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egregious abuse of Misplaced Pages in nearly all climate change BLPs

Mr. Wales,

For the last year I have struggled in vain to balance the abuses of the rights of living climate scientists the world over to have a fair, neutral, accurate biography. A year later, it's safe to say that I have achieved practically nothing, and the reason I have achieved nothing is that your gang of mostly immature, often 20-something editors and admins have closed ranks in nearly all instances to obstruct and thwart all progress.

I am not the first to notice this. Lawrence Solomon has, of course, written about it in the Financial Post in Canada a few times, and has blamed the situation personally on two of your editors, William M. Connolley and Kim D. Petersen. I disagree with Lawrence Solomon in blaming these two editors. You created Misplaced Pages. You allow your editors to do what they do. You are the founder and by remaining neutral on flagrant NPOV and BLP abuses, you are responsible, and you should answer to the public.

Does the public understand that millions of dollars of charitable donations are spent by Misplaced Pages in funding the smearing of the professional reputations of great living scientists such as Richard Lindzen, Roger Pielke Sr., or S. Fred Singer each day?

I have spent countless hours of the last year defending in vain the biographies of Richard Lindzen, Ross McKitrick, Garth Paltridge, Roger A. Pielke, and Lawrence Solomon. I have even helped out the gang in defending the likes of Rajendra K. Pachauri and Michael E. Mann occasionally. I've cleaned up Gavin Schmidt's and Raymond Pierrehumbert's biographies, but this has does little to soften the environmentalist, agenda-driven hatred your editors feel towards anyone perceived to be skeptical of anthropogenic climate change.

In the whole year, I have not received a single word of support from anyone in the Misplaced Pages Foundation, and practically none of the Misplaced Pages admins have ever helped either. A few skeptics in the admin community have helped, a bit, but most of those apparently see the fight as futile, and no one who simply cares about fairness and policy has ever stepped in to help. This is wrong, I realise. An editor, ATren, did step in, but he seems to have been finally burnt out and driven away now. Alex Harvey (talk) 15:35, 9 March 2010 (UTC) Meanwhile, my own talk page, unedited since I joined, testifies to the bullying I have received, instead, from your editors.

I should like to let you know that I have in principle approval to write up a first hand, insider's account of what goes on here, at the blog of a very prominent climate scientist. If published, my piece will not be written off as the rantings of a denier, because the scientist is well respected by the mainstream media, and he is not a skeptic. It will largely serve to independently confirm the observations of Mr. Solomon. Except, as I say, I disagree with Lawrence Solomon on one important point: I believe that you are personally responsible; it is wrong to blame all of this on the actions of two well-intentioned, fanatical volunteers.

Without an effective leader, it is my serious view that Misplaced Pages needs to be forcibly taken over either commercially or by government, for the good of the people. I will be leaving Misplaced Pages, and advocating for such a change, shortly. If, on the other hand, you would like to help me fix the BLPs of climate scientists, there is a small amount of energy left in me to continue.

Regards,

Alex Harvey (talk) 07:33, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Diffs would help. Sole Soul (talk) 07:52, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Sole Soul, if you'd like to see this in recent context then go to Lindzen's talk page and start at the top. If you really want to understand the problem, I'd suggest reading all of the talk pages of all the above scientists. Alex Harvey (talk) 08:12, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. I'm starting to read Lindzen's talk page (just to understand). Sole Soul (talk) 08:20, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I just took the challenge and had a look at Talk:Richard Lindzen where I see a recent and somewhat heated discussion concerning whether it is reasonable to use the term "contrarian" in relation to Lindzen. In Richard Lindzen we find (and I confirmed the reference) that a 2001 article in Newsweek includes "Lindzen clearly relishes the role of naysayer. He'll even expound on how weakly lung cancer is linked to cigarette smoking." My conclusion (from this and more references) is that Alex Harvey is misreading a very reasonable consensus. The article has plenty of positive information about Lindzen, but also properly records his contrarian position. Johnuniq (talk) 09:37, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

By which company or government does Alex propose Misplaced Pages be taken over? Tasty monster (TS on one of those new fangled telephone thingies) 13:26, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I do think this is an issue worthy of attention, although whenever I have checked articles in the past, I have been mostly unimpressed with the claims that these articles are particularly problematic. Diffs would be helpful, because to assess and comment on a very broad array of edits is difficult. Particular examples give us a good opportunity to examine what is going on in light of our broader principles of NPOV and BLP.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:46, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

The discussion at Lindzen have focused, since before Christmas, on whether or not it is appropriate for a great living scientist's biography to be given ~ 600 words for his career and accomplishments, and ~ 1400 words to discussions and refutations of his stance on global warming. That said, if you are claiming that you have actually looked at the climate change biographies, and found nothing much wrong there, then I'd say that's pretty much all I need to know. I'll probably quote you on this, if you don't mind. Alex Harvey (talk) 13:57, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I think it would be very easy to write something completely unfair to me by quoting that comment out of context - please do not do that. If you want to quote me, give me a specific diff so I can comment on something in particular.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:02, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

"The discussion at Lindzen have focused, since before Christmas, on whether or not it is appropriate for a great living scientist's biography to be given ~ 600 words for his career and accomplishments, and ~ 1400 words to discussions and refutations of his stance on global warming."

I think Alex means this and this. I find the arguments in these diffs completely legitimate, though I agree with the general sentiment that Misplaced Pages articles tend to give undue wight to recent and controversial subjects. Sole Soul (talk) 14:49, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Mr. Wales, if you are concerned that I could quote you out of context, would you clarify the context of that remark then? I mean specifically, "...whenever I have checked articles in the past, I have been mostly unimpressed with the claims that articles are particularly problematic." Does it mean that you think it's fine for amateurs to write up sloppy, inaccurate biographies of living people and get it all wrong? Or do you mean that it's not fine, but it's just that other Misplaced Pages BLPs are even worse? (I wouldn't know about this, as I've focused exclusively on the climate change BLP pages.) Or do you mean that you think Misplaced Pages has largely got the climate change BLPs right? Alex Harvey (talk) 15:18, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Show me a specific diff or set of diffs, and I can comment accordingly.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:09, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

If I may comment here as well, what it sounds like is that you have a point of view that is pretty much in the minority, and you are upset that this minority point of view is not given equal footing to the mainstream point of view. But, per WP:NPOV, we simply do not do that. And your characterization of other editors as "amateurs" whose work is "sloppy inaccurate" is not really doing much to contribute to a collegial editing environment. Tarc (talk) 15:26, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

• I don't think that anyone is keeping User:Alexh19740110 from adding additional information to the article which may serve to flesh out our article on Richard Lindzen, I suggest that he takes that route rather than trying to intimidate his way to having information removed of which he apparently does not approve. Unomi (talk) 15:45, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Jimbo, as a previously uninvolved editor, I believe that I can shed some light on the situation. About 3 months ago, I began editing our Climatic Research Unit hacking incident article and inadvertently got caught up in a battle between two groups of warring factions. From what I've been able to gather, this battle has been going on for years. Both sides routinely ignore our policies on neutrality, verifiability and biographies of living people and only seek to include content that advances their POV while simultaneously excluding content that is against their POV. I attempted in good faith to improve our Climatic Research Unit hacking incident article's neutrality, and was routinely attacked and harassed by both warring factions. In my short time in this topic space, this war has been brought up at several venues including most of our noticeboards (BLP, OR, RS, NPOV, FRINGE, COI, Admin), not to mention WP:Mediation Cabal and ArbCom but the community has consistently failed to resolve the situation. The issue is currently at WP:General_sanctions/Climate_change_probation where it also remains unresolved.

Neither side seems to care about the harm that they're doing to Misplaced Pages. My personal feeling is that editors who care more about advancing an agenda (rather than building an encyclopedia) are not an asset to this project but a detriment.

In any case, I gave up in frustration and no longer edit any articles in this topic space. Since someone else has brought the problem to your attention, I thought a neutral voice might help understand the situation.

BTW, sorry for the lack of diffs. The edit histories of all these pages are too long and complicated to sift through. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 17:03, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Dear Jimbo, As a newcomer to Misplaced Pages I have followed these two factions battle it out on climate change issues since November last year. I completely support 'A Quest For Knowledge' frustration.

Here is my suggestions: Temporarily remove ALL Misplaced Pages pages related to Climate science as they now stand for a period of 6 months. If the kids are not playing nice then take the toys away! This will hopefully discourage the fanatical elements on both sides of the debate.130.232.214.10 (talk) 17:30, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

All of the above boils down to WP:IDONTLIKEIT, occasioned by frustration that an article has not been slanted in favour of one POV. -- ChrisO (talk) 19:43, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Mr. Wales:

Those saying that a cabal of extremely POV editors have hijacked the Climate articles are completely correct. Those denying it appear to be members of that very Cabal. They are assiduous in their pursuit of having WP represent their point of view and only their point of view. They are so determined that they hunt down any entry like this and jump on it to make sure it does not interfere with the party line. I think it would be instructive to follow a few conversations by those saying that people complaining to you are somehow fringe elements crying foul because their minority opinion is being trampled. They are correct that the complainers are (at any given point in time) in the minority. However, that is because they drive off and even have banned anyone with the temerity to voice a contrary opinion. You *will* see that (as above with Alex Harvey) eventually after many (many, many) incidents of baiting, badgering, bullying, etc, that people get frustrated and become intemperate. Alex should not have been so heavy handed, but he was surely driven to it by a level of frustration that no ordinary person would bear. Certainly, the ones doing the systematic baiting and banning show not nearly the temperance of their victims.

You should not be expected to personally intervene, even in things as shocking as this. However, I implore you to charge somebody with selecting a group of truly neutral editors with a background that allows them to judge a little science and logic to review all of the Climate articles (particularly the 'memory-holed' missing article on Climategate) and help to bring them back to some semblance of reality.

Like others, I took a stab at trying to cure the ills of the bogus thing attempting to make it appear that there is no such thing as Climategate. Like others, my work was quickly and surely sent to the memory hole. About two thirds of what I wrote has simply disappeared.

Here is something to ponder: those who have found that the Climate articles are POV and have attempted to make corrections have been bullied right out of Misplaced Pages -- many of them banned outright. Nobody, as far as I can tell, who has been a pro AGW POV pusher or sympathizer has been pushed out. There are a fair number of people who were baited and bullied out of the picture -- more, I would say, than the side that pushed them out. The side that pushed them out has the most annoying habit of saying that the majority supports their POV and pushing out anyone who disagrees. What is wrong with that picture?

Let's say, for the sake of argument that I am an egregious and disruptive POV pusher myself and/or a sock or whatever else they use to ride people out of town on a rail. Still, would you entertain what I feel is an idea that has some hope of restoring balance to this subject area and removing the terrible black eye that is the denial (ironic, no?) of the existence of Climategate? Here is my idea: anyone who has made more than a tiny number of edits to the body of Climate related articles, should recuse themselves or be recused forcibly from making any changes to these articles for a year. Any admin that is not clearly at arm's length from the subject should similarly be recused. There are a bunch of admins who clearly are involved and more who have participated in a way that makes them similarly unfit.

Allow the recused editors to help to identify the articles in question (there are a lot and about half should be removed IMO). Send the new admins and editors out on a mission to tag, hack, slash the obvious stuff and allow the clear interest in the community at large to bring new editors in to do the 'heavy lifting' of article re-write.

During this one-year hiatus, the WP community needs to find some way to prevent a long term campaign of subtle vandalism like this from happening again or at the least some effective and rapid mechanism for correcting it when it has been found out. This stain has existed in WP for years and the Climategate blot has existed for months and appears impossible to correct. Misplaced Pages in other languages generally have a proper 'Climategate' entry, for instance. I expect that is because they are not within reach of the community of gatekeepers that have hijacked the English version.

The above is an extreme prescriptive and this entire entry (my text included) is a cheeky intrusion on the time of someone in the public eye who is very busy. However, there appears to be no mechanism in place to allow an effective way to fix this and the problem, is severe. There is no question at all that the Climate articles have been manipulated by a group of editors with a clear point of view. There are even conflicts of interest that do not stop some editors. The articles reflect very badly on Misplaced Pages. They are inaccurate or misleading themselves and so taint what has become an import subject affecting the public. They also call into question the relative verity and fairness of the entire enterprise. If this subject area can be so thoroughly dominated, controlled and skewed in a way that decreases their quality, then why not others? There is no shortage of people in this world with axes to grind, of that you can be sure.

I *LOVE* this encyclopedia. It is a thing of great beauty, warts and all. It is one of my favorite things. Its system of governance (and/or lack thereof) has allowed it to grow and flourish in a spectacular way. I am sure you would be understandably reluctant to tinker with this formula for success. I am not asking you to intervene personally in the particulars, because I do not feel that would be appropriate. I am asking you to intervene to have trusted admins and editors bring order and balance to an area of Misplaced Pages, that despite its excellent systems of governance (and I particularly *like* the lack thereof part) has been injured by (perhaps well-meaning) zealots.

I believe there has been impropriety. However, I am not asking that you act on that assumption. I am asking you to act because whether it exists or not there is a strong appearance of impropriety and, even if it is only that, it is stain on this grand enterprise that should be and can be removed. Just fixing the appearance of a problem will increase trust and confidence in the work as a whole and at the very least there is very definitely the appearance of a problem. DeepNorth (talk) 22:44, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

You wrote, among other things, that you "took a stab at trying to cure the ills of the bogus thing attempting to make it appear that there is no such thing as Climategate." Can you point me to more specifics? I just looked for the article, it is there, and does not seem to deny the existence of this incident at all. Not only does the event appear to be presented pretty comprehensively in the main article, we even have a separate article detailing the contents of the leaked emails: Climatic Research Unit documents. Now, I'm sure many complaints could be made about how this has been written about at various times. Yet, I don't think it is particularly helpful to wildly overstate the case, as you appear to have done. How does English Misplaced Pages's coverage of this incident differ from other language versions? Please be detailed.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 00:30, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Major part of the dispute is about naming the article: Should the name of the article be Climategate? If not should Climategate redirect to Climatic Research Unit hacking incident or Climatic Research Unit documents? Should Climatic Research Unit hacking incident be renamed to Climatic Research Unit email and document controversy. Sole Soul (talk) 01:21, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

There are no so-called "gatekeepers". There are, on the other hand, a small but determined minority of people - many of them brand-new editors who have been urged to come here by anti-science blogs - who have wasted a huge amount of time complaining that their POV is not sufficiently covered, arguing that partisan nicknames should be used instead of neutral and descriptive article titles, citing the latest blog-promoted controversies as issues of earth-shattering importance that must be covered immediately, and so on and so forth. They are basically partisan campaigners, seeking to use Misplaced Pages as a soapbox and treating Misplaced Pages as a battleground. DeepNorth is a case in point, as his short list of contributions shows - to date, he has not contributed to a single article, instead spending all of his time arguing on talk pages and posting rants such as the one above. DeepNorth's complaint is essentially that his preferred POV does not dominate the article as he presumably wishes. As for Jimbo's question of how other language versions have treated the controversy: the quality of the coverage is very varied, to be honest. The English version is (as you would expect given the location of the controversy) the most comprehensive and the best-sourced version. Non-English versions are generally shorter, less well written and very variably sourced. NPOV, verifiability, undue weight and (especially) BLP have been continuous problems but the high degree of scrutiny of the English version has helped to tackle these problems reasonably well. -- ChrisO (talk) 01:55, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I think there's a pretty strong case to be made for "Climategate" as the name for the article, as it is clearly the most common name in the press for this. I think it fairly obvious why people don't want it called that - but that call is not up to Misplaced Pages. We must call it what it is called, and what it is called, is climategate. (This is not a decree, but my point is that it is pretty obvious that - contrary to the wild claims of coverup and so on - we do have a well-sourced article that is comprehensive and informative and fair... but with a pretty silly title that no one uses. The scandal here is clearly not the "hacking incident" - about which virtually nothing is known. The scandal is the content of the emails, which has proven to be deeply embarrassing (whether fairly or unfairly) to certain people.) The result of the silly title is that there is traction (unfairly) for claims that Misplaced Pages is suppressing something.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 03:26, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

When people search for Climategate in google, the first result is "Climatic Research Unit hacking incident" from Misplaced Pages, which is really silly. I think a good compromise and the logical thing is to redirect Climategate to Climatic Research Unit documents. Sole Soul (talk) 05:27, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Or simply redirect to the article titled 'Climategate'. The 'documents' article was created (partly) to decrease the size of the article. So by the same logic we have 'Climategate documents'. I see a name change as a minor issue in relation to how we ended up here on Jimbo's talk page. I believe I was the one who first brought up the comment of how different language versions of WP carry a different title. My point was that other language versions have reached a different conclusion (consensus). Should we not try to learn from them in regards to both process and content?130.232.214.10 (talk) 07:01, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Let's assume that "Climategate" is the natural name for the article in question. (I have no idea, since I don't follow American media.) Here is why the article is still not called "Climategate": Initially the term was not (or not widely) used, so that the article obviously started with a different name. Then there was a huge influx of new editors who were as clueless about Misplaced Pages as they were about the background of the debate (as opposed to the partisan information that they had just read on a blog). At times the talk page had to be archived several times a day because of the walls of text that were being produced. Naturally that produced a defence reflex in many established Wikipedians.

At the time when it would have been reasonable to rename the article to "Climategate", the discussions had long ago deteriorated to the point that everything that one side proposed was rejected by the other side because they proposed it. That's a perfectly natural reaction (see reactance (psychology)) and occurs frequently on Misplaced Pages. That's why it's an exceptionally bad idea for a partisan blog to incite its readers to swarm to Misplaced Pages: It backfires. Hans Adler 07:07, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

For the record, the article's name has been discussed to death on talk pages but the general upshot is that "Climategate" is a POV nickname, like "Rathergate" or "Attorneygate"; NPOV specifically requires neutrality of article names; Misplaced Pages:Article titles#Descriptive titles specifically rejects -gate nicknames in favour of neutral descriptive names ("Dismissal of US attorneys controversy", not "Attorneygate"); and Misplaced Pages:Words to avoid#Controversy and scandal also specifially deprecates -gate nicknames as they "imply wrongdoing or a point of view" to discredit the subject. The bottom line is that "Climategate" was coined by one political faction to frame the issue from a particular POV. The term is pejorative, partisan and non-descriptive, and its use here would go against NPOV and Misplaced Pages's long-standing avoidance of such terminology. It has been proposed repeatedly by a small minority of editors, but the majority of editors - from both sides of the dispute - have recognised that a POV nickname is either unacceptable or is unlikely to win consensus. -- ChrisO (talk) 08:58, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

There was a case to be made at some point that Misplaced Pages could not and should not endorse the nickname, because it would be POV pushing to do so. However, that point has long since passed, and it is now overwhelmingly the name of the incident in all media. You can find examples of the use of the term by people in favor of the term and against the term. It is no longer POV pushing to call it that - the name was coined, and the name stuck. It is an abuse of the notion of NPOV to claim that no article can have a title that some people don't like, see for example Swiftboating for just one example of a political term that stuck.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:42, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

What you say about the term's provenance seems clear to me. I think the real question is whether the coinage was successful: Whether basically everybody uses that term now. Writing from Vienna I can only say that it's certainly not the case in German-speaking countries. I have no opinion on this. Hans Adler 09:25, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

It is hardly unheard of either. Try Google with the words: climategate wissenschaft (ger. science), and select News. Hit #1. 10 March, Frankfurter Allgemeine (Newspaper). I think it depends on your chosen source of information. There are clearly sources both avoiding using Climategate and sources choosing to use it. A green blog will not use it while a critical blog will. The main concern should be that there are mainstream sources using it.130.232.214.10 (talk) 10:32, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

ChrisO, a thought has occurred to me: While "-gate" is indeed a word to avoid, WP:AVOID is only a guideline. WP:NPOV is a policy. When policies and guidelines conflict, policy always trumps guidelines. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 17:41, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Both warring factions are guilty of treating Misplaced Pages as a WP:BATTLEGROUND. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 02:12, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Dear Mr. Wales, I am rather taken aback by your responses. I had supposed that you would either ignore me, or remain neutral, or have someone respond by proxy, or maybe say something that would weakly but without commitment acknowledge the problem. It was my hope, I must admit, although not my expectation, that you would actually take the matter seriously and investigate it before responding. I'll have to say that I didn't even consider that in the worst case you would get back in a few hours and just casually declare your sympathy with the editors who wrote these disgraceful climate change biographies. You say you don't want me to quote you out of context, but you said what you said. I have no intention of being unfair to you but the public has the right to know this. I realise that you're not a climate scientist and I can't expect you to already understand the full extent of the problem, but it seems inconceivable to me that you haven't looked at, say, S. Fred Singer's disgraceful article, after Lawrence Solomon has repeatedly pointed it out to you in the press. I just double-checked it, and it's still a disgrace. So I can only conclude that you think it's roughly what Singer deserves. Anyhow, here's some news for you: It's Not. It's not your right to allow juvenile, anonymous trolls to trash the lives of great living scientists -- even if you think they're bad people. If I type Fred Singer into Google, I am directed immediately to your site. I see two brief paragraphs about his life, and then it's just environmentalist propaganda all the way to the finish. It's not right. And you ask me for diffs, but I can't for the life of me understand why you would want diffs. How could you possibly think that my experiences can be communicated as a convenient set of diffs for you to review? I am talking about disputes that have lasted weeks, months, and in the Lindzen article case, years, and you ask me for diffs. I can't spoon feed this to you. If you want to understand what one must endure in order to fix this awful problem you have created, you will need to either read the talk pages from beginning to end, or read my publicly archived contribution history. It seems pretty clear to me, though, that you're really not very interested. I'd still like you to prove me wrong though... Alex Harvey (talk) 11:20, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

If you want to understand my position on these matters, you're going to have to help me. This is a two way street. I can easily go through various articles and point out diffs that I think are good, and diffs that I think are awful. This is not unique to this area, of course. But me hand-picking things that I don't like or do like is not likely to help you understand my views. It will be better for you to show me specific problems and ask my opinion in particular. I went through a few of the articles you mentioned, yesterday, but not Fred Singer in particular. Why don't you walk me through your current objections to the article - I can try to look at it tonight.

Yesterday I carefully read Garth Paltridge and so I am fully prepared to comment on that one. Can you point me to what you find objectionable about it, and then I can respond precisely with my views.

Please understand that your attitude here is disturbing to me and makes it hard for me to engage you in a serious discussion - I feel that you've got an agenda, that you're looking to quote me out of context, and that you're unwilling to seriously engage me in a discussion of the real issues here.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:07, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Alex, it seems to me that your interest in these scientists is primarily for their role in the AGW debate, is that not so? What is it that you take objection to in that article? Unomi (talk) 12:43, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

(editconflict) Dear Alex. I'm an uninvolved editor. Let's get this clear.

• A war is being fought. And this war is being fought over the backs of scientists, science organizations, newspapers and peer reviewed magazines and yes, Misplaced Pages. Any problems related to this war will always be visible in Misplaced Pages, as much as they are visible in the news, blogs and what not. To expect anything different is unrealistic. The only way to prevent this is to assign babysitters to each and every editor that touches one of the climate related articles. This is not possible of course. Time will produce the truth (or whatever will pass for it) for the future. It has always been that way and will always remain. And because Misplaced Pages only follows and never leads, it will always be a tad behind on what is the current 'truth'. But unlike your old history books in school, this 'book' gets corrected.
• It is not Misplaced Pages's duty to investigate real world events. Misplaced Pages presents the 'truth' as it is presented by the world. If you want to change that, I advise you to hire a few authors and start writing books and editorials. Or get an investigative journalist and start bringing the truth. Anything but edit Misplaced Pages would be my advice.
• You ask for support, but for any request of support, you will have to show that someone is bypassing the rules. You cannot just walk in and say: "This is the truth, now do as I say". So get diffs about editors not following the rules of Misplaced Pages and prepare your case.
• I suggest you also take your cause up with some people that claim to have created the Internet as a whole. This 'thing' they have created has been feeding an 'awful problem' on Misplaced Pages, blogs and news websites around the world and they clearly don't care about it. And definitely do something about Gutenberg, I mean with all those books out there.. and 'awful problem'. Or perhaps you just need to change your expectations a bit. I don't know....<sarcasm definitely intended here>
• Now please try again to state your case, and this time please with less rhetoric and more facts, news paper articles and diffs. Wales is listening I'm sure and when needed, necessary changes will be made.

The factions will war, and from their ashes consensus will rise like a phoenix. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:11, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Hans, if I'm not mistaken, the article started off as "Climategate". There is already a broad consensus to change the article name to something neutral, but the process was derailed after an editor started making false allegations of canvassing. Although that editor has been warned by the admins, the article still hasn't been renamed. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 13:39, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Jimbo, you should be more careful with what you say. If you were a newbie editor saying things like that, you'd risk being instantly attacked for being a "denier", "anti-science" and possibly called an "idiot" or a "yahoo". Even established editors such as myself are routinely attacked by the editors on these pages. The admins who are supposed to be monitoring the situation, for the most part, have done little to resolve the situation. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 15:39, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately we are stuck in two middles, either they do entirely too much and assume powers they aren't granted or they sit on their thumbs. Wiki-Politics my friend. Hell In A Bucket (talk) 15:51, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

• This is really an effect of something noted by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth; the scientific literature is dominated by near-total acceptance of anthropogenic global warming, with disputes at the edges around some issues not really shaking the core consensus, whereas over half the references he found in the non-scientific media were sceptical of global warming. The natural result is that the few climate sceptics in the scientific community receive massively disproportionate coverage of their views from the (largely political, not scientific) opponents of action to curb AGW. I don't know how this can be fixed. It's actually a fundamental question about Misplaced Pages and how we reflect topics where there is a significant difference between the scientific and the political debate - much the same as we find with evolution, in fact, where the creationists have been campaigning for years on a "teach the controversy" platform very much like the AGW sceptics like to "teach the controversy" about AGW by focusing on the limited areas of scientific difference and ignoring the fact that, for example, no scientific body of national or international standing denies AGW. Guy (Help!) 17:22, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
  • Well, the issue of what is happening is scientific, but the issue of what to do about it is primarily political, does not have any consensus in the United States and in many other places, and is clouded by piss-poor amateurism on the part of scientists in the public arena (responding responsibly to opponents; responding to FOIA requests; being open in a way required to allow the public to trust them) and some scandalous behavior by scientists in the scientific arena . A string of very public scandalous behavior erodes the public's trust. In terms of the politics of climate-change issues, "teach the controversy" is the only course for Misplaced Pages to take. There is a consensus about global warming in general on the science among the reliable sources, but, as the UK government's chief science advisor says (first diff), there isn't a consensus on everything. There is absolutely no consensus on the politics among reliable sources. Misplaced Pages's main problem with this is a lack of a real commitment to adhere to NPOV because tempers are often high and conduct is often barely regulated. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 18:57, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Jimbo, I'm disappointed to see you expressing opinions supporting a partisan term used to promote fringe or pseudoscientific viewpoints in an area of contrived political controversy over a clear majority scientific view. Please note that while the partisan term "climategate" is common, it is by no means universal and is treated carefully by more reputable sources – for example, Hacked climate science emails | Environment | guardian.co.uk . . dave souza, talk 17:21, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Dave, Jimbo said it doesn't matter what we think is "right". Misplaced Pages is not the judge, we just follow where the sources lead us. I don't know if the anyone really did anything wrong in Climategate or what effect, if any, it will have on climate science in the long run. However, I do know that there is currently a scandal and that it is widely called Climategate. To deny this is to deny the social phenomenom currently taking place. Describing and documenting is not advocacy or promotion! I was originally an uninvolved editor who searched for the term "Climategate" and found the controversy that had been stewing for months...and left the following argument. Remember, WP:TITLE states that "the choice of title is not dependent on whether a name is "right" in a moral or political sense" and "Misplaced Pages describes current usage but cannot prescribe a particular usage or invent new names." Moogwrench (talk) 06:58, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Sir: I agree with AH that there is a lack of even-handed treatment of climate scientists in Misplaced Pages, and it is a disgrace. I have been paying attention here only a short time, but I have seen contrarians with sound references driven out by a pack of harridans - Nightmote is one I recall. I have seen skepticism dismissed as the foundation of scientific method. Peremptory dismissal was all that was accorded a suggestion I made a month ago that "Climategate should be reserved for an article discussing the perception of scientific scandal, its dimensions, and the denials of same. It will have the advantage of the ability to incorporate other events of similar nature such as the China UHI revelation, the pruning of world temperature stations from 6000 to 1500, the Darwin Australia homogenization, New Zealand’s National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research (NIWA) data adjustments, NOAA's adjustments to Central Park data and others, and any further events that may transpire. The other article (the residual of this current) should preserve the discussion of the origin and compilation of the file and of the release of the documents and any legal proceedings or ramifications which may ensue." I hope it may now receive consideration. Oiler99 (talk) 09:18, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

With all due respect, Oiler, whether or not one is skeptical of AGW is really beside the point. One does not have to be at all skeptical of AGW to say 1) Some people believe that there was some serious wrongdoing in the UEA, and 2) everyone is calling it Climategate. Those are the only two things that matter. We just document what is happening. I personally think that the reason some pro-AGW editors reject this is because it damages or goes against their belief system, which in my mind is a serious conflict of interest. Calling the controversy Climatic Research Unit hacking incident instead of Climategate is akin to have an article titled Drug-crazed hippy concert of 1969 instead of Woodstock Festival. It is inartful, POV (especially in that it focuses on a more minor aspect of the content, the hacking, instead of the overall controversy), and certainly not the common reference to that event or phenomenom. Moogwrench (talk) 15:36, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

"everyone is calling it Climategate" – I find it hard to get an overview of how this is reported about in the English-speaking world, but this statement is simply false in its extreme form: http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&um=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=-climategate+global+warming+east+anglia+emails Hans Adler 17:26, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

When I said everyone, I meant in the colloquial sense, not reductio ad absurdum. A good comparison would be between GNews results for Climategate - 1213 and the GNews results for Climatic Research Unit hacking incident (without quotes for maximum results) - 10 See what I mean? Moogwrench (talk) 21:56, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I think these results are pretty compelling. Dave Souza, I notice that you used the example of an article in The Guardian of the UK as an example of what "more reputable" sources are saying - but although The Guardian is of course a high quality newspaper, I don't think it's clearly superior to, for example, the New York Times . Also, you may not want to use The Guardian as the bedrock of the argument that reputable sources don't use the term, since google counts 9,830 pages using that term on the site. One can firmly believe in science, the scientific method, the scientific consensus, etc., and still acknowledge the simple truth that the name of this incident which matches Misplaced Pages policy is "Climategate". I'm quite sure you wouldn't deny that this is, in fact, a scandal - and even some of the scientists involved have admitted that some of the emails were 'pretty awful', etc. If there's anything partisan here, it is the attempt to control political language by Misplaced Pages editors, no matter how well-intentioned. It is not up to Misplaced Pages to decide what it is called - it is up to the world at large, and they have - overwhelmingly - decided.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:17, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Jimbo, that was very impressive. Thank you for putting it so well. (As far as the title "Climategate" goes, that word is still spreading but I'm not sure it's spread far enough in the reliable sources to make it worth the fight, although I suspect it eventually will -- words like this spread over time, but right now, when major media uses it, including The Guardian, I'm still seeing it in quotes.)

The fact is, editors at that article have been fighting so hard that the article ignored the considerable shocked reaction to the CRU unit scandal (what was put in the article was later removed; early last December I tried to get the simple statement that the emails involved potential violations of the UK's Freedom of Information Act -- sourced to Science magazine quoting a UK legal expert on the subject, and editors insisted that must be a BLP violation; even though it went to the BLP noticeboard, numerous news reports were cited saying the same thing and consensus at BLP was that there was no problem with it, the information never went back into the article -- subsequent investigation showed that FOIA had indeed been violated). Partisan editors who try to plug up Misplaced Pages, preventing it from covering information they don't like even when that information should be in the article, are only hurting Misplaced Pages. This is the Internet: If readers don't see the information here, they're still going to see it somewhere else, and when they check Misplaced Pages and find the information missing here, their esteem for Misplaced Pages is going to drop. This is exactly what happens sometimes with The New York Times when it looks like it isn't covering something because of bias. Anybody with a blog can criticize the Times or any news outlet or Misplaced Pages and link to the reliable sources themselves. Look at how Walter Russell Mead slices, dices and fillets the Times. It could happen here -- or rather, it could happen again, much worse. Unlike the Times internal decisionmaking, all the diffs are here of Misplaced Pages's internal POV pushing. Just substitute "Misplaced Pages" for "US media" here, and you can see how damaging this is for the encyclopedia:

The blogosphere has shamed some leading US newspapers into paying perfunctory attention to one of the biggest stories in several years. But there’s still no sign that the US press is ready to pursue this still unfolding story with anything like the determination it deserves. Until then, Americans will have to rely on the internet to watch this story unfold — and every day that goes on, the mainstream US media lose readers and respect.

For those who want the public to better understand the scientific reasons for global warming, this blogger over at the Washington Post has some ideas about the Internet's role in helping to do that: Take the high road and educate the public about the science. This journalist over at the New York Times agrees with him. And instead of having Walter Russell Mead pounding on the Times, that blog post produced this praise. In a public debate, taking the high road is ultimately more productive because credibility needs to be maintained, and Misplaced Pages editors should remember that. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 01:42, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Some diffs

@Alex Harvey and Mr Wales, I've not been very active in many of the bios mentioned by Alex Harvey, but I've seen some disturbing patterns in at least the Lawerence Solomon article as I've noted earlier :

Bio

I can examplifies it with this article Lawrence Solomon and some of the diffs: by WMC by WMC, he is not an environmentalist according to the AGW, even if its supported by many WP:RS sources, Nsaa (talk) 13:19, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Suppress ease of Navigation

I've earlier pinpointed how some editors have done everything to keep the Climatic Research Unit hacking incident(i.e. Climategate scandal) and/or the Hockey stick controversy out of navigation template {{Global warming}}

See these diffs:

Remove critical reactions to official reports with huge financial impacts

Example: In the Stern Review this section was twice removed on what I see as dubious grounds and .

Removal of the {{press}} template from articles talk page

We have numerous instances of removal of commentary articles by Lawrence Solomon and James Delingpole from a couple of talk pages. See Misplaced Pages:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard/Archive77#Talk:Climatic_Research_Unit_e-mail_hacking_incident (removed by many "well founded" comments), Misplaced Pages:BLPN#Talk:William_Connolley (and all the referenced underlying discussions).

Removal of Climategate as a term

The term was over and over again in the beginning totally removed from the article even if it had many well sourced references (See last part in Talk:Climatic_Research_Unit_hacking_incident/Archive_1#Name_of_article for the first talk about it, and many more in the archive). In todays article the term has survived at least, but not bolded or in it's proper place right after the current naming of the article as an alternative name (and what most sources uses, see some at Talk:Climatic Research Unit hacking incident/Climategate usage). Now even books has this title in use, see )

Nsaa (talk) 17:52, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Dear Mr. Wales, the Garth Paltridge article is the only article I was able to get into a stable, approximately sane state, and as it is not attracting internet trolls at the moment I'd say I've done a fair job. Which is not to say I am 100% happy with it. I think it probably should mention that since retirement Paltridge has declared himself a skeptic on CO2 caused climate change -- I think both Paltridge and the reader would be happy with that -- but not mentioning his skepticism at all was a compromise acceptable to both factions. But if you are interested in that article, I suggest you start with its very first revision, rather than the state it is in now, and then read through the talk page. If you read through the talk page, you will most likely be horrified by what you find. Regarding Fred Singer's article, there is a section called "consulting" but no section called "scientific work". Does that mean he was a scientist, or a consultant? After the career section, we find ourselves in the year 2007, then in 1994. Then we get to the 1980s, then to 1997, 2004, 2009, 2008, we stop by at 1991 for a bit of gossip, before we go back to 1960 just for one sentence, then to 1981, then 1994, and finally to 1991 again where the article concludes. Is the problem that Misplaced Pages's editors have no sense of chronology, or is it that they simply don't like Fred Singer? As the reader, I want to know what happened in the 1960s and 1970s? There are doubtlessly other problems with the article, but I haven't researched Singer's career at the moment so I'll leave you with the self-evident stuff. Finally, I am sorry if I have offended you. I am tired, so I will stop here. Alex Harvey (talk) 08:13, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Alex. When I looked at Talk:Richard Lindzen, I found that one of the biggest disputes (may be the biggest) is whether to include the reference about "no statistically significant warming since 1995". What I did not understand is why you are assuming that removing that reference is "defending" Mr. Lindzen? how do you know? I mean... it is not obvious. One could argue that removing something he saide is an insult to him. Your opposition of including that info is a legitimate position, but implying that that is what the subject wants is at least questionable, IMO. Sole Soul (talk) 09:19, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Sole Soul, the problem with a site run by volunteers is evident right here. You don't have time to read through 12 pages of archives (and I can't of course blame you for that) so you quickly conclude that what I'm saying is not obvious. And why would it be obvious? If it's not obvious, shouldn't you just reserve judgement for the moment? In this particular instance, I do know what I am talking about because I have read all of Dr. Lindzen's recent papers, and most of his op-eds. The text that we are fighting over, I am afraid, is just plainly wrong, and is completely distorting Lindzen's position, and there's ultimately no way the opposing editor will win this particular dispute. I didn't come here because of this statistical warming business. You need to read the whole talk page. Sorry, that means all 12 (or 13) pages of it. And I guess you need to know your Lindzen too. Alex Harvey (talk) 12:19, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

What you are referring to as "the problem" is following exactly your advice of reading the talk page starting at the top. I would be happy to go through 12 pages if reading them would make it more obvious that removing the statistical warming info is "defending" Mr. Lindzen. We simply cannot base our editing on something a volunteer like you know or read. Your problem is not juvenile volunteers, your problem is a Misplaced Pages principal called verifiability. You want us to trust you without us being able to verify your claims, because you cannot prove your case to neutral people. Sole Soul (talk) 15:11, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Well spoken Sole Soul. If mr. lindzen has a problem, then he (or his representatives) can send and email to our system. The contact us page has the necessary information. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:34, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I think this conversation has run its course. I am truly sorry I was not able to help Misplaced Pages. If Mr. Wales would like to contact me privately, without these yes-men interrupting, I'd be happy to have a rational discussion about the problems. And just so that we're clear. Mr. Wales's quote above -- the one he pleads with me not to quote "out of context" -- is WP:V verifiable. That's the irony. Here you are lecturing to me that all that matters is Misplaced Pages's high ethic of so-called "verifiability", which allows anonymous volunteers to willfully distort the views of others without any regard to context, and you fail to note that Mr. Wales himself just pleaded with me not to be taken himself out of context. Alex Harvey (talk) 20:42, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

This "yes-man" voted "oppose" on Jimbo's latest poll. While Jimbo's quote is verifiable if you provide link to it, taking it out of context is against the spirit of verifiability. Your claim that Mr. Lindzen's views were taken out of context may be true, but unless you provide proof, it is not verifiable. Sole Soul (talk) 21:50, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

And how am I supposed to deductively "prove" that Lindzen is taken out of context, especially when you want it to be obvious? Alex Harvey (talk) 22:51, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

By providing the right context for his statement. Sole Soul (talk) 23:10, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I see. Well Lindzen has written three books, 230 papers, and probably 20 op-eds. So how much context would you like with that? I already recommended in the talk page that to begin to see Lindzen's views on recent temperature trends in context, one could begin with the Lindzen 2007 Energy & Environment paper. I was told, E&E is not a real journal, therefore we should prefer a journalist's take on the matter from Newsweek. Is that your position too, or have you read the Lindzen 2007 paper already? Alex Harvey (talk) 23:49, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Alex, I've not been involved with the Lindzen article before now, but I've had a look at the talk page and I have to agree with Sole Soul and The DJ. I think the problem here is that you are approaching this article with the mindset of being some kind of defender or champion of Lindzen and other fringe commentators. That is not a useful approach for an encyclopedist. Part of the problem is clearly that you lack wider expertise in how Misplaced Pages works, which is evident from your lack of understanding of verifiability and your frankly ludicrous demand that Misplaced Pages be "forcibly taken over either commercially or by government". I see from your contributions that you are pretty much a single-purpose account focusing almost entirely on climate change related articles. I have observed in the past that SPAs are often at a disadvantage, because they see Misplaced Pages only through the narrow prism of their particular focus. Rather than obsessing about this particular article, I suggest that it would be better for you to widen your editing to address other topic areas, work with a wider range of Wikipedians rather than the ones you are spending all your time arguing with, and in general improve your understanding of Misplaced Pages. It is a very different environment from the blogosphere. -- ChrisO (talk) 02:24, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

ChrisO, you may not be responsible for the disgraceful Lindzen article, but as you are responsible for quite a vast number of the other POV abuses in the climate change BLPs (e.g. the Lord Monckton incident), I kind of resent you turning up here and pretending to be a good little Wikipedian. Alex Harvey (talk) 05:19, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Since I've only substantially edited a handful of articles in this topic area I think you're exaggerating. You can resent all you like, but the advice is sincerely offered. I've been a Wikipedian for a very long time, I have a very large number of contributions across thousands of articles in a wide range of topic areas and I think I have a pretty good idea by now about how it works. By contrast, you have only substantively edited a limited number of articles in a single topic area over the last year. That is inevitably going to give you a narrow perspective. You also appear to have adopted the hostile, conspiracy-minded attitudes of anti-science blogs, which you apparently frequent. It's revealing that you talk in martial terms - when you speak of "defending" fringe commentators' biographies, you show that you perceive them to be "under attack." But as I've said below, Misplaced Pages is not a battleground. You would do well to bear that in mind as it's clear that you haven't grasped that principle yet. -- ChrisO (talk) 10:01, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Alex, ChrisO's advice is sound. It does not mean that you should completely stop editing in your current favourite subject area. ChrisO has told you how to gain credibility and friends in our community and how to make sure that when your character is under attack in the field that you are editing, editors who disagree with you will not assume the worst about you. I do some editing in the pseudoscience area. While everything I do is based strictly on encyclopedic concerns (IMHO – but of course everybody thinks that about themselves) I sometimes had to "defend" the accurate presentation of pseudoscience against a mainstream of editors that tried to turn the articles into pure debunking pieces. I survived in this area without any injuries for the following reasons: (1) I didn't treat the articles as battle grounds; I was on different sides of the debates depending on the strength of the merits. (2) I was uncontroversially and successfully active in completely unrelated areas. (3) I was active in some related areas where I was on the side of the mainstream trying to solve problems with disruptive editors.

You can do the same, you can give up, or you can become a martyr. It's your choice. Hans Adler 10:42, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Dr. Adler, with due respect I will believe it when I see you get this to work in the climate change pages. I have little to offer outside of the area of biographies and it is only the climate change problem that interests me at the moment. I can assure you that I am always willing to defend the same principles in the climate change pages regardless of my feelings for the subject, e.g. Rajendra Pachauri. But it makes no difference. At Pachauri's page I was beaten down by the skeptical faction and I might have stayed for longer were it not for the fact that it was (and still is) completely coverage of breaking news and I have no interest in that. I also realised then that both of these factions care far more about taking revenge against the other side than they do about defending or adding anything positive. I suppose it is true that Misplaced Pages's climate change pages are a microcosm of the climate change debate itself. Voices on the left want to see beaten down those voices on the right and vice versa -- with just a tiny few in the middle curious enough to listen to both sides. My communication skills are not perfect, and I agree that I am too aggressive. Thank you for your advice though, and I'll be interested to have a look at these pseudoscience pages. Alex Harvey (talk) 13:09, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Jimbo, I came here to warn you that the climate change BLPs are truly awful things and to remind you that, unfortunately, in any organisation, whether business, government or NGO, accountability rests ulimately with the executive. You seem to opted for a sort of figurehead role here but it is not clear to me that you have actually delegated any responsibility. So it seems to me that you must remain personally accountable for the abuses of this system. (If that is wrong then let me know who I should talk to.) If I seem nasty, or ill-tempered, I still mean you well. I came here to your talk page because there was nowhere else to go. Will you act? If you wish to do something, I am willing to continue to help. I should like to assure you that I have no intention to quote you or misquote you or in any way attack you personally but it does remain clear to me that something has to be done. You need neutral, mature, strong people to step in to fix the climate change pages. Alex Harvey (talk) 13:09, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I can't believe I came across this page (for a totally unrelated reason) and found this issue being addressed. It doesn't surprise me that Alex's initial concerns have spilled over to involve many of the other issues surrounding this subject matter. For too long, these articles have been manipulated by a small group of frighteningly coordinated activists with endless patience for subverting the efforts of well-meaning editors, many of whom quickly find their patience in fighting for what's right and good for the encyclopedia simply cannot match that of those fighting to protect an agenda. Those who do risk sinister repercussions.
I only became aware of the struggles with this subject a few months ago. Finding the base global warming article a bit off, I opted to assess it. As with anything I do here (including this post, which took over an hour to write), I was thorough, objective, and meticulous in my assessment.
I've always considered the time and effort I apply to even the most mundane tasks at wikipedia very valuable and well-spent. And recently, it has bothered me to have to make every effort to ignore the state of articles relating to global warming. In fact, I do my best to avoid them altogether because, despite having met several editors with similar concerns, I never feel more alone, or that my effort is more wasted, than when I make suggestions for improving them (actually editing them has essentially been rendered unconscionable).
That the encyclopedia has been subversively denied a proper Climategate article simply breaks my heart every time I think about it. Even if it doesn't mean it will be immediately resolved, seeing Jimbo is now actually aware of it has done wonders for my morale. I have the utmost faith in his objectivity.
What I saw in my research for the aforementioned assessment (and then the response to it), was extremely disheartening. And I guess having borne witness to the organization, duration, and extent of manipulation, I could not muster the wherewithal to oppose it. Like other well-intentioned editors before me, I simply could not find it within me to take up the sword and fight the good fight.

And that makes me sad.
--K10wnsta (talk) 21:12, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Just for the record: the english wikipedia had at some time an article about the Roman Warm Period. It's gone. The german wikipedia still has one: Optimum_der_R%C3%B6merzeit How about deleting that as well for consistency? Have fun. 91.34.242.19 (talk) 00:21, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

That's unhelpful and unfair. That article was created and redirected by its author. With such variable terminology, I wouldn't be surprised if the intended content survived somewhere, but then the converse would not surprise me either. It's probably very unwise to read conspiracy theories into mundane functional edits. Rodhullandemu 00:29, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I disagree. The absence of an article on Roman Warm Period is unconscionable, particularly in view of its previous existence. If not due to conspiracy, what, I beg you? The link you provide ] is unavailable except to administrators. Wonder why... What's next - Holocene Climatic Optimum? Medieval Warm Period? Little Ice Age? Oiler99 (talk) 05:36, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I just googled 'roman warm period' and the top ranking page is ... our page warm period, which is an orphaned stub level page that indexes all the geologically recent warm periods. In passing, I'm trying to get my head around why Google is ranking this page first. Anyhow, the earliest revision of the page is dated 11th December 2008 and in that first revision of the page there was already a link to the Roman Warm Period. So it appears to be true that Misplaced Pages deleted the page? The second ranking page on google is the CO2 science page on the Roman Warm Period, and all subsequent ranking google pages in the top 10 seem to be pages that assert that the Roman Warm Period was warmer than the present. Can an admin tell us who deleted this page and why? Alex Harvey (talk) 15:07, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Moreover, I find in the paleoclimatology article no reference to a Roman Warm Period and then the following simplistic assertion: Short term (104 to 106 years): Geologically short-term (<120,000 year) temperatures are believed to be driven by orbital factors (see Milankovitch cycles) amplified by changes in greenhouse gases. The arrangements of land masses on the Earth's surface are believed to influence the effectiveness of these orbital forcing effects. This is a gross dumbing down of the truth that borders on deliberate disinformation. We would not, for instance, find such a simplistic picture presented at RealClimate. The little ice age for instance is thought to be correlated with reduced sunspot activity. The Little Ice Age is not thought to be caused by changes in greenhouse gases. I would really like to know what is going on here. Alex Harvey (talk) 15:47, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

• Jimbo, as I'm sure you're well aware, there are several areas of WP that have been bad battlegrounds involving POV-pushing editors on opposite sides, including the Palestine/Israel articles and the Irish troubles, among several others. The global warming (AGW) articles are probably the worst ones at the moment, as far as I can tell. This is a job for the ArbCom. I'm confident that the Arbcom members can look at five years worth of diffs, make judgement calls on whose edits appear to be more NPOV than others, and topic ban those editors (like they did last year with the Palestine/Israel conflict articles), who don't appear to be here to build an encyclopedia. I don't think any action is required on your part, other than telling the press, if they ask, "Some unethical climate change advocates and skeptics have tried to hijack the wiki to promote their own agendas. But, the system worked to send them packing.". Cla68 (talk) 16:12, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

• @Alex Harvey - Roman Warm Period was created as a redirect to Roman Age Optimum on 2008-12-11, and {{db-author}} seven minutes later. The latter page appears never to have been created. - 2/0 (cont.) 17:34, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi folks, I just stumbled upon this discussion. I'm new to Misplaced Pages and only just discovered that there even was a "Jimbo Wales" page, and I haven't been involved in any of these climate issues. My two cents is that neither "Climategate" nor the current mouthful of a title is adequate. "Climategate" is the term critics use, and seems to be used by the Times in scare quotes. The "hacking incident" title, I agree, just won't work either. Why not "Global warming email interception"? "Hacking" is prejudicial, and the "-gate" suffice is prejudicial too. Both take sides. ScottyBerg (talk) 22:05, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Long comment by DeepNorth

Sorry about this. Your talk page has been busy, busy, busy while I was doing this. Cheers!

• Mr. Wales: Thanks for your time. I deal with the issues in more (ranty) length/detail here: http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&action=edit&section=5

Re: You wrote, among other things, that you "took a stab at trying to cure the ills of the bogus thing attempting to make it appear that there is no such thing as Climategate." Can you point me to more specifics? I just looked for the article, it is there, and does not seem to deny the existence of this incident at all.

Here is the Misplaced Pages page, for those who are interested on Climategate:

http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Climategate&redirect=no

It is just a stub that redirects you to a discussion that might as well be about something else.

We do not have an entry proper for Climategate. We have a redirect that points to something different. In fact, it points to something you rightly describe as 'this incident'. Climategate should have its own article and it should take its proper name. Since it is not 'an incident', 'incident' should not be part of the name. I deal with that naming issue and how it relates to (nominal) policy here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/User:DeepNorth/Drafts

Misplaced Pages's guidelines for naming an article are very clear and the only name that satisfies them is 'Climategate'. The current name is misleading, prejudicial and just plain wrong.

Instead of the umbrella name for a sweeping scandal (tons of items in link above) -- misbehavior and alleged misbehavior spanning decades, we redirect someone searching for 'Climategate' to 'Climatic Research Unit hacking incident' -- as if Climategate is merely about a smallish crime ('incident') directed *against* people at UAE and the thing that is immediately known and important about this is that somebody illegally hacked into the UAE system and that the hacking event was being taken very seriously and being investigated by the police.

Except on 'opposite day' the 'persons of interest' in a crime here are the authors of some of the Emails, not the (IMO whistleblower) person who let them out into the wild. In the real world, what is germane is the content of that FOAI.zip data file and what it may mean for the integrity of Climate Science in particular and now even the governance of mainstream Science in general.

I deal with the Article as I found it at the time in the link below. I attempted to get a balanced view, based on what was actually known, similar to that given at 'Watergate Scandal' by using that page (Watergate) as a template. I used the prior version in these diffs: http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Watergate_scandal&action=historysubmit&diff=348617087&oldid=331864938

Here is what I wrote. It was widely referenced prior to being pitched into oblivion here at WP:

http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Talk%3AClimatic_Research_Unit_e-mail_hacking_incident&action=historysubmit&diff=331711452&oldid=331711409

I didn't sign it (my bad), but at the time I really was just an uninvolved editor. There are about 50 web pages properly referencing my modest comment, even though it was quickly disappeared from the discussion.

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=4lN&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=climategate+%22this+commentary%22+%22uninvolved+editor%22+%22makes+clear%22&start=90&sa=N

There are about 70 pages properly referencing the title of the article replacing Climategate even though it has been Ranked number one in a Google search for months.

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=G42&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=%22Climatic+Research+Unit+hacking+incident%22&start=110&sa=N

There are anywhere from 1 to 50 million pages properly referencing 'Climategate' (as such, by name) depending upon how you look at it.

The current article title is about as wrong as an article title could be and still have some relation to its subject matter. It goes down from there. The opening paragraph is misleading to the point of being an effective falsehood. Climategate is not 'about' a hacking incident. This article is, but it has no business pretending to stand in for the real thing.

UEA itself is not notable enough for a security breach (if it even was one) to merit an article.

I took a look just prior to saving this and the article does not look much better 'spin-wise' than usual. It looks like it was written by an AGW apologist who had no choice but to address things gone too far public, but everything gets a spin and at the end, they refer you to only two pages:

See also:

   * Global warming conspiracy theory
   * Global warming controversy

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination the only person who has complained that Climategate and the rest of the climate articles have been manipulated. If you follow the links through all of this you will find links to various skeptics and in their article they seem to be only all about 'denialism'. If you are skeptical and vocal, you can expect your biography to be a hatchet job. If you have a high profile like Richard Lindzen they will take care, but you are still not likely to get fair treatment. If you are pro AGW, you can expect to get spun nicely. Phil Jones is, essentially, the bad guy in the Climategate Emails. He is the one who was cheered at the news of a colleagues death. He was the one that said he would 'hide behind that' and 'destroy data' rater than release it and redefine the peer reviewed literature. He is the one who said the infamous 'hide the decline', which although it does not mean what people think it does is still not good. Phil Jone's entry looks like an apologia written by his publicist. It includes the howler about the prima facie evidence by UEA shill-meisters and the entry trails off with a list of four of his publications.

The main part of the article on Lindzen ends thus:

"Lindzen clearly relishes the role of naysayer. He'll even expound on how weakly lung cancer is linked to cigarette smoking. He speaks in full, impeccably logical paragraphs, and he punctuates his measured cadences with thoughtful drags on a cigarette"

They don't list any publications of Lindzen's, though they do link to a list of his many hundreds of publications.

The 'push' of the POV is crafty and can be subtle, but it is there in spades and the poster-child for this mangling of Misplaced Pages is the pre-emption of the article on Climategate.

I am recusing myself for now. This is so vexatious! Thank you very much for your attention. I am happy that you listened and though I would be delighted if you could fix this I am not expecting you to and I do not believe you have any obligation to do so.

Great job fostering and watching over WP, which is still a thing of wonderment, warts and all! DeepNorth (talk) 21:06, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

DeepNorth, your proposals and opinions are misinformed, and possibly libellous. It's understandable in a context of widespread contrarian battering of the science, as disussed in Nature here. There are genuine issues of how scientists should respond to vexatious misuse of FOI requests to demand emails and intermediate workings, coming from people with no intention of working on the science of the subject. These issues are being examined in several enquiries, but in the interim simply repeating misinformation is irresponsible and inappropriate in Misplaced Pages. . . dave souza, talk 11:13, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Shorter comment by DeepNorth

Dave souza, misinformed? Inform them then, by all means. ... libellous (sic)? Not sure to what you refer, but its a stretch for Jones/UEA/Posters, etc. This is a talk page for goodness sake. "...widespread contrarian battering of the science...". Give me a break. People are suggesting we take extreme actions based on faulty data and little to no reasoning. This is an attack on *bad* science or *pseudo science* pretending to a level of quality and accuracy that it does not have. As for the Nature article. Isn't that the one whose editor had to resign from one of the investigative panels because he was a little less than forthcoming about his partiality WRT to AGW? I very strongly encourage anyone who is at all on the fence to read that article Dave has so kindly pointed out for us. Especially if you have a background in science or know anything about sound argumentation or the presumptive role of a publication like Nature, you will be amazed, shocked and appalled, but not for the reasons Dave is thinking. That is some piece of work. I am not being sarcastic here. Thanks for the link. It speaks much more eloquently to the distortion of the AGW debate than I ever could -- and with significant authority. Beautiful!

Re: "There are genuine issues of how scientists should respond to vexatious misuse of FOI requests ... coming from people with no intention of working on the science of the subject ... These issues are being examined in several enquiries (sic), but in the interim simply repeating misinformation is irresponsible and inappropriate in Misplaced Pages."

OMG. I hardly know what to say about the above. It is as if I am shilling for myself ... It should be easy enough to find the link. McKitrick's (sp?) submission to one of them shows clearly (from the record that is already public) that Phil Jones' resolve to withhold data *precedes* the two or three (!) requests that came his way from Mckintyre (sp?) and company. I would say that M&M deserve significant credit for doing some of the best work on climate data thus far. Again, as I say, pretty much everything I say is already part of the public record. It ain't goin' nowhere. DeepNorth (talk) 21:11, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

"This is an attack on *bad* science or *pseudo science*" and there is your problem. If people come to Misplaced Pages with that kind of attitude then they are almost sure to make problems worse than better. Please refrain from it if you want people to listen to you. We (and then i mean your fellow editors) are not a platform/vehicle for your "attack". It is for agenda's as these that we have to deal with such a problem in the first place. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 02:42, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Short version, Misplaced Pages is not a battleground. -- ChrisO (talk) 02:51, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I strongly agree that WP should *not* be a battleground. Clearly we have a situation. I have recommended that participants with clear POV (vous et moi) should recuse and allow a pool of editors who have not (thus far) demonstrated such POV. If your POV (or, if you insist, NPOV) carries the day with a set of editors who have not (again, thus far, it's all we can guarantee) been involved, then likely they will invite you all back and chastise or even ban ostensible miscreants such as myself. If truly NPOV editors can be found and are content to carry on, then I will be quite pleased. If the new editors find both sides were out of line, then we are still good. If we take my suggestion, it's all upside. This is a sort of 'wisdom of Solomon' situation here. To save the baby, I am willing to give it up. Are you?

I agree that I have been prickly. I don't think I started out that way. I surely did not come here because some part of the blogosphere suggested I do so. I was here long before even my screen name was registered. Whatever I have done here (on WP generally) has largely been anonymous. The only reason I registered the screen name was to put up stuff on programming. the only reason that there are no articles in evidence is because some well meaning but over-zealous editor kept deleting my graphics (created and owned by me) and exhausted my time before I could get the articles up. On sober second thought, when I had the time again, I was unsure (still am) if this would be more 'original research' and so elected to publish elsewhere. That's about it for my original presence here (which goes back a lot longer than my screen name). Climategate was in the news and a Google search brings the WP page (such as it is) up as the top ranked hit on a search. I came here and was appalled at what I found. I still am. It is shocking. My initial impression was maybe you had a point and I went looking. The more I looked the more gruesome it looked. The while AGW thing was a scandal long before Climategate hit. I will absolutely own being a 'skeptic'. There is nothing at all wrong with skepticism. It is healthy. It is just about mandatory when doing research. My stuff especially (not climate -- data stuff). To be honest, though, having done a little research into Climate many years ago at school, I never thought the AGW POV had enough merit even to argue about. I had no idea it had gained such traction. I still, I swear, have no idea what the chain of evidence is supposed to be that links CO2 to Global Warming (causally, of any net additional significance) or Global Warming to catastrophe or catastrophe to something we can mitigate at a cost that is less than adapting. All of the 'pro AGW' camp seems to be able to present is arguments that cast naysayers in a negative light, previously debunked evidence, non-sequitors like experiments with CO2 in the lab (this goes back forever, before I was in University, nobody has argued with that experiment, it just isn't relevant), etc. I think it was McKitrick (sp?) who said somewhere that he found that every single argument or set of data that was presented by the pro AGW crowd, when peeled back layer by layer either ended up with nothing or something demonstrably false. That has been my experience. None of the people on this page or elsewhere has presented evidence of anything that supports AGW or demonstrates bad faith on the part of people like me. There is an 'opportunity cost' for taking premature action on the unproven chain mentioned above. A part of that cost will cause people in the third world to have to bury their children. That is neither a metaphor nor is it hyperbole. They are burying them now and more will perish as we allocate resources to managing the brokering of carbon credits that could have been spent on clean water, medicine, education and industrialization in the third world. I am a dad and I truly feel for those people. If we must, to save the many, sacrifice the few, then so be it. It would be a bitter pill, but I can face up to it. What I can't abide is the notion that carnage and tragedy will result from knee-jerk public policy actions based on very shaky evidence.

Though prickly, I don't think I have targeted anybody's person. I have disagreed with some of their utterances and actions. In the case of suppressing Climategate and the endless juvenile sophistry that passes for arguments in favor of AGW alarmism, I find it hard to bite my tongue. Believe me, I think that whether this is a road to hell paved with good intentions or not, it is still a road to hell. It is easy to step off of this road and strike a better course and I dearly wish the community at WP would do so.

I do, actually, assume good faith on the part of some (maybe most or all, who knows?) of the pro AGW people. I confess that part of my apathy to the AGW nonsense was a naive notion that the ends justified the means. That is, I have never thought there was a scrap of evidence that CO2 was anything but net beneficial, but since it mobilized people to clean up otherwise (because even though CO2 is not a pollutant, plenty of other things clearly are), I looked the other way. What, I thought, is the harm in it? Who cares if they do the right thing for the wrong reasons? Sadly, it is with that line of thinking that I joined you on the road to hell.

Perhaps like you, I feel a duty to speak up because the issue is important. I think this is, broadly, an important issue outside of WP. However, it is inside that concerns me here. Regardless of who is good, who is bad, who is right and who is wrong, the net effect of the warring is detrimental to WP, and as I mentioned before the most egregious example of this is the ridiculous situation where there is, effectively, no real article on Climategate. It should make Wikipedians blush. DeepNorth (talk) 04:28, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh yeah -- likely tl;dr, but that may be what is wrong with this whole thing. Maybe if people had more tenacity for reading and cogitating on things there would not be so much disagreement here.

Let's start from the beginning. Is there any reason that a wikipedia entry "Climategate" should redirect to this page, with no opportunity to create a page by that name? Climategate scandal redirects here also. Climategate science offers Climatic Research Unit documents, as well as this, but does not discuss the perceptions of scientific scandal. This controversy may or may not rival Cyril Burt's peccadillo, or perhaps even the Piltdown Man, but there is no option to deny the possibility. Let's start from the beginning, and create an NPOV page entitled Climategate - which, after all, refers only to a perception, and a real perception, but not to a reality - which can provide links to the hacking/leaking of emails, and to the documents themselves. Dave Souza's comment 11:13, 11 March 2010 is tendentious, and the Nature editorial ] is contrary to fact: "The core science supporting anthropogenic global warming has not changed. This needs to be stated again and again ... climate legislation had hit a wall in the US Senate, where the poorly informed public debate often leaves one wondering whether science has any role at all." In fact, shouting anything again and again is characteristic of Goebbels rather than Galileo. Those who presume to be promoting "science" are in fact fighting a rear guard action, retreating from inch after inch of furiously defended territory. The Null Hypothesis has not been falsified. Scientific Method trumps "science". Let's have no more cross-burnings on the lawns of scientific skeptics (or, more simply, scientists). Oiler99 (talk) 07:36, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

What's taking so long?

This vandalous edit went by unnoticed for 90 minutes. Who knows how longer had I not vigorously pursued my watchlist. Remind me again why we haven't already enabled flagged revisions for BLP articles? JBsupreme (talk) 05:57, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

It should also be noted that based on the page view statistics for this article, as many as 250 people viewed the article in this state before I fixed it. JBsupreme (talk) 05:59, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Maybe we should tag such edits with {{citation needed}}, maybe that'll get people off their duff to do something about this. Tarc (talk) 20:48, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

*chuckle*  :-( JBsupreme (talk) 21:08, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

High database server lag for 70 minutes and counting!

• I can easily expect server lag to last around 3 minutes or less, but this time I saw something that say changes newer than 4,193 seconds when I saw may not appear on this list. I'm not sure what it could be. mechamind90 04:42, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

It may be this talk page :) DeepNorth (talk) 04:56, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

See this discussion on the technical village pump. Graham87 07:54, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Disrupting Wikimedia

Dear Jimbo, although not a member myself, I would cordially like to invite you to a workshop where you can learn all about disrupting and decieving Wikimedia with experiments in practice. This workshop is being organised on a website you may be familiar with, Wikiversity. There is no doubt that you would be welcome to participate. Just leave your name on the page Who knows, they might even design a few barnstars for exceptional graduates. If they plant an operative on the permanent staff they might even be able to pinch the petty kitty. There are many such possibilities for reward so get yourself over there before the list fills up. ~ R.T.G 21:18, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I have deleted the page as being outside the scope of Wikiversity.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 00:37, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

It's not outside the scope, I'm afraid. See v:Wikiversity:Community Review/Wikimedia Ethics:Ethical Breaching Experiments for further discussion. I know you don't go there much (and thus missed the upheaval you caused last time you did something like this), but the results of a Community Review discussion now bears the weight of policy, so please make your case there if you want to pursue this further. --SB_Johnny |  13:23, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

		The Barnstar of Integrity
		When the rest sat around for three months talking about a project designed to attack Wikimedia, Jimbo no sooner heard about it and it was gone. ~ R.T.G 02:13, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

BLP Abuse by activists complaint opened at AN/I

A discussion on the topics raised on this page regarding BLP abuse by activists has been opened here. Some may find it interesting to see how a civil and well referenced discussion of concern has been received. 99.142.1.101 (talk) 23:12, 13 March 2010 (UTC)