Talk:Wikipedia

CreationWiki at Wikipedia
The Creationwiki article was recently changed. I'm going to remove the offending, POV text (such as CreationWiki represents the growing tend of "anti-evolutionism" amongst the Christian right in the United States, but does not engage in any scientific discourse, and so is not taken seriously by the world at large.) PrometheusX303 14:50, 8 January 2006 (GMT)
 * Good luck getting your edit to stick. Bigoted anticreationist edits are the rule of the day over there.  They're supported and encouraged by the administration.  Ungtss 16:21, 8 January 2006 (GMT)

As I have noticed. NPOV is a joke on such pages. But this guy has a history of vandalism and I will point it out to the admin when I report him.

Just checking the entry for creationism. Seems to be a POV war going on. PrometheusX303 22:50, 8 January 2006 (GMT)
 * I'd be fascinated if you found an admin willing to apply npov policy on a creationism page. wasted 9 months of my life with that lynch-mob:(.  Ungtss 01:12, 9 January 2006 (GMT)

Even on topics that should remain neutral, such as abiogenesis, they allow ant-creationist links. Both links are to Talk.origins. The first link shows an article that deals with spontaneous generation, not abiogenesis, in the first 4\5. Both attempt to refute creationoist arguments.

Tal.origns seems to be the most-linked-to site in "science" matters. They allow multiple links to it on many articles. PrometheusX303 19:27, 10 January 2006 (GMT)

The CreationWiki article has been nominated for deletion. The nominating editor had this to say: "I don't find it as much more than a vanity article; it is a small community that has few active people and the article is short on information on them in my opinion because there is little if anything of note to say about them. The rest of the information on the page is more a candidate for merging with the 'Criticisms of Wikipedia' page than a seperate article." PrometheusX303 23:09, 16 April 2006 (GMT)
 * At current count, votes are 6\3 in favor of deletion. If it is deleted, I will work on one to re-establish in about five or six months. PrometheusX303 00:35, 18 April 2006 (GMT)


 * Does it really matter? So what if they don't have an article on CreationWiki?  Of course, I'd expect that they also delete the one on EvoWiki ;-)  On that point, I not that the EvoWiki article has two notices attached asking for the article to be expanded.  But the CreationWiki article has none. Philip J. Rayment 09:13, 18 April 2006 (GMT)


 * It does to me! I guess what really hit me, though, is the fact that the article was being improved by veteran editors on occasion, and none of them saw reason to delete it.  Then a new user comes along and nominates it for deletion on the grounds cited above. There have been some interesting comments made on the discussion page, such as "Besides I wouldn't want this held up as an example of systematic bias given EvoWiki" and "However, as a matter of not appearing biased, we should probably not delete it. It will look very bad if we do."  Most likely these were made in light of the deletion vote for EvoWiki. In any case, Wikipedia is an extremely popular utility!  Try a Google search on a variety of topics.  Chances are, the Wikipedia article on it will be in the top 10, if not 5 listings.


 * I encouraged him to delete it, since all it can do is bash CreationWiki. Unless they can change the article to NPOV (which isn't really possible), then they might as well delete it. Scorpionman 14:11, 22 April 2006 (GMT)

How to Bypass Wikipedia's NPOV Policy
An extremely popular method for bypassing Wikipedia's NPOV policy is the addition of a "criticisms" section. This allows users to insert their opinions into the article without having them removed. Any attempt at rebuttal is removed, because an article is not a debate forum. Adding criticism sections to pages such as biographies severely discredits Wikipedias professional image. PrometheusX303 20:56, 28 January 2006 (GMT)


 * You can say that again! Scorpionman 13:59, 22 April 2006 (GMT)

Deleted Article
Philip, would you happen to have a copy of those articles? If you did, perhaps they could find a home here. PrometheusX303 14:07, 29 March 2006 (GMT)


 * Now there's a thought. Although I'm not sure it's a good one.  I don't recall saving a copy, and I can't find one on my computer.  Ungtss may have a copy?  However, various other websites copy Wikipedia articles, and it seems that when they get deleted from Wikipedia, they don't necessarily get deleted from the other sites!  Using Google, I found the following.  However, keep in mind that the article was heavily modified (read: vandalised) by evolutionists (or at least one in particular) and it may therefore need a fair bit of work to make use of.


 * 1)   This is the only one I found with wiki source, and it looks like an early version.
 * 2)  This looks to be at a similar stage to the previous one, but has the Request to Delete notice on it, so perhaps it and the previous ones are actually late ones after Ungtss tried breaking the article up into separate articles?
 * 3)  This is more complete, although lacking the Radiometric Dating section.
 * 4)  This also looks fairly complete, although something has gone wrong with the formatting.
 * 5)  This is also fairly complete.
 * 6)  I don't know if this is the same as the previous one or a slightly different version.
 * I don't know if any of the Internet archive sites would have copies? My guess is that they wouldn't archive Wikipedia, it being mostly self-archiving.  I guess a Google search for the split-up articles might turn up similar results, but I haven't tried for that.  Nor have I spent much time looking at these ones linked above to see what is best.
 * Philip J. Rayment 15:23, 29 March 2006 (GMT)

Wikipedia is heavily biased
Here's something that can go on the article: Wikipedia is so biased against creation that the dogmatic evolutionists block any creationist users on ungrounded claims. I was just blocked on Wikipedia for the following reason(s):. They blocked me for disagreeing with their views. Scorpionman 15:05, 24 April 2006 (GMT)

CreationWiki deleted
Hey guys, does anyone realize that Wikipedia's article on CreationWiki was deleted? Yet they didn't delete the article on EvoWiki?? What's been said about that awful encyclopedia has been proven; they're heavily biased against creationists! Just thought I'd tell you that the information on this article should be updated. Scorpionman 11:05, 18 September 2006 (EDT)


 * It was bound to happen sooner or later. It was proposed for deletion two or three times prior, and just barely slipped by.


 * In my opinion, the bias came not from administrators in deleting the articles but from the multiple users who constantly proposed deletion. It had hardly been a month, I think, from the last decision to keep the article that another editor proposed deletion.


 * As for Evowiki, it has also been proposed for deletion, but survives because it's ties to Talk.Origins give it more search engine popularity.


 * You can always create another article for Creationwiki. Maybe it will stay.   For reference, here is the last version of the article before it was removed. PrometheusX303 17:19, 18 September 2006 (EDT)


 * I just created an article about CreationWiki not too long ago, and one day after, the article was put up for deletion. The reason is that it does not meet these qualifications.  An article about EvoWiki has also been created in the past but was deleted for the same reason as above.  They also said that there is a conflict of interest since I (a CreationWiki admin) created the article.  They said in the discussion that when CreationWiki becomes notable (whatever that means), they wouldn't have a problem with an article about it.  You can view the article here, and view the deletion discussion here.  --A. Morris  Talk 21:19, 29 April 2007 (EDT)

What part of nuetrality does Wikipedia not understand?
neutrality

- The state or quality of being neutral; the condition of being unengaged in contests between others; state of taking no part on either side; indifference.

nuetral

- Favouring neither the supporting nor opposing viewpoint of a topic of debate; unbiased.

These are the relevant definitions as provided by Wiktionary, Wikipedia's sister project. Yet many of their articles on evolution read as if apologetics were a primary interest. Take the following article, for instance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_as_fact_and_theory

Rather than simply explaining the article topic, that is, define the perspective being described, the background, who holds it, and outline basically the reasons why, yet the article is presented in a way that clearly affirms common decent evolution, for example, the following statements concerning the factual nature of evolution, at least one of these clearly dealing with common descent evolution:

"The factual nature of evolution arises over and over again in the biological literature in different guises. Carl Sagan wrote "Evolution is a fact, not a theory". American zoologist and paleontologist George Simpson, stated that "Darwin...finally and definitely established evolution as a fact." R. C. Lewontin wrote, "It is time for students of the evolutionary process, especially those who have been misquoted and used by the creationists, to state clearly that evolution is a fact, not theory." Douglas Futuyama writes in his book, "the statement that organisms have descended with modifications from common ancestors--the historical reality of evolution--is not a theory. It is a fact, as fully as the fact of the earth's revolution about the sun." H. J. Muller states, "If you like, then, I will grant you that in an absolute sense evolution is not a fact, or rather, that it is no more a fact than that you are hearing or reading these words." Kenneth R. Miller writes, "evolution is as much a fact as anything we know in science."

They proceed to state the following:

Nonetheless, there are those that refuse to accept this basic dualism. House Bill HB1504, in the Oklahoma state legislature, provides a requirement for an "evolution disclaimer" in state-approved textbooks stating that evolution is a "controversial theory" and that "any statement about life’s origins should be considered as theory, not fact."[21]. The creationist website Answers in Genesis claims that evolution should not be classed as a "theory" in the proper scientific sense; rather, they claim that "it would be better to say that particles-to-people evolution is an unsubstantiated hypothesis or conjecture."

The quoted statement in bold appears to clearly speak of common descent evolution, yet is presented as an example by Wikipedia as the "refusal to accept" the facts of evolution. The second statement is categorized in the same way, and it clearly specifies its problem as being with "particles-to-people evolution".

Of further interest is a part of the article's categorization.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Creationist_objections_to_evolution

The following article links to multiple other articles contained within this category, and it is easy to see that the treatment the issue is given is hardly at all flattering of creationism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution

Wikipedia proceeds to list various creationist claims (not dissimilar to Talk.Origins) and essentially elaborate for the rest of the article section on why these claims are apparently poorly supported, logically fallacious, and outright incorrect.

Uh...what? You cannot neutrally take a stance against something. There's no such thing as neutral debunking. And of course, we are also never shown the opposite side of the coin. Wikipedia claims to conform to an NPOV (Neutral Point of View) policy, however, given the very definition of nuetrality you cannot affirm one particular theory from a standpoint of neutrality, or attempt to debunk another. You can simply note what has been said, observed, and the varying interpretations of those observations. Asserting anything about the accuracy of either side is not neutral, cannot be neutral, never was neutral, and never will be neutral. To spell it out, it is impossible. If you assert something that either side asserts, obviously this doesn't add up to taking no part on either side. You cannot call yourself unengaged in contests between others where you go out of your way to elaborate on the inaccuracies of a certain specific standpoint, and fail to detail equally and fairly the problems each side has with each other's reasoning and conclusions. You certainly cannot largely devote articles to dealing with the inaccuracy and invalidity of the assertions of one standpoint, and then turn around and claim to be favouring neither the supporting nor opposing viewpoint of a topic of debate. --NeN 17:38, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Be Subtle, Be Discreet, Be Positive; Respect Others; Add Value
There are ways to make worthwhile contributions at Wikipedia.
 * Sure there are ways. Such as staying away from the creation/evolution or related articles.  I've not had too many problems when contributing material on railways, for example.  And I agree with you, too, that even in the creation/evolution area it's possible to make some worthwhile contributions.  But that doesn't change that Wikipedia is biased against the biblical view, yet claims neutrality. Philip J. Rayment 13:56, 8 January 2012 (PST)