I saw this coming a mile away.
On Wednesday August 20th, Dr. Roy Spencer noted how John Cook’s well debunked 97% ‘consensus’ claim, based of statistical sleight of hand and pal review, was used as an example of propaganda techniques
Wikipedia Page on Propaganda Techniques Uses 97% Meme
Roy opined:
I wonder how long the example will stay there, without William Connolly to play gatekeeper. I also see “Hope and Change” is given as an example. Hmmm…sounds vaguely familiar.
Like a moth to a flame, William M. Connolley showed up in comments, and accused Dr. Spencer of adding the 97% example himself:
You’re fast. That example was added only a few days ago. Its almost like you did it, or someone did it and then told you. No? Seems like a pretty bizarre coincidence otherwise.
Having boobed the date, he later had to retract that statement:
> only a few days ago
A month and a few days. So, not so fast.
Connolley is equally fast it seems, because he immediately went into Orwellian 1984 Winston Smith mode and re-wrote the entry, simply because he himself believes in the 97% consensus meme. Roy writes today:
Censorship Alive and Well at Wikipedia
That didn’t take long. Less than 24 hours after I noted the use of the “97% of scientists agree” meme as an example of “propaganda techniques” on Wikipedia, the example has disappeared.
And who did the change? Well you know who:
07:29, 21 August 2014 William M. Connolley (talk | contribs) . . (16,792 bytes) (-53) . . (Undid revision 617361920 by 130.22.49.227 (talk) better to use a non-controversial example)
In science, citations are done on published works knowing that good or bad, they’ll be there in 10-20 years for the most part, except in cases where the work is so bad, it has to be retracted, such as the Lewandowsky-Cook Recursive Fury paper.
Wikipedia, being at the mercy of thousands of Winston Smiths in the form of the banned and maligned William Connolley, is like a shape-shifting information portal at the will of the controlling Wikipedians. It might be good enough for a passing blog reference, but there’s no guarantee it will have the same meaning as a citation tomorrow or even an hour from now. With such shape shifting references at the mercy of often politically motivated editors, it certainly isn’t good enough for scientific publication citation.
Maybe that’s why there has been a movement at colleges to ban Wikipedia as a source, even going so far recently as to remove it from college dorm WiFi connections.
Zealots and activists like Connolley should never be trusted as editors, (his track record speaks for itself) and Wikipedia edit wars were even the subject of a study. Unfortunately, Wikipedia is not very good at self-policing such editing zealotry, and this is why Wikipedia will eventually fall by the wayside as a serious reference source.
philjourdan said on August 22, 2014 at 10:50 am:
Starting from Private Window (no tracking), ignoring obvious repetitions (e.g. Wikipedia entry info in box with Wikipedia entry in results), occurrences in first page of search results of applicable descriptions “dictator” (incl. dictatorship, dictatorial) and “leader” (incl. leadership), for “augusto pinochet” and “fidel castro”, includes word in URL’s:
https://duckduckgo.com/html/
Pinochet
dictator: 10
leader: 1
Castro
dictator: 5
leader: 9
Google
Pinochet
dictator: 12
leader: 1
Castro
dictator: 2
leader: 5
Yahoo
Pinochet
dictator: 5
leader: 1
Castro
dictator: 3
leader: 5
Bing
Pinochet
dictator: 5
leader: 1
Castro
dictator: 3
leader: 4
Obviously the Internet is biased against Pinochet, and all four search engines are biased against Pinochet as evidenced by their not balancing out the use of the inflammatory term in their results.
However, consistent across all search engines, only Encyclopedia Britannica described Pinochet as “leader” on the results pages, thus Encyclopedia Britannica is obviously biased for Pinochet.
Due to such obvious and blatant bias, Encyclopedia Britannica must therefore be ruled an untrustworthy source. Only a dunce would not see the bias in their description.
Why you would rely on the opinions of search engines? They can never be wrong, right Kadaka?
I see why you never ask any questions. You do not like the answers. But feel free to go tell your “leader” Castro that gee, some sites on the internet are liberal.
As if anyone would be surprised about that – except you perhaps.
Connolley again….annoying as dog dirt on your shoes!
kadaka,
What, exactly, are you trying to prove? That Wikipedia is not a nest of communist snakes? Good luck with that endeavor.
Castro is a leader of thieving and murderous rabble, and Pinochet was a dictator who cleaned his country of such rabble (including Soviet-paid Cuban mercenaries).
Compare per-capita income in Cuba and in Chile. (Oh, I forgot, blessed inhabitants of the communist paradise don’t need any income.)
From Alexander Feht on August 23, 2014 at 10:49 am:
No, tovarisch, just showing the nature of the charges. In this case, Wikipedia is only guilty of saying what nearly everyone else says. You would have to be a dunce or a totalitarian to consider that some sort of crime, which is the level of this charge of bias.
Are we ready to condemn a man for echoing the consensus view to avoid a fight? Wikipedia has their Neutral Point Of View, they don’t partake in active controversy. As shown, the consensus is Pinochet was a dictator, Castro is usually referred to as a leader. Wikipedia may be plagued with leftist editor-dictators defending their claimed territory, but in this case I must give them a pass.
kadaka,
Who is “we”? Am I ready to condemn a man for echoing the consensus view to avoid a fight?
Oh, yes. Consensus be damned.
I think we are all better off having a Wikipedia whether one agrees with its contents or not. The best attributes of Wiki are that it has rules to promote neutrality in controversial subjects and they label pages that tend to be excessively controversial.
While clearly identifying the mainstream view, Wiki has a tendency to provide opposing views in context and often provides a separate section for criticism. Also the best pages cite references. I would rather go to Wiki for an overview rather than rely only on selective and potentially misleading information that I see so often in ideological blog posts.
To give an example of nuance and completeness I recently offered my opinion in a discussion about the definition of ‘global warming’ in the context of suggesting a more precise construction of the title of the following interesting article:
“Varying planetary heat sink led to global-warming slowdown and acceleration”
I proposed it should be changed to “Varying planetary heat sink led to surface warming slowdown and acceleration”
Since I suspected that the authors were using, in my opinion, an imprecise definition of global warming, I consulted Wikipedia to check my facts and found the two following nuanced definitions:
(http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming)
“Global warming is the observed century-scale rise in the average temperature of Earth’s climate system.”
“Despite the oceans’ dominant role in energy storage, the term “global warming” is also used to refer to increases in average temperature of the air and sea at Earth’s surface.”
Although I prefer one of the two definitions, I did appreciate the additional clarification.
katatetorihanzo
It is not a surprise that you approve of the bias and distortions imposed on Wicki by C0nn0ley and his accomplices.
There could not be a more clear demonstration of propaganda than the two erroneous definitions of global warming you found on Wicki.
Global warming is – and only is – an increase to global average surface temperature anomaly (GASTA).
Global warming stopped about 17 years ago and warmunists are trying to pretend that global warming has not stopped by trying to pretend that global warming is not an increase to GASTA. The bastardised Wicki is promoting that untrue pretense.
Richard
[Snip. Bad email. Please use a valid email address. ~ mod]