5 ms·

Wikipedia rules are just insufficient to protect against "fringe" beliefs. Wikipedia itself creates several of them per year due to citogenesis: https://en.wiki

Wikipedia rules are just insufficient to protect against "fringe" beliefs. Wikipedia itself creates several of them per year due to citogenesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_citogenesis_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_citogenesis_...

jstanley 1y ago
Why are fringe beliefs something that need protecting against? All progress starts out as a fringe belief.
- blackbear_ 1y ago
  But not all fringe beliefs lead to progress, in fact most of them don't.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- surgical_fire 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - Forgeties79 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - DaSHacka 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - DonHopkins 1y ago
        [flagged]
- mkl 1y ago
  > All progress starts out as a fringe belief. That is not true at all. The usefulness and value of many new things and discoveries is often immediately obvious. Even when the value is not immediately obvious, being a curiosity is more likely than being a fringe belief. Fringe beliefs don't have evidence behind them, but progress does.
  - fhonephree 1y ago
    >> All progress starts out as a fringe belief. > That is not true at all. > Fringe beliefs don't have evidence behind them, but progress does. That depends on your definition of fringe and evidence. I suspect there may be some association between truth and some non-mainstream, cult idea, or conspiracy theory. e.g. it is widely accepted now that the earth is not flat although at one point more accepted that it was flat. That doesn’t eventually validate all fringe ideas, but acknowledges a possibility that when all fringe ideas are considered as a whole, some of them may be true or partially true or be a step towards truth. A problem with this is that truth seeking and delusions go hand in hand. Delusions seem as real as anything else, and may be evidential but misconstrued evidence or even unknowingly invented evidence. This affects more mundane things like scientific studies, reporting, politics, and Wikipedia as well as “Are they after me” or “Are they lying” things. Another problem more relevant today than ever is “Should this information be included in Wikipedia, national monuments, museums, libraries, books, or education in-general?” I’ve had articles in Wikipedia that were valid, that stood for years, and then were eventually removed, though they were valid and true, I assume because they didn’t believe it was important enough or relevant to their users that didn’t care as much as I did about preserving history. Is that the right thing to do? I don’t personally think so, but those in-control historically have and will change beliefs to suit their own. We must get involved to ensure that we are not misled. We should not stand idly by and think “Wow, Hitler really f’d up the education of our youth.” We must get involved to stop it. But that doesn’t mean culling or altering all information which doesn’t meet our worldview.
    - y-curious 1y ago
      Dude, read the article please. It explains why it keeps the flat earth page AND why it’s exhausting to argue with fringe zealots. You are literally soapboxing instead of having a good faith argument, which is mentioned in the article.
- Almondsetat 1y ago
  That's tautologically false. For something to be considered "progress" it has to provably improve upon something. But if your belief is provably an improvement, it's not a belief anymore, but more of a fact. What you actually meant to say is that all progress stems from the research and implementation sparkled by a fringe intuition. But even then, you can have progress without going too far from the current mainstream, so it's not really true anyway
  - derektank 1y ago
    >For something to be considered "progress" it has to provably improve upon something. But if your belief is provably an improvement, it's not a belief anymore, but more of a fact. This isn't true. For example, the Caloric theory of heat was a huge improvement over the existing heterodoxy (the phlogiston theory), made several testable predictions that were true (improving upon Newton's calculation of the speed of sound), and made it possible for Carnot to make serious advances in the field of thermodynamics with the postulation of the Carnot engine. However, the theory was not a fact. The self-repellent fluid called "caloric" that the theory was predicated upon never existed. We need a bit more epistemic humility.
    - Almondsetat 1y ago
      Nothing ever exists, it's all models to interpret reality. Your point?
      - IAmBroom 1y ago
        Ego sum.
- nemo44x 1y ago
  Agreed. Fringe beliefs die when they are challenged, not when censored. Driving them underground makes them stronger if anything. Policing fringe beliefs is dangerous. A free society must tolerate & even welcome such beliefs into the public sphere, not because they are good, but because the freedom to be wrong is the foundation of our ability to be right.
  - mapontosevenths 1y ago
    The encyclopedia is not the place for debate.
    - potato3732842 1y ago
      Because a false appearance of consensus is better? Why even have Wikipedia then? Why not just ask Reddit at that point?
      - bastawhiz 1y ago
        There's no such thing as consensus when you're talking about the scope of the encyclopedia. People will say that birds don't exist, that the sun is not a star because it's a space ship circling the globe with a big flashlight, and that Area 51 is a place where the government is hiding the mole people that we've enslaved to dig tunnels for the rich to evacuate into when WW3 happens. There will never be 100% consensus on anything—even on the most verifiable and proven universal truths—and so by saying there's "false consensus" is meaningless. If the bar is 100% agreement by everyone who cares to speak up, the encyclopedia can't say that anything is true. And if that's the case, what's the point of an encyclopedia?
        mapontosevenths 1y ago
        At the end of the day the encyclopedia was always written through the consensus of experts. Early encyclopedias solved this problem by hiring experts. Wikipedia doesn't hire them, it just cites them. It has only been recently that our cynical postmodern internet hordes have decided experts are somehow only equally worthy of trust as the high-school dropout uncles of facebook and the brain-worm infested politicians on the news.
- mapontosevenths 1y ago
  Because the world isn't flat, and that theory does not deserve equal weight with the truth in a reference work. There are an infinite number of falsehoods, and only one truth. If we let the lies in the truth becomes impossible to find in the pile of lies.
  - IAmBroom 1y ago
    You must believe in a quasi-Platonic world of only one truth. There are many truths. Cleveland is two hours away from me. Cleveland is 40 hours away from me. Both of these are true, but there is not enough detail in them to ascertain exactly what they mean. The same can be said of any statement outside of formal, logic-based language constraints. The point your statement keenly misses, however, is that the truth is nowhere near as obvious as you make it seem. Darwin's theories were preposterous to people who were just as certain of "one truth" as you are.
    - mapontosevenths 1y ago
      Post-modern relatavism and extreme cynicism are destroying everything that was once good in the world. Some things are objectively true, and those objective things are exactly what encyclopedias are for. Starting from the presupposition that all statements are equally true is wrong headed in the extreme. Some people will disagree with even obvious facts like the world not being flat. We don't have to listen to them, and we should not.
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  It’s covered in the article. In short, Wikipedia is not that place.
- bastawhiz 1y ago
  The idea that the earth is flat is a fringe belief. No evidence (that hasn't been disproven) exists to suggest that the earth is flat. What progress is being made by giving flat earth ideology equal footing? If any idea—even those with no evidence to support them—are published in authoritative texts as possible truths, then how can anyone trust those texts? If I convince enough people that the center of the earth is filled with spaghetti (of course it is, that's why the moon is made of cheese! To go on the spaghetti!) does that deserve equal footing on Wikipedia? Of course not.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - ungreased0675 1y ago
    I’d like somewhere where I can read about flat-earth beliefs in a neutral, non-advocacy perspective. My train of thought goes something like “wow, people actually think the earth is flat? That’s crazy.” > “Is this an internet meme thing or 4chan astroturf thing?” > “I wonder why and how many people actually believe that?” At no point am I confused or persuadable about the shape of the planet. I’ve looked out an airplane window before. Maybe that’s what feels off about it. There’s an underlying feeling of protecting a gullible public from bad information, a process with a high risk of being corrupted by ideologues.
    - immibis 1y ago
      Wikipedia has this. It's already covered in TFA, that Wikipedia can have a page about flat earth believers, but can't say, even on that page, that the earth is actually flat.
    - bastawhiz 1y ago
      That's not what's being argued here. Wikipedia has exactly the information you've described (as it should!). There's no real argument over whether Wikipedia should or should not have information about flat earth ideology. What's being discussed is whether Wikipedia should call it incorrect or not. Or rather, whether the idea that the earth is round is the truth. You can still provide information about provably false ideas while pointing to another idea grounded in facts as the truth.
- JohnTHaller 1y ago
  The vast majority of fringe beliefs are regressive.
braiamp 1y ago
Why should wikipedia protect itself from fringe, when it doesn't need to try to? If your fringe theory becomes the widely accepted one, it will naturally change the wording of the article, just based on sourcing alone.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  Probably because ignorance has shown itself to be tenacious, dedicated, persistent. (I think I repeat myself though.)
ajross 1y ago
There's nothing unique to Wikipedia there though, that kind of thing has always happened. Anyone with a printing press is tempted to control the narrative. History is written by the victors, as it were. Wikipedia rules are provably sufficient to produce the greatest and most useful reference work in human history. That's good enough for me.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
bawolff 1y ago
Wikipedia's rules do not have it as a goal to protect the world at large from fringe beliefs
b00ty4breakfast 1y ago
wikipedia's function as a general (as in not specialized) tertiary source isn't to filter out ideas or beliefs but to catalog and present them in a standardized(ish) format. The rules are not "insufficient" in this regard in the same way that a flute is not an "insufficient" guitar; they aren't designed to "protect against" any topic that would otherwise qualify for a wiki article.
y-curious 1y ago
This was such a fascinating read, wow! The term I use frequently, “Dunning-Kruger Effect”, came from Wikipedia!? Out of thin air?
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  No, it came from a paper published in 1999 by David Dunning and Justin Kruger.

jstanley 1y ago

Why are fringe beliefs something that need protecting against? All progress starts out as a fringe belief.

blackbear_ 1y ago
But not all fringe beliefs lead to progress, in fact most of them don't.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
surgical_fire 1y ago
[flagged]
- Forgeties79 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - DaSHacka 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - DonHopkins 1y ago
      [flagged]
mkl 1y ago
> All progress starts out as a fringe belief. That is not true at all. The usefulness and value of many new things and discoveries is often immediately obvious. Even when the value is not immediately obvious, being a curiosity is more likely than being a fringe belief. Fringe beliefs don't have evidence behind them, but progress does.
- fhonephree 1y ago
  >> All progress starts out as a fringe belief. > That is not true at all. > Fringe beliefs don't have evidence behind them, but progress does. That depends on your definition of fringe and evidence. I suspect there may be some association between truth and some non-mainstream, cult idea, or conspiracy theory. e.g. it is widely accepted now that the earth is not flat although at one point more accepted that it was flat. That doesn’t eventually validate all fringe ideas, but acknowledges a possibility that when all fringe ideas are considered as a whole, some of them may be true or partially true or be a step towards truth. A problem with this is that truth seeking and delusions go hand in hand. Delusions seem as real as anything else, and may be evidential but misconstrued evidence or even unknowingly invented evidence. This affects more mundane things like scientific studies, reporting, politics, and Wikipedia as well as “Are they after me” or “Are they lying” things. Another problem more relevant today than ever is “Should this information be included in Wikipedia, national monuments, museums, libraries, books, or education in-general?” I’ve had articles in Wikipedia that were valid, that stood for years, and then were eventually removed, though they were valid and true, I assume because they didn’t believe it was important enough or relevant to their users that didn’t care as much as I did about preserving history. Is that the right thing to do? I don’t personally think so, but those in-control historically have and will change beliefs to suit their own. We must get involved to ensure that we are not misled. We should not stand idly by and think “Wow, Hitler really f’d up the education of our youth.” We must get involved to stop it. But that doesn’t mean culling or altering all information which doesn’t meet our worldview.
  - y-curious 1y ago
    Dude, read the article please. It explains why it keeps the flat earth page AND why it’s exhausting to argue with fringe zealots. You are literally soapboxing instead of having a good faith argument, which is mentioned in the article.
Almondsetat 1y ago
That's tautologically false. For something to be considered "progress" it has to provably improve upon something. But if your belief is provably an improvement, it's not a belief anymore, but more of a fact. What you actually meant to say is that all progress stems from the research and implementation sparkled by a fringe intuition. But even then, you can have progress without going too far from the current mainstream, so it's not really true anyway
- derektank 1y ago
  >For something to be considered "progress" it has to provably improve upon something. But if your belief is provably an improvement, it's not a belief anymore, but more of a fact. This isn't true. For example, the Caloric theory of heat was a huge improvement over the existing heterodoxy (the phlogiston theory), made several testable predictions that were true (improving upon Newton's calculation of the speed of sound), and made it possible for Carnot to make serious advances in the field of thermodynamics with the postulation of the Carnot engine. However, the theory was not a fact. The self-repellent fluid called "caloric" that the theory was predicated upon never existed. We need a bit more epistemic humility.
  - Almondsetat 1y ago
    Nothing ever exists, it's all models to interpret reality. Your point?
    - IAmBroom 1y ago
      Ego sum.
nemo44x 1y ago
Agreed. Fringe beliefs die when they are challenged, not when censored. Driving them underground makes them stronger if anything. Policing fringe beliefs is dangerous. A free society must tolerate & even welcome such beliefs into the public sphere, not because they are good, but because the freedom to be wrong is the foundation of our ability to be right.
- mapontosevenths 1y ago
  The encyclopedia is not the place for debate.
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    Because a false appearance of consensus is better? Why even have Wikipedia then? Why not just ask Reddit at that point?
    - bastawhiz 1y ago
      There's no such thing as consensus when you're talking about the scope of the encyclopedia. People will say that birds don't exist, that the sun is not a star because it's a space ship circling the globe with a big flashlight, and that Area 51 is a place where the government is hiding the mole people that we've enslaved to dig tunnels for the rich to evacuate into when WW3 happens. There will never be 100% consensus on anything—even on the most verifiable and proven universal truths—and so by saying there's "false consensus" is meaningless. If the bar is 100% agreement by everyone who cares to speak up, the encyclopedia can't say that anything is true. And if that's the case, what's the point of an encyclopedia?
      - mapontosevenths 1y ago
        At the end of the day the encyclopedia was always written through the consensus of experts. Early encyclopedias solved this problem by hiring experts. Wikipedia doesn't hire them, it just cites them. It has only been recently that our cynical postmodern internet hordes have decided experts are somehow only equally worthy of trust as the high-school dropout uncles of facebook and the brain-worm infested politicians on the news.
mapontosevenths 1y ago
Because the world isn't flat, and that theory does not deserve equal weight with the truth in a reference work. There are an infinite number of falsehoods, and only one truth. If we let the lies in the truth becomes impossible to find in the pile of lies.
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  You must believe in a quasi-Platonic world of only one truth. There are many truths. Cleveland is two hours away from me. Cleveland is 40 hours away from me. Both of these are true, but there is not enough detail in them to ascertain exactly what they mean. The same can be said of any statement outside of formal, logic-based language constraints. The point your statement keenly misses, however, is that the truth is nowhere near as obvious as you make it seem. Darwin's theories were preposterous to people who were just as certain of "one truth" as you are.
  - mapontosevenths 1y ago
    Post-modern relatavism and extreme cynicism are destroying everything that was once good in the world. Some things are objectively true, and those objective things are exactly what encyclopedias are for. Starting from the presupposition that all statements are equally true is wrong headed in the extreme. Some people will disagree with even obvious facts like the world not being flat. We don't have to listen to them, and we should not.
JKCalhoun 1y ago
It’s covered in the article. In short, Wikipedia is not that place.
bastawhiz 1y ago
The idea that the earth is flat is a fringe belief. No evidence (that hasn't been disproven) exists to suggest that the earth is flat. What progress is being made by giving flat earth ideology equal footing? If any idea—even those with no evidence to support them—are published in authoritative texts as possible truths, then how can anyone trust those texts? If I convince enough people that the center of the earth is filled with spaghetti (of course it is, that's why the moon is made of cheese! To go on the spaghetti!) does that deserve equal footing on Wikipedia? Of course not.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- ungreased0675 1y ago
  I’d like somewhere where I can read about flat-earth beliefs in a neutral, non-advocacy perspective. My train of thought goes something like “wow, people actually think the earth is flat? That’s crazy.” > “Is this an internet meme thing or 4chan astroturf thing?” > “I wonder why and how many people actually believe that?” At no point am I confused or persuadable about the shape of the planet. I’ve looked out an airplane window before. Maybe that’s what feels off about it. There’s an underlying feeling of protecting a gullible public from bad information, a process with a high risk of being corrupted by ideologues.
  - immibis 1y ago
    Wikipedia has this. It's already covered in TFA, that Wikipedia can have a page about flat earth believers, but can't say, even on that page, that the earth is actually flat.
  - bastawhiz 1y ago
    That's not what's being argued here. Wikipedia has exactly the information you've described (as it should!). There's no real argument over whether Wikipedia should or should not have information about flat earth ideology. What's being discussed is whether Wikipedia should call it incorrect or not. Or rather, whether the idea that the earth is round is the truth. You can still provide information about provably false ideas while pointing to another idea grounded in facts as the truth.
JohnTHaller 1y ago
The vast majority of fringe beliefs are regressive.

braiamp 1y ago

Why should wikipedia protect itself from fringe, when it doesn't need to try to? If your fringe theory becomes the widely accepted one, it will naturally change the wording of the article, just based on sourcing alone.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
JKCalhoun 1y ago
Probably because ignorance has shown itself to be tenacious, dedicated, persistent. (I think I repeat myself though.)

ajross 1y ago

There's nothing unique to Wikipedia there though, that kind of thing has always happened. Anyone with a printing press is tempted to control the narrative. History is written by the victors, as it were. Wikipedia rules are provably sufficient to produce the greatest and most useful reference work in human history. That's good enough for me.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

bawolff 1y ago

Wikipedia's rules do not have it as a goal to protect the world at large from fringe beliefs

b00ty4breakfast 1y ago

wikipedia's function as a general (as in not specialized) tertiary source isn't to filter out ideas or beliefs but to catalog and present them in a standardized(ish) format. The rules are not "insufficient" in this regard in the same way that a flute is not an "insufficient" guitar; they aren't designed to "protect against" any topic that would otherwise qualify for a wiki article.

y-curious 1y ago

This was such a fascinating read, wow! The term I use frequently, “Dunning-Kruger Effect”, came from Wikipedia!? Out of thin air?

IAmBroom 1y ago
No, it came from a paper published in 1999 by David Dunning and Justin Kruger.