Wikipedia's hypocritical, farcical "NPOV" policy

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"King Jimbo" Wales

Wickedpedia cult leader













Picture is courtesy of
"Anti-Wikipedia 2: The Rise of the Latrines"













"NPOV" is Wikispeak for "Neutral Point of View."

I have found another anti-Wikipedia article, which says,

Is Wikipedia a new fascism of knowledge perpetrated by disaffected leftists: a Wackopedia?

The following is a manifesto against Wikipedia -- against its pretensions to being encyclopedic; against its false claims of openness; against its representation of a democratic access to, and democratic enunciation of, knowledge; against its institutionalized falsification of facts; against its sordid attempts to monopolize knowledge and rewrite history by blanking out parts of our collective memory and replacing them with imprimaturs . . .

It is all done in the name of a representation of a majority and culture for the masses. The unassailable mediocrity of the entries is the credo of Wikipedians, enshrined in a new ideology, sans-party, the cult of the NPOV (Neutral Point of View). The NPOV is supposed to be the result of the checks and balances of community participation in the Wikipedia project. But that's baloney -- since the community effort is an exercise in power by the new cyber-bureaucrats that go by the name of Wikipedia Administrators, and the power-play in which the "house always wins" specializes in optimizing the degradation of information to fit it into premade slots . . . .

What Wikipedia is not, is an effective repository of the best in knowledge -- or even, much more modestly, of actual, factual and adequate knowledge. Instead, Wikipedia has become a forum for an officiating falsification of knowledge, a system for disinformation and an assurance of misinformation. Backed by cabals of administrators and bureaucrats, Wikipedia features the raw, unfettered and exhibitionistic domination exerted by ignorant and fascist bullies.

The NPOV policy and Wikipedia's associated "Verifiability" and "No original research" rules can work on printed encyclopedias and on Internet encyclopedias that are not editable by readers but cannot work on Wikipedia and other Internet encyclopedias that are editable by readers. A fundamental folly of Wikipedia was the attempt to give it the appearance of a printed encyclopedia (or an Internet encyclopedia that is not editable by readers). The reason why an NPOV policy can never work on Wikipedia is that there often can be no consensus as to whether or not something on a specific controversial topic is an "NPOV" and the result has been endless "edit wars" and the tyrannization of Wikipedia content by a cabal of "administrators." The administrators usually end the edit wars by locking in their own biased versions of articles. The thuggish Wickedpedian administrators grotesquely twist the rules in their favor so that they usually win -- for example, there is a general Wikipedia rule against using personal blogs as sources, but in the Cheri Yecke bio the Wickedpedians made an exception for two "reputable" and "very notable" personal blogs but not for this "crappy" personal blog. BTW, arbitrary censorship of visitors' comments is practiced on both of those "reputable," "very notable" blogs, so there is no way to get a contrary opinion in edgewise. It is no surprise that many people have become fed up with Wikipedia and that several alternatives have sprung up -- however, some of the alternatives are not editable by readers and those that are editable by readers might be no better than Wikipedia in regard to domination by administrators.

As I have pointed out many times, the solution to many of the "edit wars" is simply to post the disputed item along with a note that it is disputed and links to external websites where the item is discussed or debated. Such a solution has the following advantages: (1) there is no suggestion of endorsement by Wikipedia and (2) Wikipedia is not cluttered up with long discussions or debates about disputed items. Such a solution would take full advantage of the Internet's power to instantly link to external sources, a power that is not possessed by printed publications. Of course, Wikipedia administrators who have axes to grind -- e.g., the Wickedpedians who put the attack ads in the bio of Cheri Yecke -- are not interested in such a simple solution to edit wars. Also, of the Wikipedia alternatives that I checked, none employ this simple idea for resolving editing disputes.

Wackopedia was accurately described by another website, Wikitruth:

Wikitruth is a website dedicated to the subject of flaws and issues with the Wikipedia, another website run by Jimbo Wales and a massive, insane army of Wikipedians that he controls with his mind rays. It's very hard to really explain Wikipedia, but if you visit it, it says it wants to be "the free encylopedia that anyone can edit". Instead, however, it is often filled with crazy people, experiences some issues with manipulative personalities, and falls prey to abuse and censorship. And that's a real shame.

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Crusades against the Great Satan, Wickedpedia

I have to trade off every so often between "jihad" and "crusade" to avoid charges of religious discrimination.

My own battles against Wikipedia made me aware of Wikipedia's large number of enemies and I wondered how much success others have had in fighting Wikipedia, so I decided to find out and here is what I found.

What is perhaps the best-known example of libel in Wikipedia, the Seigenthaler affair, was described in an article in USA Today:

By John Seigenthaler

"John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960's. For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven."
— Wikipedia

This is a highly personal story about Internet character assassination. It could be your story.

I have no idea whose sick mind conceived the false, malicious "biography" that appeared under my name for 132 days on Wikipedia, the popular, online, free encyclopedia whose authors are unknown and virtually untraceable.

Seigenthaler's bio had other false information, but the claim that he was suspected of involvement in the Kennedy assassinations was the most damaging.

The USA article also said,
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Federal law also protects online corporations — BellSouth, AOL, MCI Wikipedia, etc. — from libel lawsuits. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996, specifically states that "no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker." That legalese means that, unlike print and broadcast companies, online service providers cannot be sued for disseminating defamatory attacks on citizens posted by others . . .

. . . .Wikipedia's website acknowledges that it is not responsible for inaccurate information, but Wales, in a recent C-Span interview with Brian Lamb, insisted that his website is accountable and that his community of thousands of volunteer editors (he said he has only one paid employee) corrects mistakes within minutes.

My experience refutes that. My "biography" was posted May 26. On May 29, one of Wales' volunteers "edited" it only by correcting the misspelling of the word "early." For four months, Wikipedia depicted me as a suspected assassin before Wales erased it from his website's history Oct. 5. The falsehoods remained on Answers.com and Reference.com for three more weeks.

However, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act does not protect Wikipedia against libel charges by Cheri Yecke because the attacks on her were posted by Wikipedia staffers, including "King Jimbo" Wales himself!

According to Wikipedia's account of the Seigenthaler incident, some reforms were instituted as a result, including a new Wikipedia guideline called "Biographies of living persons," but these reforms are not doing any good. For example, the "Biographies of Living persons" guideline says that "blogs should never be used as a source about a living person, including as an external link, unless written or published by the subject of the article," but not only was this rule ignored in Cheri Yecke's bio but it was ignored in an arbitrary, discriminatory manner, two blogs but not mine being accepted as sources.

Also, a January 2006 news article reported that a German court shut down the German-language branch of Wikipedia for two days:

A fierce debate continued to rage in Germany's online community on Friday over a court ruling that forced the closure of Wikipedia's German language Web site for nearly two days this week. In a country where the most-publicized free speech cases surround right-wing or Nazi speech, it was an entry about an obscure German hacker that took the world's biggest encyclopedia offline.

The legal challenge, which began in December, peaked on Jan. 17 when a Berlin administrative court ordered the shutdown of Wikipedia.de and any redirects that took users to Wikipedia's mother site in the United States. The court had threatened Wikipedia's German parent organization with a €250,000 fine and executives with up to six months in prison if it didn't abide by the court order.

Germans could still surf the content on the US parent site, but they couldn't get to it through the Wikipedia.de address that Internet history buffs here have hardwired into their memory. With over 343,000 articles, the public domain encyclopedia's German-language community is its second largest after English and has surpassed popular commercial publisher Brockhaus as the source most Germans go to when they need to freshen up on the invention of the wheel, the Neanderthal man or Ghandi.

Following a brief court-ordered hiatus, Wikipedia.de began serving its eager readers again on Friday after attorneys petitioned the court on behalf of the organization to have the injunction lifted and paid a small fine to temporarily circumvent it . . .

The temporary injunction came after the parents of a German hacker sued the site for naming their son in an online encyclopedia entry. The hacker, who goes by the name of "Tron," was famous in the German hacker scene for his hacks, which included decrypting Pay TV and telephone cards and for developing plans for an encrypted telephone. After his death in 1999, articles and books were written about the man, whose real name is Boris F., and conspiracy theories began to brew that the hacker was murdered.
Six years after his mysterious death -- which was officially ruled as suicide -- a major debate has broken out over "Tron's" privacy rights . . .

. . . the Berlin court has conceded that it may not have the legal authority to force the American site to remove the reference to Boris F.'s real name, which can be found on the US site. US privacy laws are far looser than those in Germany and would not allow restrictions to be placed on the publication of a deceased person's full name.

A webpage has a long list of fights against Wikipedia.

There have been some modest successes in fighting Wickedpedia, but not many. I hope that my charge that Wickedpedia is violating the IRS rules for 501(c)(3) nonprofits turns out to be a chink in Wickedpedia's armor.
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Scientist complains about Panda's Thumb's censorship

Correction: Pellionisz's comment was probably filtered out by PT as suspected spam because the number of URL links exceeded four.

An article by Casey Luskin on Evolution News & Views says,

The best way to rewrite history is to delete the views of those who remember it personally. The Scientist's editor Richard Gallgaher's recent article on "junk"-DNA mentions that Dr. Andras J. Pellionisz suggested that The Scientist publish an "obituary" for "junk"-DNA. Gallagher wrote:

Andras J. Pellionisz, to whom I am grateful for bringing this notable 35th anniversary to my attention, suggested that The Scientist publish an obituary to "formally abandon this misnomer." Pellionisz's objection is that scientific progress is being inhibited, and declaring junk DNA dead would align us with his own organization, the International PostGenetics Society (postgenetics.org), which disavowed the term on the 12th of October last year. Pellionisz is not alone.
(Richard Gallagher, "Junk Worth Keeping," The Scientist, Vol. 21(7):15 (July, 2007).)

Dr. Pellionisz sent me an e-mail regarding his recent experiences at Panda's Thumb. Pellionisz reports that Panda's Thumb is refusing to print his stories about how he has personally witnessed how the Darwinian consensus rejected suggestions that "junk" DNA had function . . . . With his permission, I reprint Dr. Pellionisz's e-mail below:

From: Dr. Andras J. Pellionisz
To: Casey Luskin
Subject: Integrity of Panda's Thumb

Dear Casey Luskin,
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Under the heading of "Unintelligent move" by Panda's Thumb, obviously appearing as an attempt to "back-pedal" by citing claims that "a strict application of the Darwinian paradigm, also known as “panselectionism” or “adaptationism”, led many prominent evolutionary biologists to initially resist the idea that some DNA may be non-functional"

I tried to post my following note, as one of the first in the debate. I cited the case of my friend and fellow-pioneer Dr. Simons (a Darwinist) who bet his life more than one way since 1987 that "Junk DNA" was not junk at all.

My posting never appeared as the reply screen claimed "protection". This was the *third* time that my opinion was suppressed in Panda's Thumb . . . . . .

The name of the PT article is "Another unintelligent move," not "Unintelligent move."

As I said, one of the problems with arbitrary censorship of blog visitors' comments is that blogs are being authoritatively cited by court opinions, scholarly law journal articles, the official news media, etc.. Arbitrary censorship of comments should be avoided in order to ensure that a blog is fair and as accurate and reliable as possible. Panda's Thumb is listed in a scholarly scientific database, Thomson-Scientific's ISI Web of Knowledge. PT has been cited in a law journal article by Jay Wexler, and an August 2006 report listed 489 citations of law blogs by law journal articles. And PT has been cited in an article in the general media -- an editorial in the Daily Camera of Boulder, Colorado said,

The packages containing veiled threats that were slipped under the doors of labs at the department of evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado appear to be part of a larger campaign being waged by one man against the department.

Content on the blog www.pandasthumb.org suggests that e-mails that preceded the packages threatened to "take up a pen to kill the enemies of Truth," and stated that the writer would file charges of child molestation against the professors for teaching evolution. The writer believes that these professors are "the source of every imaginable evil in our society: drugs, crime, prostitution, corruption, war, abortion, death..." He appears to have been inspired by the words of Pastor Jerry Gibson, who allegedly spoke at Doug White's New Day Covenant Church in Boulder, saying that "every true Christian should be ready and willing to take up arms to kill the enemies of Christian society."

The cited PT article is here.

Casey Luskin himself is partly to blame for the Panda's Thumb censorship problem here. He did not join my protest against Thomson-Scientific's listing of PT in the ISI Web of Knowledge scientific database. He did not join my protest against Jay Wexler's citation of Panda's Thumb in a law journal article. Right now Casey is ignoring my protest against arbitrary censorship on Wikipedia's bio of Cheri Yecke, even though this is a golden opportunity to fight Wikicensorship because the censorship here involves a violation of Wikipedia's IRS 501(c)(3) tax status. Maybe sometime in the future, Clueless Casey might have a problem with arbitrary censorship on Wikipedia and he'll ask, "what happened"? Well, it's like this, Casey . . .
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Wickedpedia reported to IRS for violating non-profit status

I have mailed in fraud reports on Wikipedia to two locations -- in Fresno, CA and Dallas, TX. I used IRS Form 3949A (euphemistically titled "Information Referral"). I got the Fresno address from the back of the form and the Dallas address by calling the IRS. The IRS may or may not do something -- I don't know. My experience with government bureaucrats is that they won't do anything unless they get a lot of bad publicity. Of course, the more help I get from others, the greater the chance that the IRS will do something.

I reported that Wikipedia is violating its 501(c)(3) nonprofit status by not allowing rebuttals to attack ads posted on the biography of a candidate in a public election, Cheri Yecke. This is prohibited partisan political campaigning.

Please, nobody else send in another fraud report -- it is not necessary and may cause the IRS to duplicate its efforts (if you insist on sending one in, please note that it duplicates my report).

Wickedpedia has a rule against using personal blogs as sources, but on Yecke's bio Wicked is breaking this rule for some blogs but not for mine. Wicked's excuse for this discrimination is that my blog is "crappy" whereas the other blogs are "reputable" and "very notable." They are welcome to call my blog "crappy" all they want but they are not welcome to use that designation to discriminate against my blog or as a basis for violating their IRS status as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

Truth is a defense against charges of libel but is not a defense against arbitrary censorship of rebuttals.

Unfortunately, Cheri Yecke tells me she is very sick -- she has been off from work for some time -- and hence it is very difficult for her to help herself. However, I don't see why she can't get others to help her, e.g., ReputationDefender.com or an attorney.

I am also contacting ReputationDefender to see if they are willing to help me -- I feel that my reputation is at stake here too. The problem is that they do not yet officially offer their $29.95 clean-up service to those who don't subscribe to their monthly Internet search report service.

I may very well win this one. Remember -- every dog has his day.

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Wickedpedian thugs fine-tune attacks on Yecke

One Wickedpedian thug appropriately named "Odd nature" wrote on the discussion page of the Wickedpedia bio of Cheri Yecke,

The article is looking better. My only concern is that in the recent change to "hired the Internet accuracy-watchdog service ReputationDefender to help clarify the record" implies that the record was indeed inaccurate, something that has subsequently been shown not to be the case. I think "hired the Internet accuracy-watchdog service ReputationDefender to change the record to reflect her views" or simply "hired the Internet accuracy-watchdog service ReputationDefender" are more accurate. Odd nature 21:49, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, we can't suggest that maybe the record could use some clarification, now can we? And how could ReputationDefender possibly "change the record" to reflect Cheri Yecke's views?

Another Wickedpedian thug inserted the following in the section titled "Allegations of Nepotism":
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. . . Yecke's husband was hired as the deputy secretary of professional regulations by the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation amid allegations that his qualifications do not significantly distinguish him from the rest of the qualified candidate pool available in Florida.

No one claimed -- or could claim -- that "his qualifications . . . significantly distinguish him from the rest of the qualified candidate pool available in Florida." He is not a rocket scientist. His Florida state position is just one of general administration and requires no specialized knowledge. According to a news report, his background is undistinguished --

While she [Cheri Yecke] was education commissioner in Minnesota, her husband was appointed to an $84,000-a-year position as a deputy commissioner with the state's economic development agency.

Dennis Yecke held a number of executive positions with the U.S. Marine Corps. He has a bachelor's degree in business administration from University of Wisconsin-River Falls, according to his resume.

In addition to his two-year stint in Minnesota, he was also a budget analyst for the Virginia Department of Planning and Budget for 10 years.

Anyway, how did the hiring of Dennis Yecke for his positions in Florida and Minnesota suggest "nepotism"? What authority or influence might Cheri Yecke have had in selecting him for those positions?

Anyway, I am digressing. It is not my purpose here to just defend Cheri Yecke -- my purpose here is to stop Wickedpedia censorship. Truth is a defense against charges of libel but is not a defense against charges of arbitrary censorship. And Wikipedia is run by a 501(c)(3) nonprofit outfit and Cheri Yecke is a candidate in a public election and the IRS says that her Wikipedia bio must therefore be presented as a "public forum" that is "conducted in a non-partisan manner."
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IRS: Rebuttals must be allowed on Yecke bio

As I pointed out before, Wikipedia is run by Wikimedia, a 501(c)(3) organization. The IRS says,

Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position (verbal or written) made on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity. Violation of this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise tax.

However, the IRS allows the following exceptions to the above rule:

Certain activities or expenditures may not be prohibited depending on the facts and circumstances. For example, certain voter education activities (including the presenting public forums and publishing voter education guides) conducted in a non-partisan manner do not constitute prohibited political campaign activity. (emphasis added)

So the IRS says that Wikipedia's bio of election candidate Cheri Yecke is OK provided that it is presented as a public forum "conducted in a non-partisan manner." This of course means that Wikipedia must allow rebuttals of accusations that the bio makes against her. The truth or falsehood of those accusations is not an issue.

So, "I'm from Missouri" supporters who have Wikipedia user registrations that are four days old or older, I urge you to restore my rebuttal on Cheri Yecke's Wikipedia bio. Even if you don't have a high-speed connection, the restoration takes only about two seconds and two clicks of a mouse if you follow these instructions. You might want to add a statement such as a link to this blog article. Restorations performed in the wee hours of the morning are more likely to last longer. Also, I would appreciate it if you would demand -- either in your editing statement or on the discussion page or both -- that I be unbanned immediately. We've got them on the run -- please let's not stop now.

The IRS rule at the top says, "Violation of this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise tax." So the Wickedpedian control freaks -- now including Wickedpedia cult co-founder "King Jimbo" Wales himself, who has joined the debate -- are playing with fire.
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Honcho "King Jimbo" Wales now in Yecke debate!

For those of you who think that Wikipedia is taking the Yecke bio controversy lightly: The Great Honcho himself, Wickedpedia cult co-founder "King Jimbo" Wales, is now participating in the debate!

King Jimbo strained at a gnat and swallowed a camel -- he made some trivial nitpicking criticism while ignoring the glaring discrimination against my blog. There is a general Wikipedia rule against using personal blogs as sources, but exceptions to this rule were made for other personal blogs but not for mine. The reason given for the discrimination: my blog is "crappy" whereas the other blogs are "reputable" and "very notable."

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Update on holy war against Wickedpedians

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"I don't make the rules." Famous restaurant scene in "Five Easy Pieces"

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I just found the following additional Wikipedia rule:

Self-published sources (e.g., blogs) should never be used as third-party sources about living persons, even if the author is a well-known professional researcher or writer.

So much for the phony claim that the blogs of BVD-clad bloggers Ding Elsberry and Sleazy PZ Myers are entitled to a special exception because these bloggers are "nationally syndicated columnists." What a farce.

It's past time to bring in ReputationDefender.com. If ReputationDefender does not help now, then Cheri Yecke should cancel her membership.

Also, the Wikipedia rules for the biographies of living persons say (here and here):
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Reliable sources

Material about living persons must be sourced very carefully. Without reliable third-party sources, a biography will violate the No original research and Verifiability policies, and could lead to libel claims.

Material available solely on partisan websites or in obscure newspapers should be handled with caution, and, if derogatory, should not be used at all. Material from self-published books, zines, websites, and blogs should never be used as a source about a living person, including as an external link, unless written or published by the subject of the article (see below).

Editors should avoid repeating gossip published by tabloids and scandal sheets. Ask yourself whether the source is reliable; whether the material is being presented as true; and whether, even if true, it is relevant to an encyclopedia article about the subject. When less-than-reliable publications print material they suspect is untrue, they often include weasel phrases. Look out for these. If the original publication doesn't believe its own story, why should we?

Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material

Editors should corroborate contentious material about living persons with proper sources, and add them if they are not present. An editor who cannot find a source should remove the material promptly — simply tagging it as questionable is insufficient. Where the material is derogatory and unsourced, relies on improper sources (see Wikipedia:Verifiability), or is a conjectural interpretation of a source (see Wikipedia:No original research), it does not belong in Wikipedia.

Contentious material about living persons on user and talk pages also must follow the above rules. Negative biographical material needs to be placed in proper context. If this is done, contentious material from questionable sources may be discussed on talk pages, but problems with the material and the sources must be clearly identified, and it may be removed if the discussion has ended or is not contributing to the development of the article. When in doubt, contentious material that is not properly sourced should be removed.

Removal of material under these principles is not subject to normal restrictions, and the three-revert rule does not apply. Administrators may enforce the removal of such material with page protection and blocks, even if they have been editing the article themselves. Editors who re-insert the material may be warned and blocked (see the blocking policy and Wikipedia:Libel). Administrators encountering biographies that are unsourced and negative in tone, where there is no NPOV version to revert to, should delete the article without discussion (see speedy deletion criterion G10 for more details).

Jimmy Wales has said it is better to have no information at all than to include speculation, and has emphasized the need for sensitivity:

I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons.

Those Wickedpedian control freaks have broken every rule in the book, which ought to be thrown at them -- hard.

Also, the following is an excerpt from an email that I sent to a ReputationDefender customer service representative:
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. . . I might add that I am defamed in the Wikipedia discussion page on Cheri Yecke's bio, so my reputation needs defending too. Wikipedia administrators on this page are trying to justify their discrimination against my blog -- other blogs are used as references in the bio -- by calling my blog "crappy" while calling the other blogs "reputable." I know that you don't offer your $29.95 clean-up service to non-members, but let me ask you this -- if I were a dues-paying member, would you refuse my request for help in my fight against Wikipedia? Also, a lot of people do not want or need your monthly search report service but just want help with specific problems. I could understand you charging non-members more than your $29.95 fee but I cannot fathom your policy of not offering your clean-up service to non-members. Remember that famous scene in the movie "Five Easy Pieces" where a waitress tells a customer that giving him a side-order of toast is against the rules, so he tells her, "OK, I want a chicken-salad sandwich on toast, hold the chicken-salad and the mayonnaise and just bring me the toast, then give me a check for the sandwich and you haven't broken any rules"? OK, here is what I propose: sign me up as a member, then help me fight Wikipedia for $29.95, and then I will cancel my membership, and you would not be breaking any rules.

LOL
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Simplified instructions for holy war against Wickedpedians

Update: Cheri Yecke's Wikipedia bio has been "semi-protected," which means that only those with Wikipedia user registrations four days old or older can edit the bio.

The crusade against the Great Satan, the evil Wickedpedian control freaks, is in full swing. There were about 20 reverts yesterday on Cheri Yecke's bio.

This article contains instructions on how you can very easily help even if you know absolutely nothing about Wikipedia editing.

I have been unexpectedly joined by three allies on the Wikipedia bio of Cheri Yecke. Their editing has been far less restrained than mine -- they are wiping out everything that has anything to do with the evolution controversy. In contrast, in my first edit, I did not delete or change anything already there but only added a short rebuttal along with links to this blog. When they censored that rebuttal, I retaliated only by censoring their material that referenced blogs, saying that if my blog goes, then the other blogs go too. There is a Wikipedia rule -- with some narrow exceptions that do not apply here -- that blogs may not be used as sources. So if an exception to the rule is made for some blogs pursuant to Wikipedia's "Ignore the Rules" rule, then the exceptions must be made for all blogs. On the discussion page, the Wickedpedians had the gall to try to justify their discrimination by calling this blog "crappy" while calling the blogs of Ding Elsberry and Sleazy PZ Myers "reputable." The Wickedpedians even made some frivolous claims about these two BVD-clad bloggers being "nationally syndicated columnists." If you don't find all of this to be an outrage, then I beg you to read some other blog (like the Glenlivet whiskey ad where the brewmaster says, "if you can't drink Glenlivet in the proper way, then I beg you to drink some other Scotch").

Reinforcements are badly needed in the holy war against these satanic Wickedpedian control freaks. The scumbags have now blocked me so I cannot wage jihad myself. I find that anonymous proxies no longer work in hacking Wikipedia. A lot of readers here might not be familiar with Wikipedia editing, so below are some simplified instructions in what to do. I don't mean to insult your intelligence, but it is so simple that a trained monkey could do it in a few seconds:
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You can edit Wikipedia without registering. Go to this webpage. This is my initial edit, with just my rebuttal added and no other changes. Also, this version has my name and the name of this blog -- I was too generous before in removing these when the names of the other bloggers and their blogs are included. This is the way the bio is supposed to be.

Click on "Edit this page" tab on the top (I could have eliminated this step if I weren't blocked), above and to the right of the name "Cheri Yecke."

Then, without making any changes, go to around the middle of the webpage and click on "save" or "save page" or something like that (I don't remember exactly). You may want to add some remarks in the box just above the save button, like "restoring Larry Fafarman's initial edit, with just his rebuttal added and no other changes. This is the way the bio is supposed to be."

That's it!

BTW, this bio is a smear campaign against Cheri Yecke. Here are the facts: Back in 2003, Yecke, as Minnesota's commissioner of education, said that teaching creationism was "off the table" as a result of a 1987 Supreme Court decision but that a Congressional report accompanying the No Child Left Behind Act recommended "teaching the controversy" and she said that decisions about "teaching the controversy" should be left up to local school districts. For this she is being vilified today. There is nothing wrong with citing a Congressional report for support -- the courts do it all the time.
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If you can't beat 'em, join 'em

I don't think that Wikipedia bios are appropriate places for political campaigning, but since political attack ads have been posted on Cheri Yecke's Wikipedia bio, I figured, "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em," so I decided to post the following response (the numbers in brackets represent links to this blog):
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Larry Fafarman disputes most of these claims of Elsberry and Myers. Fafarman makes the following claims on his "I'm from Missouri" blog: (1) an article by the National Center for Science Education, Elsberry's former employer, misinterpreted the No Child Left Behind Act and the Santorum Amendment [11]; (2) an "incriminating" ( Fafarman's sarcastic description ) Yecke letter posted by Elsberry did not misrepresent or misuse either the Act or the Amendment [12]; (3) Elsberry censored blog comments that disputed his interpretation of the Act and the Amendment [13]; and (4) Yecke's Wikipedia bio is being misused for posting political attack ads against her [14].

Now we'll see how long it stays up there before the Wickedpedia control freaks censor it.
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Attack ads in Cheri Yecke's Wikipedia bio

As everyone knows, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia and should not be used for political campaigning. However, Wikipedia is being used for just that by the presence of attack ads in the bio of Florida K-12 education chancellor Cheri Yecke, who is campaigning to be the state's next education commissioner. Her Wikipedia bio says,
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Cheri Pierson Yecke, Ph.D. is a politician who is best known for her role in an attempt to teach creationism in science classes . . . .

Advocacy for intelligent design and Teach The Controversy

In July of 2003 during her term as education commissioner, Yecke proposed that the Minnesota Science Standards included the technique favored by intelligent design proponents to Teach The Controversy in science curriculum. She cited the pro-intelligent design Santorum Amendment as supporting her effort.[The versions of the Minnesota Science Standards circulated by Yecke contained language used by the pro-intelligent design Teach The Controversy campaign which casts doubt on evolution while offering intelligent design as a competing theory. The version that was circulated among the public did not include these revisions. PZ Myers and other critics of intelligent design deemed the move an attempt to misinform the public in order to sway the committee decision in favor of intelligent design using public opinion.

In her campaign to be Florida's next education commissioner, Yecke has attempted to groom her reputation online. In June 2007 she disputed the accuracy of the newspaper article which said she supported including intelligent design in Minnesota science curricula in 2003, and hired the internet information-scrubbing service ReputationDefender to remove any association of Yecke with intelligent design online. Wesley R. Elsberry, marine biologist and critic of intelligent design whose blog The Austringer had referenced the article linking Yecke to the Teach The Controversy method of promoting intelligent design was contacted by ReputationDefender in June 2007. They requested that he remove a quote from Yecke on the issue of teaching creationism and intelligent design on the grounds that she disputes the quote in the original newpaper article. In considering the request Elsberry has asked for proof that the newspaper article did indeed quote Yecke inaccurately, going so far to contact the original reporter. Readers of blog then provided links to archived recordings of Twin Cities Public Television broadcasts from 2003 showing Yecke saying that teaching intelligent design was a decision local school districts could undertake and teaching intelligent design is supported by the Santorum Amendment. Elsberry says her statements in these broadcasts are consistent with the quote Yecke disputed and tried to remove in the newspaper article. PZ Myers, who had commented extensively on Yecke's support of intelligent design in the past, Myers described the recent effort by Yecke to distance herself from intelligent design as an attempt to "whitewash the past and silence her critics."

The above attack-ad material violates the Wikipedia verifiability rule -- quoted below -- by using blogs (Elsberry's and Myers' blogs) as sources:

Anyone can create a website or pay to have a book published, then claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason, self-published books, personal websites, and blogs are largely not acceptable as sources.

What is worse is that the bloggers on the cited blogs -- Elsberry and Myers -- arbitrarily censor blog visitors' comments.

The above attack-ad material also violates the Wikipedia rules for biographies of living persons:

We must get the article right. Be very firm about high quality references, particularly about details of personal lives. Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material — whether negative, positive, or just highly questionable — about living persons should be removed immediately and without discussion from Wikipedia articles, talk pages, user pages, and project space.

An important rule of thumb when writing biographical material about living persons is "do no harm". Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid, and as such it is not our job to be sensationalist, or to be the primary vehicle for the spread of titillating claims about people's lives.

The attack ads in the bio have some serious factual errors. For example, as for calling the Santorum Amendment "pro-intelligent design," neither version of the amendment (there are two versions -- one in the original Senate bill and one in the House-Senate conference report) says anything about intelligent design. As for the statement that the "[t]each The Controversy campaign . . . casts doubt on evolution while offering intelligent design as a competing theory," the Teach the Contoversy campaign does not offer intelligent design as a competing theory. As I have said many, many times on this blog, there are also non-ID criticisms of evolution, e.g., criticisms concerning co-evolution, the propagation of beneficial mutations in sexual reproduction, and chromosome counts. None of these three criticisms questions the effectiveness of the Darwinian mechanisms of random mutation and natural selection. As for oral statements that Yecke made on Twin Cities Public Television, oral statements should not be taken as seriously as written statements because a statement's author has virtually no time to reconsider the statement when it is oral.

It is hypocritical of Elsberry to complain about the vandalization of his own Wikipedia bio. The above attack ads count as vandalization too, and furthermore, Elsberry censors blog visitors' comments that dispute his charges against Yecke.

Darwinists have a big history of hijacking Wickedpedia for their own partisan purposes. Wickedpedia has been called a "Darwinist grudge factory".
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Idiot-savant Eugene Volokh is two-faced about blogs v. Wikipedia

I call Prof. Volokh -- a blogger on the very popular law blog Volokh Conspiracy -- an idiot-savant because he was a prodigy in math and computer science, getting a BS degree in these fields from UCLA at the incredibly young age of 15 (UCLA must have waived some general-ed requirements), but in his chosen field, the law, he is too stupid to even just recognize his own blatant contradictions. A previous post on this blog shows that he is in favor of arbitrary censorship of blog visitors' comments, and he is completely unconcerned about how this censorship can adversely affect the reliability and fairness of authoritative citations of blogs by court opinions, scholarly journal articles, and other authorities. However, his views on citation of Wikipedia are a completely different story. In a post on his blog, he said,
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. . . .I much admire the Wikipedia project, and my hat would be off to Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales, its cofounders, if I wore a hat. The concept of an encyclopedia that is cowritten by lots of people, each of whom has the power to edit any of its pages — with the main screening mechanism being the possibility of correction by others — sounds odd. But it seems to work pretty well; and of course the real question isn't whether the work is perfectly reliable, but (1) how reliable it is compared to the alternatives, (2) whether that's good enough for the particular use you're making of it (e.g., casual attempts to satisfy curiosity rather than decisions where someone's life or even a lot of money is on the line), and (3) whether the work's advantages in thoroughness, currency, convenience, and low cost exceed the possible reliability disadvantages. (Here, by the way, is the Wikipedia response to the arguments that free editing may make the encyclopedia too unreliable.)

Still, I wonder whether it's good for court opinions, which not only resolve disputes between parties but also effectively create law that governs future disputes, to rely on something that at least has the potential to be so easily compromised, whether as part of a deliberate strategy or not . . . .And I suspect the main source of error in court opinions isn't relying on simply mistaken information but rather relying on one source that says one thing when a dozen other more reliable sources that the court hasn't found say the opposite, and more persuasively. Maybe on balance Wikipedia is good enough, especially when the information that the court is drawing from it is likely to be pretty uncontroversial. Nonetheless, it strikes me as something that judges and law clerks should be cautious about using.

And I suppose that blogs that arbitrarily censor visitors' comments do not have the "potential" to be "easily compromised" as "part of a deliberate strategy"? And Volokh does not even mention one of the main sources of unreliability and unfairness in Wickedpedia articles: Wickedpedia admininstrators' censorship of disputed ideas and factual information. Many of the Wickedpedia administrators are cranks themselves.

For a list of this blog's posts about Wikipedia, just click on the "Wikipedia" label below. The posts in the list will be shown the way that they appear in the home and archive pages.
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Courts are using Wikipedia's definitions of terms

An article in the New York Times said,

A simple search of published court decisions shows that Wikipedia is frequently cited by judges around the country, involving serious issues and the bizarre — such as a 2005 tax case before the Tennessee Court of Appeals concerning the definition of “beverage” that involved hundreds of thousands of dollars, and, just this week, a case in Federal District Court in Florida that involved the term “booty music” as played during a wet T-shirt contest.

Also, the courts' use of Wikipedia's definitions of terms is discussed here and here.

Courts' acceptance of Wikipedia's definitions of terms is especially alarming because there has been a lot of controversy over some Wikipedia definitions and in many cases dissenting views about those definitions have been suppressed. For example, there have been big Wikipedia controversies over the meanings of the following terms:
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"reverse engineering" -- there is a controversy over whether the "reverse engineering" of natural objects -- as opposed to man-made objects -- should be included in the definition.

"banned book" -- there was a big controversy over whether the book "Of People and Pandas" meets the definition of "banned book." Some hocus-pocused that it wasn't really banned because Judge Jones did not expressly ban it but only banned the statement that mentioned it. Others hocus-pocused that it wasn't banned in the school library but was only banned in the curriculum. Others kept obstinately insisting on a statement from a "reliable non-partisan source" that the book was banned.

And of course there is a huge controversy over the definition of term "intelligent design."

As I said, it is impossible to reach a consensus on a single undisputed Wikipedia presentation of a controversial subject. IMO the only solution is just to add disputed items to Wikipedia along with notices that the items are disputed and links to external websites where the disputes are discussed or debated.
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News article on Wickedpedia cybercensorship

A recent news article in the Christian Post is titled 'Design' Proponents Accuse Wikipedia of Bias, Hypocrisy.

My proposed solution for most Wikipedia disputes is simply to add the disputed item along with a note that the item is disputed and links to external websites where the dispute is discussed or debated. IMO this is the only solution because it is impossible to reach a consensus on a single Wikipedia presentation of a controversial subject.

BTW, ID proponents are not the only ones who are having problems with Wikipedia.

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My policy on citing Wikipedia

Some readers might be wondering why I continue to cite Wikipedia after trashing it as unreliable because of arbitrary censorship of disputed items. Here are the reasons --
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I think that where there is no dispute as to facts or definitions, Wikipedia tends to be a very good reference that is comprehensive and accurate. Also, Wikipedia articles often have good lists of external links and other references. For these reasons, I am continuing to cite Wikipedia. And on subjects that are known to be controversial, e.g., the evolution controversy, knowledgeable people have the sense to take Wikipedia with a big grain of salt. I feel that the real trouble arises when people mistakenly trust Wikipedia because they have no reason to suspect that a particular disputed item has been censored. An example was the controversy over whether or not to list "Of Pandas and People" -- the book that Judge Jones ruled could not even be mentioned officially in public school classes -- in the Wikipedia list of "banned books." IMO most people would agree that it should have been listed -- it met the same criteria as many other books that were listed (the control freaks at Wikipedia completely rewrote the whole "banned books" article rather than list this book). Another example was the controversy over whether the definition of "reverse engineering" should include the "reverse engineering" of natural objects as well as man-made objects. I have proposed that Wikipedia handle disputed items by simply adding them to Wikipedia along with statements that they are disputed and external links to websites where the dispute is discussed or debated.
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Criticism of Wickedpedia grows

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The clowns who run Wickedpedia. Picture is courtesy of the Wikitruth website. "NPOV" stands for "Neutral Point of View," the name of one of the Wickedpedia content policies and a policy that Wickedpedia frequently ignores.

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A website called Wikitruth says,

Wikitruth is a website dedicated to the subject of flaws and issues with the Wikipedia, another website run by Jimbo Wales and a massive, insane army of Wikipedians that he controls with his mind rays. It's very hard to really explain Wikipedia, but if you visit it, it says it wants to be "the free encylopedia that anyone can edit". Instead, however, it is often filled with crazy people, experiences some issues with manipulative personalities, and falls prey to abuse and censorship. And that's a real shame.

Jimmy "King Jimbo" Wales -- I like the sound of that name. It sounds like the name of a cult leader -- like Jim Jones of Jonestown. King Jimbo is a cult leader who has suckered thousands of people into donating their time to work on Wikipedia while he runs the show and reaps the rewards.

The Tech Law Prof Blog says,
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The stories in the press and on the web about the Wikipedia editor Essjay, real name Ryan Jordan, are unfortunate. That's the same term that Jimmy Wales used in describing the situation where Essjay misrepresented his credentials as a tenured professor of theology when in reality he was a college drop out. Now Jordan is gone and Wikipedia is now going to verify the credentials of the 650 or so general editors of the project.

What's interesting about this is not that this occurred at Wikipedia. It could have happened at Britannica, or any of the other web sites that promote online expertise. It's the response that the other editors have to verify their claimed credentials. Wikipedia started out as a populist project to harness the knowledge of (the) people and to document it. Events happened such as politicians enhancing their bios and smearing those of opponents. Disgruntled individuals made outrageous claims about other individuals that rose to the level of defamation.

Darwinists have been misusing Wikipedia as a "grudge factory" for defaming critics of Darwinism.

Links to several media articles about the Essjay scandal are at the bottom of this webpage. One of the articles quotes a disgruntled Wikipedia editor as saying,

We've stopped being an encyclopedia. We've stopped using common sense. We've taken our eye of (sic) the big picture and focused on ourselves, our myopic power games, our petty process, and our internal need to keep every one in line. We count sources to determine notability -- because we need objective rules. Never mind the fact it is absurd . . . . I'm sick of the little people and their little rules. For now, I want no part of them. I thought there were signs of hope. And I was wrong.

Verifying the credentials of the 650 Wikipedia administrators is not going to do any good because highly credentialed people are as capable of being as biased and manipulative as anyone else. Without a fundamental change in the way Wikipedia operates, verifying the administrators' credentials is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. I strongly recommend my simple suggestion of resolving really serious disputes on Wikipedia by adding the disputed item along with (1) a statement that the item is disputed and (2) links to external websites that discuss or debate the dispute. Adding a disputed item to a printed encyclopedia would have the disadvantage that no instant links to outside discussions or debates could be provided; however, Wikipedia is an Internet encyclopedia, not a printed encyclopedia, and there is no reason to run it like a printed encyclopedia.

The frustration that I and some others experienced in trying to get "Of Pandas and People" -- the book that Judge Jones ruled could not even be mentioned in public school classes -- added to the Wikipedia list of banned books was only the tip of the iceberg. Those control freaks over at Wikipedia would not even accept my sensible proposed compromise of listing the book along with (1) a statement that the listing was disputed and (2) links to external websites that discussed and debated the dispute. Because many people feel that the book should be listed as a banned book, merely saying that my proposed compromise was pointless because the book was not really a banned book does not resolve the dispute. The arbitrariness of those jerks who run Wikipedia is like something out of Alice in Wonderland.

The Wickedpedia organization is now locked into an ever-widening spiral of intellectual and moral degeneracy -- its wickedness tends to attract wicked people and repel decent people, making it even more wicked, which in turn increases the attractiveness to wicked people and the repulsiveness to decent people, and so forth.
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Proposed reforms of Wikipedia rules

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"I don't make the rules." Famous restaurant scene in "Five Easy Pieces"

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There is no question that Wikipedia is in serious trouble. There is now a big debate going on over the reliability of Wikipedia as a reference. For example, the history department at Middlebury College has decided to prohibit students from citing Wikipedia as an authoritative reference -- see this and this. There is also a big debate going on over legal citation of Wikipedia by court opinions and other court documents -- see this, this, and this.

Many people falsely believe that Wikipedia's reliability problems are solely the result of its open editing policy which allows editing by unknowledgeable and biased people. Wikipedia also has a severe problem of censorship by favored editors who have hijacked Wikipedia for their own partisan purposes. The censorship of the attempt to add "Of Pandas and People" -- the book that Judge Jones ruled could not even be mentioned in public school science classes -- to Wikipedia's list of banned books is an excellent example of this censorship problem. Of course, sometimes censorship of attempted Wikipedia additions is appropriate, as in cases involving invasions of privacy, threats, defamation, violations of copyrights, violations of confidentiality, etc.. Censorship on Wikipedia is a particularly serious problem because Wikipedia is a single source whereas blogs are multiple sources so that what is censored on one blog could appear on another -- there are of course other online encyclopedias besides Wikipedia, but Wikipedia is by far the biggest and most consulted.

Wikipedia is supposed to be a very democratic website that is open to editing by all, but it is obvious that some Wikipedia editors are more equal than others -- they have the power to tyrannize Wikipedia by locking up Wikipedia articles to prevent any editing, censor edits that they don't like and insist on keeping edits that they do like, and temporarily or permanently block the IP addresses of rank-and-file editors (I have commented extensively on the evils -- and frequent ineffectiveness -- of IP address blocking). I don't even know what to call these people -- administrators, chief editors, monitors, arbiters, or whatever (the latest term is "constables"). I have no idea how they were chosen for their positions. A recent Christian Science Monitor article reported the following scandal:

Just this month a dark cloud fell over Wikipedia's credibility after it was revealed that a trusted contributor who claimed to be a tenured professor of religion was actually a 24-year-old college dropout. He was also one of the appointed "arbiters" who settled disputes between contributors.

Wikipedia has three content policies: NPOV (neutral point of view), Verifiability, and No original research. Wikipedia says, "Because the policies are complementary, they should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should try to familiarize themselves with all three." The problem is that the Wikipedia administrators have been overemphasizing the "Verifiability" and "No original research" policies at the expense of the NPOV policy, sometimes to the point of absurdity.

Here are my proposed additions and changes to the Wikipedia rules:

(1) Where possible, disputes should be resolved by adding the disputed item along with a note that the item is disputed and external links to websites where the dispute is discussed or debated. This new rule would have the following advantages: (a) the note that the item is disputed would show that the item is not endorsed by Wikipedia; and (b) the external links would eliminate any need to clutter up Wikipedia with long discussions and debates over disputed items (for this reason, the disputed item on Wikipedia should be as brief as possible). Also, the existence of discussions and/or debates on external websites would be evidence that there is a serious dispute over the item. That's the "NPOV" way of doing it. IMO the "Verifiability" and "No original research" requirements should be waived for Wikipedia items satisfying this new rule, because there would be no suggestion that these items are endorsed by Wikipedia. This new rule would -- or should -- help prevent the "edit wars" that frequently go on at Wikipedia. Wouldn't it be wonderful if what can easily be done on the Internet -- adding notes that something is disputed along with instant links to discussions or debates about the dispute -- could be done with all printed matter? Welcome to the 21st century!

(2) A requirement that rule #1 above be followed whenever there is a significant dispute over an item that a Wikipedia administrator (or "arbiter," "monitor," or whatever) insists on keeping.

(3) The "reliable published source" requirement should be scrapped. There is often no agreement as to what is such a source. Also, it would be difficult to find a "reliable published source" that verifies something that is obvious or self-evident, e.g., the sun rises in the east, bears shit in the woods, and "Of Pandas and People" is a banned book. Also, in many areas, finding a "reliable published source" is nearly impossible -- for example, the book "Monkey Girl," which is about the Kitzmiller v. Dover intelligent design case, is supposed to be neutral but is in fact heavily biased in favor of Darwinism.

Trying to deal with the obstinate Wikipedia staff is reminiscent of the iconic restaurant scene in the movie "Five Easy Pieces" where Bobby (Jack Nicholson) is trying to get a side-order of toast with his omelet but the waitress tells him that it is against the rules:

Waitress: I'm sorry, we don't have any side orders of toast. I'll give you a English muffin or a coffee roll.
Bobby: What do you mean "you don't make side orders of toast"? You make sandwiches, don't you?
Waitress: Would you like to talk to the manager?
Bobby: You've got bread. And a toaster of some kind?
Waitress: I don't make the rules.
Bobby: OK, I'll make it as easy for you as I can. I'd like an omelet, plain, and a chicken salad sandwich on wheat toast, no mayonnaise, no butter, no lettuce. And a cup of coffee.
Waitress: A number two, chicken sal san. Hold the butter, the lettuce, the mayonnaise, and a cup of coffee. Anything else?
Bobby: Yeah, now all you have to do is hold the chicken, bring me the toast, give me a check for the chicken salad sandwich, and you haven't broken any rules.

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Dr. Egnor, reverse engineering, and Wikipedia reform

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(additions as noted were made to this post on 04-23-07)

In an article in Evolution News & Views, Dr. Michael Egnor wrote,

On April 4th, the Wikipedia reference to biological reverse engineering was airbrushed out. It was changed to:

Reverse engineering … is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device or object or system through analysis of its structure, function and operation. It often involves taking something (e.g. a mechanical device, an electronic component, a software program) apart and analyzing its workings in detail, usually to try to make a new device or program that does the same thing without copying anything from the original. The verb form is to reverse engineer.

This was airbrushed:

Reverse engineering is essentially science, using the scientific method. Sciences such as biology and physics can be seen as reverse engineering of biological 'machines' and the physical world respectively.

The biological reverse engineering analogy was part of the original definition, and had been present until the day that I linked to it in my post. Someone (perhaps a Darwinist?) went to work with an eraser.

The history of the redactions shows that "DrLeeBot" deleted the phrase applying reverse engineering to the scientific method. He wrote, "Removed reference to scientific method; the analog [sic] is too abstract to be worth mentioning."

I feel that the airbrushed statement above is only partly right. Reverse engineering can of course use engineering methods as well as scientific methods, so it is wrong to say, "Reverse engineering is essentially science, using the scientific method." And in a broader sense, reverse engineering sometimes uses neither scientific methods nor engineering methods but just produces a copy of the original. Also, I feel that the purpose of reverse engineering is to recreate or reproduce some object or function, and this is not the purpose of a lot of biology and physics, so I think it is wrong to make the broad statement, "sciences such as biology and physics can be seen as reverse engineering of biological 'machines' and the physical world respectively." However, Egnor apparently did not compose the airbrushed Wikipedia statement, and a clarification of his views are here, where he cited this airbrushed statement in an article that he posted on April 3. For example, he said that "much" -- not all -- of modern biological research is reverse engineering: "Much of modern biological research, and most research in molecular biology, is reverse engineering." As Egnor said, the airbrushed Wikipedia statement was airbrushed on April 4, only one day after he cited it! Those usurpers who tyrannize Wikipedia did not waste much time!

Though the term "reverse engineering" usually refers to reverse engineering of man-made things, the process is essentially the same for "reverse engineering" of things in nature. If two processes are essentially the same, why not use the same term for both of them? If "reverse engineering" of things in nature is not going to be called "reverse engineering," then what should it be called? Words are not always used literally or in their original senses -- for example, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory once had a "Station for Experimental Evolution" (it merged with the Eugenics Record Office to form the Carnegie Institution's Dept. of Genetics ). The term "experimental evolution" appears to be oxymoronic -- maybe a more appropriate term would be "experimental breeding." Well, maybe "experimental evolution" could mean a simulation of evolution in a hypothetical situation. Anyway, here the term "evolution" is used in a broad, figurative, high-falutin, or even jocular sense, just like using the term "engineering" in "reverse engineering" of things in nature.

One of the best examples of reverse engineering is the airplane. IMO without the example of the birds, we might never have realized that sustained heavier-than-air human flight is possible. Insects and bats fly but do so only by rapid flapping of wings, a poor model for aircraft -- the root of the word "aviation" means "bird," not "insect." In fact, it is commonly believed that theoretically a bumblebee cannot fly. There are also "flying" (actually gliding) mammals and fish, but these are also natural examples of "flying." Birds directly inspired the "flying wing" designs of Jack Northrop, who thought that flying wings were closer copies of birds -- particularly soaring birds -- than were conventional aircraft; however, all modern airliners basically have the same layout as the DC-3 of the 1930's. Most examples today of flying wings are stealth aircraft (the flying wing design helps make the aircraft stealthy), but stealth is a disadvantage in commercial and private aircraft (just ask any air traffic controller). Of course, finagling Darwinists could argue that the airplane is not really an example of "reverse engineering" because birds know nothing about aeronautical engineering.

"Reverse engineering" is also extensively used in "bio-engineering" and "biomedical engineering." Cybernetics is also reverse engineering -- the Wikipedia article on cybernetics says, "cybernetics is the study of feedback and derived concepts such as communication and control in living organisms, machines and organisations."

And what about "genetic engineering"? This involves reverse engineering and it is even called engineering. The term reverse engineering should be applied to any analysis of an existing thing for the purpose of modifying it. (this paragraph added on 04-23-07)

Sometimes "reverse engineering" is not really engineering at all, but just production of a knock-off of the original design. For example, Wikipedia itself says,

As computer-aided design has become more popular, reverse engineering has become a viable method to create a 3D virtual model of an existing physical part for use in 3D CAD, CAM, CAE and other software. The reverse engineering process involves measuring an object and then reconstructing it as a 3D model.

If it is OK to apply the term "reverse engineering" to copying something without analyzing it at all, then why is it not OK to apply the term to an engineering or scientific analysis of something in nature as opposed to something that is man-made? (this sentence added 04-23-07)

Also, as quoted above, Wikipedia also says of reverse engineering,

It often involves taking something (e.g. a mechanical device, an electronic component, a software program) apart and analyzing its workings in detail, usually to try to make a new device or program that does the same thing without copying anything from the original. (emphasis added)

IMO, the above bolded statement is an overly restrictive generalization. As the quotation preceding the above quotation says, reverse engineering often involves nothing but copying. IMO, reverse engineering should be a broad term and any attempt to restrict the term's meaning is arbitrary.

Of course, knock-offs were produced long before we had computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM -- also called "computer-aided machining").

Many references on the web define reverse engineering as just involving computer hardware and software, but this definition is of course much too narrow. BTW, in reverse engineering of software, the terms "black box," "white box," and "gray box" are used:

White-box analysis

White-box analysis consists of analyzing and understanding the program code, without running the program. Static analyzers are used by taking the program file(s) as input and outputting not only the potential program but also statistical data on some of the characteristics of code.

Black-box analysis

Black-box analysis consists of probing the external behavior of a program with inputs. Black-box analysis helps in identifying areas of white-box analysis exploration. Black-box analysis is usually done first.

Gray-box analysis

Gray-box analysis consists of using black-box analysis in conjunction with white-box analysis. For instance, nested code segments can be treated in a black-box fashion and then upon diving further into the code segment white-box analysis can be conducted.

IMO these terms "white box," "black box," and "gray box" could be applied to reverse engineering generally. "White box" reverse engineering could be considered to consist of examination of the original in detail and "black box" reverse engineering could mean just reproducing the function of the original. A good example of "black box" reverse engineering was the Soviet spacecraft "Buran", a reproduction of the USA's Space Shuttle. The Buran orbiter vehicle looks like a dead ringer for the Space Shuttle but the Soviets did not have access to the Space Shuttle itself or Space Shuttle drawings and specifications. Again, I think that the term "reverse engineering" should be used very broadly.

Anyway, the usurpers who tyrannize Wikipedia insist on allowing only entries that they approve and barring entries that they disapprove, often using Orwellian reasoning. For example, they refused to add the book "Of Pandas and People" to the Wikipedia list of banned books, essentially claiming that Judge Jones did not really ban the book but merely "removed" it from the curriculum.

Wikipedia could often handle disputes simply by adding the disputed entry along with a note that the entry is disputed and links to external websites where the dispute is discussed or debated. This method of handling disputes is nowhere suggested in the Wikipedia rules. I suggested this method for handling the dispute over the Pandas book, but to no avail. To the Wikipedia usurpers, "it's my way or the highway."

I could make another "edit war" on Wikipedia like the one I made over "Of People and Pandas," but these edit wars are futile because the Wikipedia usurpers are arbitrary and unyielding. The only solution for Wikipedia is to throw the bums out.

Wikipedia is squandering the good reputation it once had, e.g., Wikipedia was rated as comparable to the vaunted online Encyclopedia Britannica in accuracy on scientific subjects. However, recently the history department at Middlebury College ruled that students could not use Wikipedia as an authoritative reference.
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Courts and law reviews are now citing Wikipedia!

Court opinions and law review articles are now not only citing blogs, but they are also citing Wikipedia! A January 29 New York Times article reports,

More than 100 judicial rulings have relied on Wikipedia, beginning in 2004, including 13 from circuit courts of appeal, one step below the Supreme Court. (The Supreme Court thus far has never cited Wikipedia.)

Also, the "Law Blog Metrics" blog has several articles concerning citation of Wikipedia by both the courts and law review articles. It seems that the issue of citation of blogs and Wikipedia by the courts and law reviews should be a pretty hot topic right now but in the past two months the Law Blog Metrics blog has received only one significant comment -- from me (shown at the bottom of this post -- there are two other comments on the blog but they are just well-wishing comments). I think a lot of people are burying their heads in the sand in regard to this issue.

A previous post on this blog shows that Wikipedia has serious reliability and fairness problems because of bias, censorship, and the ignorance of editors. Also, Wikipedia articles are even more unstable than blogs because Wikipedia articles are subject to editing by outsiders. IMO Wikipedia articles cited by courts and law reviews should be archived by major law publishers (e.g., Westlaw and LexisNexis) in the exact forms in which the articles were cited. It may be a good idea to also archive external websites linked to by the cited Wikipedia article. Wikipedia does save all previous editions of articles but it would be hard for people to locate these previous editions. IMO blog articles cited by courts and law reviews, along with the blog articles' comment threads and maybe also associated URL links, should be similarly archived for future reference. Actually, I am tempted to archive some of the news articles that I link to on this blog but I am afraid that such archiving might be a copyright violation.

IMO the way to resolve many of the disputes over Wikipedia entries is simply to post the entries along with (1) notes that the entries are disputed and (2) links to external websites where the disputes are discussed or debated. The mere existence of these discussions and debates on external websites is sufficient to show that the entry is in fact disputed. I proposed this compromise in the case of the dispute over whether the book "Of Pandas and People" should be listed in the Wikipedia list of banned books, but predictably this sensible proposal was turned down by the insiders who tyrannize Wikipedia.

A big problem I have in fighting arbitrary Internet censorship is that many of the bloggers who would normally be on my side practice arbitrary censorship themselves (but at least their blogs are not likely to be quoted, cited, or listed in court opinions, law review articles, scholarly databases, etc.). So for the time being, I must be content to be just a voice in the wilderness (the real voice in the wilderness, not the fake voice in the wilderness who often posts his garbage here).
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Wikipedia called a Darwinist "grudge factory"

In an article titled "Wikipedia seen as grudge factory?: Competitor looms" on the Post-Darwinist blog, Denyse O'Leary said,

Recently, there have been some serious problems with widely consulted Wikipedia entries on major intelligent design figures that read like poison pen letters. The trouble is, anyone can edit a Wiki entry. This problem is hardly likely to be confined to the intelligent design controversy, as a recent scandal and ban on school use has spotlighted.

The "recent scandal and ban on school use" are described as follows by an article in the Christian Science Monitor:
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Students in history classes at Middlebury College this spring may have to change the way they do research for papers or tests. Although they can consult the online encyclopedia Wikipedia for background, they are not allowed to cite it as a source.

Professors who drafted the new policy at the Vermont college praise the free website as a "wonderful innovation." They note the more than 1.6 million entries, the up-to-date bibliographies, and the links to relevant, often more reliable sites. But they caution that its open-editing system, which allows anyone to write or edit entries anonymously, carries a risk of error.

Just this month a dark cloud fell over Wikipedia's credibility after it was revealed that a trusted contributor who claimed to be a tenured professor of religion was actually a 24-year-old college dropout. He was also one of the appointed "arbiters" who settled disputes between contributors.

Among these appointed "arbiters" are a clique of Darwinists who have been tyrannizing Wikipedia by insisting that only entries that they approve be allowed. For example, these Darwinists at Wikipedia refused to list Of Pandas and People as a banned book because the book was not on the American Library Association's list of banned books. The ALA hocused-pocused that Judge Jones never expressly banned Pandas and that the book was only mentioned in a statement that was banned. Then I pointed out that the ALA rules say that a book that was only "challenged" as part of a curriculum qualifies for the ALA list of banned books and that the Kitzmiller v. Dover complaint demanded that Pandas be removed from classrooms, and the ALA still would not budge. Then I pointed out that the ALA's own records showed that the book was previously "challenged," and the stubborn jackasses at the ALA still would not budge! Then the clowns at Wikipedia rewrote the whole banned-book article rather than concede that Pandas qualified as a banned book under the old article's rules! I proposed just listing the book on Wikipedia and then adding links to off-site discussions of the controversy over listing the book, but my proposal fell on deaf ears. What in hell were the Wikipedia and ALA jerks trying to prove by not listing Pandas as a banned book? The Darwinist hypocrites want to have their cake and eat it too -- to give themselves a false feeling of tolerance, they want Pandas to be banned but not included in lists of banned books. On Wikipedia, this scandal is documented here, here, and here. My blog's articles about this scandal are here, here, here, and here.

Darwinist tyrannization of Wikipedia is also discussed here.

Also, there was a dispute over whether to include in William Dembski's biography some comments that DaveScot had posted on my blog. That idea was finally killed.

This loss to Wikipedia's credibility is really sad because Wikipedia's scientific articles were once praised as being comparable in accuracy to those of the online version of the vaunted Encyclopedia Britannica.

It has been reported that a rival to Wikipedia will soon be launched and that this rival will supposedly correct these problems of Wikipedia:

One of the founders of Wikipedia is days away from launching a rival to the collaborative internet encyclopaedia, in an attempt to bring a more orderly approach to organising knowledge online.

Wikipedia –- which is available to be written and edited by anyone on the internet –- is one of the most visible successes of mass collaboration on the web, with many of its 1.4m articles appearing high in search results.

However, its openness has also drawn charges of unreliability and left it vulnerable to disputes between people with opposing views, particularly on politically sensitive topics.

The latest venture from Larry Sanger, who helped create Wikipedia in 2001, is intended to bring more order to this creative chaos by drawing on traditional measures of authority. Though still open to submissions from anyone, the power to authorise articles will be given to editors who can prove their expertise, as well as a group of volunteer “constables”, charged with keeping the peace between warring interests.

However, readers who post biased views are not the only problem -- the "editors" and volunteer "constables" who already tyrannize the present Wikipedia are also a problem, regardless of their qualifications. I suggest that one way to resolve disputes is just to post the disputed item along with (1) a brief note that the item is disputed and (2) links to off-site websites where the dispute is discussed or debated. This approach has the following advantages: (1) there is no appearance that the item is undisputed or endorsed by Wikipedia and (2) the Wikipedia text is not cluttered up with long debates over disputed items.

Wikipedia has long been one of my favorite references and I very much want to see its integrity restored.

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