Wikipedia talk:Information suppression

message: There have been 3 or 4 drafts of this policy and it is now being submitted for wider consideration. Please help make this a good policy and contribute.
FT2 18:58, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Overview

message: In principle, do you see a policy of this kind being useful? (subject to refining the actual wording and layout)
===Support===
* Support - FT2 18:45, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Talk:Natasha_Demkina Hipocrite - «Talk» 22:53, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  At first sight it mentions this page without any policy inclination; the discussed policy is NPOV, in line with FeloniousMonk's comment above. Harald88 00:26, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Initial policy straw poll

message: * Support - FT2 18:45, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Support

message: *Oppose --Improv 03:21, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Talk:Natasha_Demkina Hipocrite - «Talk» 22:53, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  At first sight it mentions this page without any policy inclination; the discussed policy is NPOV, in line with FeloniousMonk's comment above. Harald88 00:26, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Oppose

message: Several names have been suggested, including: POV suppression, POV suppression and selective misrepresentation, Selective information suppression, Information suppression, or some combination of these.
Is the current name sufficiently apt, or do you feel a different name would better describe it?
* POV manipulation: information suppression
Comments: Originally it was meant to be a short paragraph on the NPOV policy page (and honestly, I don't mind if it will finally end up like that; let's not waste time on cosmetics). But if it is going to be discussed on a separate page, I think that it's important to make immediately clear (=in the title) that this subject is relevant for the NPOV policy. Harald88 11:49, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: in the light of the below discussion, what about something more telling such as :
*POV manipulation: unfair information suppression
Harald88 21:40, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Initial name straw poll

message: Zenmaster proposes the following additions:
** Using needlessly absolute, direct and literal language or sentence construction to present one view, but then using dismissive or weasle words to present alternative views.
** General use of ambiguous and unclear language that does not sufficiently disassociate abstract concepts nor encourage abstract conceptualization but does induce presumption and unconscious acceptance of one sided and/or unscientific issue framing. 
I now parked them here, because they are for later discussion, and mixing his proposal with the existing one would mess things up. The text as it stands is the near-final result of a long discussion on the NPOV Talk page, and we're here to discuss details as well if it should be paragraph on the NPOV page or, as proposed, be a separate article that is linked from it. Zenmaster, please don't disrupt this discussion! Harald88 11:38, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think both are valid ideas, both happen in POV suppression and POV warfare situations. But also harald's right, lets agree the principle of listing this policy, then afterwards we can collate any suggested wording changes and discuss them. it's not disruptive so much as "first things first." As see above, I think I added some for later consideration too. The former's good; I think the latter comes under "words tending to imply a POV" and is more covered by policies about neutral wording (eg WP:WTA) rather than policies about misrepresentation and suppression of evidence and views though. Discuss after? FT2 15:07, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, but note the wording in the initial straw poll above "subject to refining the actual wording and layout". zen master T 17:31, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Zen-master's additions 

message: Look at Edward Smith (psychologist), and the related article Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Edward_Smith_(psychologist). The votes are overwhelmingly in favor of deletion. This VfD caught my attention because I have verified the scientific findings of Edward Smith with my own experimentation and observation, and Edward Smith's contributions are generally large and plain to see. The thing is, no one has pin-pointed his identity, or what educational certificates he has or doesn't have. Furthermore, none of his findings are published in popular scientific journals. ...Nevermind the fact that his contributions are all truthful, major, and verifiable. The reason that so many people are attempting to delete this article is because it disproves the fanatical belief that approval by major publications, completion of long college rituals, and/or certain identity, are prerequisites of making major contributions to society. It's just such a blatant and comically shameless display of information suppression on behalf of a false POV belief, and by SO MANY people, that I just HAD to mention it, for laughs if nothing else. IrreversibleKnowledge 03:13, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think you have a case here. The Afd is not making a judgement about the ideas expressed, but about the credibility of a more or less anonymous web essay as an information source. Any verification by you personally is original research. Tearlach 12:34, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Is a lack of information in wikipedia an act of information supression? I have a negative vote at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Edward_Smith_(psychologist) because we cannot *verify* WP:V the information, we cannot determine notability of the individual, and we cannot tell if the article is about WP:NOR. We have lots of interesting information in wikipedia that is not accepted by other information sources, provided that we can verify multiple sources, and find several people who have cited, or used, the original sources. Ronabop 15:25, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A live case study of selective information suppression 

message: #It describes a situation but not a solution. Hence, it's an essay rather than a proposal.
#It is in fact redundant with our guidelines on citing sources.
#"Do not suppress information" is a no-brainer, not to mention FUD
#The phrase "Note that science, religion (or any other system of knowledge), when used to emasculate other views rather than to add extra insight into the subject of the article, is also POV suppression." is highly questionable and easily invokable by pseudoscientist rules lawyers. *Radiant_>|< 00:22, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This has been explained to you before: it's listed under proposals for good order, to vote to give it a separate page or not. We don't want the NPOV page to become too long. As regards to your "no-brainer": that may be said, depending on one's personal experience and opinions, about most of the NPOV article. It is now an established fact that for a number of editors this is not a "no-brainer" but instead it fills up an information gap, which may help Wikipedia against both unintended and intended abuse. It has some overlap with your guideline for citing sources, but in principle it's an unrelated subject. Apart of that, please specify why you think that the by you criticized phrase is different from actual policy (it originates with FT2). Harald88 02:08, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Sorry, but here you did not specify a difference with existing policy; instead you a use (invented?) the label "pseudoscientist rules lawyers" that implies the existence of two POV camps, in which you apparently take sides. Your use of the label pseudoscience doesn't make sense to me: who would want to advovate error? And please note that Wikipedia NPOV is incompatible with the so-called scientific point of view WP:SPOV, which has accordingly been rejected by the Wikipedia community. Harald88 12:07, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

text: As explained above, it indeed is an essay that provides important practical information for unexperienced editors who want to apply NPOV. If you are already familiar with how bias can sneak in, good for you! The reason that it is marked as "policy", is because the proposal is to split this information off from the NPOV page, which is policy. Harald88 18:11, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What's wrong with this proposal 

message: Above I see : "Oppose ... I would support a refinement of notability criteria instead."
Notability should be mentioned as planned (see discussion) to avoid that it is overlooked, but this article has nothing to do with that. Assuming that this voter has actually read the article and the comments, apparently it lacks clarity. But in what way? Any suggestions? To me this is a real riddle. It may be (to verify) that the example list is too long, and/or that the split can't be fully compensated with clarifications; in that case it would be better to drop this proposal and instead shorten it and bring it back to the NPOV main page, as was intended before it became too long. But in that case there will also be little room for refining the notability criteria as would be easily possible to include in this article, with a title extension. Harald88 01:35, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  lack of clarity?!

message: come on, this is an essay on WP:NPOV and Wikipedia:Notability. Redirect or delete. And no, giving less of a platform to fringe views is not censorship, it is NPOV. The Internet is crawling with kooks and conspiracy theorists, and Wikipedia needs some sort of defense against these. dab (ᛏ) 12:07, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would strongly support this. Its the best idea I've seen so far on this page. KillerChihuahua?!? 12:19, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: speedy redirect

message: Shouldn't we fork the WP:FORK policy to disallow creation of POV forks of existing policies? er, — Dunc|☺ 13:20, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Funny! That's exactly why I propsed to include this tutorial in NPOV_tutorial instead of on a separate page as now is the case. And of course, we don't want such an elaborate list of examples on the NPOV policy page. Harald88 14:19, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV fork 

message: Hi. I have been looking all over for a talk page where I can ask whether a certain writing style or statement is POV or information suppression. Does such a page exist? Thanks bcatt 13:56, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think so: it's open for discussion on each Talk page. Harald88 14:20, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Ask for mediation Harald88 23:57, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

text: No, do NOT ask for mediation. The correct next step is Article Rfc. Mediation is ONLY when Rfc has failed. KillerChihuahua?!? 00:19, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where to look for help? 

message: Perhaps this is as good a place as any to discuss the possibility of resurecting the Thought police article, perhaps by salvaging usable npov content from earlier versions (still available in the article's history).  Deletion review might not be the best means, since the basic complaint dealt with npoving, so the last version may not be worth the trouble of getting undeleted.  Oddly, pov-forking as an issue was invoked as a justification as well.  Odd, in that the article now redirects to Thoughtcrime, a title which garners barely a quarter of the hits of Thought police, which is clearly the primary subject in this case, not the other way around.  For that matter, thought policing may actually be a broader topic than censorship itself, a question that might be answered when and if the article is reworked for npov and restored.  Ombudsman 04:41, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Thought police

message: Haven't seen any work going on here for a while. Radiant, the most vocal critic, has left, but there was by no means a "consensus" shown in the talk page. If this message doesn't garner any replies over the next week or so (haven't been any on-topic messages here for almost 2 months, I'm tempted to slap on a "historic" or "essay" tag onto the proposal page. I may be wrong, but it doesn't seem to have a snowball's chance of becoming policy at the moment... TheGrappler 23:08, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This proposed "policy" is in fact a guideline, since it mainly consists of examples. Meanwhile a compact version of it has been included in NPOV_tutorial, which is linked from WP:NPOV. The proposal to call such examples "policy" has little chance to be accepted, and appears to have become inactive. IMO, "historic" would be a correct tag. Harald88 13:31, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Is this now a historic page?

message: Shouldn't the position of information be considered relevant?
For example, consider a case where two opposing points of view are acknowledged and cited. However one is treated as the "default" and listed directly up top as the "fact" and cited thoroughly. Pluto not being a planet, perfect example. "There are EIGHT planets and those other things are worthless dwarf planets, because some people on a self-appointed board of experts made up some new rules a few years ago! So mote it beeee!" ... Somewhere lower down and less noticeable in the article the opposing viewpoint is presented. "Some people  disagree and think Pluto is still a planet, but the IAU said so so they are in charge even if the number of people who vehemently oppose this definition could certainly be assumed to vastly outnumber the IAU, because the IAU is certainly smarter than all those other people and they aren't on a board and we don't know who the weasels are." But, oh yes, we acknowledged both points of view fairly and evenly, because it's perfectly fair that the other point of view be in a sort of word-ghetto! Dodger (talk) 01:41, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  How about position?