Wikipedia Woes - Pending Crisis as Editors Leave in Droves

[davesmith_au]

December 26, 2009 ~ davesmith_au

Observation: It is difficult to ignore the many complaints which we at the Thunderbolts Project receive about Wikipedia. The horror stories circulating recently about the way in which Wikipedia has been taken over, including experiences we can vouch for ourselves, really do suggest that the "people's encyclopedia" is moving rapidly toward a complete breakdown of confidence, particularly on subjects that challenge common theoretical assumptions or the "consensus" that underpins orthodox science.

A recent physorg.com article cited a report indicating a ten-fold increase in the number of "editors" leaving Wikipedia between the first quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009. Whilst Jimbo Wales was understantably quick to defend his encyclopedia, the figures speak for themselves and the hard question needs to be tackled. Why is Wikipedia in the wars? [More...]

[jjohnson]

I urge every forum reader who uses Wikipedia to read this Thunderblog and fill out the simple 2 minute survey linked to it. This concerns the 'editing' of "pseudoscience' subjects like plasma and electrical cosmology in order to keep them out of the mainstream, by Wiki editors who are members of that mainstream. It is part of the overall effort to suspend discussion and controversy from the pages of scientific subjects in order to keep projecting the 'consensus' viewpoints as "facts".

The idea of Wikipedia is not, in its founder's view, to be a tool to keep people from thinking. It is supposed to be a fount of reliable and free knowledge that anyone may use, and improve one's knowledge thereby. Holding back differing opinions is not a good step. Wikipedia is not a Debating Club; but neither should each subject be allowed to become a closed subject, "no questions or alternate ideas allowed by the approved editor" which might conceivably lead to a better science.

I personally would not care if there were separate headings for the different scientific approaches to cosmology, but binning the traditional view into the "fact" category while the other into the "pseudoscience fringe" category is not a very professional approach by people who probably consider themselves professionals. Wikipedia is an excellent, very often useful and factual resource to all of us. It is inconceivable that it is letting dogmatic practitioners in certain areas of physics use it to dominate the thinking of the more lay readers and to prejudice them against other viewpoints by others who use the same path and physics to yield a different picture of the mechanics and forces at work in the universe. Agreeing to disagree in a healthy exchange of ideas keeps science vibrant and moving ahead, whereas suppression and dismissive tactics will keep it in a boring, non-progressing circular orbit.

[allynh]

Check out the many articles discussing Wikipedia at:

The Register
http://www.theregister.co.uk/

Start with the following article and follow the various links in the page.

Wikipedia springs free labor leak
http://www.theregister.co.uk/

This is a classic, with many key links.

Wikipedia black helicopters circle Utah's Traverse Mountain
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/06 ... overstock/

Google would have ceased to exist if not for Wikipedia.

Google and the Great Wikipedia Feedback Loop
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/26 ... ps_google/

[mharratsc]

Well dear friends- good news!

In the light of all this Wikipedia talk, I went to Google and searched 'plasma cosmology'...

... guess what topped the list at Google?

Plasma Cosmology .net
Plasma Cosmology, by contrast, acknowledges the electrodynamic nature of the universe. Gravity and inertia are NOT the only forces at work. ...
http://www.plasmacosmology.net/ - Cached -

Wikipedia came in second!! Eat that, ScienceApologist! Who's yer daddy?!

Soupdragon is!!!

Way to go, Soupdragon! This is like winning the SuperBowl of the Internet!! Bravo!!


Mike H.

[popster1]

Wikipedia springs free labor leak
http://www.theregister.co.uk/

The direct link to that interesting article is: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/24 ... declining/

[SWAMP Yankee]

I googled this knucklehead I think you will get quite a chuckle out of this.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sci ... ected=true
seems like he ought to be banned

happy new year people

[RayTomes]

I wrote the following blog article almost 3 years ago on Wikipedia being broke.
http://ray.tomes.biz/b2/index.php/a/2007/02/02/is_wikipedia_broke_anti_cycles_behaviour

However it is still a very useful tool at times.

[allynh]

Hah! Yes, thanks for fixing the link.

Then there are the articles by Lawrence Solomon, and his Wikipedia woes, that started me reading the comment pages on Wiki a bit more carefully.

Wikipedia's Zealots: Solomon
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blog ... lomon.aspx

Hide your name on Wicked Pedia: Solomon
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blog ... lomon.aspx

This is the latest sequence of Wiki fun that started on December 19th.

Lawrence Solomon: Wikipedia’s climate doctor
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blog ... octor.aspx

Lawrence Solomon: Wikipedia's hockey stick wars
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blog ... -wars.aspx

He is also the author of the book, _The Deniers_. Here are some of the articles that became the book.

The Deniers Series
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blog ... niers.aspx

Lawrence Solomon articles
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blog ... fault.aspx

[RayTomes]

...
Then there are the articles by Lawrence Solomon, and his Wikipedia woes, that started me reading the comment pages on Wiki a bit more carefully.
...

This is interesting because in a way the big problems with regard to climate change are linked to the earlier problems with cycles. You see, there are very definite cycles in climate and the same cycles are found in the Sun. It beggars belief that human activity is affecting the Sun.

As a result of following your links above I eventually came to this page http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=3512 which states in part:

The measured global temperature record which started around 1856 shows that the Earth was in a warming cycle until around 1880. The CO2 record shows that CO2 was increasing by about 0.21ppmv/year over this period.

During the cooling cycle which followed from 1880 to 1910, the CO2 concentration increased at a rate of about 0.30ppmv/year.

The next warming cycle from 1910 to 1942 saw a dramatic increase in global temperature, but the rate of increase in CO2 concentration only grew to 0.33ppmv over this time period.

The well documented global cooling period from 1942 to 1975 that had the world concerned about an impending return to the equivalent of the Little Ice Age, had a contemporaneous rise in atmospheric CO2 that equated to 0.63ppmv/year; almost twice the increase in CO2 of the precious warming cycle.

During the warming that took place from 1975 to 1998, the rate of CO2 increase took another dramatic jump to 1.54ppmv/year, but this was followed by an increase to 1.91ppmv/year that we are currently experiencing during the present ongoing cooling cycle.

Each successive cooling cycle has had an increase in the rate of CO2 growth over the previous warming cycle, indicating that there is no possible correlation of CO2 with global warming.

...

One of the known climate cycles averages about 53 years. You will see it is clearly evident in the above dates. It peaked in the 1990s. The 208 year de Vries cycle also peaked around 2000. That is why temperatures stopped rising after the 1990s. However the 2300 year climate cycle is still going up. These same cycles are found in the Sun through proxies such as C14, and they show clearly that what happened on Earth was closely related to what happened on the sun.

It seems to me that wikipedia has to have a means to allow alternative views when such exist. People who try to prevent alternative views being shown should be banned.

[allynh]

If you get the chance track down a copy of The Great Global Warming Swindle. There is a section at the end of the special features where a scientist goes in to great detail on how he connected all of the data to the sun cycles, great and small.

I loaned my copy of the DVD to a friend so I can't find the name of the scientist in the special features, but I think that this is a similar study:

Galactic Cosmic Rays and Climate by Charles A Perry from Science Direct
http://www.greatglobalwarmingswindle.co ... harles.pdf

And here are more links discussing the Sun.

The Sun
http://www.greatglobalwarmingswindle.co.uk/thesun.html

Check out the links at the DVD site and see if there is anything you can use.

The Great Global Warming Swindle
http://www.greatglobalwarmingswindle.co.uk/index.html