Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard

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

The result of the debate was give it more time. The page was MfD'd within about half a day of creation - not really enough time to see how it will function, and whether it will do so successfully. What the noticeboard attempts to deal with is a growing and often overlooked problem on Wikipedia - this being one of the easiest places in the world to push your crankery without being controlled effectively. Let's give this more time. In due course, a WikiProject might be something to consider, either in addition to the noticeboard, or to replace it. Those speaking in favour of deletion make good points, especially about whether this noticeboard will give undue weight to POV-disputes - it may be something to consider for those who plan on using this noticeboard, and those who plan on helping to maintain it. ~ Riana ⁂ 06:40, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard

A new noticeboard that was created last night, apparently intended to address the pushing of fringe theories on articles. However, fringe theory-pushing is no different from POV-pushing, and POV disputes are already handled in various ways (such as discussions on talk pages, CAT:NPOV, WP:CSB, and Wikipedia:Neutrality Project). There's no real need for yet another noticeboard to address this; Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. Coredesat 05:46, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

• Given the large number of noticeboards (currently 8 on the header of WP:AN along with the 5 village pumps), we don't need to be increasing the number of noticeboards right now. As an editor of math articles I am quite familiar with fringe theories, and I do think they are an important issue. I think Wikpedia:WikiProject Fringe Theories would be a more reasonable way to bring together editors who are interested in seeing balanced, accurate, NPOV presentations of fringe theories. — Carl (CBM · talk) 05:52, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. Let's be clear on the stated purpose of FTN: it's to inform editors when fringe theories are being given undue weight in articles about non-fringe subjects. For example, one user was rather taken by the theory that Troy was actually in England, and edited many different articles, including Troy, Homer, Iliad, Odyssey, etc. to reflect this theory--which is so far off the map that we could only find one academic source that even touched upon it. In that case, it was easy to deal with the problem, because those articles are watched and edited by many people. But in less-travelled areas of Wikipedia, such as Armenian hypothesis, Asii, Scythians, various fringy ideas get inserted and remain unnoticed for months or years. It's a definite problem. As for CAT:NPOV, WP:CSB, and Wikipedia:Neutrality Project, "ineffective" is probably the nicest word I can use. I'm skeptical about the efficacy of a noticeboard in dealing with this problem, but I think it's worth a try--and if the objection is that it shouldn't be the same type of page as WP:ANI, etc., converting it into a WikiProject might work. I should note, though, that in science and math it's usually more obvious that someone's spouting a crank theory. (It's still caused some pretty tortured ArbCom cases, though.) In the humanities and social sciences things can be a bit murkier. --Akhilleus (talk) 06:05, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
• Delete it appears to be an overly useless and unnecessary board that will only lead to more issues and more drama concerning a centralized area of interest.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 06:07, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
• Delete useless--Sefringle^Talk 06:14, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. When I saw this page earlier today, I was leaning towards MFD as I saw this page as another unneeded subpage of WP:AN, and of something that most editors won't understand. I don't think it's useless but the last thing wikipedia needs is more bureaucracy which violates WP:NOT, but thats commonly broken. Sorry Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 06:18, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

• Delete. The remedy for undue weight is to bring many eyes to the article. This will not achieve that. --bainer (talk) 06:33, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. Akhilleus does have a point. I had little doubt that the latest attempt to provide some measure of protection against trolling would fall victim to IRC-driven astroturfing. That's why I believe IRC should be shut down as speedily as possible. Until that is done, any check against trolling will be bombed. There is a large chunk of WP admins who are not interested in content arbitration (in content, basically). I have not seen either Ryulong or Jaranda or Thebainer argue with crackpots and fight to preserve the integrity of Wikipedia on a day to day basis. On the other hand, I have seen the latter and the former in attempts to block one of the foremost contributors to Wikipedia from editing, for no reason at all. Of course it's natural for them to ignore the purpose of this board.

A simple example: on Old European Script we have an editor who argues that Homer was a Slavonic poet and that this point of view warrants serious mention in the article. It's fortunate that the article has been on watchlist of several people who have been able to face the challenge so far. Other pages are not so lucky. For instance, I remove from Aratta the cranky claim that it was "the oldest Armenian state".[1] Within ten minutes (sic!) I am reverted by an anon (or a sockpuppet of a banned user) who obviously has some means of watching the page. The next revert of an anonymous revert warrior follows within four minutes after my edit.[2] Since I'm not an admin and such articles normally don't fall within my sphere of interest, I abandon these pages in disgust and the cranky claims like this are perpetuated for eternity (you may see Aratta for yourself). I don't want to fight with crackpots until I collapse from exhaustion, thank you. Since I am denied the only means of reporting the fringe POV-pushing to the community, I'd better chat all day long or edit Russian Wikipedia where the policy towards trolling is more strict (and where I actually transfer much of my activity). --Ghirla^-трёп- 07:18, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - I think Akhilleus and Ghirla have pretty much summed up nicely what I would like to say. Regardless, I think it's worth giving it more than 9 hours to develop. We don't deal with neutrality problems well, and we deal with fringe-theory pushing very badly, mostly because it takes place on very obscure articles. A noticeboard to attract more attention to these issues isn't a bad idea, to get more better eyes looking the problems. Articles on fringe theories aren't the problem: it's when junk gets added to existing articles that real issues begin.

Regardless, I'm not that fussed. I was being bold in creating this, and if people think that a WikiProject might work better, I'm willing to look at that as an option as well. However, I do think a bit more than 9 hours is required in seeing how this pans out. Moreschi ^Talk 08:43, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

• Give it more time This aims to deal with one of the biggest problems facing Wikipedia. We have effective methods for dealing with vandals, but not the trolls and cranks who are a much bigger threat to the encyclopaedia. They add inaccurate content, waste decent editors' time and drive many actual or potential users away. Something has to be done , but the current remedies in place are pretty hopeless. Let's give this experiment a chance. --Folantin 09:07, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
• Give it more time per Folantin.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  09:26, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
• Keep A need has been identified.[3] Noticeboards like WP:BLPN and WP:COIN fulfil a valuable function of attracting editors interested in dealing with specific problems. If this one doesn't work, it will become apparent soon enough. If it does, then it justifies itself. Tyrenius 10:52, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, maybe rename - I've seen crazier ideas that have been useful. I might suggest a slight change in the name to take some of the venom out, like using "Undue weight" instead of "Fringe theories" in the name. This _IS_ an encyclopedia first, right? As the tail that wags the dog, we really have a responsibility as a project to avoid being a soap box for crazy people. Documenting that a "9/11 was done by jews!" movement exists might be useful, for example, as long as the article doesn't state "BTW, 9/11 was done by jews." But articles that implicitly assert some of these things DO exist on the project, and while this might be better suited as a Wikiproject, that can always be changed going forward if the noticeboard turns out to be something useful. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 14:50, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Pseudoscience, though that is not quite the same thing. Fringe science is possible science believed by a few, and Pseudoscience (according to that WikiProject) is material which is judged to fall outside the domain of science. The latter project exists to write articles. The present noticeboard hopes to give perspective in disputes where off-the-beaten-track hypotheses are advanced. Let it run for a little while and see how it goes. EdJohnston 15:17, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment to the closing administrator I see you already have a lot to read and consider, but I would encourage you to read my comment on User talk:Moreschi#Fringe theories noticeboard and the following sections there. Shalom ^Hello 15:18, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

• Keep; let it run for a month and determine then if it is useful or not. I suspect it will be, but could be wrong--if it turns into a troll festival we can reconsider then. We do need to centralise discussion on fringe theory pushing, since a lot of it happens on out-of-the-way articles (geostatistics and kriging are examples I've seen, in which it's taken forever to recruit someone knowledgeable enough to push back versus a monomaniacal crank) -- it'd be great to have a single place to post problems for attention by experts. Antandrus (talk) 15:34, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. On one hand we have too many places where to report such stuff, OTOH those places, e.g. Portal talk:Physics are rather dead or would prefer to talk about important things, not how to handle the fringe. --Pjacobi 23:18, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

• Keep - Well-meaning though the nomination is, POV disputes aren't handled in various ways, they are not-handled in various ways. Maybe this Noticeboard will help. Let's give it some time and see. Tom Harrison ^Talk 23:26, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

• Keep, at least for now, to see if it proves useful or not. At the very least it could allow us to get a better idea of the magnitude of the problem, and serve as a plataform to discuss alternative ways to deal with this issue.
  At the same time, I'm not sure whether I really want to see a solution for this problem... I would miss the fun of reading such things as the current version of the Ancient Egyptian technology article mentioning electricity :-) Ev 00:15, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
• comment Initially, I saw this project as an POV-based attempt to eliminate the proper discussion of alternative views in articles--probably mainly in the sciences, but by extension in the social sciences as well. I therefore have reworded the lead text to indicate it is a place to discuss both attempts at pushing of improper fringe views into article, and attempts at keeping out improper ones. If -- and only if-- this board is used in a neutral way will it be accepted. It might therefore serve as a place to avoid the excessively heated discussions on individual pages. I see both excesses as problems: there are articles almost taken over by theories deserving of perhaps a line or two, and pages where the work of reputable but minority scholars is rejected from even mention or link. Making both of these visible to the general community might help very much to diminish WP:OWN. DGG (talk) 00:43, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
  • the purpose of this page is not "keeping out" fringe theories. We have many, many fringe theories covered on Wikipedia, and that's no problem at all. This page concerns fringe theories pushed as academic when they are not. The purpose of this page is to recognize fringe theories as fringe theories and label them as such. dab (𒁳) 16:22, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, fringe theories are enough of a problem on Wikipedia so that we need dedicated means to deal with it -- Ekjon Lok 21:45, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
• keep. we need a dedicated way to directly address what is a severe and growing issue on WP. This may not be the best way, but deleting it is not an answer. Instead, help it evolving into something optimized. In the end, these problems will always involve attracting more eyeballs, but we need to do this efficiently, and we need to keep a record of the most typical problems. The alternative is building the same arguments from scratch for the benefit of every new crank or national mysticist strolling in. Big waste of resources (competent editors wasting time with idiots the reality-challenged). This is an attempt informed by quite some experience in this. Help improving it and incorporating it into WP's noticeboard-bureaucracy efficiently. dab (𒁳) 09:37, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. Fringe theories present special problems in sourcing. Developing expertise in handling articles of this type is difficult, as individual editors may not encounter the problem often. Having a page of this type gives people a place to systematically work on the policy issues that they raise. It is a specialized type of editorial issue that deserves clear focus. Buddhipriya 09:45, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

• Keep but watch closely. I think we need to give it time, even if I think it is either going to be useless or inflate disputes. VanTucky ^(talk) 23:38, 11 July 2007 (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 page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.