youcanhandlethetruth 01:34 AM 24-07-2008
Originally Posted by Akria:
Your point about your typing all day because you know what is at stake could apply to anyone, including myself.
Why else would I spend so much time focussing on global warming?
As I said, I have looked at the other viewpoint with an open mind. The problem is that the viewpoint I currently hold has, in my opinion formed after a great deal of research, a greater amount of evidence to support it.
Looking at the other viewpoint has thus given me more cause to worry about global warming, because the arguments against it are very weak compared to the arguments for it.
The two most important ones, although there are other criticism subsections:
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Anyone can edit it, with or without an account, although an account is recommended so that people can both discuss your edits with you if necessary and to help prevent spamming.
Pretty much any article can be edited, although some are locked to anyone but administrators - usually important things such as the main page, for obvious reasons - and normal articles can be protected (no-one but moderators can edit) or semi-protected (people without accounts can't edit) if either an edit war is brewing or there's been an event which could reasonably lead to spamming occurring (an example of the latter would be when the famous webcomic xkcd linked to a page a few strips back; the page was semi-protected to prevent vandalism).
People are usually dissuaded from editing articles relating to themselves, as it's considered bad form and conducive to bias, but it's not forbidden. Alex Jones could quite easily edit his own page for example, with or without an account.
Hope that helps.
I think if you looked at the other evidence totally out of the sphere of global warming relating to the political motivation of governments, you may eventually take a different view, but fair enough, up to you.
Thanks for the information.
You say "Pretty much any article can be edited, although some are locked to anyone but administrators"
Is it possible to know which articles are locked by administrators and which are not ?
[Rep]
Akria 02:03 AM 24-07-2008
A while ago there would be a banner at the top of a page saying that it was protected, although this practice seems to have died out now. I haven't been keeping an eye on community discussions.
However, the banners themselves still remain, and hence are probably still in use in at least some places.
One of the fully protected banners looks like the bar at the top of this page:
Template:Pp-vandalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
There is a protected page log, although it's not very useful at times; it's difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Some of the protections are simply put in place on articles with mispelled names which provide a redirect to the correct one; for example, Qu'ran is fully protected as it is a redirect to Qur'an (Qur'an itself is semi-protected).
[Rep]
youcanhandlethetruth 03:02 AM 24-07-2008
Thanks for the information.
I've read wiki's guidelines and their definitions of "consensus", "neutrality" etc.
I suppose at the end of the day, wiki have the final say if consensus or agreement cannot be reached ?
I notice they define reliable sources as "their authors are generally regarded as trustworthy or authoritative in relation to the subject at hand" which naturally is massively open to interpretation.
It's always going to be difficult to define neutrality, bias and such things which makes me think it is necessary to have an open mind rather than accept every entry as gospel.
What I do find particularly worrying though is that in the NPOV(neutral point of view) tutorial is that it states ""It's what everybody I know believes," is a start."
Whilst this sounds the most reasonable way to proceed, it does not guard against the fact that the majority of people may be completely wrong in their beliefs, as the majority of "conspiracy theorists(for lack of a better definition) would probably agree with me on.
But hey that's the world we live in and I can't blame wiki for that though it may well suit their policy if it fits in with the mainstream view.
[Rep]