The Guerrilla Skeptics

[CrowsNest]

Guy Macon just gave this piece an airing on Jimbo Talk. Not sure why as it's old, but Guy isn't the sharpest tool in the box, as is well known. Still, it gave me a good reason to kick off a much needed thread on these people, who have previously only been sparingly referred to.

https://www.csicop.org/SI/show/is_wikip ... _explained

Is Wikipedia a Conspiracy? Common Myths Explained
Susan Gerbic
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 39.5, September/October 2015

Unsurprisingly, this pile of patronising garbage, written by the founder of the Guerrilla Skep​ticism on Wikipedia (GSoW) project, explains their cult within a cult nature quite well. Also unsurprisingly, it didn't result in any significant changes in how they are viewed by the wider Wikipedia community (naturally, since most were just as stupid), or indeed the wider world, who still seem largely ignorant of even their existence, let alone their effect on Wikipedia.

This stupid bitch is so blind to her own propaganda, or more likely so unafraid of the opposition, she says things which, to a normal human who is familiar with Wikipedia, are proveably wrong. Batshit even. As such, she ruins her credibility as far as being an authoritative source goes.

She trots out the favourite skeptic line that anyone who exclusively focuses on a single topic, is by definition, an enemy of Wikipedia. While it is accurate to say this is virtually the de facto situation on the ground, because it is manifestly stupid and wholly an expression of bad faith it isn't actually Wikipedia policy. You are perfectly entitled to edit with a singular focus, and if you are doing so in line with expectations, i.e. if your behaviour is up to code and your edits similarly so, then you are not supposed to be maligned as a 'single-purpose editor', which itself would be a code violation. And you are absolutely not expected to edit other articles just to somehow prove your loyalty to the cause or worth to the Wikipedia cult.

Building on that theme, she is supportive of the idea that the victims of Wikipedia, typically the subjects of BLP's, have no right or indeed expectation that they be allowed to edit their own page. As before, while that is often the de facto case, for very good reasons (especially for legal reasons) it isn't policy. Again, as long as you are up to code, then yes, you can and should feel entitled to remove problematic content from your own page. And this is especially because, as the Wikipedia collective has proven time and again, it doesn't respond to mere talk page notes in a timely fashion, not even when the complaint is of a serious nature and provided with exceptional evidence/reasoning.

This will seem like a minor point to outsiders, but in the context of what is acceptable on Wikipedia and thus her credentials as an insider, it really isn't. Contrary to what she claims, it is not "vandalism" to add "alleged" to any descriptor used in a Wikipedia biography. It may well be a totally incorrect edit, jusitifiably reverted, but it is considered a gross breach of ethics to label any edit "vandalism" if it is not actually a purely malicious act of...well...vandalism, rather merely something you disagree with. It is a rare case of Wikipedia terminology matching the real world quite well. Unlike the other two issues, there is clear blue water in the Wikipedia community over this issue - the ordinary cultists will still nominally enforce this policy as a core element of their faux society (with the usual caveats around hierarchy etc), in contrast to the cult within the cult, who see no need for such distinctions.

All she has done here, in trying to deny there is a controlling group within Wikipedia, is identify the controlling group within Wikipedia. What she has shown is that when she says "we", she doesn't actually define the Wikipedia community the way their own policies do. Because like it or not, and the Guerrilla Skeptics most certainly do not, if you arrive at Wikipedia with a singular purpose and a knowledge of the rules and an intent to stick to them, then it doesn't matter if your first edit is to completely rewrite the 9/11 page, you are entitled to be treated with respect, as if you are already part of the community.

That is the fallacy of Wikipedia - there is no theoretical need for a community at all, it only arises out of the fact most people who try to edit aren't very good at it (because by design they let anyone do it), and so edits need to be adjusted and discussed, hence there needs to be some structure to how that is done. But if your edits comply with policy, then there should be no other reason they are rejected, least of all because the existing regulars were shocked or alarmed or suspicious of your motives. You can be a community of one on Wikipedia, the only requirement is you need to be good at writing encyclopedia articles.

Rewriting the 9/11 article in one edit is of course an extreme example, but let's get to the heart of the issue here. For intelligent people, for the sort of people you would want actual writing Wikipedia articles on controversial subjects, editing Wikipedia really isn't a complex thing. Handling your own biases, identifying and using sources, dealing with issues of weight and terminology, these are not difficult things. Time consuming sure, but not remotely taxing.

All the relevant Wikipedia policies on content issues would make sense to someone with a professional background, especially those in the field of writing reference works. Their rules on behaviour would be more alien, but even then, as soon as one gets your head around the basic concept of what the community is, they're no challenge. And of course, such a person would never ever make their first live edit until they had studied the technical and style manuals, and tested themselves in a sandbox.

The problem for such peoole, is that the rest of the Wikipedia community are not such people. Including most assuredly, every last member of the Guerrilla Skeptics. What she is advocating for here, as head honcho of the self-annointed group supposedly representing the insiders, is their desire for outsiders to accept that there are insiders and outsiders. Their desired portrayal of the Wikipedia community is as something you have to earn your stripes to become part of, in ways other than foundational policy or indeed common sense demands. You must prove your loyalty by doing grunt work or scut work, you must prove your good intent by working on lots of topics. Only then, can you become one of the "we".

Fuck. That. Shit.

From the perspective of an outsider trying to make good edits and being reverted for reasons other than addressing the merit of edit, there is a "they". They are the "we".

While she implies the Guerrilla Skeptics are calm and reasonable people who embody the original principles of the so called community, who were supposed to be open and tolerant and only care about the merits of an edit, an insider/outsider form of tribalism is now very much baked into Wikipedia. And that is undoubtedly exactly what the Guerrilla Skeptics always wanted.

Truly smart people realise that there's nothing in it for them to be editing Wikipedia at all, it is not an encyclopedia and it never will truly be accepted as such. Instead Wikipedia and the Wikipediots will merely lower the popular perception of what a reference work is. Namely, shit.

But smart people will realise that until it dies, as it will, there is honour to be had in fucking with these people, and their idiot defenders on Wikipediocracy.

HTD.

[CrowsNest]

Larry Sanger is the founding member of the cult of NPOV which used to hold considerable sway at critics sites as well as on Wikipedia generally ........ Larry Sanger, if I understand his position, would have it that you wouldn't ever "take a side" as to whether the electron had mass or not.

Then you manifestly don't understand his position.

NPOV is not a cult, it is an editorial position.

The editorial position that it is not Wikipedia's place to take a side. That does not imply there is not a scientific consensus on such issues, that a "side" would not be self-evident to an unbiased reader.

You people are the cultists. Insecure, afraid, possessing an arrogance that belies your lack of confidence in your decidedly amateurish view and approaches to public education. Each and every one of you being just a chip off the Guy Macon block.....capable of uttering absurdities like "yes, we [Wikipedia] are biased towards science and biased against pseudoscience". and apparently expecting not to be mocked by serious people to whom the very basic skills of encyclopedia writing are mere child's play.

I'd ask for an essay taking an unbiased (but qualified) reader from Larry's thesis to your own bullshit conclusion. If I didn't already know I would be wasting my time.

[Abd]

Larry Sanger is the founding member of the cult of NPOV which used to hold considerable sway at critics sites as well as on Wikipedia generally ........ Larry Sanger, if I understand his position, would have it that you wouldn't ever "take a side" as to whether the electron had mass or not.

Then you manifestly don't understand his position.

NPOV is not a cult, it is an editorial position.

Some key words here got my attention, "Guerrilla Skeptics," misnamed. They are not skeptics, they are believers in what is called "scientism," . No link was given. Then, "ScienceApologist is jps, or Joshua P. Schroeder, another of his account names, apparently his birth name, though he is now using another. But where is the quote from?

The editorial position that it is not Wikipedia's place to take a side. That does not imply there is not a scientific consensus on such issues, that a "side" would not be self-evident to an unbiased reader.

Neutral editing would report what is in reliable source without claiming it is truth. This is standard journalism or academic neutrality. Wikipedia never realized that it needed a neutral academic review to assess the balance of sources, for which Wikiversity was available. Wikiversity was neutral by inclusion, until the Wiki invaders demolished it, and these were JzG and jps, plus some others. jps and JzG are defendants in Lomax v. WMF.

The Smith sock Goblin Face and other socks were allied with the Guerrilla Skeptics. The extent of a knowing relationship is unclear.

You people are the cultists. Insecure, afraid, possessing an arrogance that belies your lack of confidence in your decidedly amateurish view and approaches to public education. Each and every one of you being just a chip off the Guy Macon block.....capable of uttering absurdities like "yes, we [Wikipedia] are biased towards science and biased against pseudoscience". and apparently expecting not to be mocked by serious people to whom the very basic skills of encyclopedia writing are mere child's play.

Jimbo Wales knew better at one point, but then also was the source of the meme about "lunatic charlatans," which is a gross insult, not what an academic or journalist would say about anyone. That kind of snark is typical for pseudoskeptics and debunkers.

Yes, this is cargo cult science. Not real science. Real science is not a body of conclusions, but an investigational method and a body of evidence.

In science, the real thing, found in scientific journals, those ignorant about a field do not write papers about it, debunking it. Parapsychology was called by these cultists a "pseudoscience," and, in fact, if you do a survey of "scientists," i.e., any kind of scientist, and ask if parapsychology is a pseudoscience, most will probably answer "yes," but that simply shows that people will give opinions about what they don't understand. They confuse parapsychology, which is explicitly scientific, with "belief" in the paranormal as having no basis in evidence. All that is, in fact, a massive confusion between evidence and conclusions. "Paranormal" means "having no explanation consistent with the rest of our knowledge," or something like that. There are paranomral phenomena that have not been explained by any theory adequate to make predictions. That's just fact (but a pseudoskeptic will invent an explanation with no proof: "they faked that" or "those stupid idiots don't know how to do statistical analysis," etc.)

I'm basically a materialist without worshipping materialism. I started the Parapsychology resource on Wikiversity to be a place where the topic could be studied, and there is lots of interesting stuff to look at. The Muggles from Wikipedia hated it, and Darryl Smith tried for a long time to get some of it deleted, specifically a list of sources compiled by one of his targets and if failed straight-out, because that resource was neutral. To these cultists, all means are allowed to prevent the public from being deceived by the "lunatic charlatans." You can lie and impersonate, all for the Cause of Truth and Science!