Apparently Wikipedia’s own attempt at self policing problem editors isn’t working. Despite being up for a restriction or a ban, rogue Wiki editor (and Real Climate co-founder) William Connolley is still removing anything he doesn’t like when it comes to climate science. This time it’s wholesale removal of any reference to the American Physical Society resignation letter of physicist Hal Lewis, who resigned over the APS global warming position:
And no wonder, the traffic to the Hal Lewis Wikipedia page looks likes a hockey stick. People are learning about the reasons for the Lewis APS resignation, and Mr. Connolley can’t have that:
Here’s the Wiki history page. Note the comment by Mr. Connolley:
And look at the Wiki entry for Hal Lewis now, fully sterilized:
Ironically. the yellow highlighted text says:
This article about an American physicist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Yeah, right. Just try.
Members of Wikipedia, you need to show William Connolley the door, or at the very least, put up a new picture for him:
Don’t get it? Read this.
h/t to WUWT reader “gibo”
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Also interesting is this:
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/10/price-of-knowledge.html
“Coincidence or not, this morning I got a phone call from BBC Radio Oxford, asking if I would speak on their show tomorrow (at about 10:10am) on … climate change. Specifically, they are having a debate about the resignation of Hal Lewis, which Dellers did big, amongst others.”
So even the BBC is taking notice now
Connolley desperately craves attention. The Register (theregister.co.uk) is one of the best and biggest online tech publications worldwide, with more than five million users each month. How dare Wikipedia allow this repulsive Connolley free reign to make false accusations that the Register is not a reliable source.
When a scientist becomes paranoiac about something, then he pursue it to point of ridicule. My rather innocuous graph
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSN-Mca.htm
has been subject of relentless ‘blog-icide’ by the same contributor of repute, as you can see here and here and here
There must be something to it !
Wikipedia apparently is not interested in striving for excellence.
excellent reference Anthony.
Also, anyone else laughing at wc for turning wikipedia into an unreliable source by blasting something else as an unreliable source?
William Connolley from the Ministry of truth
Who can we complain to about this?
Whilst on the subject of El Reg, here’s another article which links to a report on modelling vs reality. El Reg. A topic that sounds vaguely familiar.
What next for Connolley? Eliminating pages on Galileo, Copernicus? House arrest for
Lewis? Papal bull from the Profit excommunicating Lewis and taking back his PhD?
Getting mighty Medieval out there…
Teachers all over the world warn students NOT to cite Wikipedia as a reference in any of assigned papers; why these warnings are issued is very obvious.
OT, for which I apologize, but wanted to let you know that today is the day we will be saved from global warming, no wait, climate change ahhhh DISRUPTION, errr cooling? AT ANY RATE very very bad CO2 by benevolent alien dead souls who are no relation whatsoever to those thetans from Battlefield Earth:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/prweb/20100914/bs_prweb/prweb4491804_1
Oh Canada!
(not all Canadians, I know!)
Don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Connolley doesn’t care when you catch him. People like him are arrogant enough to think you owe your lives to their divine existence.
You may not like it thomas but Connolly is an embarassment to science and the Wiki treatment of the entire issue is anti science.
This is a great problem with Wiki.
It is not just AGW issues, but any other ‘challenging’ subject is routinely guarded by a ‘gatekeeper’ who will not allow any dissenting views. Wiki is routinely biased.
Regards AGW, I must have posted paragraphs on wind-power unreliability about 50 times, to have them all deleted. According to the oracle of Wiki, the wind never drops.
.
At the time of this post, the Hal Lewis page now carries this;
In 2010, Lewis resigned in protest from the American Physical Society, citing its position on global warming, which he labelled a “scam” and a “hoax.”
>>Thanks for your post. I am sure you mean “rogue” in
>>the first paragraph, not “rouge”.
I don’t know. Perhaps Connolly should be ‘red-faced’ at his continuing antics.
.
Wikipedia is No Man’s Land. Er, uh, Nomad’s Land.
==============
You can help Wikipedia by removing Connolley from it.
Is it just me? I can’t wait for the clever video artists from Minnesota to create a “no Pressure” video featuring Schmidt, Mann, Bradley, Connolley, Jones, Briffa, Schneider, Trenberth and the other horsemen of the climate apocalypse.
Arijigoku>
“Who can we complain to about this?”
If you have the energy, you can register yourself a Wikipedia account, edit the page, and then go through their arbitration process when Connolly attacks. You’ll win (as long as keeping to a single issue), but it’ll take while.
I would note that El Reg actually meets all criteria to be a Wikipedia RS.
I thought Connolley was hit with the ban-stick? Or am I thinking of someone else….
Seriously, the Wiki article on William Connolley states:
“Connolley is an editor of Wikipedia and served as a Wikipedia sysop, a form of website administrator, until 2009.[13][14][15] A December 2005 Nature article that compared the reliability of Wikipedia to Encyclopedia Britannica used Connolley as an example of an expert who regularly writes for the on-line encyclopedia.[16] An October 2006 Nature article that contrasted Wikipedia with the Citizendium online encyclopedia project (which recruits experts from academia), quoted Connolley as saying that “some scientists have become frustrated with Wikipedia” but that “conflict can sometimes result in better articles”.[17] His Wikipedia editing was also discussed in a July 2006 article in The New Yorker that said he 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.[18] He told The New Yorker that Wikipedia “gives no privilege to those who know what they’re talking about.”[18] ”
So why is a line stating that Hal Lewis’ recent resignation from APS not appropriate in Wikipedia, including the reasons why he resigned?
Huh?
Wikipedia is a fixed game. “Facts” can only come from “reliable sources” which means filtered (and edited) by the major media outlets.
Try to prove from major media sources that there are ANY climate skeptics who are qualified, sincere, and respected, and you begin to see the trap.
Connolley, and even Wikipedia itself is really more of a symptom than the problem itself, which is an allegedly impartial media that props up positions it agrees with, and hides or demonizes the rest.
To extend the Medieval Catholic metaphor some have been advancing:
Don’t forget to buy your Carbon Credit indulgences! (You can spend them on out of season blueberries!)
Quite rightly, strict editorial rules exist to ensure every Tom Dick and Harry don’t try to use Wikipedia to promote their personal half baked theories to a world audience.
On the more specific question as to whether the gatekeeper of the Climate science section is more hostile to Sceptic submissions than Warmist ones, the following information may help readers to make their own judgements.
To achieve this aim it may be instructive to follow the role of the administrator of the climate section, Mr William Connolley
Firstly, it is worth restating the criteria for wikipedia in considering submissions made to them;
“Verifiability
Main article: Wikipedia: Verifiability
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. This policy and the verifiability policy reinforce each other by requiring that only assertions, theories, opinions, and arguments that have already been published in a reliable source may be used in Wikipedia.”
To examine the claims of bias often made against William Connolley on the matter of him favouring material submitted to him by warmists, as against that from sceptics, it is worth following a specific case-that of Lawrence Solomons- who wrote the well known sceptics book ‘The Deniers’
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/04/12/wikipedia-s-zealots-solomon.aspx
The above is a very good link re alleged wiki bias, with a subsequent blog of claim and counter claim, including a robust defence mounted by the editor of wiki who was criticised. It is instructive reading and worth staying with to the end.
This is by way of a review of the book by Solomons in The Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/may/06/the-climate-change-deniers/
This is another review and provides some further background to the wikipedia bias claim by Solomons, so throws further light on the first link.
http://richardvigilantebooks.com/
The link below is again biased, but throws interesting light on William Connolley (The Administrator) and his alleged bias against sceptic’s views.
http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=17981
This is the blog of William Connolley that is accessed from within Real Climate, in which he actively supports them by, amongst other actions, attending a conference in Vancouver.
“I was there with my Real Climate hat on, to offer ideas and insight on blogging in particular and public communication of science in general.”
http://www.realclimate.org/
Some people wishing to submit sceptical material question whether wiki should allow people with close links to a web site enthusiastically endorsing the views of Dr Mann (whose Hockey stick reconstructions were thought to have been widely discredited) and has known passions-he stood as a candidate for the UK Green Party-is objective enough to be allowed to oversee the editing of the climate pages of the worlds leading reference source as an administrator (definition and duties here)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators
The wiki core element of verifiability rather than truth allows some potential leeway in accepting articles that support a personal view. Consequently wiki’s objectivity- by any reasonable measure- should be called into some question (on certain controversial topics such as climate change) Checking back to the original source should be a follow up to any wiki climate related research, but many people rely on it as their primary and only source, thereby receiving a certain view of the topic.
This is William Connolley’s blog leading to various other topics he is interested in.
http://www.blogger.com/profile/05836299130680534926
The guy is no ogre, has an obvious sense of humour, and has a particular world view as a UK Green party candidate. The policies of the party in general are here-they have sometimes been (perhaps over sensationally) described as the green successors to the communist party and anti capitalist. In Britain they have a Euro M.E.P in Caroline Lucas.http://www.amazon.co.uk/Babylon-Beyond-Economics-Anti-capitalist-Anti-globalist/dp/0745323901
This about other Green party links to anti capitalist, socialist, communist and Marxist movements
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/theory/ecology.htm
The Green party’s specific policies and philosophies can be read here. http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/mfss/mfsspb.html
This page states the green party’s current understanding of climate change and their own mitigation policies
http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/mfss/mfsscc.html
William Connolley’s politics and beliefs are his own business in his personal life. Where they might impact on the public in a wider sense, some might say that his own deeply held beliefs and links may make him insufficiently objective to administer the climate science pages of the world’s most referenced information source.
Footnote-There is something of a Catch 22 situation. As the IPCC report -warts and all- is considered the pinnacle of verifiable climate science it is referenced accordingly by Wikipedia, so even debatable information is presented as factual. Consequently sceptical information -which by definition is therefore incorrect- will achieve limited profile. The end result is that those from the wider world seeking information on the subject will always end up with IPCC supplied ‘factual’ data and will take a view on climate change accordingly.
tonyb