Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Philosophy/Archive 7

message: Weird stuff!! Some of you folks have had your votes anulled re the Hilary Putnam article by Raul. He declared the previous page "incomprehesible" and started from scratch. That's a bit anti-democratic, IMO. So this is just to advise the folks who believe their votes should count for something....(;--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 13:32, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Putnam retrial

message: I recall reading somewhere - probably apocryphal - that the word "amateur" once had greater stead than "professional", since one who studied a topic with passion and love was more worthy than one for whom it was simply a paid task.
The Wiki is run by passionate amateurs. That's just part of the nature of the beast. It isn't going to change, and if you don't like it, go talk to Larry Sanger.  So any proposals that involve editing of articles by professionals are simply unworkable. I have an  Honours degree in philosophy, and a Masters with a philosophical emphasise, but have not worked in a Uni for twenty years - perhaps I could have snuck in as a professional, but the point is moot.
The idea of stable versions failed. It would have suited me, since as an admin I would have been able to edit stable articles to my heart's content, while most of you would simply have had to put up with my errors and omissions. But again, the point is moot.
Many (most!) philosophy articles suck. But if you take a look at any article - even truth - what is there now is better than what was there twelve months ago. If you are here to write the definitive article, then good luck - you will need it. The passionate amateurs ensure that progress here is ad hoc. That's just the way of the Wiki.  Banno 21:38, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Administrators, professionals and enthusiasts 

message: The Philosophy Wikiversity department seems to have died somewhat. The former head of department hasn't been on since April so far as I can see and is not responding to messages on his talk page. Equally, no other Philosophy Wikiversity members are responding to my request for a new head at wikibooks:en:Wikiversity:philosophy message board#Need a new head. The need is slightly pressing as there is an academic on wikibooks:en:User talk:Alex beta (Alex beta is the former head), who is keen on making some substantial contributions, but will need some help from someone both wiki-fluent and philosophically competent. Feel free to nominate yourself for the position if you are prepared to give some time to it. --cfp 13:29, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Now, is this a paying job or what??--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 13:08, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikiversity Needs You 

message: Free will is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 20:29, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Free will]]

message: I have started to think that biographies of academics (including, but not exclusively philosophers) raise some special guideline-style issues that are not completely covered by WP:LIVING.  In response to this thought, I have created an essay at Wikipedia:Academic and artistic biographies... if it shapes up well, I may turn it into a proposed guideline; but that's getting ahead of myself.
At this point, a lot of the relevant stuff is in the talk page; the essay itself is a bit stubby, but hopefully enough to point to the concerns I have.  I would value any input members of this WikiProject have.  After all, the bread-and-butter of this project is writing biographies of philosophers (I know about schools, distinctions, paradoxes, disputes, etc.; but bios are big). LotLE×talk 21:33, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  New essay (possibly future proposed guideline) 

message: Want to pat self on back, encourage others to participate I like philosophy, so I started the Department of Philosophy in the School of Humanities. Join in! -Justin (koavf)·T·C·M 06:09, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Have you asked Ned Block? He's no Blockhead. "No one but a Blockhead has ever written excpet for money." --Samuel Johnson. Sorry, couldn't resist.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:42, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Philosophy on [[Wikiversity]] 

message: Omnipotence paradox is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 03:02, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Omnipotence paradox]]

message: This poll is NOT a policy to make the proposed policy official, it's to gain a preliminary idea of how much support there is for the proposed policy mentioned above. 
58.105.111.91 12:02, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hey Cfp your page displays a badge for being an "expert" in Mathematics . How does that work? Has it helped in the Math areas? Could we model an expertise badge on the lines of this?  How did you get that badge? Did you give it to yourself?  Could be create a host of expertise badges on this model? Bmorton3 16:39, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Those badges as you call them are just userboxes that I added to my page. They're a tad silly, but they seem to be common nowadays. Their chief function is that they put your user page in an expert... category, so if anyone wants to recruit a mathematician (say) for something they can find one. Obviously people have different specialities, but if someone messaged me about something within one of my specialities I would gladly help, as indeed I would for philosophy. I have no objection to someone making philosophy user boxes, (I'd imagine they may well already exist), and would gladly have one on my page, but I don't think that's the issue here. There is no law saying "you should only edit this page if you have been ascribed such and such a userbox by the wikipedia maths council", they are just guides of the approximate ability I might be able to contribute with. However, because everyone has specialties this should be taken with a pinch of salt. On Analytic Topology (for example) I could contribute at a roughly doctoral level, on Statistics I would struggle to contribute at a pre-undergrad level. Userboxes such as these may also reassure non-specialist editors that my edits are not vandalism, but as a vandal could just as easily add them, it wouldn't really be proof that my edits were trustworthy. So in short, userboxes are useful ways for individuals to mark themselves as being prepared to (attempt to) be helpful in a subject area, anything beyond that is 99% geekery/silliness/boasfulness. (Hmm, maybe I really should remove those userboxes...) --cfp 18:47, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I second that.  I have been writing on and off WP philosophy since 2003 (pretty early days).  I have tried tirelessly either to recruit professional philosophers directly by emailing them and inviting them to contribute, and also by being 'nice' to the ones who happened to turn up.  Also, it has to be said, by being pretty horrible to the various cranks and trolls who live around here.  No apologies for that.  I read the Hillman piece, by the way.  Pretty depressing it was too.  Dbuckner 16:05, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

text: PS, philosophy is generally recognised to be different from other subjects in that, while actually quite 'hard', it is popularly thought to be soft as a ripe blackberry.  Dbuckner 16:05, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I disagree with this. Think of popular science/history or political theory. There are millions of people who watch a documentary on the Discovery channel and think that qualifies them to destroy text written by people with a doctorate in the subject. It is a fairly small minority of philosophy topics that will ever draw popular interest, and mostly these topics will be subjects largely ignored by the mainstream of Anglo-American Analytic philosophy, and so they tend to be relatively more stable, and relatively more accessible. (Why argue about the existence of god when you can argue about the existence of aleph_1...) Popular pages in all subjects have to deal with people who don't know what they're talking about editing them, but they cope, as I'm sure philosophy will. --cfp 18:47, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

text:  Sadly, you are right.  Dbuckner 10:10, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I was saying the popular topics are stable, not the pages about those topics. (I.e. few serious philosophers are working on them). That free will article is a prime example. Very little of it is devoted to the last 40 years. Please read people's comments properly before resorting to personal insults. Also, your articles that have become FA's are on broad overview topics (like free will) which are automatically more accessible and more popularly interesting. The bulk of contemporary AAA philosophy doesn't deal with such broad topics though, instead focusing on narrow aspects of the debate, often with particular emphasis on the philosophy of language. When there is a FA on Yablo's heavily modal-logic reliant dualism then you can tell me that philosophy has popular appeal. I am not quite sure which articles you are accusing me of destroying, and from your user page at least it does not seem like your philosophical background is any stronger than mine. Calm down. And don't use the fact you've had a few FAs as a substitute for a proper argument. If you wish to continue this discussion, please use my user page. --cfp 19:52, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm...I didn't know Hilary Putnam was a broad overview article!! Fascinating. Thanks for informing me about this. LOL!! The free will article, as is the case with almost all of my articles, concentrates precisly on the last 40 years of research. If it weren't for my additions in fact, there would be nothing there beyong d'Holbach. As I said, take a look at the history and see for yourself. I have nothing more to say on this. Ohh two further points actually. My "formal" background may not seem very impressive to you. You can read my talk page and find more than sufficent explanation for why that is the case. Informally, I have devoted most of my life to studying philosophy. For the last several years, I have done NOTHING else. I mean ah absolutely NOTHING ELSE. That's it. That IS my existence on this earth. No wife, no girlfriend, no job, no social relationships, no kids. I read and study 16 hours a day. Final point, AAA is a godawful mismoner. I've learned more about "analytic philosophy" here in Italy (that's part of the Continent, right?) than I ever did in the US. I need not mention that Frege, Meinong, Carnap, Wittgenstin, etc, etc, etc, were all consdiered "analtyics philophers". In what sense is it "Anglo-American"?--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 08:43, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Anyway, you opened yourself up this, so I will persently list some more examples of non-"Anglo-American" analytic philosophers who are very well-know and respectd in Italy: Giovanni Boniolo, Paolo Vidali, Giancarlo Ghirardi, Mauro Dorato, Massimo Pauri, Silvio Bergia, M. Luisa dalla Chiara, Roberto Guintini, Carlo Celucci, Piergiorgio Odifreddi, Andrea Bonomì, Massimo Dell'Utri, Alberto Voltolini, Mario de Caro, Simone Gozzano, Vincenzo Fano, Carlo Penco, Eva Picardi, Cesare Cozzo, Alberto Perruzzi, Achille Varzi, Silvio Bergamo, ...etc.. Don't sound like "Anglo-Americans" to me for some reason.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 12:12, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

text:  Very little of the the free will article is devoted to the last 40 years?? C'mon, by my count all but 18 of the 87 cites are more recent than that, and most of the others are primary sources.  That is how the free will discussion has been going in the last 40 years.  Sure we could pack lots more discussion of Frankfurt-type examples and versions of the consequence argument and such, but much of  that is already alluded too.  We could certainly make it more technical if we wanted.  But we are in fact striving to summarize in an encyclopedic fashion thousands of years over dozens of cultures, and while trying also not to neglect the last 40 years. Bmorton3 21:16, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

text:  I was not agreeing with the bit that you were disagreeing with.  The idea that the popular articles are in some sense safe (it that was the claim) is of course insane.  Good work on the Free will article by the way.  Dbuckner 12:46, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Can whoever called the vote place a clear statement of what we're actually voting on at the top. My understanding from the previous section was something a lot more controversial than a self ascribed badge. --cfp 18:47, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

text: You are right.  I did look at your guidelines, by the way.  Dbuckner 10:10, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Where is your evidence for the claim that one does not need to be an "expert in philosophy" to make good edits on wikipedia?  Or did you mean that someone can make good edits in science fiction films or computer games without being expert in philosophy?  Dbuckner 20:11, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Poll on proposed policy 

message: How about some system where you have to earn the trust of other trusted people working in a particular area.  The trust group will have a rep who is able to control accounts.  The ideal would be a philosophy account, with two levels of access (the first to a restricted number of pages, the second to all pages.  The second level requires more trust to be earned).  So, instead of the current system where any idiot can edit any page, you would have to apply for permission to edit philosophy pages (pages that are not attached to any subject area could of course have unrestricted access as at present).  If the edits earn the trust of the group, the user gets to stay.  If not, account is terminated.  If the user wants to edit the traditionally more contentious articles, which require a higher level of trust, they have to earn it.  Something on the lines of proposer, seconder, consensus, that sort of thing.  This is the basis of our current banking system, and it kind of works.  Dbuckner 10:49, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Support---But it will be shot down by the libertarian anarchopedians of course. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 11:00, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Comment --- this will not work within the Wikipedia framework, so any vote of mine here would be moot. You can start your own project, if you like. There are even some projects which have already been started along these lines. Have cited one above. Lucidish { Ben S. Nelson } 16:11, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Object, for the same reasons I gave in my post just above this one.  I don't really understand how anyone expects to implement these kinds of policies anyhow.  Everyone seems to be upset with the obvious downsides to Wikipedia (edit wars, 14-year-olds, vandalism, and so forth).  But, while I hate it all too, I also don't consider Wikipedia to be striving for high quality.  I think Wikipedia is primarily about having (at minimum) decent information about lots of topics.  To put it shortly: quantity over quality.  For one, this seems like a more reasonable goal, given the format of Wikipedia (i.e., anyone can edit).  Second, this is all I use Wikipedia for anyways, and that seems to me to be the most reasonable view of Wikipedia.  I like to come here when I've heard about something that I don't know anything about.  I tend to go looking for pop culture, news, etc. kinds of entries (things I'm no expert on).  Then, I look it up and get some introductory info on it, realizing that many of the details are probably flawed.  So, I came to contribute to that project.  I wanted to do my part in contributing to something I know quite a bit about: philosophy.  That way, when some freshman college student, for example, comes looking for, say, "epiphenomenalism", because they heard about it in some class or something but didn't know what it meant, they can get some intro-level info for free.  Wikipedia is about the spread of free medium-quality information.  Now, of course, it's great to get high-quality information here; and that's what the feature article stuff is all about.  But, that seems to be icing on the cake.  That's why I tend to stay away from high-traffic articles like consciousness, and focus on upgrading articles that are low-quality to medium-quality.  If you spend your time trying to make medium-quality articles high-quality, you will be involved in some crazy, nit-picky edit wars.  Now, that's not to say that the consciousness entry and other similar ones should be ignored.  They should be watched carefully, and corrected when necessary.  It's just a word of advice to avoid worrying too much about trying to drastically improve them.  So, what I'm trying to say is that a lot of people have too high of standards for Wikipedia.  Lower your standards and you will be much happier (and realistic), I think. - Jaymay 20:33, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

text: The assumption here is that philosophy is a hopeless case.  No it's not.  I'm not whinging and moaning, I want to do something about this and get things improved.  There is evidence that good philosophy can be done in Wikipedia.  It is being done by a small group of people despite the efforts of vandals, cranks, well meaning idiots &c.  Just a plea for an 'edge'.  Let's give these people some sort of 'edge'.  Dbuckner 05:30, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Jaymay: Wikipedia, as Jimo Wales never ceases to point out, aspires to surpass the Encylopedia Brittanica!! There was even a study conducted a while back by Science magazine in which it was found that, for hard sciences at least, Wikipedia holds up quite well in terms of factually accuracy. I'm NOT making this up. Just google "Wikipedia" and "Brittanica" (or something like that), and you will find this study mentioned all over the place. They found 4 errors on Wikipedia per every 3 on Brittanica. The point is: if it's going to claim to be as good as Brittanica, then it should be able to back it up in at least THOSE areas. Anyway, the bsic point is that the garbage overwhelmingly predominates everywhere, and, analogously to  monetary theory, bad content pushes out the good. Che puoi fare?? I don't know.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:51, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

text:  NO!!  There is OVERWHELMING evidence from all fields of human endeavour that the most successful method of creating something is by groups of people who trust one another (i.e. such that each trusts any other either to create something, or to review something they have created – remember that review only works if the reviewee trusts the judgment of reviewer).  So forget 'experts', think, trust groups.  The expert knowledge required to build a good article involves basic judgment, sense of proportion, ability to write good sentences, good paragraphs, and above all, to provide structure and balance to a whole article.  Expert knowledge is a small part of this.  The PROBLEM with Wikipedia is that it gives very little reward to members of such groups, for being members.  Disruptive people who spoil good edits by insert sentences or paragraphs or whole sections that don't belong, have exactly the same privileges.  It would require very little modification to the original Wiki vision to give some reward, however slight, to trusted members.  And as I've said above, this idea already exists in the form of 'admins'.  But the wrong behaviour is being rewarded here.  ANYONE can edit an encyclopedia, because anyone can easily acquire the skills necessary to gain the trust of an existing group, by exhibiting the right kind of behaviour (respecting existing members, abiding by the groups rules of engagement, conforming to the standards applicable to the subject matter, and so on).  The trouble with the existing system is that ANYONE can RUIN an encyclopedia.  This has to be stopped.  Dbuckner 09:39, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

text: The admin/bureaucrat/etc.. system is clearly a hierarchal system within Wikipedia. If anyone doubts this, go find out who the people are who can close FARS, FARCS, FACS and so on. Someone named Raul654 has almost total authority and discretion in deciding
whether FACS stay up for five days or three months. Whenever I have asked people about minor procedural questions regarding FACS, they tell me to "trust Raul. He does not allow silly objections" etc.. It reminds me a bit of scientology sometimes, as a matter of fact. Then then are, of course, the inevitable informal hiarchies which Timothey Scriven mentioned a few times. So the idea that there is no pecking order in Wikipedia, as Jaymay and a few others who haven't been around very long suggest, is another myth. If anyone is really serious about this matter, then they have to face this fact: On Wikipedia, control has to be asserted in pratice by groups of people dediciding that they are going to cooperate through e-mail, messages and other means to concentrate on this area. This is how informal cabals are formed. To cite one example, Tony1 decided to concentarte exclsuively on improving the prose standards (according to his minimalist criteria), He posted his credential as a oriefssional editor on the user page, wrote up a set of  guidelines and exercises about "how to meet crierion 2a", and then he started VERY agressively attacking those FACS to which he objected on the basis of prose and flattering those FACS of which he approved. Naturally enough,the people who were praised (or perhaps just came across his exerices and liked his views on language) began to exchange messages and eventually emails back and forth discussing this FAC or that FAC and how to deal with this situation. etc.. As a result, there are masses of people who subscribe to Tony1 views and there are even some folks who object to articles on this basis of the fact that Tony1 objected to them. If something like this can be done for, say, certain specific areas of philosophy (or whatever subject), then you have essentiall created a "trust group" (better knonw as "cabal"). Another example, is the total control that certaain groups (Randian Objectivsts) exercise over specific articles and whole areas. There must now be about 60 articled devoted to Rand. Hierarachy and control are everyehere on the 'pedia, but it is all informal and cabalish in this way.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 12:33, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  There is such a hierarchy but its applied pretty sparingly.  A few pages are locked, but not very many.  The hierarchy has lots of weird powers over the FA processes, but not over pages as a whole.  There are other hierarchies working on ver.05, and ver1 releases and such.  In most areas it is the relevant WikiProject, that forms informal cabals to control the content.  Over in Role-playing games there was a long vicious dispute between advocates of "roleplaying games" (the normal spelling since the mid 90s) and "role-playing games" (the normal spelling from 1980 to the mid-90s), and guess what the older role-players organized and eventually out-edited the younger ones, and the admins and heirarchies never got involved, but left it mostly to the WikiProject.  Probably the more modern spelling would have been better, but certainly consistency is better than confusion.  But that is exactly what WikiProjects are FOR!  We are little mini-hierarchies to try to organize editing of articles within our project domain.  We are the local hierarchy here, and it's just that we have to bow to other hierarchies if we want to mess with the FA process or Ver1, or fight so much that an admin needs to step in. Bmorton3 14:18, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another proposal 

message: I've started a page User:Dbuckner/Expert rebellion.  This is simply a list of user pages whose users have expressed frustration with the poor quality control at WP.  Some of these have now left WP for that reason.
Feel free to edit the page if you have knowledge of experts who have left because of the well-known reasons about quality control, vandalism, trolling, cranks &c.  Give a link to their page, or to anything they have written. Thanks.  Dbuckner 16:32, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I've read through them more carefully. It's good to know that somone is actally trying to quantitatively study the validity of the constant propaganda claims that are made along the lines of "the evolutionary process of Wikipedia inevitably leads to improvement." Sorry, I don't buy it. Vry generally speaking, it seems to me that the less an article is touched the better. Look at the FAs. They all turn to crap after a few months. Indeed, the very need for FARs and FARCS contradicts the principle that articles inevitable improve over time. Period. I dopubt it works out even in the average case. But I cannot prove this.---Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 09:05, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

text: There has been extensive discussion on this at various times on meta and on the foundation mailing list. Generally those who think we need more experts have got frustrated and given up in the end. (Indeed the cofounder of WP thought this but gave up arguing for it and left the project in the end.) One discussion I started a while back is at meta:Academics, there are some useful related pages links at the bottom too. --cfp 20:33, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Do you have links to the extensive discussion please.  Thanks for the link. Specifically I am trying to get solid information on the edit creep phenomenon that Hillman talks about.  Most of the arguments against "expert edge" depend on the assumption that piecemeal editing improves articles.  There is also another assumption that good articles somehow came together by the collaborative efforts of non-experts.  There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that this is not the case, and there is my own experience of 3 years of WP editing (most of which was NOT piecemeal).  Dbuckner 05:30, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

text:  I've now read this discussion and followed the links.  The one on Academic Standards Disease was particularly interesting.  It gives all the arguments against giving an edge to users.  Note that the 'Nupedia argument' always comes up. The argument is: look how successful Wikipedia became, and look what happened to Nupedia.  Well, I question the first leg of the argument.  Of the second leg, well yes, but it seems the peer review process for Nupedia were absurdly high.  I think the WP idea works surprisingly well.  But the encyclopedia is getting older and in some ways more mature, and there are still some parts where quality is v. poor.  All I would like to see is 'experts' having a bit more of an 'edge' than they currently do.  Also, the discussion linked to was about 'academics'.  I am not an academic any more.  Some of the good editors here are not.  I always think in terms of: who are the people I can trust to write philosophy in WP or, who are the people I can work with.  There are a few of those.  But there a few of the other sort also, sadly.  One of the recurring complaints is, having to spend a lot of time with cranks and trolls, patiently explaining why a ceramic is not a gas, why Cantor's theorem is impeccable, why alchemy is not part of philosophy.  Dbuckner 08:38, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  New page 

message: Do we really need :Category:Action theorists? At the moment there is just one entry - Harry Frankfurt --Davidlud 19:56, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, obviously not. But this is Wikipedia.  I see, sir, that you have contributed to the German language version of the Jerry Fodor article.  Dbuckner 20:08, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well, I'm not sure, if we should delete or use this category. At the German Wikipedia I would delete it but I think you have a more fine-grained category system at the English Wikipedia. --Davidlud 20:39, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

text: David has done an excellent job on several philosophy of mind articles over at the German Wikipedia. He is, understandably, shy about contributing here. And now that we have "business style-sheet writing experts/lunatics like Tony1 who have nothing better to do with their time than to make sure that "outside of philosophy" is never used instead of "outside philosophy", it is very easy to undertand why. Oh, I'm sorry. I used the dreaded redundancy "very". Excuse me. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 08:58, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category:Action theorists 

message: Hello,
a french user of Wiki:fr has created a few new categories:
# fr:Philosophe athée (in English: "atheist philosophers")
# fr:philosophe catholique because he has seen you already have such categories on wiki:en. But ever more contributors think that those categories are very problematic (it's my case for example...). I have therefore two questions for you:
# do you think that those categories are really useful? As you have a lot more articles that we your experience can be very useful for us,
# and do you have a precise "policy" for those two categories?: :Category:Roman Catholic philosophers and for :Category:Atheist philosophers. How do you decide that one can that X or Y is (or is not) a catholic or an atheist philosopher? I thank you for help. Apierrot 16:50, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Cats are very flexible. They were invented to try to better organize the entries (a sort of super-TOC) on Wikipedia. The experiment failed, but the cats remain. It's all very flexible and I've never understood the need to wage struggles over such nonsesne. Ayn Rand, that Holy of Holinesses at Wikipedia, was classified, at one point, as both pro-gay rights  and anti-gay rights. It was the only workable solution.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 08:01, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

text: We haven't fought this much yet, but another site I was on was categorizing sci-fi authors by religion and eventually decided to count anyone who admitted to that religion at any point in their life.  So that, for example, Douglas Adams was both Anglican and Atheist (Anglican as a young man according to his autobiographical statements, and atheist most of his adult life, again by autobiography).  The criteria this cite used was a creditable citation of the person claiming to be of the religion.  Wiki:en pages are often in lots of seemingly contradictory categories at once "Problem of Evil" is in both Christian Philosophy and Atheism, for example.  This wouldn't solve everything, I just added Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite to the categories Christian Philosopher and Atheist Philosopher, we'll see what happens. I'd be unsurprised if an Atheist tries to remove him. Bmorton3 19:48, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categories 

message: I'll try to be discreet as I can here. There's a v. interesting discussion going on at 
 Experts problem page.  See user TerryEo's comments.  It was only predictable that if scholarly editors should be disgruntled about lack of adherence to certain values, then editors from certain subcultures should be disgruntled for similar-ish reasons.  The user in question has been banned from Scientology pages, I understand.  I have the relevant links on User:Dbuckner/Expert rebellion.  Dbuckner 16:51, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Subcultures 

message: Check out the Criticism of Wikipedia article.  Contains criticisms such as " Others have noted that in some areas, such as science, Wikipedia's quality is often excellent."
Interestingly, while the New Yorker article by Stacy Schiff is mentioned, Hilary Putnam's endorsement of WP is not.  Goodness.  But then, they also missed out: "Wikipedia remains a lumpy work in progress. The entries can read as though they had been written by a seventh grader: clarity and concision are lacking; the facts may be sturdy, but the connective tissue is either anemic or absent; and citation is hit or miss. Wattenberg and Viégas, of I.B.M., note that the vast majority of Wikipedia edits consist of deletions and additions rather than of attempts to reorder paragraphs or to shape an entry as a whole." — Stacy Schiff
The edit creep phenomenon seems to have escaped their attention entirely.  Anyone fancy a go at editing this one?  Dbuckner 14:11, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Criticism of Wikipedia]] / Putnam 

message: This little fellow in the photo is an administrator on the Italian wikipedia. Interesting. I was wondering if the English wiki had any power-brokers of a similar level of....maturity? --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 17:09, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm a cat in real life. No joke. Lucidish { Ben S. Nelson } 23:28, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Other Wikipedias

message: I copy a comment on the expert problem pages here.  What exactly is the SPOV?  How different from NPOV?  Aren't they the same?  Dbuckner 16:14, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Which fundamental assumption are you referrring to? For the well-meaning but inept degradation of articles type of edit creep, I don't claim that it's not a problem. But it's a problem with some solutions in the works; particularly, once there is support for stable versions, it will be much easier to maintain articles that are merely the subjects of inept editing. And that kind of edit creep generally doesn't generally destroy the valid information in an article or lead to edit wars, it just destroys the style and coherency. The more long-term problem is the type of edit creep (if we want to call it that) you complain about below (also by well-meaning and sometimes well established and even "good" editors) for articles like intelligent design. I believe these are fundamentally NPOV conflicts; one of the main reasons intelligent design is such a problem article is that many readers and editors don't see their viewpoints treated adequately, and the regular editors who control the article seem committed to (at least implicitly) maintaining a Scientific rather than Neutral POV. The goal of NPOV is to create an article where all sides can agree that their own views are adequately represented; for the most problematic articles, the defenders of the mainstream views are so zealous in fighting what they see as pseudoscience that a Wikipedia-style NPOV is never achieved.--ragesoss 14:28, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, I agree. This is a completely separate issue from crankishness, edit creep and all the other things that have far been discussed. This is primarily a problem with the interpretation of NPOV as epistemological egalitarianism. Leave aside the example of intelligent design. Should we allow Holocaust deniers to have adequate representation (by their own subjective lights) on the Wikipedia because we are required not to take sides. The Holocaust really did happen!! PERIOD!! I shouldn't even be required to defend that FACT!!Yet there is a minority of scholars  and, of course, there may be large majorities of people in the Arab-Muslim world who don't believe it happened. These people are.......WRONG!! The earth orbits the sun and not viceversa. Should adequate representation be given to geocentrists. I read somewhere that there are 35,000 (!!) web sites devoted to crackpot conspiracy theories about the death of Princess Diana. Should they all be represented?? Adequately?? What would that mean??--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 17:42, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Oh, you're asking a question. I looked into once and it wasn't very clear to me why the SPOV was not adopted. But the link should be still there: WP:SPOV.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 06:46, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In all honesty I have trouble seeing what an official policy of SPOV would accomplish. I can see pseudoscience conceivably being a problem on something like natural selection, but not Green's theorem or Photon_polarization. The science pages seem to me to be protected by a lack of public interest. --GoodIntentionstalk 07:28, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I am thinking about slapping a citation notice on the sentence "Dinosaurs were vertebrate animals that dominated the terrestrial ecosystem for over 160 million years, first appearing approximately 230 million years ago."  (from Dinosaur).  Outrageous.  A clear violation of NPOV, which says that all claims must be made in a way acceptable to everyone.  By contrast, the article Adam says " Adam ("Earth" or "man" ...) was the first man created by Elohim according to the Abrahamic religious tradition.".  Why shouldn't the dinosaur article and ALL the articles like that have 'according to the Western scientific tradition' or something like that??  Dbuckner 07:48, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Becasue we have an informal SPOV, of which I strongly approve. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:53, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

text: What does any of this have to do with the philosophy wikiproject? Lucidish { Ben S. Nelson } 23:44, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  We have a FORMAL policy guidelines, that amount to being partway between SPOV and NPOV.  Re-read the NPOV undue weight and NPOV pseudoscience quotes.  NPOV does NOT say that claims must be made in a way acceptible to everyone, they must represent all "significant" views "fairly and without bias" where bias specifically lists 9 kinds of bias, but bias of a scientific POV over non-scientific POVs is not considered a form of bias.  Further in the section of pseudo-science, it is clear that we are to assume that the SPOV is the majority point of view. "the task is to represent the majority (scientific) view as the majority view and the minority (sometimes pseudoscientific) view as the minority view" (and this BTW is factually incorrect globally, in the US, and in almost every country other than a few in Europe; in most of the world, and the world as a whole the SPOV is a minority POV).  The dinosaur article is in compliance with WP's formal policies near as I can tell. Bmorton3 15:17, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

text:  The project is to improve the quality of philosophy articles in Wikipedia.  These are all discussions around how to do that.  Dbuckner 07:45, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please take this personal stuff to your respective talk pages and stop edit-conflicting me.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:49, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I removed the PR.  Dbuckner 08:08, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

text:  And to make amends I have put some hopefully constructive and useful comments on the talk page of Philosophy of language which is part of the project and could do with more help.  Franco has been doing some good stuff there.  Dbuckner 09:14, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scientific point of view