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Wikipedia is fine if you look up something less controversial like proton decay, but as soon as article has multiple points of view, there is a fight to establi

Wikipedia is fine if you look up something less controversial like proton decay, but as soon as article has multiple points of view, there is a fight to establish the 'dominant narrative'. Articles that have any arbitration measures applied or in semi-protection shouldn't be trusted: if there are huge talk page archives its also a sign the topic has multiple points of view which Wikipedia can't express. Neutral point of view(Wiki policy) with controversial topics often leads to one-sided articles where the side which 'won the article' controls completely the content, which is massaged to fit the NPOV policy without adding anything from opponents.

kerkeslager 9y ago
This is a problem for sure, but consider the alternative. We could include all viewpoints. This means we put "the universe originated with a big bang and humans evolved from apes" next to "an invisible being created the world and humans 8000 years ago", "AIDS is caused by HIV" next to "AIDS is caused by vaccines and can be cured by ear candling", "the Holocaust killed 10 million plus people" next to "the Holocaust is a Jewish conspiracy to gain sympathy so they can take over the banking system". It's true that for some topics, including only the dominant view glosses over substantial evidence, but we can't ignore the fact that dominant viewpoints are often dominant because the non-dominant viewpoints have no basis in reality.
- FrozenVoid 9y ago
  These contrasting views are documented in Wikipedia as conspiracy theories(holocaust denial, HIV denial) and creationism, wikipedia is fine with it. What i talk about are single articles where there is no other view elsewhere: the only expression of that topic belongs in a single article. It doesn't require to seek political articles to find obvious bias. Lets take for example 0.999... ; its contained in single article, there is only a brief mention of opposing view in skepticism section, but if you look at the talk pages you'll see its more controversial than it sounds and the opposing view is silenced.
  - kerkeslager 9y ago
    Okay, but there's similar argument on vaccines and Obama's birth certificate; how do you propose to resolve that? Do you feel qualified to say that the minority opinion on 0.999 is more notable or sane than moon landing denials? On what basis?
    - FrozenVoid 9y ago
      Wikipedia is fine with all of these topics and has articles documenting them: Obama birth certificate has its own article,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_citizenship_conspiracy_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_citizenship_consp... Moon landing conspiracy theories article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theori... Vaccines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_controversies
      - kerkeslager 9y ago
        I think you're conflating "documenting disproved conspiracy theories" with "presenting disproved conspiracy theories as alternative theories". The vaccine controversies page, for example, notes that some people think vaccines cause autism, but also prominently quotes someone calling the vaccine-autism connection "perhaps, the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years". At no point does either the vaccine or vaccine controversies article deviate from the dominant viewpoint that vaccines do not cause autism. This is very different from the numerous attempts to edit the page vaccines to say that vaccines cause autism. That is what we'd be allowing if we say that articles must present opposing viewpoints when there is controversy. Do you really want the vaccines page to present that as a valid viewpoint?
        FrozenVoid 9y ago
        Wikipedia pretends to be neutral retelling of secondary sources("Verifiability, not Truth"). If Wikipedia was truly neutral it wouldn't need to adhere to "valid/dominant viewpoints" and pretend everything else doesn't exist. Basically, they claim to be neutral and unbiased while "dominant viewpoints" determine the content.

kerkeslager 9y ago

This is a problem for sure, but consider the alternative. We could include all viewpoints. This means we put "the universe originated with a big bang and humans evolved from apes" next to "an invisible being created the world and humans 8000 years ago", "AIDS is caused by HIV" next to "AIDS is caused by vaccines and can be cured by ear candling", "the Holocaust killed 10 million plus people" next to "the Holocaust is a Jewish conspiracy to gain sympathy so they can take over the banking system". It's true that for some topics, including only the dominant view glosses over substantial evidence, but we can't ignore the fact that dominant viewpoints are often dominant because the non-dominant viewpoints have no basis in reality.

FrozenVoid 9y ago
These contrasting views are documented in Wikipedia as conspiracy theories(holocaust denial, HIV denial) and creationism, wikipedia is fine with it. What i talk about are single articles where there is no other view elsewhere: the only expression of that topic belongs in a single article. It doesn't require to seek political articles to find obvious bias. Lets take for example 0.999... ; its contained in single article, there is only a brief mention of opposing view in skepticism section, but if you look at the talk pages you'll see its more controversial than it sounds and the opposing view is silenced.
- kerkeslager 9y ago
  Okay, but there's similar argument on vaccines and Obama's birth certificate; how do you propose to resolve that? Do you feel qualified to say that the minority opinion on 0.999 is more notable or sane than moon landing denials? On what basis?
  - FrozenVoid 9y ago
    Wikipedia is fine with all of these topics and has articles documenting them: Obama birth certificate has its own article,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_citizenship_conspiracy_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_citizenship_consp... Moon landing conspiracy theories article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theori... Vaccines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_controversies
    - kerkeslager 9y ago
      I think you're conflating "documenting disproved conspiracy theories" with "presenting disproved conspiracy theories as alternative theories". The vaccine controversies page, for example, notes that some people think vaccines cause autism, but also prominently quotes someone calling the vaccine-autism connection "perhaps, the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years". At no point does either the vaccine or vaccine controversies article deviate from the dominant viewpoint that vaccines do not cause autism. This is very different from the numerous attempts to edit the page vaccines to say that vaccines cause autism. That is what we'd be allowing if we say that articles must present opposing viewpoints when there is controversy. Do you really want the vaccines page to present that as a valid viewpoint?
      - FrozenVoid 9y ago
        Wikipedia pretends to be neutral retelling of secondary sources("Verifiability, not Truth"). If Wikipedia was truly neutral it wouldn't need to adhere to "valid/dominant viewpoints" and pretend everything else doesn't exist. Basically, they claim to be neutral and unbiased while "dominant viewpoints" determine the content.