UPDATE2: There’s now some question about who is who regarding the editing of the Connolley page at Wikipedia.One of the problems with Wikipedia is the use of handles. In the messages sent to me seen below, it appears that they came from William Connolley via the Wikipedia message system, but can’t be sure since the identity of the people who have handles and are involved in active editing aren’t known it appears not to be the case. This is one of the central problems with Wikipedia- anonymous editing lends to the confusion. While it is clear that Mr. Connolley has in fact edited his own page in the past, I have removed a reference to self editing in the current time frame because of the uncertainty he did not do so recently. My apologies for the confusion. – Anthony
======
People send me things. Here’s a story about a thread of recent exchanges that appeared in Wikipedia in the “talk” section regarding William Connolley’s page. This incident highlights the shape shifting nature of the information presented on Wikipedia, and how it is subject to the whims of ego and agenda. With information changing character literally in minutes, how could anyone treat Wikipedia as a reliable reference? I’ll coin a new word and call this “turborevisionism” due to the speed, sound, and fury it characterizes.
Consider the “Neutral Point of View” required by Wikipedia policy:
Neutral point of view (NPOV) is a fundamental Wikimedia principle and a cornerstone of Wikipedia. All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view, representing fairly, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources. This is non-negotiable and expected of all articles and all editors.
The editor who takes issue with this event writes:
On Sunday night, I went to the William Connolley wiki page and entered:
Additional criticism appeared on December 19, 2009, in nationalpost.com, as “How Wikipedia’s green doctor rewrote 5,428 climate articles.” This alleges that Connolley removed more than 500 wiki articles of which he disapproved; that he published inaccurate information on the controversial “hockey stick” graph; that he specifically opposed scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
That disappeared within an hour (maybe less); I reinserted it. On Monday night, checked again: text gone. I wished to re-enter it, but the [edit] facility was totally missing from the wiki page. Hardly ever saw that before.
Found a msg from Connolley directly to me:
William Connolley I’m the original author of the paragraph at William Connolley that deals with the Lawrence Solomon article of December 2009. I note you inserted some specific detail that I acutally removed, as I believed it only caused confusion between opinion and fact, and isn’t really necessary, anyway. I don’t want to add any more reverts to that already poorly abused article, so I’m urging you to reconsider your addition of the detail. Cheers. —Ħ MIESIANIACAL 05:58, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
___________________________________________
Date: Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 11:53 PM
Wikipedia activity
In 2005, an article in the scientific journal Nature compared the reliability of Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica. It discussed Connolley as an example of an expert who regularly contributes to Wikipedia.[8]
A July 2006 article in The New Yorker reported that Connolley briefly became “a victim of an edit war over the entry on global warming”, in which a skeptic repeatedly “watered down” the article’s explanation of the greenhouse effect.[9] The skeptic later brought the case before Wikipedia’s arbitration committee, claiming that Connolley was pushing his own point of view in the article by removing material with opposing viewpoints. The arbitration committee imposed a “humiliating one-revert-a-day” editing restriction on Connolley. Wikipedia “gives no privilege to those who know what they’re talking about”, Connolley told The New Yorker.[9] The restriction was later revoked, and Connolley went on to serve as a Wikipedia administrator from January 2006 until 13 September 2009.[9]
An October 2006 article in Nature contrasted the Citizendium online encyclopedia project, which makes a point of recruiting experts from academia, with Wikipedia. It quoted Connolley as saying that “some scientists have become frustrated with Wikipedia”, but that “conflict can sometimes result in better articles”.[10]
___________________________________________
Just appeared in wiki (by Mason):
Additional criticism appeared on December 19, 2009, in nationalpost.com, as “How Wikipedia’s green doctor rewrote 5,428 climate articles.” This alleges that Connolley removed more than 500 wiki articles of which he disapproved; that he published inaccurate information on the controversial “hockey stick” graph; that he specifically opposed scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
__________________________________________
Instantly changed to:
An October 2006 article in Nature contrasted the Citizendium online encyclopedia project, which makes a point of recruiting experts from academia, with Wikipedia. It quoted Connolley as saying that “some scientists have become frustrated with Wikipedia”, but that “conflict can sometimes result in better articles”.[10]
Mason corx, 2009 XII 21, 12:45 AM & again 12:51 AM:
[[Lawrence Solomon]], on December 19, 2009, penned a piece in the ”[[National Post]]” that accused Connolley of editing Wikipedia and using administrative power in order to subvert opinion that disagreed with his own, linking the supposed activity to the [[Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident|Climategate scandal]].<ref>{{Citation| last=Solomon| first=Lawrence| author-link=Lawrence Solomon| title=Wikipedia’s climate doctor| newspaper=National Post| date=December 19, 2009| url=http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/12/19/lawrence-solomon-wikipedia-s-climate-doctor.aspx| accessdate=December 19, 2009}}</ref> The specific allegation was,”How Wikipedia’s green doctor rewrote 5,428 climate articles,” claiming that Connolley removed more than 500 wiki articles of which he disapproved; that he published inaccurate information on the controversial “hockey stick” graph; that he specifically opposed scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
__________________________
2009 XII 21 midnight: txt missing again. Mason want to re-inserts txt, cannot because the facility [edit] is now missing :
[[Lawrence Solomon]], on December 19, 2009, penned a piece in the ”[[National Post]]” that accused Connolley of editing Wikipedia and using administrative power in order to subvert opinion that disagreed with his own, linking the supposed activity to the [[Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident|Climategate scandal]].<ref>{{Citation| last=Solomon| first=Lawrence| author-link=Lawrence Solomon| title=Wikipedia’s climate doctor| newspaper=National Post| date=December 19, 2009| url=http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/12/19/lawrence-solomon-wikipedia-s-climate-doctor.aspx| accessdate=December 19, 2009}}</ref> The specific allegation was,”How Wikipedia’s green doctor rewrote 5,428 climate articles,” claiming that Connolley removed more than 500 wiki articles of which he disapproved; that he published inaccurate information on the controversial “hockey stick” graph; that he specifically opposed scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
_____________________________________
Msg from William Connolley to Mason, 2009 XII 22:
William Connolley
I’m the original author of the paragraph at William Connolley that deals with the Lawrence Solomon article of December 2009. I note you inserted some specific detail that I acutally removed, as I believed it only caused confusion between opinion and fact, and isn’t really necessary, anyway. I don’t want to add any more reverts to that already poorly abused article, so I’m urging you to reconsider your addition of the detail. Cheers. —Ħ MIESIANIACAL 05:58, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
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Malay Observer:
: “Simply, organise or surrender the turf.”
That very formula is inherently biased against fact. Wikipedia reflects the vocal nature of the activist minority.
Wikipedia will never work, no matter how many “safeguards” evolve because it cannot vet the accuracy of its editorship, which will always be predominantly left of center. Wikipedia is today what it has always been: The encyclopedia of Utopians… vainly striving but never arriving.
: Bad mouthing it won’t make it go away.
No, it won’t. But it will make others aware of how flawed the nature of the so-called “encyclopedia”.
: Simply, organise or surrender the turf.
As you may have guessed, I have more profitable things to do with my time. Further, the turf of Wikipedia was pwned by activism to start with, so surrendering the turf is a misnomer. It would be like saying, organize or surrender the turf of RealClimate.org! I am a realist, not a dreamer.
You may want to try Wikwery, which is a kind of question-based Wikipedia http://www.wikwery.org It’s new so it doesn’t have any Wikipedia type liberal bias
I’m glad that this issue came up and blew the wikipedia’s status as a reliable information authority to bits.
I am particularly sympathetic to the person who deals with Dissociative Identity Disorder. I invite him to go look at the site’s treatment of trauma induced dissociation.
My first inkling that something was wrong with the Wikipedia came through trawling the talk pages of Satanic Ritual Abuse while looking to find out more about the subject while researching potential research proposals for a postgraduate psych course in research methodology.
It was immediately apparent that there was censorship going on, and that a contributor was having all attempts to post links to academic articles and news stories supportive of the phenomenon removed by an editor/administrator (you’d actually have to see the dialogue to believe it).
This subject is, incidentally, tied up to larger issues such as the alleged involvement of the political elite in pedophilia etc (some of which was exposed during the course of the infamous Dutroux Affair).
From what I could tell the page simply served to bar entry to deeper thinking on the topic in the same dismissive, sneering, scornful and patronising tone we have become so accustomed to from the AGW camp. In other words it became a facilitator for censorship and propaganda.
The irony of this is I went there an agnostic, and left the page suspecting that there was far more to the issue than was indicated by the Wikipedia entry. I’ve since noticed similar patterns on any contentious issue.
Both sides of the question are rarely given equal weight, and there is a strong bias towards modern establishment narratives, a tendency that puts the wikipedia site on a par with the laughable Skepdic. In fact when I want more reliable info I just look at the talk page rather than the main page as there is a far greater chance of other perspectives being aired.
True pursuit of knowledge should expose us to all sides of a question and encourage us to use and develop our critical thinking skills to reach our own conclusions.
In 1789 Mason de Luchet summed it up quite effectively:
“There are a certain number of people who have arrived at the highest degree of imposture. They have conceived the project of reigning over opinions, and of conquering, not kingdoms, nor provinces, but the human mind. This project is gigantic, and has something of madness in it, which causes neither alarm nor uneasiness; but when we descend to details, when we regard what passes before our eyes of the hidden principles, when we perceive a sudden revolution in favour of ignorance and incapacity, we must look for the cause of it; and if we find that a revealed and known system explains all the phenomena which succeed each other with terrifying rapidity, how can we not believe it?”
Come on over if you think you’re hard enough:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2009/12/poor_old_watts.php
REPLY: Why would anyone want to participate in a discussion with you when you phrase it that way? Those are the words of a bully, not of a scientist. From your words and demeanor there in that piece, clearly you have contempt for the general public which Wikipedia is designed to serve.
The real question is, why do your friends remove valid criticisms from the National Post? – Anthony
Pointed out earlier:
Wikiwiki – the Hawaiian word for “quick” that the “pedia” appropriates for its name, is in fact NOT the proper word. The first word in Hawaiian for quick is – AWIWI. Thus an etymologist would suggest the proper corruption would be: AWIWIPEDIA…
However, you can understand why the inventor of even a hearsay-based encyclopedia has shied away from using King Kamehameha’s Hawaiian.
OK, so you aren’t hard enough. Fortunately GoRight is, though he seems confused about whether you’ve edited your original post or not. Do you have your original text? It would be nice to see it.
“The real question is, why do your friends remove valid criticisms from the National Post?”
Well it is one possible real question. It would seem natural to ask the people who are doing it rather than me. Do you have diffs?
REPLY:The issue was brought up here, yet you want it moved to your turf by making a goading statement. I see you’ve ducked the real question by deferring it, that’s fine. The text is clear in the update. – A
I’ve asked you for a diff of whatever it is you’re complaining about. You’ve ducked the question by refusing to reply. If you want an answer to “why was text X removed from wiki” yuo’ll need to tell me what piece of text X is, and the best way to do that is a diff. If you’re not interested in an answer, that’s fine.
REPLY: The issue is simple, you have, in the opinion of many, undue influence over a huge number of Wikipedia entries related to climate change. A germane reference to an article bringing that to light, published in a newspaper of record in Canada, keeps getting deleted from your Wikipedia page. The edits (or “diffs” as I think you mean) are listed in the body of this article. The number of articles you’ve edited and people you’ve banned from making edits to articles you’ve been involved in on Wikipedia is documented by an independent source here and agrees with the numbers in Solomon article, yet that article keeps getting deleted from your Wikipedia page. The question is why? That’s really the only question here. While it initially appeared that you were making the edits to your own page yourself, upon further inspection (and to an outsider the Wikipedia is somewhat of a maze) that claim was brought into question, and the article here reflects that uncertainty.
If the Solomon article is untrue, or somehow erroneous, and that is why it is not cited as a reference, in the interest of fairness I’ll offer you an opportunity to write a new guest post here. This affords wide exposure so that you can address/explain why it is not valid and tell your side of the story. The only caveat would be that you limit the topic to that issue and do so without using denigrating language that insults the readers and myself as you have done in comments here and in your articles.
Thank you for your consideration. – Anthony
: “Come on over if you think you’re hard enough”
LOL. What’s wrong William, cannot deal with the matter here? You can see why this fellow has been desysopped by Wikipedia.
Dan-
Nah, he’s just lonely. After all, he’s got…what…like three commenters on his blog page (and one or two of them are skeptics — likely from WUWT)?
Awww…does wittle Biwwy need a hug? I think him does…
P.S. The Mekons were posers.
I have noticed a trend, a rouge administrator doing Connelley’s dirty work in banning people relating to global warming articles
http://connelleywatch.blogspot.com/2009/12/connelleys-hatchet-man.html
Lawrence Solomon has a new column at:
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/12/23/lawrence-solomon-climategate-at-wikipedia.aspx
It looks like Connolley and/or his cronies are still hard at work re-writing and revising. It’s really quite pathetic.
Maybe Wikipedia should at least flag “contentious” entries somehow. Or not cover such topics at all. Or cover them on a separate site.
Notice that the title of Connelley’s blog, “STOAT: Taking science by the throat …” nicely fits his role as Wiki-censor and his manner of commenting here – crude thuggery and bullying.
AW: my answer to LS is here: http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2009/12/i_am_all_powerful_part_2.php so I don’t need a guest post from you. If you’ve got any questions on that post, feel free to add them there.
You say “The number of articles you’ve edited and people you’ve banned from making edits to articles you’ve been involved in on Wikipedia is documented by an independent source here” where “here” is http://toolserver.org/~soxred93/ec/William+M.+Connolley
That’s a std edit counter. It doesn’t tell you who I’ve banned or from what articles. I’ve banned (or more correctly, blocked) loads of people from loads of articles – but most of them had nothing to do with climate change. Most of them were to do with WP:3RR (see-also WP:AN3).
You don’t understand how wiki works, so you’re thrashing and embarassing yourself in public. Talk to GoRight (privately, by mail, if you want to avoid embarassment). He is one of you: he’ll be happy to explain.
I notice the top of this blog still says “There’s now some question about who is who regarding the editing of the Connolley page at Wikipedia.One of the problems with Wikipedia is the use of handles. In the messages sent to me seen below, it appears that they came from William Connolley via the Wikipedia message system”. That is all wrong. There is no doubt. None of those messages were sent by me. You commenters have explained this to you, as has my blog post if you can bear to read it. So you need to update your posting.
REPLY:Thanks for your consideration, the offer remains open. So just for the record then, none of the other handles involved in that editing are connected to you in any way?
Solomon has just written another story. Here: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/12/23/lawrence-solomon-climategate-at-wikipedia.aspx
Oh and to add, despite our differences, I wish you and your family a joyous, happy, and safe holiday!
– Anthony
This is the same thing that happens with the articles about cult leaders. Sun Myung Moon and Elron Hubbard both have devoted minions who will remove anything negative that gets added to their articles.
Clearly Wiki needs to make editors more accountable. Anonymous posts should not even be allowable. All handles should be tied to verifiable email addresses. How hard is this really? The fact of the matter is that pure garbage gets posted on WIki all the time. Heavily emotive or politicised subjects are most prone to attack. It is a rubbish reference for these kinds of topics. I would not even think of looking at Wiki for anything relating to climate for this exact reason.
It really doesn´t matter whether Connolley or someone else is instrumental behind the CC Wiki pages, they show clear POV bias towards the IPCC and the overwhelming majority of the content reflects that view. It is equally evident the contempt in which Wiki holds prominent skeptics, often devoting the vast majority of their entries to attacks on their credibility. The POV bias on those entries is equally evident.
I have battled Connolley and the bias at Wiki for over four years. It has been a very frustrating experience. He and Petersen, Schulz among a few others have worked diligently to manipulate the Wiki info on AGW. In particular, their peer review “trump” card has been played consistently and without reproach to defend their religion.
Reminder: Wikipedia is used in schools as a point of reference for children to seek out facts on AGW.
Connolley and cohorts have effectively been indoctrinating young minds and that makes them among the very lowest forms of life…
A couple other things I find amusing… Watts here has links to sites on both sides of the AGW debate including Mr Connolley´s Stoat site, which has mediocre traffic at best of times. You can bet your bottom dollar that it won´t be reciprocated there.
Additionally I see Mr Connolley´s first post here is to goad readers to his site which is moderated at his own discretion:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2008/08/comment_policy.php
Basically he likes to delete whatever he doesn´t like (i.e. finds boring or noisy), much unlike WUWT which welcomes all views as long as they are polite. The problem with this smug approach is that it alienates the moderates. It might work well for his Green Party extremists, but it doesn´t get traction with the mainstream.
Good luck with that approach Mr Connolley.
Quite right Bulldust. Let’s analyze. He comes to our neck of the wood to issue a challenge against Anthony.
The problem is why would Anthony lower himself? Connolley isn’t in Anthony Watts league. He’s just the CRU’s cabin boy.
If the captain of that ship were to come and challenge, that would be different, but as things stand we need someone from the Watts “crew”, a swabbie if you will, to take on Connolley.
There has to be a stake involved. Lets argue a point of contention, say the MWP page. If the Watt’s swabbie wins the edit stays from now till the end of time. If Connolley wins WUWT will never post another disparaging word about him or Wikipedia.
There has to be a jury selected at random, whose verdict will be final.
There has to be some neutral place outside of Will’s ability to tamper with the jury. Sciblog, where he can manipulate his antagonist’s comments, is right out.
Those are the terms. Are these acceptable with you Anthony?
William are you hard enough to face someone without your automated posse backing your every word?
Personally, I think a fair fight will be too much pressure for ponytail boy.
I took the bait and had a quick look at Stoat. (Strange avatar – a stoat. “Methinks ’tis very like a weasel…” )
Anyway I see the one who calls himself ‘Dhogaza’ is still in the huff because he’s banned here.
I notice that for a while now the sceptic arguments seem to revolve around attacking people rather than the science of AGW. Does that mean they finally understand the science and realise that attacking it is a no-hoper??
Given that Plass in 1956 got all the main elements right, it’s about time.
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/2010/1/carbon-dioxide-and-the-climate/10
Turboblocke (06:23:02),
You misunderstand the situation.
Scientific skeptics have demolished the CO2=CAGW conjecture. The mistaken belief that CO2 can possibly lead to runaway global warming and climate catastrophe has been repeatedly falsified. The climate’s sensitivity is so small that it can be completely disregarded for all practical purposes, no matter how much the minor trace gas CO2 rises.
Your American Scientist link references only Arrhenius’ 1896 paper, in which he imputed a very high sensitivity number to CO2. But your source rather mendaciously omitted any mention of Arrhenius’ follow-up paper ten years later. In his 1906 paper, Arrhenius recanted his 1896 conclusions, and assigned a very low sensitivity number to CO2.
We have learned a lot since 1906. Current estimates range from 0.5 – 0.35. And the more we learn about the climate’s low sensitivity to CO2, the less we find that CO2 matters. If that were not so, then the recent rapid increase in CO2 would have resulted in a rapid rise in the global temperature. But that has not happened. Instead, the global temperature has declined. Therefore, CO2 must have very little effect on temperature.
The real problem is William Connolley’s dishonest redacting of thousands of articles and comments that simply presented a different [and more scientifically credible] point of view to the debunked belief that rising CO2 will cause rapidly rising temperatures leading to runaway global warming.
Censoring different points of view is not science, it is partisan political advocacy, and an unethical abuse of his position within the increasingly discredited Wiki AGW posts. As we see in this thread, and in Connolley’s election loss, and in his repeated punishments for improper advocacy, people do not appreciate being spoon-fed his discredited propaganda.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Medieval_Warm_Period&dir=prev&action=history this is the early record for the Medieval Warm Period article on Wikipedia.
The article was created on 27 Jan 2002, had two more edits and was then redirected to “Medieval climate optimum” on 25 February 2002.
The record for that page starts at 20:57 on 15 November 2002, when it was moved back to “Medieval warm period”.
The page moved in the Medieval warm period is noted at 20:58. At 21:42 the same day William M. Connolley made the following edit, with the edit summary:
“Remove rubbish. Look at Temperature record of the past 1000 years where this has been addressed for some time now.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Medieval_Warm_Period&action=historysubmit&diff=7502049&oldid=7501548
The edit removed the section header titled “Recently changes in scientific thinking” and the following text:
Sherwood and Keith Idso wrote:
:”IPCC documents up to at least 1995 had faithfully depicted the existence of both the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age … The Medieval Warm Period and subsequent Little Ice Age – which followed hard on the heels of the Roman Warm Period and Dark Ages Cold Period (McDermott et al., 2001) – were long considered to be classic examples of the warm and cold phases of a millennial-scale climate oscillation that has reverberated seemingly endlessly throughout glacial and interglacial periods alike (Oppo et al., 1998; McManus et al., 1999), as well as across the early Pleistocene (Raymo et al., 1998).” [http://www.co2science.org/edit/v5_edit/v5n13edit.htm]
Make of that what you will.
Wikipedia is a perfect example of a democracy. I highly recommend Hoppe’s book, “Democracy – The God That Failed”.
Democracy never works because we are individuals, not parts of an organism. Some power-lusting clowns will always try to rule the collective. In a democracy, there will always arise an elite that rules “in the name of the people”- called “representatives” in our political circles. Democracy is always a fraud. Wikipedia is based on a fraudulent premise. Thanks to the internet, it is being exposed faster than previous encyclopedias for what it is: the opinions of those who control it.
Error in my above text:
Third sentence should be 2004 not 2002 – both the page move back to MWP and WMC’s edit were on 15 Nov 2004.
Should read:
“The record for that page starts at 20:57 on 15 November 2004, when it was moved back to “Medieval warm period”.”