I hadn’t noticed this yesterday, but the second most prolific climate revisionist at Wikipedia has also been banned from posting on the climate topic.
By a vote of 4-3 Kim Dabelstein Petersen has been topic banned, just like RealClimate founder William Connolley:
Also, It appears there was [initially] no support for Mr. Petersen’s voluntary self ban of 6 months.
[Update: the final outcome is a 7-0 vote for accepting voluntary ban, details here]
In fact, there’s a number of disruptive people that have been up for bans and restrictions.
Read about them all here under this URL:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate_change/Proposed_decision
It is rather long, lots of scrolling needed.
I’ll also point out that there are some skeptical editors that have been banned as well, such as “theGoodLocust” and “MarkNutley”. It is unfortunate that they got caught up in the revisionist firefight, but their efforts in trying to keep Mr. Connolley and Mr. Petersen from having free reign can also be seen as “disruptive” per the Wikipedia rules.
It is akin to breaking up a schoolyard fight, where the principal says: “I don’t care who started it or who hit who, you’re all going to detention”.
Perhaps now we’ll see some settling down over there.
Thanks to WUWT readers “movielib” and Mark Nutley for the tip.
I’ve been looking at Discussion pages, and once again it’s clear to me that the basic WP:NOR rule is a major stumbling-block for cutting-edge research.
Questionable journals are allowed because WMC has determined they are reputable sources, others are disallowed because WMC has determined they are not reputable sources, and all the time the actual science is only reported secondhand, the firsthand material doesn’t get a look in. So the whole of WP is Chinese Whispers, not Science, when it comes to Climate Science.
On the last WP thread, Njorway flagged up this sad state of affairs: “Who is NuclearWarfare?” and it deserves another flag IMO. Timothy Ball’s bio, deleted, and inaccessible if you simply type his name in the search bar.
Would someone like to write his bio again? He certainly deserves a page at WP. And I get the feeling he’s been more cruelly attacked than most. Perhaps his story felt too hot for WP to want to mention.
The problem with wikipedohilia boils down to consensus vs. knowledge. Consensus (which means total agreement, just to set that definition straight) and even common sense are not the same thing as knowledge/science based on observation of phenomena. I’m sorry if this is preaching to the converted, but I can see why and how “the consensus on climate change” ruled the day for so long on wikipedophilia. “Peer review” and “sources” on wikipedophilia are the same sort of surrogate imitations that pass for such in AGW circles.
And yes, there is child porn on wikipedia.
Poptech says: October 15, 2010 at 4:49 pm
Respectfully, I disagree. I still think it’s needed.
Poptech, I looked at your work. Great list. But it’s too overwhelming. And I don’t like what hits: political articles up top (not the science basics), the huge page length, the lack of annotations suggesting the value/content of each, and the time taken to surf from one of your references to another, to compare them.
Where does someone short on time start? Wikipedia of course, because it’s easily accessible, has page sections contents list that lets you jump, links everywhere let you follow through and through and through, and (in theory) it’s not just one person but a consensus statement. Even the bad articles often have good links.
To Dave….sorry, I misunderstood your post….I really didn’t see the ( sarc ) at the end….
Ian
If there has been such a victory, why is the content of Hal Lewis’s resignation letter still air-brushed from his wikipedia page? A kinder, gentler form of censorship… is still censorship.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Lewis
I’m shocked and pleased!
It seems as though the “editors” of Wiki really are trying to ferret out the “emotion”…and stick to “the facts”.
I really regard this as a “net win” for objectivity!
Kudo’s the the VOLUNTEER Wiki staff for taking this BULL by the HORNS.
twl says: “If there has been such a victory, why is the content of Hal Lewis’s resignation letter still air-brushed from his wikipedia page?”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Lewis
twl, the problem with putting the resignation letter on his entry is that it would give undue prominence to the letter in what is a very limited entry on the chap. So, I tried to find more information to add to the wikipedia entry, and to be honest, all I’ve found about him is the news about his resignation. I couldn’t even find a CV or a list of publications and without that there’s almost no point even trying to tidy up his entry.
So if anyone knows where to get more hard information on this guy please post it
The reputational damage to Wiki is already severe. Where I used to just ‘quote the wiki’, I now must first save a copy (as folks would regularly go erase / rewrite articles to which I pointed). And now I simply go elsewhere first. I’ll use the wiki if I need a non-copyright to quote, but otherwise it just gets an ‘avoid’ now.
Maybe someday they can fix their issues, but I’ve not got that long to wait… Though “good on them” for at least starting / trying. (But I fear the “food fight” methodology is not amenable to repair.)
While anyone on the Watts Up with That site is well informed and far above average in intellectual capacity, Wikkipedia is widely used by the unsophisticated and generally accepted as a source for factual information. Please, do not dissmiss it as unimportant. Millions of students, at all levels, use it as the unquestioned source of truth. It is becoming the internet authority. Google usually lists Wikki as one of the first few sources on any search.
Those of us who are working to correct the bad science behind the CO2 global warming scare, must give a high priority to making Wikki a fair and balanced source.
I urge my highly respected Ph.D.-holding heros to organize a committee to take on the project of editing the pertinent Wikki articles. You will be reaching far more people than by publishing papers and writing articles in journals. By correcting the information in Wikki you can make a huge impact on the outcome of the issue.
Remember, ultimately public opinion controls the politicians, and the elected officials control the purse strings on the research dollars, and the research dollars control science and the ouput of science controls the media that controls public opinion. Wikki is an important seat on the merry-go-round.
We need your help Ph.D. scientists. Please make Wikki a priority.
@John Coleman
‘Wikkipedia is widely used by the unsophisticated and generally accepted as a source for factual information.’
I wouldn’t go as far as calling people unsophisticated, bone heads sure, but not unsophisticated. :p
But you’re right though, people take what is written at heart, and that’s the intelligent way. If you go to a encyclopedia you automatically expect what is written to be true and factual at the time of its writing. Period. Period. Period.
That’s why I hate the idiots who rule wikipedia, because by their allowing fundamentalistic extremist, i.e. bias only, sources to write they’re making themselves as a source effectively useless as a source of reference.
It used to be that people made fun of encyclopedia references due to the inherently old entries, but now days with wikipedia it’s because the source lacks the facts of its own time, i.e not because the fact is old and out dated but because it’s not even there in the first place.
Lucy, the reason for the volume of reference material at my site is due to the volume of material that exists and what I have still only covers a fraction of it. You thinking it is too overwhelming, not liking the political links, the huge page length ect.. is your opinion and yours alone. Everyone else that has contacted me (hundreds of people) have all found it to be a valuable resource. The only other comprehensive science resource I have found besides mine is at CO2Science, every other one is missing way too much information.
Someone short on time can start with the simplified version.
The reason they start with Wikipedia is because Google assigns Wikipedia a 9 out 10 PageRank and anyone trying to compete has no remote change of listing higher than Wikipedia in search results. Google effectively created the monster by listing it literally first for every search result at the founding of Wikipedia way before it could possibly build up such an insane PageRank for everything. Alexa also ranks Wikipedia as the 7th most popular site on the web, effectively behind 4 search engines, facebook and YouTube.
Long term I prefer informing people of how Wikipedia really works then trying to fight it.
John, I agree with you and am not dismissing it as unimportant rather attempting to inform people of it’s unreliability. Long term this is much more important than attempting to partake in endless edit wars on Wikipedia.
@FergalR,
I saw that William M. Connolley has made some slight revisions on “my” Wikipedia page. I do not completely agree with him, but this is no reason for an editorial war. Only my professional homepage mentioned before is authoritative.
From today’s WSJ Opinion:
WikiPropaganda
Wikipedia bars a global warming censor from editing its pages.