against cranks trying to use Wikipedia to promote fringe theories.

There are a lot of times when Wikipedia editors are dogmatic bureaucratic idiots, but this isn't one of them.
posted by 0xFCAF at 5:11 PM on March 3 [21 favorites]

That was good enough for me to go to the trouble of recalling my old password there.
http://www.metafilter.com/113495/What-did-...se-days#4221526