Bishop Hill had the news first, which is fitting since Mr. Connolley is based in Britain.
In a vote of 7-0, The most prolific climate revisionist editor ever at Wikipedia, with over 5400 article revisions has been banned from making any edits about climate related articles for six months.
Here’s the details at Wikipedia. After that time, he can reapply, per the Wikipedia rules seen here in remedy 3
This is of course just a shot across the bow, and there are easy ways to circumvent such a ban, but it is finally a factual realization by Wikipedia that the sort of gatekeeping and revisioning wars in the climate change information business are being recognized and dealt with.
Personally, I’m encouraged by some of the recent changes brought to my attention by Peter Tillman, an editor who left a comment here.
Perhaps we no longer need to disengage from Wikipedia, but rather engage it and work to make it better.
AloanG says:
October 15, 2010 at 12:29 am
Who is paying WMC?
I was recently asked to donate to Comic Relief, where supposedly all funds go to good causes. Before contributing I researched on google and was amazed to discover that a very large sum had been passed over to a carbon related research body.
Since when were charities permitted political agendas?
Needless to say I witheld my money.
I always thought that the argument for Wiki came from “the Wisdom of Crowds” – a concept that makes eminent sense.
Of course for the “Wisdom of Crowds” to hold you need to avoid a dominance or over influence from “experts”. The Wiki crowd seem to be ignorant of this fact. It needs experts among a much larger, diverse and independent group of contributors.
The damage William has inflicted on wiki remains. Is Hal Lewis page back to normal? it looks very cut down compared to Hans Bethe’s page.
Lucy Skywalker says:
October 15, 2010 at 2:09 am
“For now, I’d like to suggest that Anthony runs a “hot” Wikipedia climate article once a week, for folk here to crowdsource rewrite suggestions, and for those who choose, to edit them into place.”
If this was done then they’d quickly protect the article for a week/month/whatever.
Personally, I think the WUWT community could write up their own articles, applying wikipedia’s rules properly, and then keep them in the sidebar for people to keep up to date and so people can use them as resources to modify the wikipedia articles.
Once a month or week, as you suggest, a post could be made to point to the current WUWT project.
I think the WUWT articles would be so much better in comparison that it’d embarrass some of the wikipedians who’ve kept the climate change articles in such a tragic state.
Another nice thing about it is that it would be a good way to teach WUWTers how to use wikipedia and what the rules are there. This would prevent a lot of frustration and quick bans I think.
wee, don´t know if this was already posted…haven´t found anything here coming close.
William M. Connolley is now also registered as WMC:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WMC
This must happened within last 2 days, I think.
citing WMC “But thanks: User:WMC now created. And isn’t swapping between accounts a pain? I can’t see how these socks manage it William M. Connolley (talk) 18:59, 13 October 2010 (UTC)”
Sorry to be totally negative but as wikipedia can be perverted to such an extent it is worthless as a source of authoritative information. I sometimes use it for ‘triangulation’ i.e. when it I want to cross reference a couple of reputable sources but otherwise…it’s far too fluffy. As someone above said good idea…pity about the execution.
Oddly enough Mr.Connolley’s Wiki entry carries no mention of the ban.
Is there who might be able to correct this?
HOW ABOUT seeing that his wiki page is properly edited!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Connolley
This is misinformation. The errors that traditional encyclopedias had were mild and few dealing more with grammatical issues than factual.
Comparison of Wikipedia and other encyclopedias for accuracy, breadth, and depth in historical articles
(Reference Services Review, Volume 36, Issue 1, pp. 7-22)
– Lucy Holman Rector
“The study did reveal inaccuracies in eight of the nine entries and exposed major flaws in at least two of the nine Wikipedia articles. Overall, Wikipedia’s accuracy rate was 80 percent compared with 95-96 percent accuracy within the other sources. This study does support the claim that Wikipedia is less reliable than other reference resources. Furthermore, the research found at least five unattributed direct quotations and verbatim text from other sources with no citations.”
WP is worthless for anything other than basic facts.
The real news here is that it has been proven in a “court of law” (ie a group of people have looked at the evidence and acted) that Connolley, a founder of Real Climate, a site that habitually hacks out any comment they disagree with, has been found out. He has been altering facts, truths in some cases to fit his own agenda.
That destroys trust that any right minded person should have in him or anything he has touched.
This in the same week the BBC has decided it needs to be more balanced in its climate reporting, an admission of guilt.
This in the same week Schmidt et al release such a blatantly political “its the C02 stupid” paper that it’s becoming laughable.
This in the week we see a respected US Physicist resign and for his former organisation to be unable to fully defend their position.
Oh and don’t forget it was this week Franny and company showed their double standards while presiding over the utter flop of the global day of action.
The wheels are coming off. Now watch as the negative AMO, PDO and La Nina push the wreck of the road…..
Lucy, I am hesitant to criticise
This is not Kindergarten. A debate society perhaps.
The point is one of salience to topic not censorship or vogue. The weight of the opinion cannot silence by numbers.
Wikipedia is political and hence not a source.
He was either sacked or timed out on criteria either science or vogue. That states to publication not punishment, if they cannot or will not good order conduct than the entire organisation is dismissed from teaching and learning as a source.
It does not matter, the wikipedia is dismissed as political and dis reputable in teaching and learning.
Your field of science is not the issue. The project failed in teaching and learning.
Resource users students and teachers agreed. 4 years back. Before Climategate.
The word it’s dumb and bad.
Anyway, I would like an opinion.
How does someone tell thousands and thousands of Volunteers the project failed?
Guess it’s up to me, Teaching and Learning institutes have blackballed Wiki.
They said can’t be trusted as a resource. Long before Climategate.
How does one tell people in science their lance was at windmills?
Some Music
Yer everyones gets a lesson fer free.
Leave yer egos at the front door.
Well, I was “debating” Mr. Connolley way back before the Web existed on Usenet. Some of you might be interested:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/32rcd5b
Of course, although there were ways to “censor” Usenet (i.e., rougue cancels), you pretty much had to live with the fact that you either had to deal with people who disagreed with you, or ignore them.
‘Perhaps we no longer need to disengage from Wikipedia, but rather engage it and work to make it better.’
I love the idea of what wikipedia says they want to be, but sadly that’s just not the case as long as they can’t be neutral and objective. Who’d want to donate time, energy and resources to anything that turns into, by extremists and their fundamentalist behavior, biased information?
At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPOV Wikipedia spells out its claimed “Neutral Point of View” policy, starting with this abstract:
[I am not addressing here the overall issue of accuracy on Wikipedia.]
Obviously, Connolley and Kim Dabelstein Petersen abused this policy and it took a long time to address it properly.
Personally, I see no reason why Wikipedia can’t classify some issues as “controversial issues” and have a policy on those. That policy could include separate sections for those conflicting sides, plus a neutral part where facts are stipulated – accepted without contest – by both sides. That policy should also include some kind of bold notice at the top of that page, declaring the issue to be a Controversial Issue (in BOLD) and including a disclaimer of any assurance of accuracy – due to bias – for anyone reading the articles, and that this notice is necessary due to the real histories of such issues on Wikipedia.
Wikipedia could state that they WANT factual information edited in, but that there are factions working against their desires. It would in fact, be a disclaimer and acknowledgment of the limitations of an open-edited online encyclopedia.
That would present the entire article as one on which what is included cannot necessarily be trusted, in spite of Wikipedia’s normal NPOV policy. This would be stating what is actually already true and give them a way to caution people.
Poptech says:
October 14, 2010 at 9:34 pm
I am stating as fact that it is impossible to trust a single word on Wikipedia without verifying it from a reputable third party source every time you look at it.
I agree, unfortunately, because I also agree that the concept of Wikipedia seems great.
A user does not know whether only minutes before they view an article someone has inserted/edited it with bad information. They would then repeat that incorrect info, not knowing that only an hour later the article was corrected.
It might be a simple thing, like a person’s birthplace, but the fact that facts can be changed as easily as they can on Wikipedia makes it a dubious resource.
Over 5000 changes, what a busy fellow. And he did all that with or without pay? Either way its a hell of a way to make your view relevant. And not a good one.
Me, I use Wiki to see if an old movie star is still alive or dead, I like those old black and white British and continental movies where every scene photographed is a work of art. Great photography. And the actors, totally professional. Most likely the result of talent, hard careful work and it is their own. Something this Wiki active fellow should notice.
Whether Wikipedia is a worthy project or not is not at issue. What is at issue is whether skeptical views get aired and heard. In the case of Mr Connelly, his blatant removal of reference to a fact – that Hal Lewis did in fact publish a letter of resignation in which he made condemnatory remarks regarding AGW – and that Wikipedia was able to process the resulting debate and handle it by publicly curtailing Mr Connelly; demonstrates that the skeptical view is now firmly a part of the dialogue of scientific debate surrounding all matters of global climate. This is yet another example where the debate has permanently changed for the better. This is another win for the pursuit of science, knowledge and truth.
Fred Bauder says:
October 14, 2010 at 7:13 pm
“I don’t think him being gone for a while is going to change much; we’re still not going to allow poorly sourced biased information, but maybe you can accept this as evidence that we are trying to provide a fair statement of generally accepted knowledge in this area.”
Thanks for letting us know, Fred. It’s very valuable to be sure Wikipedia will carry on being a biased and unreliable source of information on global warming, and, by inference, a number of other controversial issues in which those who disagree will be misrepresented and vilified.
You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself.
@ur momisugly Poptech October 15, 2010 at 5:10 am:
Poptech – (Note: I am pretty neutral about Wikpedia.)
Several brief points. . .
I wouldn’t draw too many conclusions from that paper. Especially since it concludes with this:
Sample size: It is also only based on eight articles. Given the gazillions of articles, we could somewhat compare encyclopedias to tree rings, and it might equate fairly closely to some notorious trees at a place called Yamal. It is just too small a sample, and this is recognized by the Emerald site reviewer.
The 80% accuracy, to me, is a bit fishy. I can’t link to the actual paper, so I don’t know. But 20% error rate??? What level of statements of fact are included? Why so small a sampling? Also, what was the motivation for the paper? And did the author cherry-pick, ala Yamal?
20% error rate in ONE article would be pretty shocking. To find a sample of eight with an overall rate of 20% sounds a little bit “off” to me. Especially since it is based on “biographies.” I have to say that I’ve read a LOT of bios on their site and can’t recall seeing any statements of fact that were out and out wrong. So, were the bios of popular show-biz types with lots of fans? Or of true historical figures? If the latter, oy vey! If the former, shame on them, but who the heck cares? (That latter I say as much as a LOL as anything…)
I won’t let Wikipedia off scot-free, though, because even if it is only 1/4 as unfactual as that, it is pretty bad – even for so small a representation. Even 5% would make me cringe. One would be hard-pressed to find a string of Britannica articles with anything approaching a 5% error rate.
At the same time, I for one am not willing to pay Britannica’s online fee. But I do read Wiki articles knowing that any single fact may not be correct. Like others, I use Wiki as a starting point and then verify, verify, verify.
If we here looked at eight global warming articles on Wikipedia, we would probably disagree with 5% or even 20% of the statements of fact. And if they came here, they would likely return the same level of distrust of statements of fact presented here.
All in all, I would not draw a conclusion from so small a sampling. I am with the reviewer.
But thanks for pointing to it.
Lucy Skywalker;
For now, I’d like to suggest that Anthony runs a “hot” Wikipedia climate article once a week, for folk here to crowdsource rewrite suggestions, and for those who choose, to edit them into place.>>
I like the idea, but I think the end goal of editing it into place in Wikipedia will in the end be cirumvented by those determined to pursue their agenda.
What may be more effective is the same idea, but written as a counterpoint and/or suplementary to Wikipedia’s articles, and hosted by someone like you or Anthony with a small group of moderators tightly controlling the articles. You could even use WUWT threads to debate a given article before it goes into the Climatepedia.
I think also that some of the difficulty in doing this is that there are plenty of scientists (real ones) who contribute to forums such as this, but their writing is often WAY too technical for the common user of Wikipedia. I note that in addition to all the serious heavy weight technical people who contribute to WUWT, there are plenty of commenters who have other skills.
I for example, am no where near technical enough to write a lot of the articles that would be required. But have someone who is jot down the issues in point form, be they four or forty, and I can turn it into a well written article that someone with a high school education can understand and is still technicaly sound in a few hours.
There’s probably lots of people who could pitch in, but to protect it, it must remain “outside” of Wikipedia.
I think also that
Friends,
You are under rating the importance of Wikkipedia. You may be “above it” and see its flaws clearly, but for millions and millions of people it is THE SOURCE of fact. It is the first listing of google on most topics. I work with an News Producer who has Wikki open on his computer at all times so he can check any “facts” that need researching as he prepares his TV newscast. Hundreds of thousands then see his news. We need a Wikki committee in the Climate Realists movement. We need a name PhD to step forward and be in charge.
Why? I find major errors in just about every article I’ve read on there. Bios are some of the worst! Try reading the ones on skeptical scientists,
The Real Climate Martians (Financial Post, Canada)
Fred Singer, one of the world’s renowned scientists, believes in Martians. I discovered this several weeks ago while reading his biography on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. “Do you really believe in Martians?” I asked him last week, at a chance meeting at a Washington event. The answer was “No.”