Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Modern Galilean relativity

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. alphaChimp^(talk) 00:25, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Modern Galilean relativity

This article appears to be a possible hoax, and was (mostly?) the work of one editor, who is now permabanned from WP. The consensus of virtually all others on the Talk page was to start a new page of Opposition to the theory of relativity, where possibly some material can be lifted from this article. At this point in time, the only activity on this page is the repeated attempts by the permabanned editor to edit it under multiple anon socks. Crum375 20:48, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

• Strong delete. As an editor who spent some time dealing with this page (and as a PhD student in particle physics), I am quite confident that the only way to make it usable would be a complete rewrite, as Crumb375 states above. Since nobody has time to do this, I think the article should be deleted. In principle, if it turned out some material from it was useful for a rewrite in the future, undeletion is easy to do. However, to keep the article in its present form for an extended period is to misinform our readers. -- SCZenz 20:56, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and for those who like policy acronyms, the article in its present form severeley violates WP:V, WP:OR, and WP:NPOV. -- SCZenz 20:57, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

This was actually KraMuc's second chance after Anti-relativity was deleted, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anti-relativity. For a short time there was some hope, that something encyclopedic about Relativity's critics may come out of this (e.g. in this version [1]), but by now, I'm all for Delete. And I can repeat my comment from the last AfD: Writing an article about reception of the theory of relativity and its opponents (besides those handled already in our article Deutsche Physik), perhaps taking de:Kritik an der Relativitätstheorie as a starting point, would benefit from starting with a blank sheet. --Pjacobi 21:35, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

• Delete for the above reasons and replace later by a new, more general article as proposed. Harald88 21:40, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

• Keep although the article is mostly complete bollocks it does have a leading critique section that makes this clear for those prepared to listen. Deleting the article will solve nothing: a new hydra head will sprout elsewhere, as it did last time. --Michael C. Price ^talk 21:46, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree that KraMuc socks and others may be attracted just as easily to Opposition to the theory of relativity, but at least there we start off with a clean slate, include all viable opposition (there was a great article cited in the Talk page) in a single article, and of course we can limit the contents to the bare acceptable minimum, per WP and Jimbo's fringe science policies. Crum375 22:11, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Here is the excellent reference provided by Harald88 in the Talk page, which can be used in the foundation of the new article.Crum375 22:20, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Deleting the article also helps establish community support for what I feel is the key issue: such crank-created articles cannot currently be maintained in an acceptable state at an acceptable cost to the Wikipedia community. ---CH 22:19, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

• Strong delete. As a long-time Wikipedia user (now semiretired) who

1. created c. 1994 and maintained for many years the website Relativity on the World Wide Web (now hosted by the illustrious mathematical physicist John Baez),
2. initiated c. August 2005 WikiProject GTR (now defunct, because all my time was taken up with bootless attempts to control crank-POV pushing edits; see User:Hillman/Archive for some idea of what Wikipedia has lost because of this in terms of creation of new articles and improvement of old articles concerning a rather technical topic which is however of wide popular interest and which I happen to know well),
3. created a extensive shared watchlist for Wikipedia:WikiProject Pseudoscience,
4. currently maintains notes such as User:Hillman/Dig/KraMuc (look but don't touch, please, as per the header!); note that this permabanned user created and continues to edit the article under discussion, despite having been permabanned,
5. has been quietly maintaining a database tracking thousands of physics-related cranky websites, and making some effort to correlate this with problem articles in the Wikipedia,

I could be (and have been) accused of being "biased" in favor of mainstream physics, but presumably I cannot be accused of not knowing a good deal about relativistic physics or fringe physics.

Let's get one thing out of the way right away: the article in question and other edits by KraMuc (or his many sockpuppets and IP anons) expresses a tiny, tiny minority view which is about as contrary to well-established science as can be imagined. Relativity is one of the best-tested scientific theories of all time; there simply is no such subject as "modern Galilean relativity" [sic] known to modern physics. This line of crank thought has of course a long pedigree, going right back to the 1920s, but it was cranky even then.

However, I expect that many Wikipedia users who participate in this AfD, who have no particular axe to grind but happen not to be familiar with the problems faced by members of Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics (the membership of WikiProject Pseudoscience seems to be a small subset) in controlling cranky POV-pushing in physics-related articles in the Wikipedia, will conclude that "Wikipedia's mission includes WP:NPOV description of well-known crackpots such as Time Cube". In an ideal world, they would not be wrong (and I myself have made this argument in the past). The trouble is, current practices at Wikipedia for controlling problem edits and problem editors are far too cumbersome to admit any attempt to describe Wikipedia as an ideal world! While I and other editors of good faith are working hard to try to ameliorate this situation (which requires reforming the cumbersome policy creation/implementation process, so that we can emplace wise and effective policies for protecting Wikipedia articles from being traduced by those who come here to pursue some personal agenda which does not serve the interest of our readers, who come here seeking accurate information about topics of interest to them, including technical topics such as physics which require considerable background and expertise to write about knowledgeably, accurately, and well), at present it is far too easy for one disaffected crank to endlessly tie up, not one, not two, but a half dozen Ph.D. physicists/mathematicians whose time here should be spent in more useful activities than trying to "reason" with KraMuc. See User:Hillman/Dig/KraMuc (look but don't touch, please!) for evidence of the magnitude of the problem in trying to deal with KraMuc.

On the basis of my extensive experience here, I feel that until better policies are in place for enforcing WP:NPOV without imposing an undue burden of time/energy upon the still too rare "physics expert" population here, it is my judgement that it is best to delete this article, because as a practical matter there is currently no way to maintain it in an neutral state at an acceptable cost to the Wikipedia community. I also would point contributors to this AfD to User:Hillman/Dig/Sarfatti to see the kind of abuse which can result when the community tries to maintain in neutral form an article on a controversial fringe figure. I would respectfully request that anyone planning to vote keep take the time to read the above cited pages and then decide whether they themselves would be willing to invest a sizeable portion of their own time at Wikipedia in helping the membership of WikiProject Physics try to maintain Modern Galilean relativity in a neutral state.

In a phrase, my argument in this and in similar cases is that "deletion is the best part of valor". If the experiment in the German Wikipedia with various cruft control measures succeeds, and if our policymaking efforts here succeed, so that cruft patrol becomes much, much less onerous for Wikipedia users with a strong physics/math background, we can no doubt recreate articles such as this, in the fullness of time.---CH 21:49, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

To add to your points from current WP/Jimbo policies:

From Jimbo Wales, paraphrased from this post from September 2003 on the mailing list:

• If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts;
• If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents;
• If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia (except perhaps in some ancillary article) regardless of whether it's true or not; and regardless of whether you can prove it or not.

In other words, views held only by a tiny minority of people should not be represented as though they are significant minority views, and perhaps should not be represented at all.

In particular, to elaborate on the last comment above, if you are able to prove something that nobody currently believes, Wikipedia is not the place to premiere such a proof. Once a proof has been presented and discussed elsewhere, however, it may be referenced.

Above quoted from WP:NPOV. Crum375 22:31, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

• Strong Delete as per nom and uh, yeah, everything what CH said (I've got an 'ology, that means I'm a scientist too). Bwithh 22:07, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

• Strong delete per all the arguments above. This "theory" is a little like Flat Earthism, really, only conceptually much more advanced: which makes it far more misleading to the public, and requires far more effort to maintain...the more of these sorts of articles that are deleted, the more time and energy competent editors will have, to work on proper topics. Byrgenwulf 06:47, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

On the contrary it may make the work of other editors more difficult since deleting the article will not stem the input of nonsense, just make it more diffuse and widely spread. --Michael C. Price ^talk 08:30, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

• Delete per nomination and CH. While the influx of nonsense is never-ending, setting a good strong precedent now will, I strongly suspect, help keep the mess under control later. Anville 15:55, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

• Delete as per nomination and CH. The pseudotheory is not notable, and there are no reliable sources addressing (debunking) them scientifically. Much of the current content started out as a diatribe by KraMuc outlining what were essentially his personal ideas and opinions on various theories, each supported by about one crackpot. As an Einstein's Witness and cyber clown, I know a reasonable amount about both relativistic physics and the dynamics of pseudoscience coverage on Wikipedia. Deleting this article is the best thing to do now. No one has the time or inclination to make the article acceptable, and to do so would require original research to show how the ideas conflict with mainstream physics. --Philosophus ^T 22:40, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

On the last point, the article contains a critique section which debunks the whole of "ether theory" and which isn't original research. --Michael C. Price ^talk 23:53, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I think we all agree that any salvageable part of the article, such as the section you mention, should be used in the new article, possibly named Opposition to the theory of relativity. Crum375 00:09, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

• Delete per many arguments above. The article was never about an existing "discipline" called MGR. Tim Shuba 21:39, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.