The "sceptical" movement try to controll wikipedia for their own purposes.
Thank you for stating this.
Because my expertise is in the areas of religion, folk magic, spirituality, and divinatory customs worldwide, i have had to face the sketical cabal on many occasions. They employ sock puppets, they have embedded themselves with friendly admins who support their ideologies, and they have page-watch systems in place which allow them to delete, often within a few hours, any material -- whether biographical, anthropological, or generally historical -- which is not openly critical of religious beliefs.
They are particularly fond of "owning" articles about minority religions or historical religious figures associated with non-mainstream religions.
Once they "own" a page or series of interlocking pages, they insert sleptical and contentious opposition to the beliefs espoused by religious figures in the lead paragraphs of biographical articles, in contravention to normal biographical standards.
They label articles on the divinatory and liturgical customs of minority Americans and non-American cultures "pseudo-science" or "pseudoscience," usually in the lead paragraph.
They almost always use either JREF (James Randi Educational Foundation) or CSICOP (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal ) / CSI (Committee for Skeptical Inquiry) as footnotes sources to defend their contention that various beliefs are "pseudo-science" or "pseudoscience." They cannot understand that believers in certain faiths do not pit themselves, their beliefs, their customs, or their faith against "science" nor pose as "scientific" -- and therefore cannot logically be labelled "pseudo-scientific." To these fanatics, it is not enough to ignore science or laugh at it or shrug one's shoulders at it. Anything short of athetistic scientism is, to them, "pseudo-science" or "pseudoscience."
They delete scholarly references (usually by contending that they are not "reliable sources" and in some cases by false claims that the sites cited are "commercial," when they are not) and then tag the previously reffed sentences and paragraphs as uncited, and follow this up shortly by deleting the cited sentences and paragraphs from articles on historical topics that describe people or movements that favour spirituality over skepticism.
They delete dozens of new articles on religious, mystical, occult, supernatual, anthropological, and liturgical subjects either by declaring them "not notable" and getting their cabal and their socks to vote for deletion or, in some instances, by merging articles with others similar to them and then deting the portions of the dmerged article which dealt with matters of religious belief, especially minority faiths.
The reason they attack minority faiths is not that they are more opposed to them than they are to mainstream faiths, merely that there are fewer writers to defend and re-write pages on minority faiths.
I used to write for Wikipedia regularly. I no longer do so, and 90% of the reason is the organized interference i have had to endure from the skeptical cabal and the admins who support their edit wars (at east one of whom runs a sock puppet edit-warrior).
64.142.90.33 04:42, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
According to prof. dr. Bart van Heerikhuizen, "science is organized skepticism". Therefore, skepticism does render the mainstream scientific position, i.e. that all scientific theories are open to criticism and must be so in order to be considered scientific. Reliable sources are defined by the Wikipedia policies, in this case they are print-published, peer reviewed scientific articles from mainstream scientific journals. Just because you call something "anthropology" it is not necessarily science or a reliable source, especially if it is self-published. Please mind that anthropologists cannot claim that spirits exist, that magic works (as it is supposed to do), that drugs open doors to higher realms of awareness, since these claims cannot be scientific. All that anthropologists could claim if that "this or that group of people believes in spirits and uses magic in order to appease/control these spirits", describing their ritual without making any claim that spirits would be real.
Yes, but Wikipedia is not supposed to present the Truth. It is supposed to be a reference, where you can look stuff up. There is no call for articles to repeatedly emphasize a particular pont of view, when that point of view does not contribute information. All things in moderation. - Brya 04:52, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
Let me restate it: the scientific consensus is based on skepticism. Wikipedia renders the scientific consensus, so it inherently has a skeptical bias. There is absolutely no problem with such bias. Such bias is required of any academic contribution: listen only to persuasive evidence, take heed from Ockham's razor and doubt everything you can reasonably doubt. This is how scholarship works, and Wikipedia is based upon scholarship.
This statement "Wikipedia renders the scientific consensus" seems confused, and certainly cannot be found in any of the policy pages. Wikipedia is supposed to offer information; and "scientific consensus" (or any of several scientific consensus-ses) is only part of that information.
This "Wikipedia renders the scientific consensus" is indistinguishable from "Wikipedia renders the Truth", which pretty explicitly belongs with "What Wikipedia is not". - Brya 18:00, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
You have argued that science has no place for "Truth", therefore you contradict yourself.
People can treat anything as the Truth, like the Bible, the Koran, a scientific consensus, etc. That does not mean it exists, except in that place and time, and to those people. No contradiction. - Brya 05:15, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
Ok, to put it otherwise: Wikipedia renders the information provided by reliable sources. Reliable sources are produced by academics, which are professional skeptics. Or maybe by journalists, who always have to check their information in order to be convinced that it it true. Wikipedians cannot express their own opinions as encyclopedic knowledge, they may only render the research done by academics and journalists. This is a matter of several official policies, like WP:VER, WP:NOR, WP:SOURCES and WP:NPOV.
Wikipedia never was supposed to be made of scientific consensus. Therefore if some somebody is deleting/tagging no-scientific parts or whole articles following this narrow-minded practice then he is corrupting Wikipedia and he should be cast out from Wikipedia. Wikipedia it is not what most people think. Wikipedia it is an encyclopedia, not a compendium of exclusively scientific articles. That means every thing of historic/current notability can be and should be inside of Wikipedia. That is to say: fiction, music, poetry, painting, cinema, dance, theatre, TV, folklore, religion, myths, doctrines, magic, science (physics, medicine, mathematics, biology, psychology, history, …, etc.), etc, etc, etc, etc, etc… should be present in Wikipedia. None of these articles are expected to tell eternal truths but only supposed to be a display of historic and notable ideas/events, sometimes embodying truths or lies or both. Even scientific articles which today are current and accepted ideas, a true scientist knows that in the future those current theories can be changed. It is not clear yet? I will elucidate: Wikipedia it is about what has popular and unpopular notability. That is to say, Wikipedia it is an ENCYCLOPEDIA.
All the listed items can be studied scientifically (or academically: fiction, music, poetry, painting, cinema, theater, TV, folklore, religion, myths, doctrines, magic, science -- yes, even science can be studied scientifically!). When talking about science I also mean literary critique, film criticism, critical-historical method, psychology, sociology, religion studies and so on. If you do not like the term, replace scientific with academic: Wikipedia renders the academic consensus (or lack of it), since reliable sources express it (or its lack). This of course does not apply to news items, which are not studied academically, but reported by journalists.
Simply, reliable sources are either mainstream academic sources or mainstream newspapers. Therefore Wikipedia renders the viewpoints of either academic papers or news items.
Most things can be studied scientifically, usually by more than one science. Any science can have one or more consensuses, at any one time.
Your "Wikipedia renders the academic consensus (or lack of it)," is a lot closer to what the intent is than your earlier statement. It lacks the requirement of the proper context, and it does not take into account that there may be more than one consensus on a topic. - Brya 05:23, 22 May 2011 (UTC)