Directory:The Wikipedia Point of View

Welcome to The Wikipedia Point of View.

Pretty much any subject you search Google for – let's say 'Neurolinguistic programming', the article about it in Wikipedia comes first in the ranking. That makes Wikipedia an attractive target for determined groups of individuals who want to present their idea or product in a global market, free of charge. Join the encylopedia that anyone can edit, write an article about, let's say, Neurolinguistic programming, and you have as much free advertising as you want.

Wikipedia has a Neutral Point of View policy. This requires you to write not what you believe to be true – not even if you know it to be true, in the philosopher's justified true belief sense - but only what is verifiable. The theory is that any overtly biased article on NLP, crystal healing, or whatever, will be overwritten by someone else who will come along and edit the article to a more 'neutral point of view'. He, or she who can cite reputable, authoritative peer-reviewed research against the many strange and idiosyncratic views we encounter in real life, in quack medicine, from proponents of 'alternative sexuality' viewpoints, and so on.

But it has become apparent that the NPOV policy has failed Wikipedia in many areas. This has happened for many reasons, to be documented in The Wikipedia Point of View.

• "If there’s one thing I hope people take from this sort of issue, it’s that there really is a “Wikipedia perspective” on almost any controversial subject. As you’ve recognized, that perspective is extremely insular and values “civility” – which translates to “avoidance of all negative reactions to, or personal criticism of, established Wikipedians” – above almost anything else, including morality, accuracy, and fairness. Meanwhile, Jimbo & Co. realized a long time ago that drama and controversy are just another recruitment strategy. Jimbo in particular won’t step in to try and quell it unless his personal interests are threatened". ("Somey" of Wikipedia Review).

• Encyclopedias are compendiums of settled, broadly-agreed, and largely non-controversial scholarship. They are not newspapers, they are not research journals, they are not book reviews, they are not giant rubbish heaps of every possible theory on any given topic. This is why Wikipedia is either: a) not an encyclopedia at all; or b) the world's worst encyclopedia. (Gomi of Wikipedia Review).

• "... the currently seriously malfunctioning Wikipedia experiment, which has gone from being a well-intentioned experiment run by a few nerds to being a source of defamation and misinformation so powerful that it's having a genuine and noticeable corrosive effect on the world's media. One of the key issues in that is the discussion of the pros and cons of the Wikimedia Foundation's almost unique decision to allow children unrestricted access to positions of authority in which they're obliged to make serious ethical and legal decisions (often on extremely sensitive issues, such as the ethics of publishing material likely negatively to impact real-life medical diagnoses, the ethics of a charitably-funded educational institution maintaining a large-scale collection of hardcore pornography, or the appropriate way to handle defamation on a massive scale, which is beyond the ability of a rapidly shrinking volunteer group to control completely). Many people feel that people below the age of legal responsibility should not be taking decisions of this nature, and that allowing them to do so has serious moral and legal implications for the adults involved". - Eva of Wikipedia Review - [1]
• "Essentially the Pol Pot view that the scientists should be down in the mud weeding plants along with everybody else, if they haven't already been executed. I've compared the structure of WP to the Khmer Rouge more than once. Nobody gets killed, imprisoned, tortured, fired, censored, or had their books or papers burned on WP, but that's not because nobody would be willing to, I think." Milton of Wikipedia Review - [2].
• "As I have said previously, I consider many Wikipedia users, and particularly administrators, socially dysfunctional computer geeks with no normal interpersonal social skills. To compensate for that lack, they live in the virtual world of Wikipedia, where they pretend that enforcing perceived violations against Wikipedia rules (which rules exist no place but Wikipedia) is actually doing something worthwhile. That personality defect, so common among Wikipedia users, does not make them charming company, and getting thrown out of WP and into the real world is always a refreshing change. " - Parting shot from Banned user:Kwork [3].

The main sources of bias in Wikipedia

• Deviants
• Fans
• Quacks
• Cults
• Activists
• Cranks
• Conflicts of interest
• Governments

Plagiarism

• Flying Toaster RfA
• Steve Smith Plagiarism
• Roger Davies plagiarism

Administrative corruption

• TBP
• The Case of Law

Sceptics or scientists who have been blocked from Wikipedia

• Flavius Vanillus
• HeadleyDown
• Dpeterson
• Peter Damian (Wikipedia editor)
  • Directory:The Wikipedia Point of View/Editors Trade Union
• Peter Damian Evidence
• ScienceApologist
• R Physicist
• Hong Kong University Sceptics

Other Wikipedian sceptics

• [4]
• Shot_info
• Raymond_arritt
• Filll
• MastCell
• Orangemarlin
• Jefffire
• WAS_4.250
• Stephen_B_Streater

See also Expert_withdrawal

Editors who are not sceptical

• FT2 - see also FT2 on Animal Films

Guide to Wikipedia

• Neutral Point of View
• Section 230
• Wikipedia Resources
  • Kate's Tool (provides breakdown of editor contributions by article and talk page)
  • Wikipedia Review Independent discussion forum critical of Wikipedia. See also Wikipedia Review
  • Page counter Computes daily and monthly Wikipedia page statistics.

Sceptics

• Michael Heap
• Sceptical associations and websites
• THE SCIENTIFIC REVIEW OF MENTAL HEALTH PRACTICE (Scott O. Lilienfeld) - slilien AT emory.edu
• Psychoceramics. A beautiful website.
• The Paranormal project

Criticism of Wikipedia

• Nature's Flawed Study of Wikipedia's Quality
• David Blomstrom Wikipedia: The Online Reference Anyone Can Edit.
• Carl Hewitt Corruption of Wikipedia (http://wikicensored.info)
  • Full version here
• Kohs & al: Criticism of crowdsourcing
• Wikipedia scandals (see also Wikipedia Vandalism Study)
• Wikipedia Vandalism
• Creative Vandalism on Wikipedia
• Top 10 Reasons Not to Donate to Wikipedia
• Worst of Wikipedia
• Wikimoney-a
• Multiple account abuse (Wikipedia)
• Civil POV pushing
• Disgusted - interesting material on possible vote-rigging.
• The Six Rotten Pillars of Wikipedia
• Wikipedia’s Six Cardinal Sins by Sam Vaknin
• Criticisms of Wikipedia - A Compendium
• Wikipedia sucks - better than the title suggests.
• Highly educated people have better things to do with their lives than entertain nutcases - nice comment by taiwopanfob of the Wikipedia Review.

Wikipedia Review

• Wikipedia Review
• Criticism of Wikipedia Review
• Members of WR who are now also here include User:Giggy (talk), User:Alison (talk), User:Proabivouac (talk), User:Moulton (talk), User:Jon Awbrey (talk), User:Blissyu2 (talk), User:Naerii (talk)

Wikipedia and Academia

• School and university projects
• List of missing journals A list of academic journals about which Wikipedia does not yet have articles.

Amusement

• Essjay
• Sam Blacketer controversy