This is an archive of past discussions with User:Shibbolethink. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Hi Shibbolethink! I'm kind of disappointed that in your statement in the current Arbcom case request, you refer to the 'thing' about skepticism on Wikipedia as a witch hunt in search of a witch. At least two editors in the case request have explicitly objected to this kind of rhetoric. Is it really needed to make your point? Do you really believe that all of those who see a problem are deluding themselves like that?
Also, when you say that the broader skepticism issues, however, in many many cases, boil down to fundamental disagreements about WP:FRINGE as a PAG, I think you're failing to acknowledge that in many cases too, it is not about a disagreement over WP:FRINGE, but over WP:IMPARTIAL, WP:DUE, and perhaps especially, WP:Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.
There are some people who edit here not to build an encyclopedia, but to try and make the public more aware about quackery and pseudoscience. But there is a large gap between keeping fringe stuff out of encyclopedic articles, a very noble endeavor and much of what you're doing here if I perceive well, and keeping encyclopedic stuff out of anti-fringe articles, which is what a lot of 'skeptic' editors here are doing. They want articles to make clear that a topic is fringe, and that's it. Any formulation which does not 100% comply with that goal must be kept out. Any kind of historical context is taboo. A trick! Anything that does not paint the subject in an absolutely negative light is misleading, and dangerous.
And of course, any editor who disagrees is pro-fringe.
This is not doing the encyclopedia any good. I guess that from the point of view of someone who is fighting off true pro-fringe editors every day, it is hard to perceive that such a problem would exist. But it does. I guess that it's easier to perceive from the point of view of a historian of philosophy and science, like me. Is it a worse problem than the perennial threat of fringe ideas infiltrating Wikipedia? Not at all! But it still is a 'thing'. I'm not imagining it will be solved anytime soon, but a first step would be if more editors would recognize that there really is a problem, or at least the possibility that there may be a problem. Thanks! ☿ Apaugasma (talk☉)00:20, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
Honestly I just thought it was a kind of funny way to use that quote from Firefangledfeathers which I thought was pithy. I will happily change it to a McCarthyism reference if you like.I think with regards to your other points here, I would urge you to read my statement again. I reference DUE and encyclopedic interpretation vs POV interpretation. I make a nearly identical argument to the one you are making, in my perception... I absolutely agree with you wrt issues re: mistargeting of anti-fringe editing etc. I think appropriately contextualized historical content is lacking in a lot of these articles. I think sometimes that stuff is removed for the wrong reasons. I believe I made that exact argument in my statement.I just don't think it merits an ArbCom case, it seems that may be where we disagree. I think better application of current policies is typically not ArbCom's purview. They are better at clarifying ambiguity in how a current PAG is interpreted. If there are specific ways that lots of people are misinterpreting FRINGE, DUE, etc. then that would be an ArbCom matter. But my view is rather that lots of people just straight up aren't reading these things. Or don't care about them if they do. Not that they are having good faith misinterpretations. The role of ArbCom is not to overrule the community, it is to clarify points of contention which the community struggles with. The issues that you and others have described should be handled by threads at WP:ANI, WP:AE, WP:FRINGE, and WP:NPOV. Removal of high quality sources at WP:RS etc.. I know some threads have been brought there and failed to make any useful change. I would say, that, overall, the problem is that we are currently having such a huge pseudoscientific renaissance in America and England right now, really all over the globe, that many good faith edits appear to some as trojan horses or POVFORKs. I think historical perspectives are warranted, I think philosophical ones are valuable. But I don't think that should overrule having mainstream views depicted appropriately... It's so case-by-case, and in line with FRINGE... I don't think a huge view of this issue is even possible. each individual article where this happens has different problems... — Shibbolethink(♔♕)00:21, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
I would say the McCarthy reference is better because communists actually existed. There really were Russian spies infiltrating America, but they weren't the people McCarthy was labelling as a threat. Russian spies wouldn't be caught dead at a communist rally. They looked a lot more like McCarthy than his enemies. — Shibbolethink(♔♕)00:34, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
Coming here as someone who's found your opinions to often be well-measured in previous discussions (and as someone who is taking offense at being compared to McCarthyism, Nazis, etc.), I'd just comment that those kinds of easy comparisons remove a lot of the nuance from the discussion. When one starts talking about Russian spies in a conversation about wiki guidelines I think it probably indicates the issue has gained an unhelpful narrative of its own. PS: the firefangledfeathers quote will forever be one of my favorite replies I've ever read. Cheers. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me!01:03, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
Okay, that's fair. I don't think you're Joseph McCarthy or a Nazi. I'll try and think of a better sentence, that will probably be less pithy, but also less offensive. — Shibbolethink(♔♕)01:05, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I'm really glad to see that you agree with some of the stuff I've mentioned. I also agree with almost all of what you're saying here. I guess I'm just not seeing this in your ARC statement, which is perhaps a bit ambiguous. In that vein, please consider that your comment about McCarthyism may not come over as intended (now I am having trouble seeing who you think are the McCarthyists and who are the not-really-communist communists: are it the 'skeptics' seeing pro-fringe editors where there aren't any, or the 'concern-trolling editors' seeing overly zealous anti-fringe editors where there aren't any?), and especially that it may push some buttons better left unpushed. ☿ Apaugasma (talk☉)01:07, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I guess in this ill-fitting analogy I would say that you guys are the McCarthyites and the anti-fringe users are the non-russian-spy communists. And the russian spies are pro-fringe POV-pushers. In this analogy, as in real life, all 3 groups really exist! So anti-fringe users perceive the POV-pushers as similar to McCarthy-ites, because in some ways the goals are coincidentally sometimes aligned, but also anti-fringe users often erroneously perceive McCarthy-ites as pro-fringe and fail to see that there is good faith there. Similarly to how McCarthy probably really did think he was doing the right thing. And so the endless cycle continues. I don't think you two are Joseph McCarthy, I think you are often actually right, and there really is an issue with how this has often worked in skeptical articles. But I also think sometimes the arguments that this is brought up as are just ill-formed. like that current RS thread. A lot of the examples of how SI sources are used there are just straight up uncontroversial, and per WP:PAG probably don't need a source at all. or can use a non-RS.I would say i am more often perplexed by why things are removed rather than why they are added. I'm a deletionist at heart, but even I see that skeptics (myself included) often remove fringe things that are notable and just need to be recontextualized. — Shibbolethink(♔♕)01:12, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
What about us editors who don't care about GSoW, but do care about overzealous NPOV editing leading to BLP violations and wildly unbalanced articles? I still maintain this whole GSoW thing is a red herring. Trying to chase down secret off-wiki collaborations is an enormous waste of time, and will only cause more friction. Just deal with bad editing. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 01:17, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
Then I would say, bring it to the right noticeboards with the best possible most indefensible argument for your position. A place where a controversial fact about a BLP is sourced to a clearly POV SI column that likely wasn't fact checked. That will get you traction. It likely won't lead to the entire source being blacklisted or thought of as SPS or w/e. But it will show that such problems really exist. I feel as though whenever I trace down the examples I'm provided with, I only see extremely uncontroversial statements or clear facts sourced to these SI articles... — Shibbolethink(♔♕)01:18, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
See, that's the problem I think arbcom should focus on fixing. Any type of movement in that direction heads directly to a shit show. Rp2006 was performing COI edits, and they're was a thread on it, and it devolved into the wiki equivalent of norovirus spreading on a cruise ship. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 01:22, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
ArbCom will easily tackle the GSOW thing because it's all about interpreting the COI guideline. They're good at that. It won't get messy because they don't really care about the content at that point, it's all about the editor relationships and actions. It literally could be about drain-pipes and a Guerilla Plumbers on Wikipedia group to them. Granted, those plumbers make a lot of really great articles about different types of sinks and toilets or w/e. They'll consider that too.Anyway, I would say the issue with the broader skepticism conversation is that it is so gosh darned diffuse. Each article has its own little microcosm of issues with POV. Some articles are too pro-fringe, some are too anti-fringe in how they are written. Some have COI issues, some have sourcing issues. It's an under-trafficked area with lots of tiny little minutiae articles which have difficulty finding good sourcing. We probably need to AfD more often. We probably need to have fewer opinions and more facts. But how would ArbCom help with that? In a concrete way, what would they actually do? Issue Discretionary Sanctions right? What would those DS say, in your perfect outcome? — Shibbolethink(♔♕)01:29, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
I've mentioned before, on one of the legion threads in the past few months, that providing reasonable evidence of undisclosed COI editing should get a topic ban. This would come in handy, as GeneralNotability recorded they weren't confident using the existing pseudoscience D's for that. Aside from that, escalating lengths of topic bans or page blocks for battleground behavior. My first interaction with Rp2006 was them calling me a fringe supporter and saying I was at war with GSoW. This was for removing an obvious and severe blp violation from Thomas John (medium). From then on they treated me as their enemy. Another example of that is the page A. C. Santacruz tried to edit (which I don't recall right now, I'm sure she can remind me) only to be met with bad faith refers, insults and refusal to discuss. That forced her to make a bunch of RFCs that the same group is unhappy about, but she's more or less getting consensus for her edit, one piece at a time. The reverts are also what led to the Rp2006 COI fiasco. If there were good faith engagement from the beginning, instead of battleground conduct, this whole fracas could have been avoided.
I'm pretty sure there have been arbcom cases that have had highly tailored sanctions, but you asked what my perfect outcome would be. Using page blocks and narrow topic bans allows them to generally keep editing in a topic area. Regular DS is fine, if there are some principals about battleground conduct, AGF and civility/PAs. Even a clarification that Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Pseudoscience applies to skeptical editing as well would at least let people go before AE instead of ANI/AN/ANother notice board, where there might be slightly less drama, and rampant incivility may be seen and addressed.
I also don't think that Topic bans for evidence of undeclared COI editing. Escalating lengths of narrow topic bans and page blocks for battleground behavior is so highly detailed that people would be getting caught in the weeds trying to deal with it. If it's focused on GSoW, and the Pseudoscience DS doesn't explicitly cover skepticism then there's no way to address thingslikethiswithoutdealing with drama boards. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 12:10, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
I agree the content issue is something I don't expect arbcom solving. The never-ending issue of local vs. global consensus will continue to affect this project for a long while. I had some ideas in the COIN thread of ways to improve the articles systematically but it didn't pick up much traction, but I'll see what I can do about that after the arbcom case. I find myself very much caught in the middle of extreme anti-fringe and extreme pro-fringe where either side sees me as too radical. I'm very hopeful though that the topic can improve if some good initiatives and systems are put in place without any need for DS. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me!01:43, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
yes, some might say that is how you know you are NPOV!! But I would humbly suggest that it might mean you just need to reframe your argument! such that instead of considering you too extreme on both sides, neither side can figure out which side you're on, but they like what you're saying. Easier said than done, I know lol — Shibbolethink(♔♕)01:46, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
Oh I'm definitely biased, but I guess just not aligned to a particular ideology? I very much like the phrase "strong opinions weakly held" to describe my positions on things. I think my biggest issue now is just needing to get more fluent in both the history and jargon of wiki discussions so I am more convincing. I know I certainly provoke a lot of resistance because of my impatient and awkward behaviour. The learning curve is a total pleasure, at least ^u^ A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me!01:55, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
Skepticism and coordinated editing arbitration case opened
AfC for Dr. Vin Gupta, NBC News/MSNBC COVID-19/Medical Analyst (hoping for review)
Hello, Sir,
In reading your background, I thought you might be willing/interested in reviewing this AfC for pulmonologist Dr. Vin Gupta, who's been a visible medical analyst for national news outlets (mainly NBC) since the beginning of the pandemic.
For viewers of these channels, it'd be helpful to know further details about his background, since he's always on air. I've received significant feedback over the last 3 months on this AfC but am hopeful you might be willing to weigh in if you have time.
I appreciate your feedback, and will keep it in mind. but as far as I can tell the only revert was the most recent about moving the sentence about scientists around. — Shibbolethink(♔♕)17:15, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
Also worth saying, as far as I know, that article is not subject to any 1 revert restrictions. Please let me know if I'm mistaken. — Shibbolethink(♔♕)17:16, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
Hi all, I'm gonna take a more serious wiki-break. I'll respond to queries here, but will likely not involve myself in articles or talk space much, if at all. Please do not tag me into disputes.
This is for a few reasons: 1) I have COVID (got it from the hospital, where else), and am not recovering on schedule and need to relax a bit more. 2) I am taking some time off from school to recover better for a few weeks, and will be studying for my second round of board exams during that time. 3) I just do not think wiki is very good for my mental or physical well-being right now. Please understand. Good luck and good vibes. — Shibbolethink(♔♕)00:00, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
Shibbolethink, I hope your recovery speeds up and that your studies go well. Happy to hear you're taking a well-deserved break, though I wish it were under better circumstances. Hope the joy of the project comes back to you soon. Firefangledfeathers03:20, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
I hope you have a nice, relaxed recovery. I currently have COVID too but since it's mild it's basically an excuse for me to introvert for 10 days. Good luck with the board exams as well. Santacruz⁂Please ping me!10:39, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
Thanks everybody for the very kind words I did get a whole lot better, and now I have quadruple the antibodies, some might say! But, I will probably still be using wiki less than in the past... Just not zero :) — Shibbolethink(♔♕)00:35, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
You too eh? Waldorf was my first (only?) "run-in" with the Wikipedia authorities.[2] It is one of the few areas where I shrugged and resigned myself to Wikipedia being crap, and best left like that. I told myself i was imagining things about there being a protectorate in operation. I did however, manage to wrestle anthroposophic medicine into shape - editors (probably rightly) care more about health misinformation so consensus was easier to achieve there. Alexbrn (talk) 18:23, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
Hahahahaha yes, yes indeed. I'm pretty sure those talk pages are where I first saw your username, @Alexbrn!! All those many years ago. I think what I told myself was that the effort required to truly fix those articles is not worth it for the very small gain in fringe low-view-count article space. It's really sad. But it becomes a lesson: the more fringe and obscure the article space, the more likely FRINGE editors can stake a claim and keep it in their POV. To me, it's also a lesson in how ArbCom can fail to do its job. Their Waldorf education case really did not fix the problem. I really do like the anthroposophic medicine article. And I think the Steiner article is better. The Waldorf education article is the absolute worst. As they say, science advances one funeral at a time. Some articles won't truly be improved until certain editors retire. They're just too good at playing the game. — Shibbolethink(♔♕)14:25, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
