Talk:Crank (person)

message: This concept is exactly what I was looking for. Is there a German translation for it?
Gibt's auch ein deutsches Wort dafuer? RedNifre 16:39, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: German word for this?

message: "It would be more correct to say that mathematicians have gradually become aware of subtle issues which had previously been overlooked. That is, previous mathematical knowledge has been enriched, not overthrown, by such discoveries as non-Euclidean geometry or Gödel's incompleteness theorems." 
"Enriched" sounds like an euphemism to protect the concept of linear scientific progress. Some consideration of modern scientific theory, e.g. Thomas Kuhn could help to improve this article.--Olaf g (talk) 13:15, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Structure of Scientific Revolutions? 

message: This is one of the few papers in psychiatry which directly bears upon the phenomenon of crankery.  It is often badly misunderstood (especially by cranks, not surprisingly!), but also often mentioned in discussions e.g. on UseNet, so it should be discussed accurately and clearly in a new section of this article.
When I get a chance I'll add some more references to printed works on cranks as a phenomenon in social psychiatry. ---CH 19:25, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Much of the article is W:OR and hard to document.  Your suggestion seems like a promising direction.--CSTAR 21:22, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: The paper by Kruger and Dunning

message: Do we really need Wikibiographies of every person mentioned in passing in the Wikipedia?  I think not.
I think we should consider the possiblity that we might not want to encourage the creation of an article on persons of questionable notability.  Note that I don't know how notable Dunning and/or Kroger really are in psychology, so User:Robinh, if you have reason to think either of them is truly notable as individuals, by all means restore the red links.  Here I want to express a general concern about a profusion of red links, so please bear with me for a moment.  
It seems to me that inviting the creation of articles on obscure persons virtually ensures that the only person willing to write such an article will be the subject himself, so that this is tantamount to encouraging endless wikibiocruft.  Just think of much more difficult it would be to keep the WP reasonably fair and unbiased if everyone on the planet were tacitly or explicitly encouraged to create their own wikibiography! That might be an amusing project, actually, but Wikipedia is not the place for it.  
In other words, I feel that this kind of possibly unthinking wikification actually runs contrary to our hard work in trying to keep the Wikipedia free of autobiocruft and other self-promoting edits.---CH 00:14, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hello CH.  Well, I think that Dunning and Kruger are notable.  Their paper is very well-known in the field.  Although having said that, I can't find much in the way of biography on the net.  My general feeling is that any author of a paper in any top journal (say Nature or Science for a start) should have a page by default and the author of any notable paper should have one too.  Comments?  Best wishes Robinh 07:10, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Hi again.  Sorry, but I think you're wrong.  Wikipedia is not paper; there are 1.1 million entries currently, and adding a dozen or so more pages each week for top scientists won't break the RAM bank.  Now, perhaps you  don't regard being published in Nature as a notable thing; but for me and many many people like me it would be a crowning acheivement of a career.  I do quite like your worse proposals, and one or two of them did raise a wan smile; but really, this policy wouldn't hurt.  best, Robinh 11:32, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

text: FWIW, My roommate had a paper published in Nature.  He's an interesting enough character, but IMO he's definitely not notable enough to have an article.  Or put it this way: if he gets one, then so do I.  And Hillman too. -lethe talk [ +] 12:08, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Red links

message: As per your request, I have rewritten the section to conform to WP:SELF.  This was not particularly hard; it's easy to report on Wikipedia in the same way we report on other internet phenomena, and couched in a larger discussion of cranks and how they use the internet, it seems perfectly natural.  So while my new text may be OK with self-reference, I'm not sure it sits as well with WP:NOR.  Comments welcome.  -lethe talk [ +] 01:43, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This paragraph is based mostly on my own personal observations and interactions with cranks.  I assume this would need some references, though I'm not sure what sort of references are appropriate (are usenet/message board moderator postings valid sources?) or where to find them. -lethe talk [ +] 01:43, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Chris, this link should point to a particular subsection of that article which contains criticisms of wikipedia based specifically on its containment of crackpottery. -lethe talk [ +] 01:43, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Where is Time Cube?-lethe talk [ +] 01:43, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

text: I propose to add this section to this article, under the header "Cranks and the Internet", replacing the existing section, which this supersedes.  When I mentioned moving stuff to Criticisms of Wikipedia, I was referring to the bulk of your section "Cranks and Wikipedia".  I have a paragraph for that (which turned out longer than I had originally envisioned), but detailed discussion about why Wikipedia is unreliable due to cranks could go there, while this article mentions how cranks use Wikipedia without focusing on what this means to Wikipedia.  You listed some links above with sources criticizing Wikipedia for this, I think those could go to the main Criticisms article. -lethe talk [ +] 18:00, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Yeah, I just inserted some comments, tabbed and italicized, just to sort of open up the discussion of this proposed addition, which I expected some of us not to like. -lethe talk [ +] 18:00, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

text: The examples paragraph is not mine, I took it from previous reversions, but what is the argument for its non-inclusion?  Is it potential accusations of libel? -lethe talk [ +] 18:00, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

text: That's the paragraph which mentions Archimedes Plutonium, James Harris, and Alexander Abian. -lethe talk [ +] 19:22, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Yeah, and I guess I don't really care whether or not we mention examples.  I note for comparison that the article racism doesn't have a list of racists, though it does have a list of racist organizations.  -lethe talk [ +] 19:35, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  my new internet section 

message: User:Fubar Obfusco removed the "See also" links to "Wikipedia as an information resource", apparently citing WP:SELF.  However, this policy states at the outset:
In the context of this article, specifically the phenomenon of crank POV-pushing (which I and others can document and have documented), particularly since the removed items were internal links to Wikipedia pages which talk about Wikipedia but which can be a bit hard for newbies to find, not text in the article itself talking about the Wikipedia, it seems to me that Fubar's action was ill-considered.  Comments? ---CH 13:59, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: While the links are internal Wikipedia links, they are not links to article namespace, but to Wikipedia namespace.  I don't think an article should have "see also" links that go out of article namespace.  When the encyclopedia is distributed on CDROM, the Wikipedia namespace won't go with it, and you'll have a bunch of articles with broken links.  However, if the article contains text talking about Wikipedia from a neutral observer point of view, the presence of cranks on Wikipedia, and the response to their presence of the Wikipedia community, then it makes sense to include as external links (rather than internal "see also" links) relevant pages about Wikipedia editing and policy.  At present, the article contains no such text, but if and when it does (see my proposed outline above), then I think these links can be used if they are changed to external links (full URLs etc).  -lethe talk [ +] 00:03, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Self reference?

message: I extensively rewrote this article in May 2006 and had been monitoring it, but I am leaving the WP and am now abandoning this article to its fate.
Just wanted to provide notice that I am only responsible (in part) for the last version I edited; see User:Hillman/Archive.  I emphatically do not vouch for anything you might see in more recent versions.  This article concerns a controversial topic and on the basis of past arguments over content, I have reason to believe that it is particularly likely to present a slanted picture in at least some future versions.
Good luck in your seach for information, regardless!---CH 23:12, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Students beware

message: Great article! Let's nominate it for Wikipedia:Featured articles. --Uncle Ed 15:14, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: FA candidate

message: there is a redirection from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/911Truth.org to this page.
Its a personal opinion and in this case the redirection has to be removed, right?
: The redirect is unquestionably inappropriate, regardless of whether the website in question is crankery or not.  I've restored it to its earlier target: 9/11 Truth Movement.  --Piet Delport 23:36, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: REDIRECTION

message: Would it be appropriate to provide a (somewhat short) bulleted list of sample crank beliefs? There could be a few lists, one for each major category (math, physics, medicine, other?). Another possibility is to link to specific list articles, e.g., List of Mathematical Crank Beliefs, or something similar. Or is this too much and therefore inappropriate for Wiki? — Loadmaster 01:23, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks to me like there already is such a link in the "See also" section. Tengfred 07:30, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lists of Crank Beliefs 

message: I found the 1998 article by Baez and inlined it.  However, it appears that it is an "update" of a previous version.  Unfortunately, I can't find the original version, skirting the Google event horizon at:
http://groups.google.ca/group/sci.physics/msg/c0fef118fe1ff95b?hl=en&
which is just evidence of it's existence as of 1992 October 16.  mdf 16:51, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Crackpot Index (Baez, sci.physics 1998) 

message: Apologies if I'm butting into a discussion that has been going on for some time, but I just came across this article because I'm interested in the subject of cranks and it struck me as a little unbalanced in some respects. I can't see anything else in the discussion thread that echoes my concerns so the fault is almost certainly with me rather than the article, but I'll tell you the things that are bothering me just in case anyone else thinks they're appropriate.  Basically I think the article narrows itself down too much. A crank, in common terminology, is any eccentric person, but the article first narrows this down to someone with eccentric beliefs, then to someone whose eccentric beliefs relate to scientific theories, and finally to someone whose scientific theories are the result of gross incompetence. I can think of many examples of crankery that appear to fall outside this narrow remit:
* Is "Belief" too narrow? The world is full of cranks whose eccentricity is practical rather than theoretical. Someone who spends every moment of his spare time building an immaculately detailed model of St Paul's Cathedral out of matchsticks would be called a crank by most people, but  this has nothing to do with unconventional beliefs. Many of the characters in Last of the Summer Wine are portrayed as "non-theoretical" cranks of this kind (e.g. Foggy, Seymour, Wesley and more recently Alvin).
* Is "Science" too narrow? If you asked a random person in the street to describe a typical crank, I don't think they would mention relativity or Gödel's theorem or any of that stuff you talk about. They might mention antigravity or perpetual motion machines, but even then they would be thinking of practical inventions, not scientific theories. But the two things I think they would be most likely to mention are health cranks (e.g. people who claim to subsist purely on sunlight and yoga) and religious cranks (e.g. people who equate the written word with the reality that it's supposed to describe - something I'll come back to in a moment). These are definitely crank beliefs, but they're not scientific beliefs. Maybe scientific cranks are in the ascendant now because we live in such a technological society, but I wouldn't be surprised if 200 years ago they were outnumbered by the health cranks and religious cranks.
* Is "Gross Incompetence" too narrow? The first thing to say is that the paper by Kruger and Dunning (which is very good) makes no mention of cranks, or indeed of "gross" incompetence. It is about incompetence in the sense of "substantially below average competence as measured against an appropriate peer group". As such, it is inevitable that any group of people in any field will include people who are "incompetent" by this definition. If you go to a symposium where there are 1000 physicists in the audience, it is a sad fact that something like a hundred of them will be incompetent by this definition. I don't think anyone would claim that all incompetent physicists are cranks, but is the converse true - are all cranks (whose crankery relates to physics) incompetent physicists?
* I think it's useful before going further to distinguish between "amateur cranks" and "professional cranks" -- something the article doesn't really do. I studied physics in the late 70s and early 80s, at which time a significant number of people working in the field (possibly as many as one person in every department!) were commonly considered "cranks" by their peers. But I don't think these "professional cranks" were incompetent, and I don't think it was necessarily true that "arguing with the crank is useless, because he will invariably dismiss all evidence or arguments which contradict his cranky belief". The key thing is that for one reason or another they were eccentric, and tended to closet themselves away and work on their own line of research which was often at odds with the mainstream fashion. But it wasn't necessarily incompetent research, or what the mainstream would brand "scientifically impossible". It was just wacky and improbable - the main principle that was violated was that of Occam's razor. The most famous example of the sort of person I'm talking about is Fred Hoyle. He was a first-class scientist who, on the one and only occasion I saw him, was lecturing on the subject of Panspermia - not just viruses arriving in meteorites, but insects arriving in meteorites! This was a crank theory par excellence, but I don't think it was motivated by incompetence -- more a sort of thumbing the nose at the ponderousness of scientific convention (that was the impression I got, anyway).
* Turning to amateur crankery, that's a different matter altogether. I've met several people of this type (in person, I mean - not on the internet) and I couldn't agree more that they are grossly, grossly incompetent when it comes to the motives and methods of academic science, and completely fail to understand any counter-argument against them. But in some respects, that's missing the point. These people are obssessed with the subject-matter of physics, towards which they have a completely different attitude from a professional physicist - much more emotional, much more literal, much more urgent. If you're a physicist, you sometimes forget just how big some of the ideas you deal with are - "the origin of the universe", "you can't go backwards in time", "you can't travel faster than light", "you can't create something out of nothing" etc. These may not seem like emotional subjects to you, but they are to the untrained amateur "science crank" - who, like the "religious crank" mentioned earlier, has difficulty distinguishing between concepts and the words used to describe those concepts. No doubt physicists were baffled by the outpouring of emotion over the "demotion" of Pluto from planetary status -- to a physicist the word planet means whatever it's defined to mean, and Pluto as an object still exists whether it's encompassed by the definition or not. But you can't stop uneducated people from feeling something important has been taken away from them, just as you can't stop amateur cranks from having desperately strong feelings about big issues they don't understand. - Andrew 84.65.115.198 13:48, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  An unbalanced article? 

message: The main text refers to the 1833 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. There is no such edition; the OED did not even begin to appear until many decades later.
Fcw 15:18, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  OED citation mis-dated 

message: Common theories as to the etymology of the words crank/cranky are that the word is derived from the German word for sick 'Kranken' or from one of the historic means of hard labour in british prisons, the practice of forcing an inmate to rotate a drum device via a crank handle. They would have to do a set number of rotations a day (which were recorded on a mechanical counter) and the prison wardens would frequently make the job harder by increasing the friction on the drum by turning a screw thread attached to a brake. The theory goes that such hard repetitive action would have a detrimental mental effect ie turning the crank handle making you cranky. It is certainly the origin of the nickname for British prison wardens. To this day they are knowm as 'screws'. I am surprised neither of these possible etymologie have been explored if only to discount them. Dondilly 15:10, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Etymology 

message: Actually, much of the article reads like an editorial. Wahkeenah 05:55, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV? 

message: I think this article is a bit full of criticism... at his time Einstein , Cantor (Mathematician who first worked on infinities)orothers would have been considered to be 'cranks', i think there's a bit lack of respect for new ideas in this article,not all people proposing new ideas are cranks trolls or whatever you say, going agains usual thinking isn't a crime.
: This would be true if "crank" merely meant "someone with scientific beliefs outside the mainstream", but it also means someone who disregards counterarguments and current evidence without good reason, and who fails to understand current scientific consensus, regardless of whether he disagrees with it. This rules out Einstein and Cantor. The definition of "crank" has little to do with people proposing new ideas. 201.216.245.25 (talk) 20:05, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  What amounts to "good reason"? And how can one not fail to understand a consensus that one believes to be false? What if I asked you to "understand" that 2+2=5? Assuming the answers to these questions glosses over huge foundational issues in the philosophy of science and mathematics, and while I believe ignoring the lofty demands of metaphysicians is justified when it gets in the way of research, is it really worth doing just so one can snipe at strangers over the Internet? Wikipedia's policy of writing its articles based on scientific consensus is better than the alternatives, but it's another thing entirely to hurl pejoratives at the unorthodox. 98.154.22.134 (talk) 10:40, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  No attempt at a "rational" discussion or argument is ever completely free of rhetoric and miscommunication. A great many misunderstandings are caused by miscommunication. And on top of that, consensus is no guarantee of accuracy. If anything, it is a surefire way to slip into the ad populum fallacy and GroupThink.  Sure, people are going to draw some seriously out-there conclusions from whatever it is they have experienced, but being wrong isn't a crime. Even being really determined about being wrong isn't a crime. It doesn't require hostility nor pejorative terms to reduce a simple difference of understanding into an absurd Us-Vs-Them squabble... lest we at any point believe there is any validity or justification in calling someone a "Crank". ~ SotiCoto (talk) 11:23, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Criticism about this article

message: There should be some reference to the extensive website www.crank.net.
:There used to be; it seems to have disappeared for no obvious reason a while ago. I put it back now. Tengfred 21:58, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, I guess I could have done that too.  I'm sure this page rubs some people the wrong way, but it's an important article.  Wikipedia is fertile ground for crank science.  Sadly, many noteable scientsts don't have a page, but pretty much every crank not only has an article, but also a dedicated following of true believers who guard it. DonPMitchell 05:55, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I wasn't the one to remove the link to crank.net, but its status here is dubious. It is just the opinion of one non-notable person with no special insight into what does or does not constitute a "crank" or a "crank theory". When nip comes to tuck, such an opinion site is lucky to get any mention here at all (let alone a link), inasmuch as this amounts to an advert. The definition of crank - "a person who holds to an idea or opinion despite all counterargumentation and counterevidence" - is not something that can be definitively proven in the vast majority of cases. Sadly, the proprietor of crank.net is making definite accusations regarding various people and ideas, some of them clearly over his head. Obviously, Wikipedia is not in the business of condoning ignorance, prejudice, or unkind behavior. Asmodeus 15:31, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a tricky problem, and strikes at the heart of Wikipedia's philosophy of not having strictly expert review.  Many cranks have articles on wikipedia that present complete rubbish.  The scientific community does not usually take the time to refute cranks.  Instead, they reject their papers from the review process.  If you try to refute a crank on wikipedia, their supporters will demand "cite a paper that proves him wrong!".  Of course there are no such papers.  The end result is bad for wikipedia, because it contains incorrect information. DonPMitchell 23:48, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Opinion is opinion.  There is no advantage to the Wikipedia in trying to pick one person's opinion over another.  Jst because some group says that person is a crank or crackpot, unless they have objective evidence, like scientifically based, why should their opinion matter any more than someone else saying they're wrong?  And disparaging the Wikipedia in a Talk page by saying it has a lot of crank articles is just impolite and issues with the Wikipedia itself should be brought up on other pages.  I think a major issue with some people is a need to get validation for their particular axe that they want to grind, and these kind of people look to the Wikipedia to validate personal insults, and would like nothing better than to flame some person they dislike within the Wikipedia so that they can then use those flames in attacks against that person, like on Usenet.  Simple thing is for the Wikipedia to remain an encyclopedia, and not a place for sophisticated personal attacks like I had to personally step in and delete off the main page, while leaving on the Talk page in keeping with the rules.  Notice the person who put up statements that are clearly libel, was smart enough to put them on the Talk page as well, and even stoops to mentioning my "demise".  These kind of people are sophisticated, dedicated, and willing to try and hurt their intended victims through any means they have.  Why should the Wikipedia help them?  JSH 01:59, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

text:  I just want to point out that no-one can use "cite a paper that proves him wrong!" as an argument against you.  Everything on Wikipedia must be verifiable using reliable sources:  the burden of proof is always on the person who wants to add information, not the person who wants to remove it.  --Piet Delport 06:50, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Crank.net 

message: I added one line to the article noting that use of insults may tell more about the perpetrator than the target and noted that the definition given also implied "stupid".
The problem I think with not noting strongly that it is an insult along the lines of calling someone stupid is in validating the insult to be used against people targeted as "cranks" which I know about as I've had someone link to this article in Usenet flame wars.
Keeping the Wikipedia out of inter-personal battles depends on its objectivity--leaning neither to one side nor the other--and readers not aware of attempts by some to use the Wikipedia in personal wars should note corrections I've had to make to the main page including removing text that actually talked about my death as if it were a humorous topic.
People willing to get amusement out of the topic of your death are not the people you want slanting the article or being validated by the article not being completely honest about the full implications of the term and its usage.  
JSH 12:37, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I took out this line again, twice now. The addition is completely redundant; whichever verifiable meaning is has is already implied by the fact that "crank" is a pejorative term. Look up the word "pejorative" - it is the fourth word in the article and quite clearly tells the reader that there is a (not-very-)implicit value judgement going on. Your persistent vague and irrelevant references to alleged death treats confers no license to fill the article with such non-encyclopedic context. We're attempting to write an encyclopedia here, not a style guide, a how-to or a treatise in good manners. Henning Makholm 13:04, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe you could substitute "insulting" for "pejorative", which the reader might have to look up. (Sorry for being insulting). Wahkeenah 13:39, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There is nothing wrong with some redundancy in an encyclopedia article if it helps understanding, and "pejorative" may force some readers to go to their dictionaries or chase the link to find out what it means, while noting that the definition given is akin to stupid is just an objective take on what precedes that line.  I find it hard to understand why there is a fight over this line, but I am willing to push this issue to have it included.  And as for people joking about your death, have it happen to any of you and see how calm you can be about it then.  I am very wary of a non-objective crank article being used by unsavory people with a hostile agenda which demeans the Wikipedia and what it stands for.  Oh yeah, if this article is NOT objective then the Wikipedia leaves itself open to lawsuits from people who find themselves defamed by people using the article which I am not going to just sit by and let idly happen just because some people have an agenda and a need to keep the article from being objective.  The included line helps the objectivity of the article.  JSH 21:57, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Stupid" addition 

message: In 'The Psychology of Cranks' The phrase "cognitive abnormalities" is used to describe traits with unestablished prevalence (or normality) in the general population. Suggest replacing with "cognitive disadvantages," as the disadvantageousness of said traits can be readily established.71.218.236.43 17:38, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggestions for Improvement

message: This page is quite bizarre. It doesn't read like something you'd find in an encyclopedia, but it's not quite something you'd find in a dictionary either. I would expect to find this kind of content in an urban dictionary. There's also a lot of POV and anecdotal first-hand research based on personal experience which doesn't fit with the style of an encyclopedia. It is interesting, however, in that it goes into a lot of depth on a subject for which there aren't many other resources, however, as for being encyclopedic, I fail to see how it's marked on B on any scale, from what I see it's an F, no two ways about it.
I was going to mark the page as disputed or POV or first hand research or something, but none of these quite fit. Perhaps the right solution is to delete the page (save perhaps the introduction) and start from scratch? Brianski 23:43, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bizarre page 

message: There was a  tag which was accompanied by the following HTML comment: "I don't think that there's anything controversial about Kruger and Dunning per se, *but I'd like to see a cite for "is often thought to bear directly upon a striking and virtually universal characteristic of cranks"*. Really? Often? By whom? Thanks. ". I've changed that to  which is what seems to be intended. 193.95.165.190 (talk) 11:38, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The whole section which mentions this needs to go, as the paper itself does not mention cranks or kooks and no source linking the paper to the issue of cranks has been provided, so we have a clear case of original research. WP:NOR is a core policy of Wikipedia and is non-negotiable and hence the section has to go. That "is often thought" quote has been there for two years now without any sources to back it up. MartinPoulter (talk) 12:32, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dunning & Kruger 

message: Apparently removed without discussion. I think it belongs here because it explains crankery and Internet kookery very clearly - David Gerard (talk) 09:14, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not the one who removed the quote in the first place, but I'm not so sure.  The quote is more about civility in online discourse than crankiness -- the reference to a crank (even though the word crank is never actually stated) is only thrown in at the end of someone who is a typical target. Xihr (talk) 22:25, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  I cut the quote down a bit. It started out by satirizing the notion that adding a smiley to an insult somehow makes it non-insulting, and it is possible that the editor who deleted the quote thought it was supposed to comment on the civility (or lack of same) of calling somebody a crank. The trimmed quote is more to the point, though I'm not entirely convinced that it serves a purpose in this article. –Henning Makholm 04:02, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Restored Bruce Sterling quote 

message: Someone who publishes under a pseudonym or anonymously. This would include of course most contributors to Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.170.104.32 (talk) 21:41, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is a Crank? 

message: This article only seems to discuss science cranks and not conspiracy theorist cranks.
Are conspiracy theorists cranks?  Or is there a distinction?  Can we maintain that a crank holds an nutty opinion about a scientific idea, whereas a conspiracy theorist holds an nutty opinion about society?  A UFOlist might lie in the intersection.
--Michael C. Price talk 09:39, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Conspiracy theorists

message: Schizophrenia? As a scientist, my colleges and I often receive mailings from individuals in the public about their "theories". Often, these mailings exhibit EXTREMELY bizarre discordant thinking. Enough for me to conclude, even as a non-psychiatrist, that they were made by someone clearly suffering from schizophrenia. Yet that term doesn't appear in the article. There is mention of "mental health" but my opinion is that schizophrenia is the predominate cause of crank mailings. Maybe somebody can back up such a claim with a reference. Jason Quinn (talk) 19:21, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: NOTE: fixed old typos and phrasing for clarity. Jason Quinn (talk) 22:13, 21 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Schizophrenia? 

message: It is not fair to the cranks of today(who may themselves be vindicated) to say that they "are" cranks but that people who were cranks like Alfered Wegener were only "considered to be" such. By the first sentence's definition of crankery, he certainly was a crank. If there isn't a way to write this page without actually applying this epithet to anybody and probably diminishing objectivity, maybe it shouldn't exist.
98.154.22.134 (talk) 11:24, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Did Wegener cling unshakeably to his beliefs in the face of contrary evidence?  Was there any contrary evidence? -- cheers, Michael C. Price talk 14:24, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Temporal Bias 

message: Suggest this be redacted throughout, could be misleading for non native speakers and the usage is unique to this article/the topic. The general connotation of "cranky" is irritable, particularly of small children, unrelated to what this article is about. "Crankery" for example as a neologism unique to the topic has no such problem and a similar usage should work. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 15:26, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Misleading use of "cranky" 

message: Let's start with a sentence by sentence breakdown of the first couple paragraphs:
>"Crank" is a pejorative term used for a person who holds an unshakable belief that most of his or her contemporaries consider to be false.
Is this article about cranks or the word "crank"? Bare in mind that this is an important distinction, and if it is the latter then this should be an entry on Wiktionary unless the word itself has significant notability.
>A crank belief is so wildly at variance with those commonly held as to be ludicrous.
Are beliefs that are drastically different automatically ludicrous? I have not seen anyone try and defend that point in any discussion about cranks or their beliefs, unless they were arguing that scientific truth was a social construction.
>Cranks characteristically dismiss all evidence or arguments which contradict their own unconventional beliefs,
In the tradition of Popperian falsifiability, this is required of ANY true theory.
However, these concerns are only secondary.
For God's sake, we have here an article where the very first sentence explicitly identifies the subject as a pejorative term, and then proceeds to describe those to whom the term applies! This is Wikipedia applying a pejorative to people! I don't understand how one could possibly have a more blatant violation of NPOV. Imagine if the entry for "nigger" proceeded to describe them as having gold teeth and committing felonies. Imagine if someone tried to backpedal and said that it was okay to use the word "nigger" to describe someone as long as they fit the stereotype!  You have to make the distinction between the concept of a crank in the mind of the person using the epithet, and the actual existence of cranks(which if Wikipedia is to be a values-neutral source of information, must according to us be zilch). This is the difference between taking the stance that "nigger" is a stereotype and that "nigger" represents a physical reality.
Either "crank" is not a pejorative term, at least not when used by us, or it is a pejorative term, in which case if this entry is to exist at all then it must restrict itself to the description of the IDEA of a "crank", not "cranks" as they really are.
98.154.22.134 (talk) 20:42, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Criticism of this article

message: Possible CoI: I am a young-earth creationist. This is defined as a "crank" belief by virtually every scientist working in the relevant fields today. Should not creationism be mentioned in this article (there is not one mention of it), as possibly, nay, likely, the premier exemplar of a modern, widely-held belief (in America, 46% are young-earth creationistshttp://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolution-creationism-intelligent-design.aspx 46% YEC, 32% theistic evolutionists, 15% materialistic evolutionists, but truth is not amenable to majority vote: merely an illustration of the penetration of this crank belief) that is held with deep conviction, but is considered to be crank-like and wildly erroneous in the scientific consensus of today? Even if they do not use the word - and many do - there are possibly thousands, and almost certainly hundreds of sources, from Scientific American to books by Dawkins and the "New Atheists" to popular books of paleontology (Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters by Prothero and Buell) to American court decisions that define and describe this theory to be crank. There is a non-cottage industry dedicated to creationism, and an equal one dedicated to rebutting it. I'm a creationist, for God's sake, and this seems to be a glaring omission in the article, that creationism is not once mentioned despite all I have written. St John Chrysostom Δόξατω Θεώ 08:11, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Creationism 

message: "...or who deny extremely well established physical theories, such as the special theory of relativity,..."
The theory of relativity is by no means well-established. That a group of ignorant academics get together and decide what constitutes knowledge does not make it well-established. This article is biased, lacks reliable resources and ought to be deleted. 173.11.135.234 (talk) 07:54, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah! That's the same group of ignorant academics who claim that gravity is real! And electromagnetism! Where do these people get the idea that theories about electromagnetism are well-established??!!? What's wrong with those scientists, anyway??!!? They do a lot of calculations and run lots of experiments, and when they get consistent results, they just jump to conclusions! And it's these same people who refuse to accept that The Moon is made of green cheese! This article needs more balance! We need more discussion of the green cheese theories! Famspear (talk) 12:26, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I do conclude, though, that the article needs more sourcing. Famspear (talk) 12:43, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: What a biased article! 

message: The current link to John Law in the "monetary cranks" section points to a disambiguation page. Which of the names there is the intended target? From the context I narrowed it down naively to the Indiana representative and the Scottish economist, based on subject matter and time period. Can someone please authoritatively say what was meant? Thanks Rschwieb (talk) 14:08, 17 June 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I looked at John Law (representative) and found literally nothing extraordinary or remarkable. It appears he's only considered notable because he was a Congressman. I don't think I've ever seen such a trivial wikibio before. Nothing interesting is said about him. (My own life appears exciting in comparison!) Which might be remarkable in and of itself, I don't know (I'm reminded of the interesting number paradox). Unless there is something really big omitted from the wikibio, I fail to see why you even considered this John Law. It's so obvious that he doesn't fit the bill, while John Law (economist) does. So I've changed the link to point to the economist.  --Florian Blaschke (talk) 07:38, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disambiguate John Law link 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Assuming this article doesn't get deleted/significantly trimmed down, it might be a good idea to add it to the Pseudoscience series. Assuming it gets fixed, however. Dr Roach (talk) 02:43, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree. I see no overlap with this article and pseudoscience. If you think there are problems with it, then WP:SOFIXIT. Since you're new here (assuming you are new) then you might find more incremental ways to pitch in. Chris Troutman (talk) 01:28, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Organization Suggestion 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I made a few changes to the etymology section.  The Dickson source that was already mentioned in the article says that "krank" was possibly an idiosyncratic invention by a single author, and modern use of the term may overstate its historical use, which he says was "virtually unheard of in the 19th century" (see this entry in his book).  I also added a  tag to an unsourced statement about someone who played a character named Kookie.  I'm thinking to myself, "So what?"  Has any reliable source connected this character to the popularization of the terms "crank" or "kook"?  If not, we should probably remove this.  I tweaked the part about the Daily Mails definition of "kook" because the claim it "may have first appeared" in that article was completely unsourced.  You can't cite a primary source as evidence that it was the first usage of a term.  You need to find a reliable source that explicitly calls it the first use. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 06:51, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  I have often wondered, but never found any evidence, if 'kook' might refer to the followers of Abraham Isaac Kook and his son. Padres Hana (talk) 15:06, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Etymology 

message: I removed the cartoon because the original source did not directly call this legislator a "crank." Here's the source: https://www.newspapers.com/image/480015931/?terms=square%2Bthe%2Bcircle. Sincerely, BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 07:52, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removing the image 

message: I'm tempted to just go to Mass deletions of unsourced sections of this page. The lead is nearly completely made up without any kind of sourcing at all. editors just can't come to Wikipedia and make stuff up. It's not enough that it sounds reasonable. Wikipedia relies on sourced material. Much of what is in the lead is total BS. Why not start with an argument that relates the word to the word cranky. Jackhammer111 (talk) 21:25, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: The lead is supposed to summarize the rest of the article and therefore does not need sourcing. --Hob Gadling (talk) 09:55, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sourcing 

message: We need to return this one, it was a bad thing to delete and was actually valuable. Who could let this be deleted? TheZelos (talk) 17:49, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Return