Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science/Proposed decision

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Comments

Well done, Coren.

Grammar: "That coverage of a topic is primarily scientific does not prevent it from (nor obviates the need to) being neutral." could be changed to "That coverage of a topic is primarily scientific does not prevent it from being (nor obviate the need to be) neutral." (Much better, though I would still delete the "s" from "obviates".)^{(22:26, 10 January 2009 (UTC))}

Typo: under "Baiting", Coren's comment reads "...even when face with bad faith attacks..."; perhaps a "d" needs to be appended to "face". (Fixed.)^{(22:26, 10 January 2009 (UTC))} ☺Coppertwig(talk) 19:51, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

• Thanks Coren, for getting the ball rolling. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 19:14, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Clarification needed: "This includes topics that declare themselves outside, or on the fringe, of scientific understanding but are not generally accepted as such by the scientific community." Does "as such" mean "as scientific topics", or "outside scientific understanding", or what? ☺Coppertwig(talk) 01:30, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

As outside; that reads clear and obvious to me— but I'm the one who wrote it so I have the unfair advantage of being able to guess at the author's intent.  :-) — Coren ^(talk) 22:50, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Wait a second ... you mean there are topics where the proponents of the topic declare it to be outside scientific understanding, while the consensus of scientists is that the topic is scientific? I suppose you must mean that it's a topic that talks about the same things that science talks about (such as foo-ism explaining the motions of the planets), not that there is a consensus of scientists that the theories are correct.

How about "This includes topics that declare themselves to be outside, or on the fringe of, scientific understanding, but where the scientific community believes that science has something to say about those topics." Or "This includes topics that declare themselves to be outside, or on the fringe of, scientific understanding, but are not generally accepted by the scientific community as being something science cannot comment on."

That's harder to parse for me, and I think that actually aims a little off. For instance, some spiritual "Lovarian" movement might postulate that plants derive sustenance from "love fields" and that this belief isn't subject to scientific examination (I would rather not explicitly name fields in those examples). Certainly, the prominence of that view on plant life needs to be evaluated against the general views of biology, botanics and biochemistry at least; and could not be neutrally be expounded on as anything but marginal; even in articles that discuss the "Lovarian" movement. — Coren ^(talk) 23:07, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Your sentence seems to mean one of two things, depending on what words earlier in the sentence "such" represents:

1. "such" means "scientific understanding"; the sentence means "This includes topics that declare themselves outside, or on the fringe, of scientific understanding but are not generally accepted as scientific understanding by the scientific community.", or
2. "such" means "outside, or on the fringe, of scientific understanding", and the sentence means "This includes topics that declare themselves outside, or on the fringe, of scientific understanding but are not generally accepted as outside, or on the fringe, of scientific understanding by the scientific community."

Neither of these sentences makes much sense to me. The second seems to be saying that the scientific community supports the theories.

How about "This includes topics that declare themselves outside, or on the fringe, of scientific understanding but are not generally considered by the scientific community to be beyond scientific scrutiny." or "This includes topics that proponents declare to be beyond scientific understanding but that the scientific community considers to be subject to scientific scrutiny."

(Note that I would move the comma to after the word "of"; though I just realized that the phrase "outside of" could be considered OK.) ☺Coppertwig(talk) 23:53, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Or "This includes topics whose proponents believe not to be subject to scientific examination when scientists generally believe that it is subject to such examination." ☺Coppertwig(talk) 23:57, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that thing is going to come back for clarification like lightening. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 00:28, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Clarification needed: Under Supervised Editing, it says "then the mentor should be advised". I suppose this probably means that the supervised editor should advise the mentor, and if so perhaps it could be revised to say so.

Duplicate headings: There are two identical headings "Supervised Editing", making it impossible to section-link to the second one. This can be fixed by adding some punctuation to, or making the second word lowercase in, one of them. ☺Coppertwig(talk) 03:03, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

SPOV

Science as an ideal has certain POVs, such as that more-valid data can be gained by application of the scientific method. The proposal doesn't even address the SPOV dragon, since what people mean by SPOV is the POVs of mainstream science as an institution which is derogatory towards fringe ideas. Alternately, they mean debunking. IOW, you're just getting confused by the vagaries of speech. I started the whole SPOV thing when people objected to pseudoskeptic. Since then, I've chosen debunker as a better word. I would choose a word which was even less potentially insulting, if I could think of one. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 20:27, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

I would say that it's individual persons who have those points of view. Science can consider that X doesn't seem to work, and articles can't express that, but it will be either skeptics or individual individual scientists who will say that something is ridiculous, bad, evil, etc. Those are the statements that you have to be careful with, to separate the personal opinion from cold hard facts based on stuff

(for example, picking a non-controversial topic like Hongcheng Magic Liquid, its article can probably say that it's ridiculous for science but only when taking into account the current knowledge on physics and thermodynamics, it won't be ridiculous per se or because people find that it is so. If enough reliable scientific sources say that it's scientifically ridiculous, then that's not a POV either, like the proposed principle says, scientific method is, well, a method or a collection of methods). --Enric Naval (talk) 07:23, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

No, that incident is interesting because it was a classic snake oil scam but on an extra-ordinarily large scale and the Chinese government itself was taken in. In fact, I'd say the statement "As of 2005, no working product has been released" may be subtly POV because it falsely implies that there was an underlying process, which there most certainly was not. It was a scam and it should be written up as a scam. This should be treated as a fact and not an opinion. Misunderstanding of NPOV has led to a very odd treatment of that case, I think. --TS 10:15, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

it never hurts to explain the scientific basis for rejection, as in Water-fuelled_car#Chemical_energy_content_of_water, or the social basis for fast wide aceptacion of a clearly flawed theory, like, in this case, the lack of basic scientific education on chinese people as explained by chinese government (and I think that a famous chinese skeptic also puts the blame on that, so it's government propaganda).

Summarizing, it's good to put mainstream science explanations (which may not be apparent to the less knowledgerable readers: teens, non-universitary, arts-oriented, in countries with bad education systems, non-schooled, etc.) and cultural and social underlying causes (it's amazing what sociologists can come up with, and it makes for interesing additions to articles).

I fixed the sentence, explanation on talk page here --Enric Naval (talk) 01:24, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Time

I have more evidence to do- I hope you will give time. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 20:27, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh, yes, I expect this will last at least another week. I've started with the proposed principles given that will color most everything else and may well direct some of the evidence. — Coren ^(talk) 21:05, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

I should be inputting something tomorrow or Thursday; I've been extremely busy or out of town, for the most part. seicer | talk | contribs 05:32, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, things are definitely still in process. For example, I'm trying to find a way to give the Arbs MrDarwin's (very good) credentials without revealing who he actually is. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 05:41, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Prominence

This is nice, to re-affirm this. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 20:27, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

The phrase "Academic and peer-reviewed publications" is somewhat ambiguous; does it mean "publications that are academic and peer-reviewed", or "academic publications and peer-reviewed publications", thus including publications that are academic but not peer-reviewed? The latter kind are in general less reliable than peer-reviewed publications. To avoid the ambiguity, I suggest to strike the word "and", resulting in: "Academic peer-reviewed publications are highly valued and usually ...". (As far as I'm concerned the judgement "highly valued" is furthermore irrelevant and not indisputably true. A lot of academic stuff gets published in peer-reviewed outlets that may be scientifically valid but is so marginal that it is not worth the paper it is printed on.)  --Lambiam 14:40, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

... highly valued as sources. Insofar as someone is talking about the topic on Wikipedia, those are prefered. — Coren ^(talk) 15:50, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a crystal ball

Of course, Wikipedia is not a crystal ball : we are just asking that it presents the current state of knowledge in a neutral way.[1] Pcarbonn (talk) 11:14, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Relevant comparisons

Prominence of fringe views need to be evaluated against the views of the entire encompassing field; limiting that evaluation against a restricted subset of specialists or only amongst the proponents of that view is, necessarily, biased and unrepresentative.

I have advocated that Wikipedia go either NPOV or SPOV. Just so you know: there are two things here, first, you are allowing Wikipedia, rather than the sources available, to evaluate. This is what NPOV does not do, but it rather lets the sources speak for themselves. In practice on fringe views, this is SPOV, debunker POV, call it what you will.

You also allow original research. You allow synthesis of disparate sources to "evaluate" a fringe belief, even when the sources themselves are not evaluating said belief.

My own area -on Wikipedia- is parapsychology. Now, it will be argued that parapsychology is a subset of psychology. It's not. It grew out of psychology, but now has little to do with it. However, it often happens that psychologists have strong opinions about the paranormal, even though they know little or nothing of it. What this will mean is that most of the articles on parapsychology (Parapsychology, Ganzfeld experiment, Remote viewing, etc.) will be weighted toward what psychologists in general think. Most of the article will be evaluation from the standpoint of mainstream psychology.

That's fine. It will allow ScienceApologist and friends to have a completely free hand in these and every other fringe article, to do what used to be original research and to do what I call debunking. This is what they have been asking Wikipedia to do for years, and they have it now. It institutionalizes the fringe exception to NPOV. I do not condemn this, because I have long advocated that Wikipedia choose forcefully. With this, the ArbCom completes formally what it began in the Cold Fusion arbitration, making things crystal clear. Thank you, Coren (: ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 01:40, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

It says we evaluate the prominence of the views, not that we evaluate the views themselves. I think that's an accurate description of what Wikipedian editors must do to enforce the NPOV policy.

For most fields of science, it's probably sufficient to give the consensus or range of views within the experts in the field (for example, molecular biologists for a topic in molecular biology). That's because scientists in general, and the educated public in general, has a certain degree of respect for such experts. However, if there is a consensus among parapsychologists that telekinesis can really happen, or if there is a significant minority of parapsychologists with that view, that cannot be presented as representative of NPOV in the same way, because there would not be a general scientific consensus among the broader scientific community that such views are reliable. "Exceptional claims require exceptional sources". ☺Coppertwig(talk) 02:00, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

As Coppertwig noted above, evaluating relative prominence is what NPOV is all about. That's what a Wikipedia editor does to make a neutral article. — Coren ^(talk) 02:11, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Coren, if that's all you mean by it, Coppertwig is right. I interpreted it the way ScienceApologist would -and I think he'd be right per the wording. So -and this is important- what you actually mean to convey by that is that we do what we always do under NPOV, and state the relative prominence of the fringe ideas in the articles, much as I did here: "According to the Parapsychological Association, Parapsychologists have come to the consensus that there is evidence for Extrasensory perception and Psychokinesis, but the scientific community in general has not accepted this work" [2]. (changed slightly for correctness from the diff)

Coppertwig, I agree that what you say is NPOV. My interpretation was based on the fact that evaluating the prominence is the same thing as evaluating the field because prominence determines WEIGHT. And then the "evaluation" part makes it clear that we are giving WEIGHT to the field in general, not the specialty and that we are evaluating each specialty from the outside whenever it comes to fringe ideas. Certainly, under NPOV you would explain the evaluations which have been published from the outside, but you wouldn't evaluate the fringe claim, nor would you give the greatest WEIGHT to the outside material- you would spend more of your time describing than evaluating. See, if WEIGHT is given to those outside the field, as with parapsychology, or to the greater field, you are specifically saying that non-expert opinion is given more WEIGHT. You are also giving more WEIGHT to the project of evaluation, automatically, because that is what you will find in the sources if you are writing from the POV of the outside looking in.

"Exceptional claims require exceptional sources" is sort of a non-entity from where I sit, because it's all a matter of attribution. I don't edit articles where you can legitimately -under NPOV- make many statements of fact.

I would put it thus, Coren:

The prominence of fringe views need to be put in perspective relative to the views of the entire encompassing field; limiting that relative perspective to a restricted subset of specialists or only amongst the proponents of that view is, necessarily, biased and unrepresentative.

That's more in line with what I think you are now saying. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 02:31, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think there were any ambiguities in "evaluating prominence", but your suggested wording is also acceptable. I've edited the proposed principle to match. — Coren ^(talk) 02:39, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

That's wonderful (wipes cold sweat off forehead, snatches despairing emails back from cyberspace). Nah. Really, I expect to lose this ArbCom, but I'll do my best.

(But you see how I got that out of your text. Because prominence determines WEIGHT. I advocate determining WEIGHT relative to the subject of the article, not how prominent a view is relative to other fields. The latter is SA's idea concerning WEIGHT.) ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 02:52, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Please don't see arbitration as a "win" or "lose" situation. Some corrective measures may be put in place to make the encyclopedia "win", but we try to keep editor "loose" to the strict minimum (and tend to err on the side of caution). — Coren ^(talk) 03:04, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I expected you'd say that, but the area has been a zero sum battle for years. The Paranormal ArbCom helped, but it was generally ignored. There have been a few times when it wasn't a battle, like dealing with Ryan Paddy on Parapsychology. It's hard to know more of the subject than the other people on an article when they think you're a POV pusher. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 03:11, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

If it becomes less of a battleground, that is a loss for debunking. As I became a more sophisticated editor, I found that I could always form a consensus I could agree with if I could draw outside editors in. Even when the editor is skeptical, I often hear "I'm not going into that environment." If it isn't a battleground, there will be enough outside editors who don't refuse to get involved. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 05:26, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Martin, you really need to clean up your POV pushing motivation for being here, amply demonstrated by your "... I could always form a consensus I could agree with ...". Your "sophistication" as an editor has amounted to becoming better at manipulating editors and the sytem to get your fringe POV included. Yes, you have proven that consensus can be manipulated and misused to violate NPOV and other policies here. That's very unwikipedian. I expect that you and a few other editors, including some skeptics, will soon become candidates for Supervised editing. It's just a shame that valuable time will thus be used to watch you day and night. -- Fyslee (talk) 05:58, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

You expect wrong, because I'm retired unless the ArbCom does something STRONG about this kind of constant attacking and debunking.[3] [4] Isn't it funny, Coren, how he attacks me for learning how to draw in editors from outside the dispute?

I remember once how delighted I was when FT2 edited a fringe article, and made the lead NPOV. SA came right along and reverted him. I don't have to work to get outside editors to be NPOV- they already know what NPOV is. Here is Fyslee and others advocating OR for refuting fringe ideas [5] (and the question they're answering [6]). ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 06:22, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

No Martin, no diversionary tactics from you. Your offense is not a good defense. I just pointed out the evidence you provided of your motivations for being here. Just looking at your subpages is an interesting experience that makes clear your fringe agenda here, and especially your attack page. That attack page should be deleted under WP:UP#NOT ("Material that can be viewed as attacking other editors, including the recording of perceived flaws.") -- Fyslee (talk) 06:52, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Not really talking to you, but to the Arbs, merely using you as an example. You should have voted when you had the chance [7]. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 06:58, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I think I finally figured out what Fyslee was talking about:

I said "I found that I could always form a consensus I could agree with"

Fyslee assumed I was a POV pusher trying to form a POV consensus. I was assuming that I would accept any NPOV consensus. With that assumption, no wonder he thought it was a matter of Self-incrimination. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 20:11, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Martinphi, in the "Encouraged, discouraged and dismayed" section, you said, "The other diff, it's in the middle of things but I'm basically taking the argument that science=majority and saying, well if that's always the case then parapsychology is majority. I don't believe that, but if your argument is right, then mine is right". This seems to contradict what I said above, " However, if there is a consensus among parapsychologists that telekinesis can really happen, or if there is a significant minority of parapsychologists with that view, that cannot be presented as representative of NPOV in the same way, because there would not be a general scientific consensus among the broader scientific community that such views are reliable," which I thought you had said you agreed with. Maybe it's that you're quoting from what you had said earlier and you've changed your mind?

We report the opinions of molecular biologists on topics in molecular biology because those opinions are widely considered reliable sources on that topic, and not because it's the ultimate purpose of Wikipedia to report the opinions of molecular biologists about molecular biology and the opinions of parapsychologists about parapsychology.

You said "Certainly, under NPOV you would explain the evaluations which have been published from the outside, but you wouldn't evaluate the fringe claim, nor would you give the greatest WEIGHT to the outside material- you would spend more of your time describing than evaluating." I don't see why that should necessarily be the case. I see no reason why we can't spend more time describing the scientific evaluations of some topics than describing the topics themselves as seen by insiders. It depends on weight and reliability and what the sources spend time on. If the scientific evaluations are more notable in some way, we'll probably spend more time describing them. There may also be descriptions of the topic written from a scientific POV; we could spend time on that too. I think it makes sense to include some information describing the topic from the POV of insiders, but it doesn't necessarily always have to be the largest or most prominent part of the article. What is your basis for saying we would not give the greatest weight to the outside material?

The situation with a generally accepted science such as molecular biology is not the same as the situation with a fringe science such as parapsychology, so the same arguments do not necessarily apply. ☺Coppertwig(talk) 00:43, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Remedies

Those are expected remedies most likely to be applied, once case analysis is complete and findings of facts can be made. Nothing is set in stone, at this point, but this is the most likely form the proposed solution will take. — Coren ^(talk) 01:39, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Supervised Editing

Excellent concept. -- Fyslee (talk) 05:50, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it does look good. It depends on who the Arbitrators accept as mentors: if they accept those who merely appear neutral, it will be a fiasco. Will the Arbitrators be fooled into non-neutral mentors- mentors who only pretend to feel neutral about the subjects? ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 05:59, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

It will only work if the mentors are acting as prison guards. They are dealing with known offenders and their job is not to coddle their subject, but to guide and teach them to edit according to policy. If they start taking the side of their subjects, they are betraying the community's trust. That happened in the events leading up to the Barrett vs Rosenthal ArbCom, where User:Ilena's mentor defended her, encouraged her, and even aided and abetted her in continuing her disruption and BLP violations. His final misdeed was to start that ill-fated ArbCom as an attempt to punish me, one who was defending Wikipedia against her onslaught. Well, she is indefinitely banned, and her mentor has been silent since then. No, mentors for those under this sanction need to be chosen carefully for their ability to be wise, firm, and ready to hand out swift blocks and bans if necessary. They are not dealing with newbies. -- Fyslee (talk) 06:06, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Time will tell. It is hard for me to imagine why someone who has repeatedly insisted that they don't understand what it means to be civil would suddenly abandon their feigned ignorance because of this arrangement, but since there is no deadline, it doesn't really hurt to try. I'll be surprised, however, it this doesn't just turn out to be a way of postponing the inevitable. Dlabtot (talk) 06:41, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, it may just turn out to be a way that POV pushers can learn to be more effective. The ArbCom hasn't elucidated anything which could really do anything about POV pushing. The fringe articles have been on restriction for a long time now. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 06:55, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Curious about some things: 1) What if the person doesn't get along with the mentor? Can he request a different one? 2) if so, is there a limit to the number of different mentors a restricted editor can have? 3) And what if the mentor decides the relationship isn't working and wants to bail; will ArbCom appoint someone else? TimidGuy (talk) 20:24, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Good questions. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 22:40, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

(undent) The intent is that unless there currently is a mentor agreeable to both the editor and ArbCom, then the restriction becomes a simple topic ban. I suppose either the mentor can bail or the editor can boot them, but then the implicit topic ban kicks in until a new one is found. Finding a suitable mentor is, ultimately, the responsibility of the sanctioned editor but ArbCom will cooperate to help try find one. — Coren ^(talk) 00:32, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

That's cool. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 00:53, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Advocacy

This is really good. One thing I would ask of the Arbitrators: they have made it really clear that they believe that advocacy of fringe views has happened in the past. I would ask for a finding of fact that deriding of fringe views has also occurred. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 20:30, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure if more evidence, or evidence against particular editors needs to be presented. If so, I'll work on that... but it will take a bit of time. As the case has evolved, it's looking to need more evidence that we've so far gathered, because the scope the ArbCom is willing to address is larger than I expected. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 22:10, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Martin, from what you have just written, I'm wondering if it is now your intention to defend your long history of advocacy of fringe POV by attacking those who have resisted yours and other's advocacy of fringe POV? Is this a proper thing to do? It seems like you are dividing this issue into two parts: (1) the forbidden act of advocacy; (2) the act of opposing or ridiculing such advocacy. Then you seem to be intending to attack part 2 as a means of defending the commission of the forbidden advocacy named in part 1. This may seem like an assumption of bad faith, but the only reason I would ever think in such a manner is because of your track record here. How else are we to interpret your words, but by your writings and actions here? I AGF that you sincerely believe your POV are correct. You have written something to the effect that the NPOV policy needs to be changed in order to allow more inclusion of fringe POV. Those writings were forbidden here at Wikipedia, but are now housed elsewhere. Those are your sincere beliefs, but I also sincerely believe that those POV and attitudes towards NPOV as a faulty construct are inconsistent with an ability to edit constructively here. Why not just stop advocating for fringe POV? -- Fyslee (talk) 01:22, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

You are committing a logical fallacy, in fact the same one as above (I was taught it as assuming the antecedent which is a better description). Here is an article on it [8]. If I have committed the act of advocacy, as opposed the act of confronting debunkery, you have your chance in this ArbCom to present evidence against me. Please do so. I do not think the NPOV policy needs to be changed. If I said that, I was advocating it be changed to allow debunker POV, so that policy would be consistent with practice. I also tried to change policy to more obviously and consistently say that "Proper sourcing always depends on context". Since I am not a fringe advocate, but rather I have dedicated my time mainly to preventing the anti-Wikipedia activity of debunking, your questions don't have much meaning in reality. When one opposes debunking, one automatically gains the reputation of advocacy, but that is not the POV reflected in my edits. I have acted as an anti-debunker, not an advocate. This may particularly be seen in that I have no belief, but rather disbelieve, in most of the articles where I am labeled as being an advocate.

My greatest expertise, here, is in parapsychology, but I am not an advocate of it, and indeed I am not personally convinced by its data. However, you might think I was an advocate, as I would be interested in contributing information about its studies- if only the debunkers allowed me to contribute significantly at all.

Certainly, I do not hold the opinion that parapsychologists cannot be scientists: such is not an opinion supported even by the skeptical sources. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 01:51, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Our common aim should be to get the balance of sources right. Accusations of bias often fly thick and fast during editing of articles on controversial subjects.

A past arbitration case from November, 2007 found that, at that time, you had "engaged in a variety of disruptive behavior ([9]), including, but not limited to, using Wikipedia as a soapbox ([10], [11]), threatening disruption of the project ([12]), and making deliberately provocative edits ([13], [14])." In my opinion it would be reasonable, on that evidence, to characterize you as an advocate. --TS 11:17, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Looking at the above section, one aspect of this affair that strikes me is that it is quite similar to a couple of 2005 cases in which I was peripherally involved.

• Robert the Bruce
• Robert Blair

In the first case, the Committee dealt with an editor, Robert the Bruce, who had turned up to edit Wikipedia specifically to counter anti-circumcision advocates who had responded to an off-site "call to arms" issued by one User:Walabio. In the second, the conduct of a prominent anti-circumcision advocate (Robert Blair) was handled. Raul654 may remember both cases. We're still dealing with people (on all sides of all issues) who say they are here to counter the activities of abusers. Often it's difficult to tell who is in the rightand one has to look very carefully at an editor's conduct and statements and how they serve the purpose and policies of Wikipedia. --TS 14:37, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

for long-term, regular contributors (not spa's) it can be quite difficult to evaluate the advocacy portions of their contributions.--Rocksanddirt (talk) 18:34, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

That ArbCom was pretty funny, because if they had noticed, the thing they were saying I soapboxed about was the very thing they had already accepted as true and foundational for the Paranormal ArbCom.

Compare: "I want to be able to cite it as a science, rather than just something some crazies study." [15]

To:

"In addition to mainstream science which generally ignores or does not consider the paranormal worthy of investigation, there is a scientific discipline of parapsychology which studies psychic phenomena in a serious scientific way,"

Which is more "promotional" to parapsychology? Why, the text of the ArbCom. So while the ArbCom did find against me, and I did do a few disruptive things, I have real questions about what they were thinking. As to making provocative edits, you deal with people like ScienceApologist for a couple of years, and see if after a while when you get nothing but true hate you can act as well as I did. That's not an excuse; still, few could take it as well, I bet.

I change my position all the time, as Wikipedia changes. I refine things. I also change what I say relative to the listener [16]. It would not be appropriate to give the kid a Randi treatment, and I responded out of my general knowledge of parapsychology. To give him an answer about confirmation bias or something would not have helped.

So again, like I said above I have learned not to act in a disruptive, way, but that is a very sophisticated thing to do on Wikipedia, especially when everyone else on the page is a disruptor and had an advantage since their actions are immune from censure, but yours are not. If I emulated a tenth part of the tactics of ScienceApologist et al, okay that was bad, but it was the best I knew how to do at the time. If the admins at Wikipedia had been on the job and fair to us both, the situation would never have occurred. He would have been banned years ago, before I even came to WP, and I would have had my hand slapped and reformed my ways. Get your double standard gone. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 21:24, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

What double standard do you mean? In the two ArbCom cases which centered on you and ScienceApologist (here and here), you two were treated to essentially parallel findings and remedies. Neither one of you has been blocked for any extended length of time, and you're both still doing your respective things. You two are actually much more alike then I think either of you would want to admit. Yes, from your perspective, you've been admirably forbearing in the face of abuse, and whatever disruption you've caused is minimal and in the service of a greater good. I can guarantee that ScienceApologist feels exactly the same way. Whatever; but I don't see a double standard here. Quite the opposite. MastCell ^Talk 21:47, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Good example. His behavior is about 50 times -without exaggeration- worse than mine. I mean, you could literally take each of his violations, and each of what my worst critic thinks are my violations, and put them side by side and you'd come up with something like this.

The double standard has been noted well by others. Here is just one quote [17]. It happens relative to POV as well.

Actually, the very worst thing that has happened to me at WP is having people think I am the opposite equivalent to SA. We don't use the same methods, and we don't have the opposite POV. His is against WP (I think it's Wikipedia's job to show people how kooky they are), mine -as an anti-debunker- is not. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 22:31, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I take that back: properly seen, we do have the opposite POV, debunker and anti-debunker. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 22:33, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

hmmm, I think I agree with mastcell, I don't think there is much of a double standard regarding you v. SA. What has happened is that you have learned how to moderate your actions that seem to be disruptive to collegial editiing better than SA has. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 23:00, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm talking about a Wikipedia wide, systemic bias, not mainly about me.

So, you dislike my anti-debunking stance, and don't see a difference between my behavior and SA's. My point. However, if you guys want to judge me, that's cheap, but why not do something about it, and get rid of an incredibly disruptive editor, who is indeed equal to SA in his destructiveness? Here's the challenge: I think there is plenty of evidence against SA- I assembled the Durga's Trident evidence [18], and have presented it at this ArbCom. So go present similar evidence for me, and you will, without doubt, get me banned. Indeed, if the Arbitration Committee sees a similar problem of disruptive editing, or that my purpose of anti-debunking is counter to the good of Wikipedia, I hereby ask them to create a finding of fact to that effect. If neither of these things happen, I hold you to be wrong. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 00:28, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

You misunderstand me. I think at one point you were as disruptive as SA, but that you have learned how to work with everyone. SA has not learned that yet. I'm afraid he's still on the slow boat to site ban, whereas you certainly are not. Some users problems with you stem from their past interactions with you, and not recent activity (imo). --Rocksanddirt (talk) 00:31, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh, okay, thanks, sorry I misunderstood ): ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 01:51, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

The problem posed to us by Martin and ScienceApologist, both, is the same as that posed by Robert the Bruce. They are crusaders. To what extent does their crusade match the aims of Wikipedia? I hope the Committee will eventually find a way of saying to both that this kind of activity, overall, is not compatible with Wikipedia's aims. No matter how civilly one might be on the surface, campaigning against Wikipedia's purpose of providing the most neutral and complete encyclopedia is not permissible. This isn't the place to fight battles. --TS 02:19, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

You can call me a crusader only in the sense that you could call the British crusaders in WWII. They were defending against a threat, and basically wanted to be left alone. In the same way, I would have written articles if I could, and since I can't I'm leaving after this ArbCom. The most obvious crusade here is against fringe ideas (or, from your perspective for science), and so you at least cannot say that crusading is necessarily negative. It depends on the method and the goal. When the ArbCom recognized that parapsychology could be science (and therefore was not to be treated as "obvious pseudoscience"), I got what I wanted. It turned out I wasn't asking for anything which NPOV could not grant. Since then, my only crusade has been against debunking, since I could not write articles without getting rid of the debunking first. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 05:33, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Martin, when you wrote "... basically wanted to be left alone. In the same way, I would have written articles if I could, and since I can't I'm leaving after this ArbCom.", you triggered an old memory. We have had the same experience, but with a very different learning curve. When I first came here, I didn't understand how things worked, I was used to participating in discussion groups and making websites, and the description "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.", sounded like I had come to heaven. Wow, free webhosting! I didn't know about or understand the rules here, or about how collaborative editing works, or about consensus, and I was rudely (and appropriately!) notified that my first few edits and additions were against policy. What was my reaction? I tried to adapt and learn and immediately change my behavior by not doing those things I was informed weren't right. You still aren't willing to do that.

What counts here is not occasional mistakes, initial failure to understand often complicated policies and guidelines, or even occasional losses of temper that result in uncivil behavior to other editors. Even a rare block may not mean much in the long run. What counts is that we have a positive learning curve, and that we bow to the purpose of this place. It's not a place for us to write articles and be left alone, or to have them left alone to express our brilliant explanations of truth. No, we edit collaboratively and according to policies. We learn to write for the enemy, and even to support and aid the inclusion of things we find abhorrent and untrue. What counts is not if they are true, but if they are verifiably documented in V & RS. What counts is if they are what happens in the real world, and whether they are documented in V & RS. Our personal POV has to be laid aside when including stuff in articles. We follow the sources, including those we don't like.

Since you seem to be demanding "my way or (I'll take) the highway", IOW that if you can't write articles and expect them to be exempt from Wikipedia's Law of Unintended Consequences, you will leave "after this ArbCom", that's too bad for you, but not a big minus for the project. Others will surely take your place and seek to push for the inclusion of fringe ideas as if they were mainstream ideas. We'll survive, and much easier at that. BUT, I will never forget you as an editor. You are an intelligent person who fights for his beliefs, and in the real world those are admirable qualities. Here they can interfere with editing articles according to policy, and you shouldn't attempt to manipulate and change good policies so it becomes a place where everything suits you. You know, a truly NPOV article (about a controversial subject) will usually have content that irritates editors of all persuasions. If it doesn't, something is likely very wrong. ;-) So good luck in real life. Just because we disagree here doesn't mean you aren't a good person. We would probably be able to have an enjoyable and stimulating time together in real life. (Two of my best friends in real life are chiropractors, even though I'm a chiroskeptic. Even I find that amazing!) I suggest you download the Wikimedia software and make your own wiki. It can be done. There you can write as you please. It's a free world, or so they say. -- Fyslee (talk) 06:18, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I find your unremitting personal attacks against Martinphi to be extremely distasteful. Dlabtot (talk) 06:24, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Fyslee does not appear to be making personal attacks. He is explaining his own personal perspective in editing problematic articles; his comments seem helpful. Mathsci (talk) 18:42, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I respectfully disagree, attributing views to someone that they have not stated, and then criticizing them for those views, not only constitute personal attacks, but weak and fallacious arguments. Dlabtot (talk) 19:12, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I think Fyslee is trying to be nice, though it could be taken as condescending, and I'm sure we'd get along fine in real life. I agree with his take on proper conduct and editing, and how the content of NPOV articles will effect users. I simply disagree with his take on my conduct and his assumptions about what I think. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 01:14, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

SPOV, Pseudoskepticism and exceptional claims

Science is indeed not a point of view. Scientists, when trying to practice science, can fall into 2 equally-dangerous traps : pseudoscience and pseudoskepticism. Pseudoscience has been widely discussed in previous ArbComm cases; pseudoskepticism may not have. Here is its definition : pseudoskeptics are those that "take the negative rather than an agnostic position". Science requires to take an agnostic view until data shows that a theory has been falsified. I contend that Wikipedia should take the same approach in science articles if it wants to keep its reputation.

This means that, unless proven otherwise, so called "fringe science" are simply minority views, not false views. A fringe theory becomes false only when proven so, ie. when another theory has been tested experimentally to be superior to the fringe theory. This has happen for N-ray. This has NOT happen for cold fusion : if there was a convincing non-nuclear theory to explain cold fusion, surely one third of the 2004 DOE panel of experts would not have found the evidence of nuclear reaction somewhat convincing.

I presume that reputable journals such as Science and Nature take the same scientific stance. That they don't publish articles on cold fusion only means that they remain agnostic about it, not that they are negative about it; to become sure that they are negative, we would need a negative statement from them, as the scientific method and WP:RS require. Where is the article that proposed a non-nuclear explanation of the effect that has been replicated so many times ? If someone came up with a definite non-nuclear explanation for the effect, don't you think that it would get published in those reputable journals ? The parity of sources works both ways : if critics can't publish in Nature, it means that they criticism is not up to the required level.

Science does not hold that "exceptional claims require exceptional evidence (otherwise they can be rejected off-hand)" : on the contrary, this is the perfect pseudoskeptical statement. "Exceptional" is a human construct, not a "physical reality" construct. The physical reality is what it is, and there is nothing intrinsically exceptional in what it does (or the whole reality is exceptional, depending on your belief system). Please provide a scientific, reliable source to support this exceptional statement that you make about the scientific method. Pcarbonn (talk) 15:56, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, that's not an accurate presumption. There is such a thing as an "exceptional claim": conjecture that, if it were demonstrated correct, would contradict current understanding of the physical universe (as opposed to simply add to that understanding, mind you. Relativity didn't contradict mechanics, it refined it).

Agnosticism is only a valid scientific stance in the absence of contrary information; the default position on anything that would contradict thermodynamics, for instance, is that it is incorrect until proven otherwise— and no reputable journal will publish such claims unless some very compelling evidence is shown. — Coren ^(talk) 16:48, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm. Seems to me that relativity is not a good example here, as it does contradict Newtonian physics. It contradicts the Newtonian model of absolute space and time; kicks out the Newtonian "force at a distance" explanation of gravity; does away with the luminiferous aether, which was taken for granted by the scientific community throughout the nineteenth century. Until Eddington's Príncipe expedition provided hard evidence, both special and general relativity were seen as radical theories and attracted a good deal of scepticism (some of which was motivated by anti-German feelings in the English-speaking world caused by WW1). Gandalf61 (talk) 17:11, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, yes and no. It turns out that Newtonian mechanics is a pretty good approximation of general relativity at speeds substantially below C. In that sense, special relativity refines mechanics rather than invalidate it. I agree that the distinction is subtle, and that I could have picked a more black and white example, though.  :-) — Coren ^(talk) 17:45, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Coren, you are a pseudoskeptics when you make these statemetns, giving you seem to give priority to theory over experiments. Again, this is a pathology of science, not true science. It would be a pity if Science and Nature magazines would think like you. Unless they made such statements, I like to think that they are true scientists, not pseudoskeptics. Please show me a source saying otherwise. Pcarbonn (talk)17:22, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

By the way, cold fusion is only "adding" data to the scientific body of experimental evidence. It also proposes a "new" way to achieve nuclear effects. It does not say that previous experimental data was wrong, nor that previous theory was wrong. It only says that it was incomplete, especially in terms of nuclear effects in condensed matter. This should not be a surprise. There are many other well-accepted experiments that current theory cannot explain (see this article in Phys Rev C, or Unsolved problems in physics). Pcarbonn (talk) 17:39, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

On agnosticism and belief, it's perhaps appropriate at this point to wheel out Russell's teapot. Most people would probably agree that calling oneself a "Russell's teapot agnostic" would be absurd. Whilst there is no reason to believe that Russell's teapot does not or could not exist, the supposition that it does exist is absurd enough that the agnostic position on this proposition, although sound in most formal philosophical systems, is roundly rejected by most observers. Thus Russell effectively explodes Huxleyan agnosticism. --TS 17:50, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

You must have misread the Russell's teapot article. It's about unfalsifiable statements from religion. There is no reason to believe that cold fusion falls into that category, as it is based on experiment, not beliefs. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:59, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I must have misunderstood you when you said that pseudoskeptics are those that "take the negative rather than an agnostic position. Science requires to take an agnostic view until data shows that a theory has been falsified. Although there is some evidence to support cold fusion, it's weak evidence and a position of disbelief is perfectly compatible with the existing data. In particular, the experiments aren't conclusive. --TS 18:21, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

You have misunderstood me, and you still do. "Disbelief" = "mental rejection of something as untrue". This is not agnosticism. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:42, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

On the contrary. I reject the suggestion that agnosticism is a requirement. I cannot prove that there are no ghosts but I have no hesitation in stating, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that there are no ghosts. Fuck agnosticism. --TS 22:38, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Unlike ghosts, there are enough evidence for cold fusion to make 1/3 of the 2004 DOE panel somewhat convinced of its nuclear effect. Pcarbonn (talk) 14:24, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

The Pioneer anomaly is a good illustration of what agnosticism is. This anomaly suggests that our understanding of gravitation may be incorrect. Many would see this as an exceptional claim. Our article takes an agnostic view of it : it does not try to convey an opinion on what we should think. Why can't we do the same with cold fusion and other fringe science articles like homeopathy ? Could it be because there is so much interests at stakes ? Wikipedia should take the neutral view on such topics, as our policy requires. Pcarbonn (talk) 14:24, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

exceptional claims require exceptional evidence

Pcarbonn, I'm not sure that you know the exact origin of this sentence. See Marcello_Truzzi#Famous_quotes, it's the same person who created the term "pseudoskeptic", the one who said that, on the face of lack of negative evidence, a true skeptic should say "not proven" instead of "disproven". He recommends that extraordinary claims are graded [19] (on the last section) and I'm afraid that cold fusion falls under teh grade "suggestive, meaning interesting and worthy of attention but generally of low priority." The real problem, from your point of view, ought to be that most scientists will use instead the meaning given to it by Carl Sagan.

Also, if you want scientific sources holding that principle, then google scholar is your friend [20] and google books your second friend [21] --Enric Naval (talk) 07:41, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I fully agree that we should say that cold fusion is "not proven". Unfortunately, many want our article to say that it is "proven false", and give too much wait to criticism while suppressing the favorable arguments, in violation of NPOV. See my evidence on SA. Pcarbonn (talk) 14:24, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I've read the cold fusion article and see nowhere anything about it being proven false. I think that's a straw man. --TS 15:07, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

How about the suppression of favorable arguments and the misrepresentation of the DOE panels by SA and others ? Pcarbonn (talk) 15:20, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Scientific focus

Coren, could you explain what you mean by "best" scientific knowledge?

I also would hate to see articles which are only tangentially about science focus on science, when they should be more about culture etc. Take an article on angels, which of course pertain to natural science (as everything does). That is a subject which says it is outside scientific understanding. Do you really want to focus on science?

Do you really mean subjects which say they are outside science, but which mainstream science claims are part of mainstream science? If so, perhaps you are thinking of Creationism? Or what? "declare themselves outside... but are not generally accepted as such [outside]."

Really, I think you mean

"Focusing the coverage of articles whose topics are the natural sciences on the best available scientific knowledge is in line with the encyclopedic nature of Wikipedia. This includes topics that are on the fringe of scientific understanding and are not generally accepted by the scientific community."

And I assume that Prominence defines "best" relative to sources. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 01:57, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I think it's easier to clarify with an example. Many edge beliefs about various sorts of healing powers postulate that they cannot be examined by science; they nonetheless fall within the remit of medicine and biology. — Coren ^(talk) 02:19, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I never heard of any, but okay. This looks much to me like a rule about the proper WEIGHT- focus on science, not culture. Yes, what you've done is to focus on science mainly. Like angel, would focus on science since the visions of angels relate to medical diagnosis. It has been argued that articles should focus on the entire impact, rather than do a focus specifically on science like that. If you had an article on prayer healing, you'd state that "there are no chemical mechanisms through which prayer can work at a distance," or some such, since it's within biology and medicine. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 02:30, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Question on process

Say an editor is placed under supervision for a certain amount of time. They decide not to edit for that time. They then come back. Are they still under supervision, or did they avoid it entirely? ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 03:55, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

They avoided it entirely, in a manner of speaking. The remedy is intended to prevent disruption; leaving entirely (albeit undesirable) does that. It's a self-imposed upgrade, I suppose. — Coren ^(talk) 05:02, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank, just wondering... It would allow him to skip the evaluation. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 05:35, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Mentorship

For the record, I conceive mentorship as a different function from what Coren articulates. I'm a guide, not a cop. I will not fill the role described if the proposed decision passes. If someone else wishes to volunteer for the purpose Coren proposes then they are welcome to step forward. It might be helpful to come up with distinguishing terminology, though, to avoid confusion. With respect, Durova^Charge! 04:39, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree that a better term than "mentor" may be appropriate, albeit I'm not certain the parallels with "cop" are accurate or desirable. — Coren ^(talk) 05:04, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I think it may be best to continue to call all such roles "mentor", since there are many overlapping roles. Just because someone is willing to be a mentor but rejects one specific mentorship role doesn't necessarily mean a different word needs to be used. I appreciate the specificity of the description of the role. ☺Coppertwig(talk) 13:25, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I really don't see the proposal's enforcement parameters as being compatible with mentorship, Coppertwig. It's not that I'm rejecting a mentorship role, so much as I think the additional functions would undermine mentorship itself. Call it what you will: supervisor or something else. Durova^Charge! 04:29, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I'm similarly puzzled here. You've described a parole officer. That's a sensible remedy and everything, but WP:SPADE. Cool Hand Luke 06:01, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Arguably, despite the best intentions and hard work of Durova, Jayvdb, and myself, our joint mentorship of Privatemusings has to be judged a failure, or at least it is by me at any rate. Part of the reason for that in my view (D and J may not agree, mind you, and I expect PM actually thinks it was a success from his perspective), was the lack of structure... when we found ourselves trying to get PM to do needful things and not do harmful things, we had no ground to stand on, lacking predefined principles and action boundaries, and no enforcement mechanism. This enforcement mechanism, call it what you will (Durova declines to call it mentorship, suggesting supervisor instead CHL says it is a parole officer role, I'd almost call it a nanny) does not suffer the same lack of structure. There may be other issues (I suspect it will not be a very pleasant process for either the mentor/supervisor/parole officer or the mentoree/supervisee/parolee at all. ) However I think it will be very interesting to see if it works. I applaud the ArbCom for coming up with this solution. It is likely to be so chafing, though, that I'd give 50-50 odds that the first parolee will decline to participate at all, electing instead to vanish for the duration (and thus probably keeping the CU's busy) ++Lar: t/c 06:28, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeh, I questioned that above, and Coren said that would be okey-dokey with him. However, there are certain admins who agree with SA but still have a good reputation, such as Shell Kinny, and I suspect one of them will take him on. Personally, I choose exile from the whole mess. I had what amounted to a similar setup with Vassyana, and the issues turned out to be too complex to agree on in terms of substance (he just didn't know the subject area sources well enough, we still disagree on this topic (; ). If the admin doesn't already agree and also understand the topic to begin with, the parolee won't be able to edit. That is to say, if the mentor has to agree on content. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 06:51, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Durova: I think your position is admirable and am not trying to persuade you; I'm just elaborating on my position. Parents somehow manage to fill both types of role; there is not necessarily always a clear distinction between the two, although trying to do both can introduce difficulties. Most of the description of supervised editing gives special powers to the whatchamacallems, but does not require them to use those powers nor specifically place responsibilities on them that would lead them to feel a need to use those powers. The process of choosing a whatchamacallem acceptable to the ArbCom might or might not implicitly or explicitly, or in effect, add such responsibilities. Therefore as far as that goes, it seems possible to me that one could follow some other role by just not using the special powers. The only part where the role is required to be something different is where people have to bring complaints to the whatchamacallem rather than to the supervised editor. That does change the roles, as well as perhaps adding to the whatchamacallem's workload and preventing the whatchamacallem from coaching the supervised editor on how to respond to complaints. ☺Coppertwig(talk) 14:35, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Missing the point on SPOV

Ok, as a biologist, I can only say, SPOV does exist. Very clearly even. Yes, science is a methodology and by itself it cannot have a POV. However, the methodology of science is based on a philosophical concept, namely methodological naturalism for the natural sciences and some other forms for social sciences etc. That is a POV, namely that you have to examine nature in a specific way. However, science is just one way to explain the world around us, others are religion and ideologies (like communism etc).

By addressing this case the way it is addressed, it is not going to be solved. It is just going to morph (like creationism), and the issues remains between editors who adhere to scientific naturalism versus religious people who adhere to a different philosophical approach. As long as you have enough people who share your POV, you can control the talk pages and avid consensus against your ideas. As long as you stay civil etc., you can prolong this discussion for years. I have experienced that with the natural selection article, that still has the wrong definition (evolution by means of natural selection is NOT natural selection), because a few people kept insisting on that faulty definition. What is needed is a way to break deadlocks, and we do not have anything to do that. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 05:50, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that this is, fundamentally, a contents decision. ArbCom is not empowered to rule on issues regarding what, exactly, should go in the prose of an article beyond what is specified in the existing policies (on verifiability, sourcing, appropriate weight, and so on). What you are hoping for is a method to evaluate article correctness; something which is (by design) outside the remit of the Committee. At this point, I would recommend that the community sits down and find a way out of those recurring predicaments; but the Committee cannot to it in its stead. — Coren ^(talk) 06:12, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for responding to the second point of my post. I agree, it will need the community at large to fix this, and that won't happen because there are way to many who benefit from the current situation where you can push your POV on articles by having enough people to block consensus building, whatever way you can go.

The more important point for me was the first, namely that the committee is going to miss the point on SPOV completely and make a bigger mess. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 06:17, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

The thing about SPOV having no POV doesn't mean a thing: no one has anything against SPOV, only debunking, which is how I was using "SPOV" (I knew it wasn't correct, but used it because it's what they say of themselves, that they are defending science). The Arbitrators acknowledging that scientists, and thus their works, may have a POV is an important distinction to be placed in WP history. And you are right, in the absence of expert oversight, Wikipedia will remain a source only for a first take on things. It is too bad that such a take is usually the only or most important one. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 06:26, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I am sorry, but this case would not have been needed if there was no objection against SPOV. It is what each and every pseudo-scientist tries to circumvent by claiming things as science that are not. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 06:33, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

You just said "Yes, science is a methodology and by itself it cannot have a POV" and that was what I was talking about when I said no one had objections to SPOV. Maybe someone has an objection to applying the methods of science, like those who say some things are sacred or taboo. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 07:32, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the method by itself has no POV. The choice to use a specific type of way to examine the world around us is POV, and in this case SPOV. You have also Religious point of view (RPOV) and Ideological Point Of View (IPOV). -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 16:20, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

There isn't just one SPOV; there are multiple POVs each consistent with the scientific method but based on different values or on different a priori assumptions. There's the POV that we should act as if something is not true until it's scientifically proven up to a certain standard, and on the other hand there's the precautionary principle. Or, one person might accept a hypothesis based on some evidence, while another person would require much higher quality evidence because they consider, a priori, the hypothesis to be an exceptional claim. ☺Coppertwig(talk) 13:41, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

No, SPOV is based on what is actually known, and if there are conflicting ideas, they are both presented. As soon as one makes choices, it becomes POV based on a selection of scientific evidence, but it is not SPOV anymore. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 16:20, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Remedy 5

I'm minded to draft the following, as my reply:

I'd like something stronger here but I'm trying to think what. The community's patience has been very sorely tried in this area for a long time, and I feel we should respect that if possible. As the Findings of Fact make clear, a wide swathe of editors suffer due to the problems in the disputed area, are driven away, or worn down. This forms a further general issue in the disputed area, and "warned" is not (for me) quite sufficient to reflect the appropriate limits.

I would like a remedy that, if somehow possible, would mandate that any users (generally) wishing to edit the area should expect (and be expected) to take exceptional care with their editing and their compliance with norms, rather than just "normal (and at times substandard)" care. This area needs clear above average standards of collaboration and other matters; "routine" has evidently not proven sufficient. Possibly some editors would have to rapidly improve if that were the updated expectation. This would mean that the bar would be raised sufficiently to ensure an acceptable standard of behaviors at base, rather than wait until train wrecks to make any improvement.

Before I consider it further, I'd be interested in thoughts on this theme. It's not really a workshop idea yet as I don't have a formal specific proposal or even a single approach definitely in mind. But I do feel something more is needed.

FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 06:31, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Collegiality. It needs collegiality. Having thought of solutions for a couple of years now, I don't think there are any compatible with basic WP structure- that people would actually try. You could go to expert oversight. You could do article projects: Let two teams of editors, who share a vision, take a couple of weeks to make drafts. Then have several evaluators, each of whom is willing to say they are neutral toward the subject area and who are completely new to the debate, choose which gets put up as the real article. I think that would really motivate toward NPOV, and frustrate the hell out of POV pushers. The better article team could then accept suggestions from the losing team, or else the losing team could take a few more weeks and go through the process again relative to the real article. During the initial project, ban all debate parties from the main article, and put up a totally-disputed or custom made template. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 07:26, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like a total case of WP:CREEP :D --Enric Naval (talk) 08:12, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Nah, CREEPS are what we've already got :P ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 20:20, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah, nice word game, I'll see that: what you propose is even more WP:CREEPy than the WP:CREEPs that we already have, even if you don't keep those CREEPS around :D --Enric Naval (talk) 20:43, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Lol. Okay. So you propose something creative, that doesn't depend on jailing sending gangsters to training camp. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 21:11, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

You are not going to get improvement in both articles and behavior (together) if you don't bring outside, subject-neutral editors into the process, and protect them from the nastiness. You can improve behavior, by banning either everyone with the wrong POV or everyone disruptive. OR, you can improve the article content by allowing subject matter experts in- who are almost always POV. So you'll have all the information but a lot of bias. Only if the editors have to meet an outside standard for content (and don't have to interact directly with the opposite POV too much) will you get both full and NPOV content and good behavior. This is the only way I know to do that without putting experts in charge. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 07:58, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I have seldom edited articles in the disputed area, mainly because of the potential costs in time and effort of getting involved in a long and unproductive dispute with editors who are here only to advocate for a point of view. I am encouraged by this proposed decision, which seems to be gathering support within the committee. I will endeavor to devote more effort to the disputed area in a good faith effort to work with other editors to bring all articles up to the standards of the neutral point of view. I'm not a subject expert, but I'm a regular editor of some four years experience who feels enouraged by this proposed decision, having been frightened away from the area in the past.

It is easy to underestimate the powerful message that is sent to editors as well as to readers by the presence within Wikipedia of clearly biased content. It tells us that there are people who can get away with injecting extreme material into the encyclopedia, and a lack of will to deal with the problem and neutralize it. In this area in particular that's surprising, because it isn't nationalist politics or (for the most part) religion, so the feelings aren't that strong. The good news is that if just a few good editors are encouraged to work in these areas, the content will improve and the bias will be drowned out. Those who are here only to act as advocates will now, I hope, be aware that they are not welcome to do so in this encyclopedia. --TS 10:15, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with Martinphi. I think that controlling disruptive behaviour will allow more editors to feel comfortable participating, which will in turn lead to improvements in content. Participation of more experts in an area would generally be helpful, I think; they would still need to discuss matters civilly with editors with a variety of POVs.

I suggest discretionary sanctions, as have been used in the past, with the scope and severity of such sanctions adjustable by administrators from time to time based on the degree of disruption at particular articles. It's important for such sanctions to be designed as much as possible to be POV-neutral and content-neutral, not giving admins special powers to decide content: for example, 0RR or 1RR imposed on all editors of a particular article tends to be pretty neutral. ☺Coppertwig(talk) 14:04, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

They already have that and it doesn't work. And the discretion of admins, in my opinion, has been roundly condemned by the community, on both sides of the debate. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 20:18, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I just would like that admins would intervene before the situations become train wrecks. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:43, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

On what grounds would they do that? ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 01:07, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

That's what Jehochman and I have been suggesting: that behaviours be identified which, for example, if allowed to be repeated a large number of times, will cause serious disruption; and then action to be taken in the early stages, for example when the behaviour has been repeated a small number of times and may not actually be causing any disruption yet. See Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science/Workshop#Disruptive editing and my suggestion at WT:Civil_POV_pushing. The authority for doing this comes from WP:DE and from any decisions of this ArbCom case that support such enforcement. ☺Coppertwig(talk) 01:16, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Encouraged, discouraged and dismayed

I am impressed and encouraged with many of the points being made in the proposed decision. They indicate a careful sifting through of the mountains of evidence /comments presented and clarify many critical issues - a huge task, and thank you for taking it on responsibly.

I am discouraged and dismayed by the suggested sanction to Martinphi. The diffs presented cannot be considered incriminating. For example: one diff is a year old. Two are three months old, taken out of context of a difficult discussion, are civil, and do not indicate any overarching POV any more than any other editor in most discussions and less than many. His sanctions are about editing. He hasn’t edited in several months. Why is he being sanctioned, and based on what if he hasn’t been editing? Martin was under a sanction, now expired. If there were debts to pay from the past they are paid.

I note that several of the points from the proposed decisions come out of Martin’s comments. Some of the language is strikingly familiar. How then can we turn around and say that same editor is not capable of editing policy pages. Multiple editors on this case have exhibited obvious POVs expressed in multiple ways. Not with standing the fact that in such discussions editors should be able to speak freely as long as they don’t hurt other editors, no editor should be singled out for a their perceived POV. As for talk pages - if sanctions were going to be laid on editors for opinions on talk pages, many Wikipedia editors would be considered incapable of editing neutrally.

There are many so-called fringe topics. Cold Fusion (and Pcarbonn) have been discussed very recently in a case of their own. Any further discussion or proposals here seems unnecessary and redundant and possibly a bit of an overkill.

Martin has no idea I am presenting this information and probably doesn’t care. Its not so much personal, but stems from a concern for the general Wikipedia environment. As a collective we are responsible for creating an environment that allowed Science Apologist to continue with behaviour that didn't work well with the community as a whole. Perhaps we should be asking why. With all respect, perhaps the same environment that couldn't help SA move into a more collegial editing manner is also responsible for condemning an editor where no clear present day evidence exists. Although Martin and I certainly don’t always agree, I do feel I want to comment on his behalf not only for his sake but also for editors facing the same kind of situation in the future. Thanks. (olive (talk) 22:05, 10 January 2009 (UTC))

I think it needs to be understood that, while Martinphi has significantly improved in his ability to stay within the confines of our behavioral policies and guidelines, many of the disputes in the area (and, indeed, some of the recent ones) revolve around attempts to reinterpret policy according to an agenda (and edit policy to match). This is a very bad thing; Wikipedia policy pages are not a proper field to make advocacy, and the repercussions and disruption by doing so are wide-ranging. This remedy does not hinder Martinphi's ability to participate in policy review, nor impact his ability to continue article work. — Coren ^(talk) 22:19, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Problems involving policy pages may be considered more serious and therefore it may not be necessary for the evidence of problems to be quite as recent as with other behaviour problems. However, I didn't find in the Martinphi section of "findings of fact" on this page or by searching for Martinphi's username on the "evidence" page anything like a diff of Martinphi editing policy pages in a problematic way (or at all). ☺Coppertwig(talk) 22:47, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

You may want to look at the incident around [22], eventually cascading to [23]. They date a few months ago, but Martin's activity in the past three months has been pretty much restricted to arbitration. Part of the problem is that this particular incident caused a number of secondary disputes (some involving ScienceApologist) and a great deal of drama; this is the kind of spat this remedy seeks to prevent. — Coren ^(talk) 22:58, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

edit conflict...

Actually, you can't find a single diff where I changed policy in a way which made it easier for fringe advocacy. If you are listening to the emails sent to you by people such as Guy/JzG, they quite emphatically are not based on factual evidence (he lied about me, saying I attempted to rewrite NPOV to be more friendly to fringe stuff). Nor have I re-interpreted policy to fit an agenda: the agenda to not do stuff like the following is fully in accord with Wikipedia:

The film is controversial. It has been criticized as pseudoscientific docudrama,[5] a letter published in Physics Today notes that most laypeople cannot tell where the quantum physics ends and the quantum nonsense begins, and many are susceptible to being misguided.[6], and James Randi described it as a fantasy docudrama and [a] rampant example of abuse by charlatans and cults.[7] Movie Gazette describes it as Creepy, distasteful cinematic propaganda, fronted and funded by a bunch of cults.[8] The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry dismisses it as a hodgepodge of all kinds of crackpot nonsense, where science [is] distorted and sensationalized.[9] A BBC reviewer described it as a documentary aimed at the totally gullible.[10] [24]

larding the lead with only negative quotes when the reactions encompass both positive and negative. That's not a re-interpretation. I do intend to leave Wikipedia, yet you are not doing anyone any good by making decisions which are opaque to understanding. I simply do not believe that I re-interpreted policy, nor that I attempted to rewrite it in a way more friendly to fringe. In fact, I did some rewriting which is less friendly to fringe. I also argued some points which would not allow such a loose usage of sources such as blogs. But that's not re-interpreting policy, it's making things coherent. ScienceApologist is the one who has re-written policy/guideline pages to favor lousy sourcing for debunking. I challenge anyone to come up with some actual diffs supporting the accusation that I rewrote policy to favor fringe. The only thing I can think of is that I argued that most of fringe articles should be about the fringe topic, rather than the mainstream reaction, although the mainstream reaction should be thoroughly explained. That's against debunker-POV, but it's not re-interpretation. If there are any diffs which look like that, you could allow me to explain them. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 23:07, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

(ec; reply to Coren) Those aren't diffs of Martinphi editing policy pages in any way. If there is such evidence, you might want to find it and put it into the findings of fact section (if that's how this process works). I'm not committing a lot of time to investigating past situations; I'm just commenting on the lack of presented evidence. However, in many ways I'm very positively impressed with the various items you've added to this page. ☺Coppertwig(talk) 23:10, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I believe [25] is already in evidence, and I was under the impression that it was cited specifically in the FOF. I'll double check. — Coren ^(talk) 23:13, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Further, [26] [27] [28] have all been disputed changes that let to escalating disputes. — Coren ^(talk) 23:20, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

The ban by Elonka, the other admins agreed, was unjustified. The other diff, it's in the middle of things but I'm basically taking the argument that science=majority and saying, well if that's always the case then parapsychology is majority. I don't believe that, but if your argument is right, then mine is right. What I believe is that we present all POVs per prominence. Don't take it as advocacy. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 23:11, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Edit conflict To Coren:

I respect this point of course and your view on it. I would wonder how recent is recent if an editor hasn't edited in a couple of months.

My experience is that editors on both side of this dispute edit with an agenda whether they perceive it or not. Can we call that agenda an inherent POV, and note that no editor edits article and policy with out coming into the discussion/editing ring without those POVs. This decision singles out one editor based on the past. Below is another perspective:

There is no science on Wikipedia, there are articles, and articles only. Then and only after the subject matter of that article has been considered can an editor consider whether there is science related material that should be included in that article. Science is verb driven, a process, a methodology. Believing science to be noun driven, a thing, becomes ideology. My experience in watching Martin is not that he pushes a POV that is fringe topic driven . As a matter of fact I find he is highly skeptical of many of the fringe topics. He is driven to exclude science driven agenda when and if it supercedes information necessary for the article. Science driven editors describe such editing as editing for the fringe, rather than editing for a fringe topic article, a subtle distinction. I have been accused of being a fringe supporter when in fact although an artist and trained in the humanities, I also worked for a short time for one of the top corn botanists in the world , and have a great interest in physics. Labeling an editor is easier though, than treating each editor as an individual. My point is that these categorizations and perhaps the decisions based on them are often wildly inaccurate and unfair, and gross generalizations. Martin I think has been caught in this environment and judged unfairly. Its not what he can still do that is a concern its whether this is fair or not. I think you've made some excellent proposals on this case, though, so I'll sign off with that in mind. Just my opinions, and thanks again for engaging in this discussion.(olive

(talk) 23:17, 10 January 2009 (UTC))

Adendum on SPOV

There is much discussion on Wikipedia as to what science is and concerning SPOV. A comment:

Martin edits for the article. Others may edit with the view that there is a SPOV, and edit for science or rather the idea of science. Martin is not editing for fringe but rather against the SPOV edits. SPOV has become larger- more and more inclusive. If it actually exists as specifically definable which I would say it doesn't,(its a kind of sophisticated "weasel"), then attempting to edit from SPOV is a violation of NPOV. SPOV editing requires a view, a slant and a choice to edit from the "science" point rather than the neutral. Again and again, NPOV is the mother policy. Any view that undermines that or attempts to supersede that will mean big time trouble for Wikipedia because it cannot by definition be non-neutral.(olive (talk) 18:58, 11 January 2009 (UTC))

This and this was restoring some longstanding content which had been changed. IOW, I was on the side of the policy as it stood. I believe any changes I restored were not my changes, only ones I did not disagree with (and so would have been disruptive to revert out). this was part of SA + pals drive to use such sources as scientist's blogs to make absolute assertions of fact or scientific consensus. You are looking, I believe, at an attempt to maintain the status quo. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 23:31, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

The policies -NOR especially- was being heavily disrupted to allow more OR in the Chiropractic article. IOW, they were trying to change the policy to get their way in an ongoing debate- at least they were using it that way. Please talk to Vassyana about the subject, as he and I were essentially attempting to the exactly the same thing. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 23:34, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

As a general rule, my position on policy has been to be a stick-in-the-mud along with a bunch of other editors like Blueboar and Vassyana, and say there is no change whatsoever necessary. And, to resist rewriting of policy, such as that done by ScienceApologist on the Fringe guideline. In a few cases, I attempted to clarify, but not change, existing policy. That's the full extent of it, as anyone will see who really goes through the discussions. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 00:32, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Coren, other Arbitrators, this is a table of changes I made to NPOV. It represents the main actual changes I ever tried to make to policy, and the ones I was very hotly attacked over. Especially the last section of the table represents an addition which is less favorable to fringe views. And, you just wrote the same thing in this ArbCom! [29] It's like, my policy positions and clarifications are right here in this ArbCom, yet I was wrong in my editing of policy? Absolutely weird. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 00:43, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Coren, you mention a diff which is an edit to Wikipedia:Fringe theories. The Martinphi section of the "Proposed findings of fact" on this page contains Item 11, with five diffs, and item 12, with no diffs. The five diffs in item 11 are edits to pages "Talk:What the Bleep do We Know!?" , "Talk:Psychic" (two diffs), "Paranormal primer", and "Pseudoscience". None of these are policy or guideline pages and they don't include the diff you cited on this talk page. Also, the wordings of those findings of fact say nothing about Martinphi's editing of policy or guideline pages. ☺Coppertwig(talk) 01:06, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

During the course of the case I had become increasingly concerned about Martinphi's seeming ease in interpreting policy and arbitration rulings in an idiosyncratic and self-serving way, no matter what the clear intent of a policy or ruling. I had considered adding this to my evidence, but on reflection decided that the Committee was unlikely to want to address this if Martinphi was, as he claimed, retired. It has come to my attention more recently that Martinphi has edited an article since this case began, and in the light of his extensive involvement on this case I question whether he can be considered to have truly retired, even on the most charitable view.

I welcome the proposed restriction. It is clearly Martinphi's intention to further an ideological crusade against the scientific consensus, and he frequently misreads Wikipedia's policies in order to justify his notion that an adversarial presentation is suitable for topics in fringe science such as cold fusion. His intention seems to be to water down our science coverage to the extent that the articles tip towards promoting fringe topics in science, at the expense of presenting the topics in a context that conveys to the reader why those topics are presently regarded as dubious.

In particular Martinphi's campaign against WP:PARITY, while not in itself problematic, seems to reveal an underlying commitment to an ideological crusade with the effect, if not the actual intention, of making it difficult to present reasoned opposition to ideas that are not generally accepted but are not extensively investigated by scientists, in the articles about those ideas themselves. It seems to be part and parcel of what Martinphi himself has termed a fight against the legitimacy of reliable sources whom he sees as debunkers. The scientific method is a tool for exposing poor thinking. Where fringe ideas are debunked using the methods of science, which are testable and reproducible, that is a point which should commend the source to us, not point towards rejection. They are biased sources, but they may be reliable. --TS 10:50, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

"seeming ease in interpreting policy and arbitration rulings in an idiosyncratic and self-serving way,"

"It is clearly Martinphi's intention to further an ideological crusade against the scientific consensus, and he frequently misreads Wikipedia's policies in order to justify his notion"

"...seems to reveal an underlying commitment to an ideological crusade"

The above are personal attacks/comments based on opinion.'Nuff said.(olive (talk) 18:22, 11 January 2009 (UTC))

Well obviously they're statements based on opinion, which is in turn based on observation. Arbitration is a form of dispute resolution, and in dispute resolution we discuss whether conduct meets community norms and policies. A proposal has been made to restrict an editor's editing, and I'm expressing my support for that restriction because of those personal observations. To characterize them as merely personal attacks is incorrect. --TS 18:34, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Generally such statements should be supported by diffs indicating where the problems are and moving the comments away from opinion and into the realm of evidence. Opinions, like noses we all have them, are no reason to restrict any editor from anything. Imagine the chaos if we all were restricted because of what someone else thought. Further no incivility is acceptable under our policy for any reason, protecting the editors and the editing environment.(olive (talk) 20:38, 11 January 2009 (UTC))

Stop wikilawyering. --TS 21:46, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

You know what TS.... I am fed up with editors who think its fine to attack other editors and other people. You admit to a personal attack, so back off ... and when someone else comes in and indicates the problem assuming you might have missed it somehow ... well name calling just doesn't help anything for anyone. The Arbs need to be patrolling these pages. Be glad it was another editor who asked for civility and not an Arb (olive (talk) 21:57, 11 January 2009 (UTC))

You state falsely that I have made a personal attack and admitted to making a personal attack. I have done neither. Stop this pointless attempt to goad me. --TS 23:11, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I interpreted this, "To characterize them as merely personal attacks is incorrect" as a recognition of a personal attack. I have no intention to goad anyone nor the time, nor could I be bothered to, and apologize if my comments were taken that way. I am fed up with the personal attacks that I have been seeing and dealing with and that was and is my concern.(olive (talk) 00:04, 12 January 2009 (UTC))

If my interpretation of policy is idiosyncratic, well, it's too bad because this ArbCom reflects my interpretation. IPOF, my interpretation is mainstream Wikipeida, and therefore opposed to debunker-interpretations of policy. TS does seem to be on the attack. The ArbCom has no evidence to go on in its assertions that I tried to make policy more congenial to fringe, though if it were inclined it could get evidence to the contrary. PARITY is simply against RS: it allows using bad fringe and bad anti-fringe or mainstream sourcing.

Of course, the ArbCom is allowing Original Research in this decision, and that will come back at them for clarification, and they will have to either repudiate it or give some hocus-pocus redefinition of it. Because at this point they are creating policy. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 22:44, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

On remedy 7 and stoking fires

ArbComm suggests that I should stop "needlessly stoking the fires of disputes in the area of fringe science". Looking at recent history on wikipedia, here is what I should do instead : I should ignore this recommendation and continue editing cold fusion despite my being banned there; I should get banned further; I should edit war the WP:Fringe guideline to fight pseudoskepticism on wikipedia, get banned again; I should rally an army of the night against pseudoskepticism; I should seek the identity of my opponents and get them banned; I should jokingly issue death threats against them, ... The more outrageous I'll be, the more succesfull. At the end, ArbComm will get the message, and I'll get away with "supervised editing". This is what I should do, and I may even have fun doing it. But I won't, as I have other interests in life. Pcarbonn (talk) 03:19, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Uh-oh, looks like we've got a scientific thinker on our hands.

"Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth." [30]. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 03:51, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, notorious for his gullibility over the claims of psychics and fairy photographers, probably isn't the best source to quote on this matter. --TS 16:03, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Sheesh ...lighten up TS. There are bigger issues at stake.:O)(olive (talk) 17:48, 11 January 2009 (UTC))

LOL! ☺Coppertwig(talk) 17:55, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

FYI, TS, Sherlock Holmes was a complete skeptic of the paranormal/supernatural. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 22:37, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Tiny example

You want a tiny example of debunking? [31]. Note that the revert is per WP:UNDUE. This is the general policy position of what I call debunking. Just state it as fact because it's true. But it creeps right back in [32], and even when it's a BLP violation, it's edit warred in again [33]. This is what the Paranormal ArbCom dealt with. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 06:00, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

So, you're saying that every single medium, spiritualist and mentalist is, in fact, legit? Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 06:48, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Huh? This is why I'd fine it hard to respond to your evidence section: the statements you make don't match up with the data. They aren't even wrong, but more like trying to fit the color blue into a square hole. Just not in the same field of concepts. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 06:55, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Cold reading is a technique taught in mentalism, a form of illusionism that has long been part of the repertoire of stage magicians. The technique is also used by people who falsely claim to be doing it the hard way. There is no known case of somebody successfully and reproducibly performing the same feats the hard way (by actually reading minds), and nobody has credibly made such a claim. We should not give the false impression that the known facts are other than the facts we do in fact know. --TS 11:37, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

It says it's a technique used by fortune tellers etc.; it doesn't even say that all fortune tellers etc. use the technique, so I don't see how the statement could be considered problematic.

By the way, if a Wikipedia article states that an individual such as Edgar Cayce or Marie Anne Lenormand "was a ... psychic" or "was a ... fortune-teller", is it asserting that the person actually had extrasensory powers? It could be interpreted as such by some people, I suppose. The first Wiktionary definition of "psychic" begins "A person who possesses, or appears to possess, extra-sensory abilities ...", and the definition of "fortuneteller" is "A person who professes to predict the future in return for money", so if people are assuming those definition then saying someone "is a psychic" leaves the possibility of pretense open, so that's good enough I guess. It might help to wikilink to the Wiktionary definitions when making such statements. In my intuitive understanding of the words without consulting a dictionary, "fortune-teller" tends to imply an assumption of pretense, while "psychic" tends to imply actual special abilities. ☺Coppertwig(talk) 14:57, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

See the Paranormal arbitration, particular the principle on "Adequate framing" and the finding on "Cultural artifacts". --TS 15:08, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Suppose we had an article on tin openers, and we defined a tin opener as a device used to open a tin can. Now if somebody comes along and claims by psychokinetic powers to be able to get the contents out of a tin can without such gross mechanical means, do we now change the article to say it's a device by which normal, ungifted people open tin cans, or a device that skeptics claim is used to open tin cans? Of course not. Just because somebody makes an extraordinary claim does not mean we need to change the way we write about what is known. If they want to be taken seriously, the burden of proof is on them to produce reliable source that says what they claim to be possible. --TS 15:16, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

The claim that this is a BLP violation is simply ridiculous; the fact that there are mentalists who use cold reading is clear. The notion that such a statement would be a BLP violation makes no more sense than claiming the statement "Some Catholic priests have molested altar boys" would be a BLP violation. JoshuaZ (talk) 21:59, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Some people here don't seem to have read all the diffs. Specific people were claimed to be using those techniques, which is calling them frauds without a source. TS should tell that to Ray Hyman, if he's refuted the Ganzfeld results- he's obviously done some studies which refute them, and therefore should publish. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 22:32, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

ure. If you read the articles about every single one of those people their use of cold reading is already dicussed in their articles and well-sourced. It is book keeping more than anything else to move those sources into this article. It doesn't help matters that the first dif you complain about this one which doesn't involve anything other than you not liking the facts in question. JoshuaZ (talk) 22:37, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Martinphi, the ganzfeld results, at best, suggest a weak effect. To compare this to mind-reading, of the kind routinely faked on-stage by mentalists with no special powers at all, would be a gross exaggeration. --TS 00:39, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I certainly see your point- Ganzfeld are weak. To focus better then, I do not think that you can make the claim you did without taking into consideration the early results up to about 1925, which refute your claim. Nor the ongoing studies by Schwartz and Beischel, for example. To say "There is no known case of somebody successfully and reproducibly performing the same feats the hard way" is a contested matter of opinion. I do not take a stand here, I just note that you are asserting your own opinion, contradicted by certain old and new studies. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 01:23, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Block enforcement

While it has been traditional to do so, I strongly recommend that specified block periods be left out. There should be no way it takes five consecutive blocks to reach a one month maximum. Simply mention that repeat offenses will lead to blocks of increasing length, if length need be mentioned at all. Leave the rest up to the acting administrator. There's no reason the blocks should be subject to limiting conventions that will be used to lawyer out of legitimately longer blocks and prevent administrators from imposing longer blocks in circumstances that would normally warrant such action. Of course, that's just my perception of the matter and you're welcome to some grains of salt. Vassyana (talk) 18:22, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree with this - it seems odd to devolve to administrative discretion regarding whether a violation has occurred, but then strictly prescribe limits on the length of the resulting blocks. In addition, given the lengthy histories of involved parties here, I don't know that these length restrictions match up with standard or best practices. Why not just leave block length to administrative discretion, since the remedy already relies heavily upon such discretion? MastCell ^Talk 22:23, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Fringe science vs. pseudoscience

I'm concerned that finding 3.2.1 defines "fringe science" to mean effectively pseudoscience. There is a distinction between ideas that the overwhelming majority of mainstream scientists agree are nonsense (e.g. astrology, the archetypical pseudoscience), and ideas that the majority of mainstream scientists consider wrong, while still accepting their advocates as members of the scientific community (e.g. cold fusion). It's the latter subjects that I understand by the term "fringe science". Of course there is a grey area in between (e.g. homeopathy seems to be treated a bit more politely in France than in the UK); it seems a natural extension of WP:AGF to prefer "fringe" to "pseudo" when in doubt.

Eliding this distinction is a bad idea:

• Advocates of dubious theory foo can argue that it is not fringe since the subject is not generally regarded as quackery, just wrong (giving too much weight to probably defective experiments etc).
• If SA and friends insist on labelling foo as fringe science, orthodox scientists like me may be forced to come to its defence if we do not regard all of its advocates as quacks, even if we don't actually believe it.
• In most cases this is not really the issue; as always the question is how much weight they deserve in a given article. Sometimes culturally-significant nonsense (astrology) deserves more weight than little-known scientific-but-doubtful ideas.

PaddyLeahy (talk) 22:06, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree. The bounds of what constitute fringe science can be quite hard to define. To use one example I've heard someone label species selection as fringe. If the ArbCom is going to use the term fringe science to mean what they have it labeled as in this particular case they should make it clear that they are using a term-of-art defined for purposes of this ruling that does not have any broader implications or meaning in regard to how the term fringe science is usually used. JoshuaZ (talk) 22:21, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

That is the purpose of Finding of Fact 1; to expressly define "Fringe" for the purposes of this ruling (and, indeed, the wording states explicitly that this is the case). The fact is, there are various levels of marginality from the generally agreed; from sound conjectures like supersymmetry which are viewed as promising at one end to Time Cube at the other end. This ruling carefully avoids trying to rank them, but sets out the principles by which their relative prominences can be gauged. So yes, in that case, we are simply putting for an operational definition for our purposes and not trying to make a substantive change. — Coren ^(talk) 00:18, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

But if we take your definition literally, you are ruling out a lot of the examples discussed in the evidence, since for instance cold fusion, acupuncture, SIDS, and various ill-advised plasma-physics theories are all studied by bona fide scientists, some of whom advocate theories which are fringe in my definition but cannot be by yours, since these people are considered to be doing science (badly, in the majority view). PaddyLeahy (talk) 01:21, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

You might be misunderstanding the intent, then. (Or I have expressed it badly). Those theories would have their prominence evaluated against the general scientific understanding too, which would prevent our articles from expressing them otherwise than as minority views. — Coren ^(talk) 01:24, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

You guys must know something I don't- haven't seen any time when a fringe subject tried to make itself seem mainstream, or refused to have its level of acceptance defined relative to mainstream. But whatever. Coren, saying "evaluate" instead of "describe" disturbs me in general, it sounds like SYNTH and OR.

"If SA and friends insist on labelling foo as fringe science, orthodox scientists like me may be forced to come to its defence if we do not regard all of its advocates as quacks, even if we don't actually believe it." How sad :D ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 01:31, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Wording is too open for interpretation

I just stumbled across this action. Three observations:

Considering Prominence: "...fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source" [34] "significant" and "reliable source" are the kind of phrases that have been at the root of edit warring all along. This wording simply gives the dominant group of editors the "authority" to disallow virtually all frontier science literature, no matter how well considered it is.

I the same way, References beyond prominence: "References from poor quality or less reliable sources..." have been used to buttress the fringe science point of view. In addition, there is a repeated pattern of using citations from marginal sources in a quantity and manner disproportionate to the relative prominence of that view." [35] makes it a judgement call as to what is of sufficient quality. That judgment almost always goes in favor of the skeptics without anything to do with informing the public about the subject.

The fact is that Wikipedia is supposed to answer "What is" the subject, not what some skeptical editor wants it to be. It is impossible to correctly describe what some things are without use of literature that is easily excluded with this kind of direction.

I might add that you are effectively eliminated the last proponent for fair treatment of frontier subjects if you actually Restrict Martinphi.[36] Tom Butler (talk) 00:25, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Are you by any chance defining the word "skeptics" here to mean "people with high standards of sourcing?" --TS 00:36, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, not true. The ArbCom also defined reliable sources for fringe science articles, which is definitely something which serves NPOV well. With RS better defined for fringe science articles, the debunkers will have a much harder time. "Academic and peer-reviewed publications are highly valued and usually the most reliable sources in areas where they are available, such as history, medicine and science." Isn't that what we've been saying all along? Let's not use these sources like blogs and personal rants or personal websites. Let's stick to RS. That is exactly what the debunkers have been militating most strongly against. They want to use bad sources.

"References from poor quality or less reliable sources have been used to buttress the fringe science point of view. In addition, there is a repeated pattern of using citations from marginal sources in a quantity and manner disproportionate to the relative prominence of that view."

This is certainly true of proponent sources as well as opponent sources. With both sides restricted to RS, NPOV can be maintained. Not otherwise. Remember, RS are relative to the topic, so if you need a debunker POV, you can still use Skeptic's Dictionary, and if you need the proponent POV, you can still use a book by a proponent. You just attribute, and if it is a science article you stick to the peer-reviewed literature.

You are right that per WP:GANG the article goes to the army with the greatest numbers. But this makes it much harder for them.

Certainly, evoip might go more toward discussion of Baruss's conclusions, but that is not really such a bad thing for the article. If one wishes to change that "inconclusive" verdict, more publication is necessary. With most fringe ideas, sticking to the reliable sources will give them decent coverage, whereas over-weighting the fringe component of skeptics like Randi just makes the articles into debunkery. Remember, this adds to the Paranormal ArbCom, it doesn't remove it from consideration. In the paranormal ArbCom it makes clear that there are several levels which might need to be considered per the sources, not just one [37] "A fourth phenomenon is skeptical groups and individuals devoted to debunking." Yes, and we cover all of that, and we don't weight something which is not a RS above an RS source, as the debunkers would have it. This is generally an NPOV decision.

There is one wrong part of it, and that is they are allowing Original research to refute fringe claims[38]. They may not mean to. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 01:13, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I do hope the arbitrators have read your above declaration of intent to continue warring against those who you have decided are "debunkers", and will tighten their wording to ensure that you understand that such warfare is impermissible. --TS 01:28, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

TS are you just tryimg to start a fight?

MartinPhi, how did you do evoip? Very cool!

I remember the arguments that were made against the Journal for the Society of Psychical Research, one of the "mainstream" journals of the paranormal field. [39] After it was excluded, they went after the author of article in the Journal. I know the previous arbcom was supposed to help there, but I continue to see such journals be rejected as fringe. This ruling seems to cast that in stone. Tom Butler (talk) 01:34, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

evoip? Good grief I used to get noises like this from the radio when I used to go down to the seaside. White noise + loudspeaker cone + gray matter = voices. It's really scraping the barrel to call that paranormal. --TS 01:41, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, Tony, I've called you guys debunkers so you get to pronounce calumny against me some, but I do hope that the Arbs will read what I said and not just your reaction. They are no more for debunking that I am. They do not want Wikipedia to be a soap box for deriding and refuting fringe claims based on OR, SYNTH and inappropriate WEIGHTing of sources and use of non-RS. They have said this. TS, you've said outright that we do debunk fringe claims. That's where you're coming from. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 01:44, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

As I've remarked several times now: a properly written, neutral point of view article about a fringe topic in science will necessarily inform the reader fully about why it is a fringe topic. Presenting such information in a neutral manner will tend to debunk the topic. In that sense and that sense alone, I am in favor of debunking on Wikipedia. In that sense and that sense alone, we are all debunkers. --TS 01:47, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

In that sense, I agree with you. As long as there is no OR or SYNTH. Yet, in spite of the fact we agree on this, you keep acting like I'm an advocate. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 01:54, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

That's true for the vast majority of ideas but not all of them. For example look at Electronic Voice Phenomena where part of the issue was for a long time that so few science sources bothered to even begin to consider it enough for a sourced debunking to exist. JoshuaZ (talk) 01:55, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

As I've already remarked, the notion is ridiculous on its face. I'm sure there are plenty of reliable skeptical sources who have had a bit of fun with evoip. --TS 02:01, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

There are now a few. But there are surprisingly few. And this is just one example of this issue; things that are as you put it "ridiculous on its face" don't get much attention from scientists. Extreme fringe ideas only get much attention after they become popular and if they have some very minimal plausibility. Thus, more popular fringe ideas will have much more systematic debunking. So for example, Cold Fusion which by most standards is not nearly as ridiculous as EVP has far more critical sources. This can lead to complicated issues about NPOV and undue weight. JoshuaZ (talk) 02:06, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Like I have said, there is no reason not to use debunking sources. There never were too few sources for debunking on that article. The attempt to exclude sources was all on the debunker side. Also, they tried to act like Randi necessarily speaks for the opinion of all scientists- scientists who don't even know what evoip is. If we'd been simply allowed to say "Randi and Carroll say this, Baruss says this, the advocates say this, the history is this, and science in general doesn't even know the thing exists, that would have been fine. Instead, people wanted to do OR to debunk. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 02:02, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

What other sources exist? Paranormalists? --TS 02:05, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree that an article that explains a subject in a way that leaves the reader with an understanding of the subject may "debunk" unsupported claims of people who advocate one position or another concerning the subject. However, that is not the role of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is to tell the reader what the subject is, and if there are contradicting arguments about what that is, then they should be represented.

Lets take the article on Orb (photographic). There is a whole lot more to orbs than is in the article. It is currently almost entirely a mainstream explanation of orbs, and looking at the older versions (say, February, 2008), I see that there used to be a lot more about the subject representing different viewpoints. The question is, "What are orbs?" The article does not answer the question except from the mainstream viewpoint. All other viewpoints have ben removed, including references to literature on the subject.

As I see it, this arbcom will only further solidify the ability of skeptics to use Wikipedia that sort of censorship. Tom Butler (talk) 02:08, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm a bit rusty on it. There are plenty of fringe, news sources, and books by credentialed proponents, registered organizations of proponents etc. No lack of sources. It was purely a matter of presentation, and attempts to make statements which were either not in accord with sources. There was also no end of shit over getting a one sentence definition which was NPOV. It's nearly impossible. And they wouldn't let it be a two sentence definition, which would have presented both sides of it "EVP are controversial phenomena, said by paranormal researchers to be the voices of spirits, and by critics to be pareidolia. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 02:14, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm utterly flabbergasted that a mere photographic artifact has attracted people who think they need a paranormal explanation. I shouldn't be shocked, at my age, but I am. Since the only source for this is somebody on some website or other saying what nonsense it is, I suggest that the best thing to do would be to delete the paranormal reference, which only makes us look even sillier than the person who went to the trouble of saying how silly it was on another website. --TS 02:16, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

The Orb article is okay, Tom, because it is a mainstream article, and ITC is probably not notable in that context. ——Martin^phi Ψ~Φ—— 02:18, 12 January 2009 (UTC)