| Revision as of 07:51, 23 February 2008 editOffTheFence (talk | contribs)258 edits →Personal commentary and original research← Previous edit | Revision as of 23:43, 23 February 2008 edit undoSharavanabhava (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers6,327 edits →Homeopathy article probation notification: new sectionNext edit → | ||
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| :::::It's not that I don't like the rules, but they are ill-suited to the job in this circumstance. If something that is obviously and objectively false can be cited verifiably from a "reliable source" where Misplaced Pages's narrow definition of reliable means merely that it needs to have been peer-reviewed AND where that obvious falsehood is has not been pointed out by another verifiable reliable source then that falsehood cannot be balanced within he article pages. To put it in Misplaced Pages's language: an objective falsehood can be both WP:RS and WP:VERIFIABLE, but require WP:OR to demonstrate that it is false. In the instance we have been discussing, no one in the mainstream scientific community would waste their time debunking a trivial paper like Cazin's so it just sits there ignored until someone with a specific agenda picks it up, disregards the normal processes of assessment of study quality and tendentiously exploits it. Misplaced Pages is simply a bad source from which to derive information in contentious areas, but its rules can be used to minimise the problem through interactive editing and discussion amongst editors. But this does "assume good faith". If an editor wants to deliberately engineer the inclusion of objective falsehoods then the rules are weak at preventing this.] (]) 07:43, 23 February 2008 (UTC) | :::::It's not that I don't like the rules, but they are ill-suited to the job in this circumstance. If something that is obviously and objectively false can be cited verifiably from a "reliable source" where Misplaced Pages's narrow definition of reliable means merely that it needs to have been peer-reviewed AND where that obvious falsehood is has not been pointed out by another verifiable reliable source then that falsehood cannot be balanced within he article pages. To put it in Misplaced Pages's language: an objective falsehood can be both WP:RS and WP:VERIFIABLE, but require WP:OR to demonstrate that it is false. In the instance we have been discussing, no one in the mainstream scientific community would waste their time debunking a trivial paper like Cazin's so it just sits there ignored until someone with a specific agenda picks it up, disregards the normal processes of assessment of study quality and tendentiously exploits it. Misplaced Pages is simply a bad source from which to derive information in contentious areas, but its rules can be used to minimise the problem through interactive editing and discussion amongst editors. But this does "assume good faith". If an editor wants to deliberately engineer the inclusion of objective falsehoods then the rules are weak at preventing this.] (]) 07:43, 23 February 2008 (UTC) | ||
| :::::p.s. " you seem to think that the verifiability policy is optional". You have confused necessity and sufficiency. Verifiability is a necessity and rightly so. But, it is not sufficient and it can be made to seem sufficient and this is a problem. "do not make judgments about the competency of sources or the truth" Huh? In an article one would not do this unless a verifiable and reliable source could be found for it, but you are getting very close to demanding that we come to these discussions having put all ability to judge the quality of evidence to one side. I would not include material that was not verifiable nor from a reliable source, but I would not deliberately put in anything that I had been shown was unreliable in the normal sense because that is a matter of simple human ethics. Would you add something that you knew to be false in an article by exploiting the verifiability, reliable source rules?] (]) 07:51, 23 February 2008 (UTC) | :::::p.s. " you seem to think that the verifiability policy is optional". You have confused necessity and sufficiency. Verifiability is a necessity and rightly so. But, it is not sufficient and it can be made to seem sufficient and this is a problem. "do not make judgments about the competency of sources or the truth" Huh? In an article one would not do this unless a verifiable and reliable source could be found for it, but you are getting very close to demanding that we come to these discussions having put all ability to judge the quality of evidence to one side. I would not include material that was not verifiable nor from a reliable source, but I would not deliberately put in anything that I had been shown was unreliable in the normal sense because that is a matter of simple human ethics. Would you add something that you knew to be false in an article by exploiting the verifiability, reliable source rules?] (]) 07:51, 23 February 2008 (UTC) | ||
| == Homeopathy article probation notification == | |||
| You should be aware that Homeopathy and related articles are under probation - Editors making disruptive edits to these pages may be banned by an administrator from ] and related articles or project pages. Editors of such articles should be ''especially'' mindful of content policies, such as ], and interaction policies, such as ], ], ], and ]. Editors must be individually notified of article probation before being banned. All resulting blocks and bans shall be logged at ], and may be appealed to the ]. —] (''']''') 23:43, 23 February 2008 (UTC) | |||
Revision as of 23:43, 23 February 2008
Welcome!
Hi OffTheFence! I noticed your contributions and wanted to welcome you to the Misplaced Pages community. I hope you like it here and decide to stay.
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Happy editing! Shot info (talk) 07:51, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
- I got into a muddle with my first couple of edits on a talk page and ended up signing them twice, but I don't think I have forgotten to sign any. Could you show me an example that you think is me, please.OffTheFence (talk) 08:01, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
- Welcome to wikipedia. You and I may have different points of view on homeopathy, but I hope that we can be gentleman and follow wiki policies. I hope that we can also assume good faith WP:AGF. Because you've come on to the scene here at a similar time that some previous editors who followed me around were blocked for sockpuppetry, I hope that you have learned (or will learn) from their mistakes. DanaUllman 06:51, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
- I have no idea what you are talking about. I do not edit under my real name, because my contact details are in the public realm and when I first started engaging with members of the alt.med. community under my real name a couple showed unpleasant stalking tendencies so I retreated behind pseudonym. I do not edit at Misplaced Pages under any name other than OffTheFence. As far as I can see you are not being pursued by one individual, but many different people challenge your views because they are wrong.OffTheFence (talk) 08:01, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
p.s. I restrict my comments to the discussion pages because I currently have no desire or time to get involved with the minutiae of the stylistic requirements for the articles themselves.OffTheFence (talk) 08:04, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Personal commentary and original research
You wrote: "Linde was not a competent judge." That is not for Misplaced Pages to decide, I hope you understand our policies on WP:OR do not allow us to make judgments on the competency of reliable sources. If you have other reliable sources that are critical of Linde, they should be supplied. I really think your demands upon Dana Ullman to engage in meta-analysis are unreasonable, Linde performed a meta-analysis, and you disparaging him as incompetent does not help matters. —Whig (talk) 17:16, 22 February 2008 (UTC) This meta-analysis is flawed. Linde also had to publish a correction to his 1997 clinical meta-analysis. We are interacting on a talk page not the article itself. I have no desire to include a formal comment on Linde in the Article.OffTheFence (talk) 17:41, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
- Is Linde's correction relevant and if so why should we not comment on it in the article? —Whig (talk) 20:18, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
- Again, I'm afraid I'm not getting the point you are making. I was making an off-the-cuff comment on Linde on the Talk page. If there was a wiki on Linde himself, doubtless this fact would be relevant. In the current context it is just an amusing sidelight.OffTheFence (talk) 21:04, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
- By the way, I was so intent on the talk page http://en.wikipedia.org/Talk:Arsenicum_album of Ars alb, that I had not notice that Ullman had elected to make edits to the main article that are definitely not consensual though he claimed in the edit summary that this was the case. "23:52, 21 February 2008 DanaUllman (Talk | contribs) (6,182 bytes) (→Research studies: Changes per Talk page)" I have removed the tendentious material from his edit and made it more NPOV and verifiable. If he has a problem with this then I would suggest that he backs up what he has repeatedly claimed about the Cazin and Linde papers but has failed so far to do. OffTheFence (talk) 21:04, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
- p.s. I find the royal plural pronoun a little nauseating "I hope you understand our policies on WP:OR do not allow us to make judgments on the competency of reliable sources". In wikipedia I am just as much "us" as you are. It is not a secret boys club. It's rules are just its rules, they are not god-given tablets of stone. Clearly in the handling of material from scientific journals they are hugely deficient. As I have said elsewhere, "peer-reviewed" does not equate with high-quality. If something is peer-reviewed but demonstrably rubbish then it is not "reliable" in any sense of the word. If wikipedia's rules cannot cope with that then it is the rules that are wrong not the assessment of the evidence.OffTheFence (talk) 22:24, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
- I'm sorry you don't like Misplaced Pages's rules. You are just as much an editor as I am, but you are a new editor and you do not know the policies very well, as you seem to think that the verifiability policy is optional. It is one of the three foundational policies of Misplaced Pages, the other two are NPOV and NOR. We (and this includes you if you choose to remain an editor and abide by the policies) do not make judgments about the competency of sources or the truth, these are matters for other secondary or tertiary sources which can be cited if they are reliable and verifiable.
- p.s. I find the royal plural pronoun a little nauseating "I hope you understand our policies on WP:OR do not allow us to make judgments on the competency of reliable sources". In wikipedia I am just as much "us" as you are. It is not a secret boys club. It's rules are just its rules, they are not god-given tablets of stone. Clearly in the handling of material from scientific journals they are hugely deficient. As I have said elsewhere, "peer-reviewed" does not equate with high-quality. If something is peer-reviewed but demonstrably rubbish then it is not "reliable" in any sense of the word. If wikipedia's rules cannot cope with that then it is the rules that are wrong not the assessment of the evidence.OffTheFence (talk) 22:24, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
—Whig (talk) 04:25, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
- It's not that I don't like the rules, but they are ill-suited to the job in this circumstance. If something that is obviously and objectively false can be cited verifiably from a "reliable source" where Misplaced Pages's narrow definition of reliable means merely that it needs to have been peer-reviewed AND where that obvious falsehood is has not been pointed out by another verifiable reliable source then that falsehood cannot be balanced within he article pages. To put it in Misplaced Pages's language: an objective falsehood can be both WP:RS and WP:VERIFIABLE, but require WP:OR to demonstrate that it is false. In the instance we have been discussing, no one in the mainstream scientific community would waste their time debunking a trivial paper like Cazin's so it just sits there ignored until someone with a specific agenda picks it up, disregards the normal processes of assessment of study quality and tendentiously exploits it. Misplaced Pages is simply a bad source from which to derive information in contentious areas, but its rules can be used to minimise the problem through interactive editing and discussion amongst editors. But this does "assume good faith". If an editor wants to deliberately engineer the inclusion of objective falsehoods then the rules are weak at preventing this.OffTheFence (talk) 07:43, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
- p.s. " you seem to think that the verifiability policy is optional". You have confused necessity and sufficiency. Verifiability is a necessity and rightly so. But, it is not sufficient and it can be made to seem sufficient and this is a problem. "do not make judgments about the competency of sources or the truth" Huh? In an article one would not do this unless a verifiable and reliable source could be found for it, but you are getting very close to demanding that we come to these discussions having put all ability to judge the quality of evidence to one side. I would not include material that was not verifiable nor from a reliable source, but I would not deliberately put in anything that I had been shown was unreliable in the normal sense because that is a matter of simple human ethics. Would you add something that you knew to be false in an article by exploiting the verifiability, reliable source rules?OffTheFence (talk) 07:51, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Homeopathy article probation notification
You should be aware that Homeopathy and related articles are under probation - Editors making disruptive edits to these pages may be banned by an administrator from homeopathy and related articles or project pages. Editors of such articles should be especially mindful of content policies, such as WP:NPOV, and interaction policies, such as WP:CIVIL, WP:NPA, WP:3RR, and WP:POINT. Editors must be individually notified of article probation before being banned. All resulting blocks and bans shall be logged at Talk:Homeopathy/Article probation#Log of blocks and bans, and may be appealed to the Administrators' noticeboard. —Whig (talk) 23:43, 23 February 2008 (UTC)