If Wikipedia is "biassed" - which I agree - this does not mean it is worthless (Shaun Doyle was saying biassed eyewitness accounts are not worthless the other day, on subject of proving Resurrection).
BUT, what's more, what about this whining?
When you consider who “the mob” is on Wikipedia, it is that subset of people who have access to the internet, know about Wikipedia and care enough about it to make changes on it—and additionally have the technical expertise to do so (since modifying Wikipedia is a bit like using programming language). Wow! Come to think of it, that is a pretty specialized group, isn’t it?
Paul Price, two observations:
- in the classical way it is not like using programming language as much as it is like using html.
- I have learned both in passing, as needed, so can you and lots of people on CMI, and so can lots of the readers of CMI.
So, your article has as upshot to basically demonise wiki and those consulting it. As either part and parcel of the ambient, pro-evolutionist, culture, or willing or likely to despite themselves get duped by it.
Well, where does that leave classical encyclopedias and other works of reference, and those using them? The editors are an even MORE specialised and narrowly chosen group.
Now, you actually had a story worth telling to tell. You ARE (or were) a wikipedian, and you were banned for not taking Eugenie Scott's judgement as well founded.
However, the line:
Eugenie Scott and Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education called Sarfati's Refuting Evolution 2 a "crude piece of propaganda".[6]
is, according to your own saying, factually correct. You objected to it, because it could be considered by some as saying sth about Jonathan Sarfati. But it is, from our point of view, equally revealing of Eugenie Scott.
Whome, btw, I recently contacted on FB, over her primary expertise on "biological anthropology" which presumably would include Neanderthals. I wanted an adverse reviewer's pov, and she hasn't answered so far. Perhaps she won't, and this also says sth about her? Or perhaps she will, and there will be an interesting debate ... (I am not holding my breath).
If you have basics in sifting fact from evaluation, you are likely to get sth out of wikipedia. If you haven't, what are you doing reading or writing anyway?/HGL
Paul Price answers below, in comments:
Actually, I never said Wikipedia was worthless. Where did you get that idea? You are correct: traditional printed encyclopedias are edited by an even narrower group, and they unfortunately are also biased. The sad truth is that everything is biased one way or another, and pretty much everything is biased against creationists except for their own publications.
RépondreSupprimerThe idea with a traditional, professionally-edited encyclopedia, though, is that the editors are educated and trained to avoid biased reporting (though again I recognize that is not achieved there either, when it comes to issues pertaining to creation vs evolution). With Wikipedia there is only the supposed self-correcting mechanism in place, which is very naive in my view.
RépondreSupprimerWell, there is mutual correction.
RépondreSupprimerI did not managed to get a passage onto "géocentrisme" on how parallax was historically part but a bad argument for acceptance of heliocentrism, but I did managed to get a definition change from
"selon lequel la Terre est centre du système solaire"
to
"selon lequel la Terre est centre de l'Univers"
There is no "mechanism" for providing these corrections, there is a mechanism providing occasions for them.
In fact, the mutual correction system was also part of how a more Classic Latin was rebooted during the Humanist Renaissance.
It is not mob rule - though it certainly could have been fairly roughly the same to someone preferring Scholastic Latin.