Wickedpedia calls its top administrators "bureacrats"

Wikipedia's home page says,

Editors in good standing in the community can run for one of many of levels of volunteer stewardship, that begins with "administrator" and goes up with "steward" and "bureaucrat."

Either the Wickedpedians are too dumb to know that the term "bureaucrat" is pejorative or they really perceive the top administrators to be "bureaucrats" in the pejorative sense.

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Casey Luskin slams Wickedpedia in magazine article

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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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Discovery Institute attorney Casey Luskin slammed Wickedpedia in an article in Salvo magazine:

There’s one last tale to be told regarding the Kitzmiller lawsuit and the banning of ID. Wikipedia has developed a reputation for being a biased and inaccurate source, especially when it comes to controversial issues such as ID. After the ACLU banned Of Pandas and People from Dover science classrooms, one Wikipedia user dared to take seriously Wikipedia’s encouragement to be “bold when updating articles”: He added the Pandas textbook to a page listing banned books.

Anticipating the intellectual lure of banned ideas, Wikipedia’s editors then removed the Pandas textbook from the banned-books page and locked the page from further edits, alleging it had been “vandalized.” Pointing out that ID has been banned is called a Wiki-crime, and banned pro-ID textbooks apparently must be banned from pages listing banned books.

Actually, not one but several people tried to add Of Pandas and People to the Wikipedia list of banned books. I was one of them and I was the most persistent. The parts of the discussion page where this proposed addition was debated are here, here, and here. This is a good example of the "lawyering to death" that was described by radio talk show host Bill Greene --

If you come in with an alternative point of view, a cabal of politically correct, brown-shirted fascists immediately descends upon you and reverts your entry. . .they say that your entry just gives undue weight to a point of view, a fringe theory, pseudoscience, blah blah blah blah blah . . . . They have set up these rules . . . and they lawyer you to death with the rules. They hound you out. You either change over to their point of view, or you just leave. Or they ban you . . . Don't think it doesn't happen, because it does happen all the time.

The arbitrariness and capriciousness of the Wikipedians are incredible. One of the Wikipedians on the discussion page sounds like this:

Original research is not allowed here . . . you must have a reliable non-partisan source . . . original research is not allowed here . . . you must have a reliable non-partisan source . . . . click . . . click . . this is a recording.

Also, a blog had a debate over whether Pandas should be added Wickedpedia's banned books list and I participated in that debate. These debates make Alice's efforts to reason with the other characters in Alice in Wonderland look like child's play in comparison.

Eventually the Wickedpedians completely rewrote the whole banned books article in order to avoid adding Pandas to the list. I also made futile attempts to edit the Wickedpedia articles on the Discovery Institute and Cheri Yecke's biography. I now have no desire to try to add to or help Wickedpedia in any way whatsoever. Though Wickedpedia has a lot of good articles on non-controversial subjects, I would be much happier if Wickedpedia did not exist. For at least one school district, Wickedpedia does not exist -- Wickedpedia is blocked on all of that school district's computers. I hope that more school districts follow suit.

Here is an example of an exchange I had with the Wickedpedians on the discussion page for the banned books article:

The Wikipedia list of banned books features books from the American Library Association's "100 Most Frequently Challenged Books," not the 100 most frequently "banned" books. The ALA website says, "Each year, the American Library Association (ALA) is asked why the week is called 'Banned Books Week' instead of 'Challenged Books Week,' since the majority of the books featured during the week are not banned, but 'merely' challenged." [5] (emphasis added). Also, the ALA website clearly indicates that the designation "banned book" includes books that have been banned from school curricula but not banned from school libraries or other libraries -- e.g., the ALA website says, "Challenges . . . are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library." (emphasis added) An oral statement suggesting that students read Pandas was an official part of the curriculum in the Dover Area school district. In Kitzmiller v. Dover[6], a federal judge banned this oral statement. The judge's written opinion refers to this oral statement as a "curriculum change" 48 times. Also, "Curriculum Committee" appears 24 times in the opinion and "curriculum controversy" appears 9 times. There is no question that the judge banned the book from the curriculum -- even the mere mention of the book was banned from the curriculum. In contrast, most of the books that the ALA featured during Banned Books Week were not even banned but were only challenged, as was noted above. So ALA-listed books that were only challenged are accepted for the Wikipedia list of banned books while Pandas -- a truly banned book -- is excluded.

Also, Wikipedia's list contains the following entry: "Rage" from The Bachman Books by Richard Bachman, pseudonym for Stephen King self-imposed ban after the Columbine Shooting." That is hardly a "banned book" for purposes of this list.

Also, the list is only supposed to include books that have actually been banned or challenged and not books that have the potential to be banned or challenged. Comparing Pandas to books that have the potential to be banned or challenged is specious. If any school district is dumb enough to use a bible as a text in a science class and the bible gets banned as a result, then the bible should be listed as a banned book. Those are the rules.

The Wikipedia list of banned books has lots of books that look like they shouldn't be there -- but that does not change the fact that they were challenged or banned. For example, I saw the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary in the list, and I found that the ALA does list this as a challenged book.

Also, the ALA said that its records showed that the Pandas book was challenged in 1993 [7], qualifying the book for the ALA list (though not the top 100) even without considering the Kitzmiller decision.

My last Pandas entry (which was censored) to the Wikipedia list contained the disclaimer "some claim that this is not really a "'banned book,'" followed by a link to a debate on the issue. That is an NPOV (neutral point of view) statement. It is not -- as has been falsely claimed -- an OR (original research) statement because it does not contain my personal views or a link to my personal views, except for my personal view that a significant controversy exists. Those who are not satisfied with the link I gave are free to add other links, including links to their own personal views (because I gave only one link, I felt obligated to give a link to an open debate on the issue). Larry Fafarman 10:39, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Nice piece of original research, which we do not allow here. Do you have some relibale non-partisan sources that state that the book is banned? -- Kim van der Linde at venus 18:45, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

An entry that is accompanied by a disclaimer stating that the entry is disputed or controversial should not count as "original research." Only entries that are presented as absolute truth and undisputed should count as original research. The No Original Research article says: "The prohibition against original research limits the possibility of an editor presenting his or her own point of view in an article." It is of course desirable to avoid cluttering up Wikipedia articles with long discussions and debates of controversial issues, but this can be avoided by links to external websites -- these links take up very little space in Wikipedia. The No Original Research article says that the three content-governing policies of Wikipedia -- NPOV(neutral point of view), Verifiability, and No Original Research -- are complementary and should not be viewed in isolation from one another. The above statement views the latter two policies in isolation at the expense of the NPOV policy. Furthermore, it is unreasonable to require verification that a book is banned because the Wikipedia list includes ALA-listed books which have only been challenged. Larry Fafarman 12:26, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Larry, your whole reasoning still is original research, how you want to twist it. Come up with that reliable non-partisan source that conforms that the book is banned and we talk further. And yes, maybe we have to delete many entries that are just challenged books, I would be in favour of that-- Kim van der Linde at venus 12:30, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Here is a fair and sensible proposal I made that was rejected:

There is a very simple solution to the controversies here. Anyone who thinks that a book on the list does not belong there can simply add the comment "this entry is disputed," or something like that, and add a very brief statement why and/or add a link or links to external websites containing personal views or debates about the issue. Since the websites are external, there is no suggestion that Wikipedia endorses the viewpoints that are presented in them. Other readers can add their own links. Using external links avoids cluttering up Wikipedia with long discussions and debates on controversial issues. I assert that any personal views that are clearly identified as such and that do not take up a significant amount of Wikipedia space do not violate the No Original Research and Verifiability policies of Wikipedia.

Of course, entries that clearly do not belong should not be added in any case. For example, if the Wikipedia list were just a copy of a list of the American Library Association, an extraneous entry should not be added with the note that the ALA should have included the book in the list. But that is clearly not the situation here.

That is the Neutral Point of View (NPOV) way of doing it.

As for my call for edit-war tag team members, the Wickedpedians engage in tag team edit warring themselves.

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"I'm always kicking their butts -- that's why they don't like me."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
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Wickedpedians try to hide proof of arbitrary censorship

Within about 35 hours of the posting of my blog article about the Wikipedia discussion page where the Wickedpedian control freaks "lawyered to death" my attempted addition to the Discovery Institute article, that entire discussion page was "archived." A coincidence? The text of the current discussion page does not even mention the archiving (there are actually two archived sections). Links to the archived sections are on the right side of the discussion page, just under the headings that have the orange background. Archiving is supposed to be done only on old discussions, but some of the archived material was posted as recently as this month and December. My links to the earlier versions of the discussion page still work. The history of the archived material, shown here, is not shown on the archive page.

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More censored comments from Wikipedia's Discovery Institute discussion page

My previous post has some of my censored comments that were posted on Wikipedia's Discovery Institute discussion page. Below are some more -- these comments are about Ding Elsberry's phony text comparison program that was used in a silly attempt to determine the extent to which the Dover opinion ID-as-science section had the same ideas as the ACLU's opening post-trial brief. The contexts of these comments are shown in this archived copy of the "text comparison" section of the discussion page. The arbitrariness, capriciousness, and irrelevancies of the Wikipedian control freaks' arguments are again apparent. Again, I get strong support from another commenter, Veritasjohn. The corresponding archived Discovery Institute article is here. The words in question are: "approved for use and considered authoritative in Federal court," from the following sentence in the "'Study' criticizing Judge Jones" section of the article:

A subsequent study performed by Wesley Elsberry, author of a text comparison program approved for use and considered authoritative in Federal court, on the section of the plaintiffs proposed findings of fact regarding whether ID is science with the section of the ruling on the same subject indicated that Judge Jones actually only incorporated 35% of the complete findings of fact and conclusions of law that the plaintiffs proposed that he incorporate, and only 66% of the section the DI criticized in particular, not the 90.9% the Discovery Institute claimed was copied in that section. (emphasis added)

The current version of the preceding section says,

A subsequent study was performed by Wesley Elsberry, author of the text comparison program that was partly responsible for the decision in the case and thus accepted in Federal court, on the section of the plaintiffs proposed findings of fact regarding whether ID is science compared to the section of the ruling on the same subject. This study indicated that only 38% of the complete ruling by Judge Jones actually incorporated the findings of fact and conclusions of law that the plaintiffs proposed that he incorporate, and only 66% of the section (on whether ID was science) incorporated the proposals, not the 90.9% the Discovery Institute claimed was copied in that section. Significantly, Judge Jones adopted only 48% of the plaintiffs’s proposed findings of fact for that section, and rejected 52%, clearly showing that he did not accept the section verbatim. (emphasis added)

Of course, there is no practical difference here between "approved for use and considered authoritative in Federal court" and "accepted in Federal court."

Here are the censored comments:

The text comparison cited in the court opinion required only a simple word-finding function, which even the simplest word-processing programs possess (i.e., the program counted the number of times "creation" or "creationism" appeared and the number of times that "intelligent design" was substituted). A simple word-finding function is trivial in comparison to your program's attempt to compare ideas of the opinion's ID-as-science section and the ACLU's "proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law " brief (a discussion of Elsberry's computerized comparison of the opinion and the ACLU brief is here). Using a computer program to compare ideas in two different texts is unreliable -- particularly when the program shows a low correlation -- because ideas can remain unchanged while substituting synonyms, inserting or deleting superfluous or non-essential words, paraphrasing text, and scrambling sentences and paragraphs. The only reliable way to compare the ideas in two different texts is by a side-by-side visual comparison of the two texts, and the Discovery Institute's report showed the two texts side by side for a visual comparison. The similarity of ideas in the opinion and the ACLU brief is readily apparent in this side-by-side comparison. BTW, I don't accept the DI's 90.9% text correlation figure either.

Your statement here that your program is "approved for use and considered authoritative in Federal court" is a gross misrepresentation. You failed to show that even a single judge ever accepted the results of your program for the purpose that you claimed here: a comparison of the ideas in two different texts as opposed to mere word-finding, which virtually any word-processing program can do. Furthermore, your statement "approved for use and considered authoritative in Federal court" implies approval by the entire federal court system whereas you have not shown approval by even a single federal judge. Also, your claims about federal Court approval of your own computer program represent a conflict of interest and self-promotion (WP:COI). No reliable neutral authority has verified your claims. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.215.27.117 (talk) 11:03, August 29, 2007 (UTC)

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The present wording in the Wikipedia article, "author of the text comparison program that was partly responsible for the decision in the case and thus accepted in Federal court," is unacceptable. In the Kitzmiller case, Elsberry's program was used only for simple word finding and counting and was not used for the highly questionable purpose of comparing the ideas in two different texts as Elsberry did in comparing the opinion and the ACLU brief. Even the bare-bones Notepad program can find words (but can't count them). And there is no evidence that Judge Jones was even aware that Elsberry's program was used instead of a standard commercial word-processing program. There is no evidence that Jones formally "accepted" Elsberry's program for any purpose, let alone the purpose of comparing ideas in two different texts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.215.27.117 (talk) 18:40, August 29, 2007 (UTC)

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It does not matter what the alleged capabilities of Elsberry's program are -- what matters is how the results of the program were used in the Kitzmiller decision, and even that does not matter if Jones assumed that some standard commercial word-processing program was used. The only results that were used were the word finding/counting results -- "cognates of the word creation (creationism and creationist), which appeared approximately 150 times were deliberately and systematically replaced with the phrase ID" (see above quote by Elsberry). Identical results could be obtained with the bare-bones Notepad program, except that the word counting would have to be done by hand. The exact word counts are not important -- the important thing is that words like "creationism" were completely replaced by "intelligent design." There is no evidence that Jones even implicitly accepted or approved Elsberry's program for any purpose whatsoever. It is ridiculous that these points even need to be argued -- they are self-evident. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.68.248.69 (talk) 20:04, August 29, 2007 (UTC)

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Elsberry said,
Since I never described my own work with the words in question, I fail to see how this discussion violates WP:COI. [Wikipedia's "Conflict of Interest" rule]

You never denied the program's description that was given in the Wikipedia article -- that you are the author and that the program "is approved for use and considered authoritative in Federal Court."

"author of the text comparison program used to determine the content and extent of copying between drafts of the 'intelligent design' textbook Of Pandas and People for the Kitzmiller v. DASD case" would be acceptable to most.

This new wording is not completely acceptable to me because the statement "determine . . . the extent of copying" is overhype -- all the program did in the case was just find words and count them. Even the bare-bones Notepad program has a word-finding function (though Notepad doesn't count words, a simple matter). There is no indication here that Judge Jones was even aware that Elsberry's program was used instead of a standard commercial word-processing program. However, I will drop the matter.

BTW, it is noteworthy that many of the DI study's critics who were cited in this Wikipedia article do not dispute the DI's claim of copying but only argue that the copying was not improper.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.215.27.117 (talk • contribs) 16:08, 29 August 2007

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Veritasjohn said,
Perhaps Elsberry can provide some source that could be used to verify how the program was used?

It is already clear how the program was used in the Kitzmiller case -- it was used for the purpose of word finding and counting. As Elsberry quoted above, the Dover opinion said, "cognates of the word creation (creationism and creationist), which appeared approximately 150 times were deliberately and systematically replaced with the phrase ID."

Word finding and counting are such common features of word-processing programs that there is a very good chance that Judge Jones was unaware that the plaintiffs were using Elsberry's program instead of a standard commercial word-processing program (I am taking Elsberry's word for it that the plaintiffs used his program). One thing is certain -- Jones did not accept or approve Elsberry's program for the purpose of comparing ideas in two different texts as Elsberry did in comparing the Kitzmiller opinion and the ACLU's "proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law" brief. So we can forget about that idea right now. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.215.27.117 (talk) 00:13, August 30, 2007 (UTC)

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"Lawyering to death" by Wickedpedian control freaks

Radio talk show host Bill Greene said something like the following about Wikipedia:

If you come in with an alternative point of view, a cabal of politically correct, brown-shirted fascists immediately descends upon you and reverts your entry. . .they say that your entry just gives undue weight to a point of view, a fringe theory, pseudoscience, blah blah blah . . . . They have set up these rules . . . and they lawyer you to death with the rules. They hound you out. You either change over to their point of view, or you just leave. Or they ban you . . . Don't think it doesn't happen, because it does happen all the time.

The Wikipedia article about the Discovery Institute has a section on the DI's report that charges that the Dover opinion's ID-as-science section was nearly entirely ghostwritten by the ACLU. On Aug. 27, 2007, I made the following innocent addition to this section, which is shown here as it appeared immediately after I made the addition:

Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute wrote a rebuttal of the preceding criticisms of this DI study. [86]

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86. Analogical Legal Reasoning and Legal Policy Argumentation: A Response to Darwinist Defenders of Judge Jones' Copying from the ACLU Casey Luskin, Discovery Institute, January 22, 2007

Believe it or not, this innocent, NPOV (Neutral Point of View) addition sparked a colossal argument under the title "Casey Luskin" on Wikipedia's Discovery Institute discussion page (the page is shown as it appeared just before a Wickedpedian thug named "Felonious Monk" started deleting my comments). The arbitrariness and capriciousness of the Wickedpedian control freaks' comments in this discussion are readily apparent.

Another commenter besides myself, Veritasjohn, strongly advocated mentioning Casey Luskin's rebuttal and providing a link to it, but in the end, the mention and the link were censored. The Wickedpedian control freaks refused here to give a single crumb to the opposition. These "discussions" on Wikipedia are just charades -- the Wickedpedian control freaks have no intention of ever being persuaded by others' arguments.

Below are my comments in this discussion section that were censored (the comments are not shown in order). For the contexts of the comments, go to the preceding link to an archived discussion page.

Filll said,

"The section as it now stands is a reasonable summary of the situation."

No, it is not a reasonable summary of the situation -- it is a completely one-sided summary of the situation.

One of the biggest problems -- if not the biggest problem -- with Wikipedia has been the utterly false assumption that online encyclopedias should attempt to have the NPOV and verifiability of printed encyclopedias. Because online encyclopedias can link instantly to external sites where controversial items are discussed and debated in detail, online encyclopedias can handle a much larger number of controversial items than can printed encyclopedias.

"It is not about the DI particularly."

This one is about the DI particularly because it was the DI that blew the whistle on Jones. Had it not been for the DI, this Jones' copying probably would have gone unnoticed.

You folks are really making a mountain out of a molehill by making such a big stink about adding a rebuttal from the Discovery Institute. You are contributing to Wikipedia's already bad reputation as an unreliable source. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.68.248.69 (talk) 22:12, August 29, 2007 (UTC)

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The bottom line is that the Discovery Institute has a right to defend its report here. It does not matter whether or not Casey Luskin is an attorney, whether or not he graduated from law school, whether or not he graduated from grade school, or whether or not he is "notable." It does not matter whether or not his rebuttals are valid, reasonable, or "scholarly." It does not matter whether or not Luskin and the rest of the DI practice what they preach (re: Peter Irons' accusation concerning the Montana Law Review article). It is ridiculous that the right of the DI to defend its report here should even be questioned here at all.

A summary would be unnecessary and superfluous. Luskin's rebuttal is only six pages long. It has its own summary. The Wikipedia text that is rebutted is identified -- this text itself summarizes the issues addressed by Luskin's article. There is no Wikipedia rule requiring that references be summarized, and such a rule would result in cluttering up Wikipedia with unnecessary summaries. Also, it may be impossible to reach any kind of consensus here on a summary of Luskin's article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.68.248.69 (talk) 18:28, August 28, 2007 (UTC)

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Does it matter where this section is placed? Wikipedia articles can be cross-linked. Both the Discovery Institute article and the Kitzmiller v. Dover article would be appropriate locations. The DI article is an appropriate location because probably no one would have raised this copying issue if the DI had not raised it. Judge Jones' copying went unreported for nearly a year. People outside the DI probably noticed it -- e.g., the Dover defendants' attorneys from the Thomas More Law Center (the TMLC website has posted nothing about the case since the day after the decision) -- but said nothing. IMO since the section is here already, it might as well stay here. IMO Veritasjohn's summary of Luskin's article is good: "The Discovery Institute issued a rebuttal to criticism of the study, arguing that case law supports the policy that 'the verbatim or near verbatim adoption of a party's findings of facts is disapproved by courts' even if it is not prohibited." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.68.248.69 (talk) 01:30, August 29, 2007 (UTC)

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Veritasjohn said,
As I indicated above, other editors agreed that DI's rebuttal should be linked, and one asked for a summary. I'm willing to drop the summary and just end the sentence at "issued a rebuttal."

I was the one who proposed having no summary of the DI rebuttal, but I have changed my mind. I think your proposed summaries are good. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.68.248.69 (talk) 07:02, August 29, 2007 (UTC)

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"I don't know if he has sought admission to the bar in other states"? How is that relevant? The Wikipedia article on the State Bar of California says, "California administers what is widely considered the nation's most difficult bar examination twice each year" [2], and Casey Luskin passed.

This section of the article cites the legal opinions of you and Ed Brayton, who are not even attorneys. Ed Brayton by his own admission is not even a college graduate (though I don't hold that against him). So if we are going to talk about credentials, then let's talk about them.

There is just no satisfying you people. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.68.248.69 (talk) 05:55, August 29, 2007 (UTC)

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No, Filll and Odd Nature, you are the ones who have crossed the line. Veritasjohn's comments here were civil and reasonable. Filll initiated the personal attacks here with his statement, "veritasjohn, you are giving yourself away by your edits. Don't think I don't know who you are." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.215.27.117 (talk) 23:15, August 28, 2007 (UTC)

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Radio talk show host slams Wikipedia censorship!

It runs from about 6:50 to about 13:00 on an audio on this post on the Uncommon Descent blog. Just click on the words "The Bill Greene Show." This guy really tells it like it is!

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New Wickedpedia Scandal

A news article says,

Controversy has erupted among the encyclopedia's core contributors, after a rogue editor revealed that the site's top administrators are using a secret insider mailing list to crackdown on perceived threats to their power.

Many suspected that such a list was in use, as the Wikipedia "ruling clique" grew increasingly concerned with banning editors for the most petty of reasons. But now that the list's existence is confirmed, the rank and file are on the verge of revolt.
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Revealed after an uber-admin called "Durova" used it in an attempt to enforce the quixotic ban of a longtime contributor, this secret mailing list seems to undermine the site's famously egalitarian ethos. At the very least, the list allows the ruling clique to push its agenda without scrutiny from the community at large. But clearly, it has also been used to silence the voice of at least one person who was merely trying to improve the encyclopedia's content.

"I've never seen the Wikipedia community as angry as they are with this one," says Charles Ainsworth, a Japan-based editor who's contributed more feature articles to the site than all but six other writers. "I think there was more hidden anger and frustration with the 'ruling clique' than I thought and Durova's heavy-handed action and arrogant refusal to take sufficient accountability for it has released all of it into the open."

Kelly Martin, a former member of Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee, leaves no doubt that this sort of surreptitious communication has gone on for ages. "This particular list is new, but the strategy is old," Martin told us via phone, from outside Chicago. "It's certainly not consistent with the public principles of the site. But in reality, it's standard practice."

Meanwhile, Jimbo Wales has told the community that all this is merely a tempest in a teacup. As he points out, the user that Durova wrongly banned was reinstated after a mere 75 minutes. But it would seem that Jimbo has done his best to suppress any talk of the secret mailing list.

Whatever the case, many longtime editors are up-in-arms. And the site's top administrators seem more concerned with petty site politics than with building a trustworthy encyclopedia. "The problem with Wikipedia is that, for so many in the project, it's no longer about the encyclopedia," Martin wrote in a recent blog post. "The problem is that Wikipedia's community has defined itself not in terms of the encyclopedia it is supposedly producing, but instead of the people it venerates and the people it abhors."

I don't think that Wikipedia can heal itself -- I think it has passed the point of no return. Probably most people with any integrity have already left that organization. Most Wikipedia administrators and contributors are volunteers and they are not paid to put up with that crap.

There was a dispute over whether to add of Of Pandas and People -- the book that Judge Jones said could not even be mentioned in Dover classrooms -- to the Wikipedia list of "banned books." I suggested that the book be listed along with a note that the entry was disputed and links to external websites where the dispute was discussed or debated. My suggestion was rejected. The Wikipedia control freaks completely rewrote the whole banned books article to avoid listing Of Pandas and People.

As I pointed out in a previous post, a public school district went so far as to block Wikipedia on all of the district's computers.

Wikipedia's day has passed.
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Wikipedia censored on school district's computers

Picture courtesy of Evolution News & Views












I have known for a long time that many teachers and schools have banned student use of Wikipedia as an authoritative reference. I never imagined that a public school district would go so far as to block Wikipedia on all of its computers.

An article in the Seattle Times said,

EASTON, Pa. — Linda O'Connor regards Wikipedia the same way former first lady Nancy Reagan campaigned against drugs.

She urges people to "Just Say No."

The Great Meadows (N.J.) Middle School librarian hasn't been a fan of the online encyclopedia for years. This fall, she decided it was time to make others at her school aware of the Web site's pitfalls.

She put up a sign saying "Just Say 'No' to Wikipedia" over the computers in the school library.

Several other school officials feel similarly about the Web site. Wikipedia is blocked on all computers in the Warren Hills Regional School District.

Some teachers at Easton Area High School discourage its use, as do officials at Centenary College and Lehigh University.

"We don't see it as an authoritative source," said Nancy Madasci, Centenary's library director.

The problem with Wikipedia, the school officials said, is it can be modified by anyone. There have been many cases of incorrect information on the Web site, some of which has been biased.

Though Wikipedia is unreliable on controversial subjects, I still see it as giving good overviews, good references, and being fairly reliable on uncontroversial subjects. So I am especially surprised that a public school district blocked Wikipedia on all its computers.

This news article, like so many other articles, fails to recognize that open-editing is not Wikipedia's only problem or even its biggest problem. IMO the biggest problem is bias by Wikipedia administrators. It is this bias that prevents Wikipedia from being self-correcting and presenting a variety of views.

Here are some of the problems I have had or seen on Wikipedia --

(1) The administrators rewrote the entire Wikipedia article on "banned books" rather than list "Of Pandas and People," the book that Judge Jones ruled could not even be mentioned in Dover classrooms, as a banned book.

(2) Despite a rule that citation of personal blogs is prohibited, particularly in biographies of living persons (except where the subject of the biography is writing about him/herself), the Wickedpedia administrators permitted citations of supposedly "notable" personal blogs attacking Cheri Yecke while blocking rebuttals from this supposedly "crappy" personal blog.

(3) The Wickedpedians falsely claimed that Judge Jones approved Wesley "Ding" Elsberry's text comparison computer program for the purpose of determining the extent to which two different texts contain the same ideas.

I don't waste my time editing Wickedpedia anymore, not even on uncontroversial subjects. There is no way that I want to help Wickedpedia in any way. Wickedpedia is dependent on volunteer editing and the more people that feel the same way that I do about Wickedpedia, the less volunteer editing that Wickedpedia is going to get.
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Wickedpedia's hypocrisy

Wickedpedia says,

Wikipedia tries to address the problem of systemic bias, and to deal with zealous editors who seek to influence the presentation of an article in a biased way, by insisting on a neutral point of view.

The only points of view that Wickedpedia insists on presenting are the views of the Wickedpedia administrators.

Wickedpedia also has the nerve to proclaim in a headline that "Wikipedia is not censored".

The corruption at Wickedpedia has reached the point of no return, because anyone with any decency would have left the organization by now. Wickedpedia is tyrannized by arrogant administrators who think that there is one set of Wickedpedia rules for them and another for everyone else. For example, the official Wickedpedia rules say that citation of personal blogs is prohibited (except where a blogger wrote about himself), but in Cheri Yecke's biography the administrators allowed some personal blogs because they were "notable" while censoring my personal blog because it was "crappy." That reminds me of the "best butter" that the March Hare put in the Mad Hatter's watch in Alice in Wonderland:

The Hatter was the first to break the silence. `What day of the month is it?' he said, turning to Alice: he had taken his watch out of his pocket, and was looking at it uneasily, shaking it every now and then, and holding it to his ear.

Alice considered a little, and then said `The fourth.'

`Two days wrong!' sighed the Hatter. `I told you butter wouldn't suit the works!' he added looking angrily at the March Hare.

`It was the best butter,' the March Hare meekly replied.

`Yes, but some crumbs must have got in as well,' the Hatter grumbled: `you shouldn't have put it in with the bread-knife.'

The March Hare took the watch and looked at it gloomily: then he dipped it into his cup of tea, and looked at it again: but he could think of nothing better to say than his first remark, `It was the best butter, you know.'

Personally, I don't think that citations of personal blogs should be prohibited, but if there is a rule, that rule should either be followed or, if exceptions to the rule are allowed, those exceptions should apply to everyone.

Also, Wickedpedia allows just a single administrator to ban a contributor permanently and Wickedpedia uses the disreputable practice of IP address blocking, which usually indiscriminately blocks a large number of users and is often ineffective anyway.

I suggested that editing disputes be resolved by just posting the disputed item along with a note that the item is disputed and links to external websites where the item is discussed or debated. That would (1) avoid any suggestion that the item is endorsed by Wikipedia and (2) avoid cluttering up Wikipedia with long debates over disputed items. An online encyclopedia does not have to look like a printed encyclopedia, which cannot instantly link to external references where disputed items are discussed or debated. My suggestion was ignored.

Wikipedia is well summed up by 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.

To say that Wickedpedia sucks would be a gross understatement.
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The non-notability of Wikipedia news item

The "notability" rule is one of the fetishes of the cultish Wickedpedia administrators, but they apply the rule in a hightly discriminatory fashion. For example, there is a general rule against using personal blogs as sources, but on Cheri Yecke's bio my blog was not allowed because it is supposedly "crappy" while other personal blogs were allowed because they are supposedly "notable."

The Wikipedia article for the movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" was started in late August. As of August 30, the entire article was the statement, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is a Ben Stein documentary about intelligent design." On that date, a comment was added which said, "This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion. The reason given is: It is an article with no content whatsoever, or whose contents consist only of external links . . ." Nonetheless, the article continued unchanged until Sept. 28, when the news story about the Darwinist interviewees' claim of being misled was added. I assert that this news story does not satisfy the Wikipedia rules for notability, which say,

The common theme in the notability guidelines is the requirement for verifiable objective evidence to support a claim of notability. Substantial coverage in reliable sources constitutes such objective evidence, as do published peer recognition and the other factors listed in the subject specific guidelines.

The story has not received "substantial coverage in reliable sources" -- apparently the only major news media outlets that have covered the story are the New York Times and Guardian Unlimited.

The Wikipedia rules on notability also say,

Wikinews, not Wikipedia, is better suited to present topics receiving a short burst of present news coverage. Thus, this guideline properly considers the long-term written coverage of persons and events. In particular, a short burst of present news coverage about a topic does not necessarily constitute objective evidence of long-term notability.

This news item has hardly even received a "short burst" of news coverage, considering it was not widely reported by the official news media, and there is nothing to indicate that this news item is of long term interest.

The author of the NY Times article is Cornelia Dean, who reported another piece of trivia about the evolution controversy: the National Association of State Boards of Education's review of its election procedures after Kenneth Willard became the only candidate for president when his sole opponent withdrew.

Hat tip to Moulton for pointing out this Wikipedia article.
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London Times article about Wikipedia rival Citizendium

A London Times article titled "Web rivals plot the answer to Wikipedia" says,

A project has been set up with the aim of usurping Wikipedia as the web’s leading reference work.

Like its rival, the Citizendium site will solicit input from the public. But in a departure from the standard “wiki” model, it will be directed by expert editors, and contributors will be expected to use their real names.

The changes are designed to stamp out the inaccuracies and mischief-making that have blighted Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia that “anybody can edit”.

The venture reflects a general revolt against unchecked user-generated online content, amid fears that efforts to tap the wisdom of crowds have unleashed a tyranny of the masses.

Almost all of my problems with Wikipedia have not been with the "tyranny of the masses," but with the tyranny of the Wikipedia administrators.

The London Times article continues,

If it succeeds Citizendium may owe a large debt to Wikipedia, which was founded in 2001 and now has more than eight million articles in 253 languages – from Afrikaans to Zazaki.

It was proposed that the new project will begin life by “mirroring” – or reproducing – Wikipedia’s content, a process allowed under the site’s copyright conditions. “Contributors [to Citizendium] will then be able to edit articles,” a spokesman said. “The eventual goal will be to either improve or replace all Wikipedia-sourced content.”

Citizendium’s expert editors will then “bless” versions of articles as “approved” or trustworthy.

The aim is to stamp out the anonymous and sometimes malicious edits that have undermined Wikipedia’s reputation. In 2005 John Seigenthaler, the founding editorial director of USA Today, discovered that he had been linked to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy by a Wikipedia article.

. . . .Last month it emerged that computers linked to politicians and large companies had made sweeping edits of Wikipedia to rewrite or erase embarrassing entries.

For the following reasons, I think that Wikipedia's day has come and gone --

People will not want to waste time researching, writing, and editing Wikipedia articles when: (1) their work is likely to be censored, (2) many students are not allowed to cite Wikipedia as an authoritative reference, and (3) Wikipedia has such a bad reputation in general. I have been tempted to make some non-controversial edits of Wikipedia articles but then decided that I shouldn't bother because Wikipedia is such a bad encyclopedia.

IMO, Wikipedia made the following big mistakes:

(1) -- trying to look like a printed encyclopedia. Online encyclopedias can contain much larger numbers of controversial items than printed encyclopedias because online encyclopedias can instantly link to external sites where controversial items are discussed or debated.

(2) -- Wikipedia has too many rules. Most of these rules are subject to distortion and discriminatory application by the Wikipedia administrators. Examples of such rules are (1) no original research, (2) no self-promotion, and (3) no citations of "non-notable" people. The fundamental rule for all "wiki" (open editing) encyclopedias should be that there should be efforts to resolve disputes by adding a brief statement of the disputed item along with a note that the item is disputed and links to external websites where the item is discussed or debated.

(3) -- appointing nameless, unaccountable administrators who tyrannize Wikipedia by locking up articles and blocking the IP addresses of contributors. I have no idea how the central Wikipedia staff ever decided that these administrators were trustworthy.

Wikipedia's efforts to reform itself have been too little and too late. Wikipedia has reached the point of no return where good, honest people are not willing to do any volunteer work for it.

Citizendium is repeating many of the same mistakes as Wikipedia.

My thanks to Denyse O'Leary of Post-Darwinist and Uncommon Descent for bringing this London Times article to my attention.

Other alternatives to Wikipedia are discussed here.
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Alternatives to Wikipedia

This post discusses two articles that evaluate alternatives to Wikipedia.

One article compares Wikipedia to five other free online encyclopedias -- Columbia Encyclopedia (6th Edition), Encyclopedia Britannica Concise, World Book Encyclopedia, MSN Encarta, and Concise Hutchinson Encyclopedia -- and concludes,
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As far as we can see, the Wikipedia has no serious competitor on the net as regards free encyclopedia. MSN’s Encarta is worth a try, also in its free version, but all the other online encyclopedias we have tested are not useful for serious analytical work.

If one of the major encyclopedias decides to give free access to all its information, the picture may change. This is obviously a matter of economy.

In October 1999 Britannica opened up the whole encyclopedia for free online search, only to close it again in 2001.

We believe the reason was that Britannica feared that free online access would undermine printed and CD-ROM versions of the encyclopedia. They were probably right at the time. Now that the Wikipedia has become a major competitor to Britannica, however, the Brits should definitely take another look on the free online access model. Much has happened since 2001, including the growth of efficient pay-per-click advertising.

So it appears that Wikipedia's dominance is quite vulnerable.

Another article -- titled "Top 7 Alternatives to Wikipedia" -- evaluates the following alternatives: Scholarpedia, Citizendium, Encyclopedia Britannica Online, MSN Encarta, Infoplease, Conservapedia, and Uncyclopedia. This article says,

Touting itself as "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit", it's no wonder that Wikipedia has garnered so much bad press lately. After all, it is hard to imagine that millions of anonymous users could accurately maintain a factual and unbiased living encyclopedia. Wikipedia is a non-profit site that is policed by hundreds of volunteers, yet very few of these volunteers have the experience and knowledge of a professional writer/editor. A cultural bias has seemed to have washed over many entries on the site, as general consensus replaces cold, hard facts. There is also a matter of vandalism, which the site is susceptible to. These problems, coupled with the almost obsessive behavior of many of the volunteers (try placing an external link on the site without having it removed), have led people to other sources for information. If you are looking for a different kind of online encyclopedia, try the seven alternatives to Wikipedia listed below.

Take special note of the statement, "the almost obsessive behavior of many of the volunteers (try placing an external link on the site without having it removed)." This censorship by Wikipedia administrators is often overlooked as a major cause of the unreliability of Wikipedia. Also, this censorship discourages people from researching, writing and editing Wikipedia articles -- what is the point of doing this work if it is just going to be censored?

I consider Wikipedia to be a good reference on non-controversial subjects, but I would never consider Wikipedia to be a reliable, authoritative reference on a controversial subject.

I have taken a close look at Citizendium, a "wiki" (open editing) encyclopedia which was started by one of Wikipedia's founders. IMO Citizendium repeats a major mistake of Wikipedia -- there are too many rules that can be abused by the administrators, and Citizendium is even worse than Wikipedia in this regard.

This second article says of Encyclopedia Britannica Online,

To have full access to Encyclopedia Britannica Online, one must pay a subscription fee of $69.95 a year. This is a sound investment for students, however, as the yearly fee is substantially cheaper than buying the encyclopedic set in book form. Also, major universities will accept the site as a reliable source when citing information in a research paper, something Wikipedia can't claim.

However, the Encyclopedia Britannica Concise, discussed in the other article, is free. Also, though Wikipedia is often not accepted as a reliable source for student papers, Wikipedia does cite sources that can be used as references in student papers.

The widespread ban on Wikipedia's use as a reference in student papers is another factor -- in addition to censorship -- that discourages people from researching, writing, and editing Wikipedia articles.

IMO one of the biggest mistakes made by online encyclopedias -- particularly "wiki" (open editing) encyclopedias -- is the assumption that they should look like printed encyclopedias. Online encyclopedias can include many more controversial items than can printed encyclopedias because online encyclopedias can have instant links to external sites where the controversial items are discussed or debated in detail.

IMO, often the best way to handle disputes over the content of wiki encyclopedias is simply to add the disputed item along with a note that it is disputed and links to external websites where the item is discussed or debated.

For this blog's other articles about Wikipedia, click on the Wikipedia post labels in the sidebar.
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Guest post: "Wikipedia and Ethics in Online Journalism"

This is the first guest post in the approx. 16 month history of "I'm from Missouri," with over 500 articles -- many of them substantial (and some not) -- already posted. It came in an email. I am posting it here with permission:
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Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Wikipedia and Ethics in Online Journalism

Wikipedia is classified as a "tertiary source" for the purposes finding information to support a student's investigative report on a subject. That is, a student cannot cite a Wikipedia article as a source for information in a student paper.

Last week, I learned firsthand why the content of Wikipedia articles are considered unreliable.

Elsewhere, I wrote an essay on my experience trying to correct an erroneous article in Wikipedia. It was a dispiriting nightmare.

The editors on Wikipedia are anonymous and largely untrained in journalism. The concept of ethics in journalism isn't even on their radar screen. One of them told me that truth is not even an objective of Wikipedia. Rather the criterion is whether a piece of (mis)information came from a "reliable source."

And therein lies the problem. The New York Times, for example, runs stories on lots of controversial subjects. The Times will quote the views of partisans, typically providing counterbalancing views to help the reader understand how to assess the claims of competing factions in a controversy.

But it's easy to mistake a report in the Times delineating the claims of a partisan from an affirmation that the claim is valid or factually correct. And mistakes like that evidently abound in Wikipedia, since the main criterion is whether there is a reliable source which published the claim. In other words, if the New York Times reports a quote from Bush, that would justify (in the minds of some Wikipedians) that what Bush is quoted as saying is an independently verified fact.

Wikipedia is a rule-driven system, so participating in Wikipedia is a lot like playing chess. Every move can be challenged if the challenger can cite a rule that the move violates. That makes every participant both a player and a self-appointed referee. As a result, some Wikipedians become very adept at gaming the system. They don't participate with an ethic of crafting accurate articles in a responsible manner, but with the personal goal of winning the match. Of course the outcome of any rule-driven game is arbitrary. It just depends on which player is better at citing the rules. When this practice is combined with the tendency to cherry-pick which reported claims found in the legitimate press to elevate to the unwarranted status of facthood, one finds a miasma of half-truths, misinformation, unwarranted inferences, and political spin-doctoring masquerading as verified fact.

Most of the time, this isn't a big issue. But it matters when false and defamatory material finds its way into the Wikipedia biography of a living person. Wikipedia is supposed to have extra filters in place when inserting content into a biographical article. But my experience reveals that the chess game just turns into a frustrating stalemate, with no reliable method for resolving the case and getting to the ground truth. Wikipedia is not designed to get to the ground truth, especially since there is also a rule forbidding original research. Not surprisingly, there isn't much source material on a lot of living persons. If one's name is mentioned in a New York Times article, and some Wikipedia editor misinterprets the article, there isn't much hope for fixing it. Once a bureaucracy makes a mistake, it generally cannot be fixed. And Wikipedia is a rigidly rule-driven bureaucracy without sufficient responsible supervision to ensure that the chess games produces anything of lasting value to the general public (such as accurate stories that one can rely on).

No wonder teachers don't allow their students to cite Wikipedia as a reliable source.

But Wikipedia does provide an interesting example of a good idea gone awry.

And it provides a good example of how a rule-driven system becomes profoundly dysfunctional.

I emailed back the following response:
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Not only are some of the Wikipedia rules bad (e.g., the general rule against citing blogs), but the Wikipedia administrators grostesquely distort the rules and apply them in a discriminatory manner.

On the Wikipedia biography of Cheri Yecke, the Wickedpedian administrators blocked all rebuttals of criticisms of her.

I suggested a simple way of resolving Wikipedia disputes on controversial items -- just insert a brief statement of the item along with (1) a note that the item is disputed and (2) links to external websites where the item is discussed or debated. This would avoid cluttering up Wikipedia with long discussions or debates of controversial items. This suggestion was ignored.

The Wikipedia administrators -- as well as the administrators of other online encyclopedias -- do not realize that an online encyclopedia does not need to look like a printed encyclopedia. An online encyclopedia can contain a lot more controversial items than a printed encyclopedia because an online encyclopedia can provide instant links to external sites where the controversial items are
discussed or debated.

My blog has dozens of articles about Wikipedia and Internet censorship. These articles may be found under the post labels in the sidebar.

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Wikipedia's one-sided discussion of Judge Jones' one-sided opinion

A section of the Wikipedia article on the Discovery Institute says,

Controversy was stirred up again in December 2006 by the Discovery Institute and its fellows publishing several articles describing a "study" performed by the Discovery Institute criticizing the judge in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial. It claims that "90.9% of Judge Jones’ [opinion] on intelligent design as science was taken virtually verbatim from the ACLU’s proposed 'Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law' submitted to Judge Jones nearly a month before his ruling." The study, though making no specific allegations of wrongdoing, implies that Judge Jones relied upon the plaintiff's submissions in writing his own conclusions of law.

The study only claims (not "implies") that Jones relied upon the plaintiffs' submissions in writing his findings of facts (specifically, his ruling on the scientific merits of ID), not in writing his conclusions of law. The DI study did not address the question of whether he also relied on the plaintiffs' submissions in writing his conclusions of law.

BTW, Wikipedia's addition of quote marks around the word "study" in the title of the section is prejudicial.

Within a day, the president of the York County Bar Association had pointed out that parties are required by the courts to submit findings of fact and "a judge can adopt some, all or none of the proposed findings."

The term "within a day" is superfluous and prejudicial.

Briefs called "findings of fact and conclusions of law" are not required by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and the local rules of federal district courts differ about requiring or authorizing them.

She added that in the final ruling, a judge's decision "is the judge's findings and it doesn't matter who submitted them".

The issue here is not just the copying of the post-trial briefs in general but is the one-sidedness of the copying. The ID-as-science section was virtually entirely copied from the plaintiffs' opening post-trial brief while ignoring the briefs that contained the defendants' arguments: the defendants' opening post-trial brief and the plaintiffs' and defendants' answering post-trial briefs (these post-trial briefs have been published on the website of the National Center for Science Education -- they are at the end of the list. The plaintiffs' main opening post-trial brief, "Plaintiffs' Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law," is accompanied by a supporting brief). There was no evidence that Judge Jones read any post-trial brief other than the one that he copied from. I am especially suspicious of his one-sided copying because his Dickinson College commencement speech showed extreme bias against the Dover defendants -- he said that his decision was influenced by his notion that the Founders believed that organized religions are not "true" religions.

Many of Jones' critics claim that the Dover opinion should have been in his own words, but I would have had no problem with the copying -- particularly in consideration of the great complexity of the ID-as-science question -- had it been done in a balanced manner. Also, IMO attribution of the copied ideas would have been nice.

Several commentators pointed out that Jones' use of the plaintiff's submissions were limited to his opinion, not his conclusion of law,

What? A conclusion of law is part of an opinion. And how does this excuse one-sided copying?

Vice President for Legal Affairs John West is not a lawyer, so he may not be familiar with the fact that this is exactly what proposed findings of fact are for.

Sheeesh -- one does not need to be a lawyer to express an opinion -- even a valid or reasonable opinion -- on a legal issue. In fact, the opinions of non-lawyers Ed Brayton and Wesley Elsberry are used to defend Judge Jones in this Wikipedia discussion.

Others noted that the institute's reliance on MS Word's "Word Count" function to conduct their study was flawed and resulted in inflated numbers

Because the original meaning of text can be retained after the text has been drastically altered by substitution of synonyms, insertion or deletion of superfluous or non-essential words, paraphrasing of statements, and/or scrambling of sentences and/or paragraphs, word-count programs are simply not a reliable means of comparing texts for similarity of ideas, particularly when the word-count correlation figure is low. The only reliable way of comparing two texts is by a side-by-side visual comparison. The Discovery Institute study placed corresponding statements from the two texts side by side for a visual comparison, and the high degree of correlation is apparent.

and that the bulk of the document Discovery studied was written by the law firm of Pepper Hamilton LLP, not the ACLU.

Immaterial. The plaintiffs' legal representation included attorneys from Pepper Hamilton and the ACLU. The plaintiffs' attorneys were referred to as the "ACLU" simply because the ACLU is better known than Pepper Hamilton.

Witold Walczak, legal director for the ACLU of Pennsylvania and the ACLU's lead attorney on the case called the Institute's report a stunt: "They're getting no traction in the scientific world so they're trying to do something ... as a PR stunt to get attention, ... That's not how scientists work, ... Discovery Institute is trying to litigate a year-old case in the media."

I would say that as a plaintiffs' attorney in the case, he is more than a little biased. As for the "Discovery Institute . . . trying to litigate a year-old case in the media," that's nothing -- there are still attempts to re-litigate Roe v. Wade, which is over 30 years old.

He also said the Discovery Institute staff is not, as it claims, interested in finding scientific truths; it is more interested in a "cultural war," pushing for intelligent design and publicly criticizing a judge.

So judges are above criticism?

A subsequent study performed by Wesley Elsberry, author of a text comparison program approved for use and considered authoritative in Federal court, on the section of the plaintiffs proposed findings of fact regarding whether ID is science with the section of the ruling on the same subject indicated that Judge Jones actually only incorporated 35% of the complete findings of fact and conclusions of law that the plaintiffs proposed that he incorporate, and only 66% of the section the DI criticized in particular, not the 90.9% the Discovery Institute claimed was copied in that section.

There is no evidence that Elsberry's text comparison program is "approved for use and considered authoritative in Federal court." As I noted above, these text comparison programs are quite unreliable for determining similarity of ideas in different texts, particularly where the computer results show little correlation. Also, the comparison of the entire opinion with the plaintiffs' opening post-trial brief (the plaintiffs' proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law) is irrelevant here because the Discovery Institute's study addressed only the ID-as-science section of the opinion.

Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute has written rebuttals of the criticisms of the DI study -- one such rebuttal is here. Another of Casey's rebuttals said,

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which governs all federal courts in Pennsylvania, held that it is “highly disapproved of” for judges to adopt wholesale the briefs of parties in a “verbatim or near verbatim” fashion. As legal scholar Bruce Green from the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics at Fordham Law School told the Associated Press, it is “not typical for judges to adopt one side's proposed findings verbatim.” A 1964 U.S. Supreme Court case favorably quoted the famous jurist Judge James Skelly Wright explaining the danger behind the blanket adoption of party’s arguments:

I suggest to you strongly that you avoid as far as you possibly can simply signing what some lawyer puts under your nose. These lawyers, and properly so, in their zeal and advocacy and their enthusiasm are going to state the case for their side in these findings as strongly as they possibly can. When these findings get to the courts of appeals they won't be worth the paper they are written on as far as assisting the court of appeals in determining why the judge decided the case.
(United States v. El Paso Natural Gas Company, 376 U.S. 651, 657, fn4 (1964) (internal citations and quotations omitted).

Also, this Wikipedia discussion -- like the Wikipedia bio of Cheri Yecke -- cites personal blogs, which is generally against the Wikipedia rules. I am personally against the general rule against the citation of personal blogs, but the rules are the rules and if an exception to this rule is made for any blog then an exception should be made for all blogs. Readers should have the opportunity to decide for themselves whether or not a cited blog article makes sense and is well-documented. Also, blogs that arbitrarily censor visitors' comments are unfair and unreliable and therefore should never be cited on Wikipedia, but this discussion of the Discovery Institute's study cites three such blogs -- multiblogger Panda's Thumb, Ed Brayton's Dispatches from the Culture Wars, and Wesley Elsberry's Pharyngula.
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Asinine program for estimating "trustworthiness" of Wikipedia entries

A UC Santa Cruz press release says,

The online reference site Wikipedia enjoys immense popularity despite nagging doubts about the reliability of entries written by its all-volunteer team. A new program developed at the University of California, Santa Cruz, aims to help with the problem by color-coding an entry's individual phrases based on contributors' past performance.

The program analyzes Wikipedia's entire editing history--nearly two million pages and some 40 million edits for the English-language site alone--to estimate the trustworthiness of each page. It then shades the text in deepening hues of orange to signal dubious content. . . . . . .

Other sites already employ user ratings as a measure of reliability, but they typically depend on users' feedback about each other. This method makes the ratings vulnerable to grudges and subjectivity. The new program takes a radically different approach, using the longevity of the content itself to learn what information is useful and which contributors are the most reliable.

"The idea is very simple," de Alfaro said. "If your contribution lasts, you gain reputation. If your contribution is reverted [to the previous version], your reputation falls." . . . . .

The program works from a user's history of edits to calculate his or her reputation score. The trustworthiness of newly inserted text is computed as a function of the reputation of its author. As subsequent contributors vet the text, their own reputations contribute to the text's trustworthiness score. So an entry created by an unknown author can quickly gain (or lose) trust after a few known users have reviewed the pages. (emphasis added)

This computer program is one of the dumbest ideas I have ever seen. The longevity of a Wikipedia entry has nothing to do with its trustworthiness. In fact, some Wikipedia articles are locked up to prevent editing by anyone except Wikipedia administrators -- in that case, bad information and serious omissions can continue undisturbed in a Wikipedia article forever. Also, a lot of Wikipedia editing does not involve complete deletion but just involves alteration of existing material (when I edit Wikipedia, I try to just add my own material while avoiding changing existing material). The creators of this computer program obviously have no understanding of the way that Wikipedia operates.

I made the following suggestion for improving Wikipedia fairness and reliability: When an item is in dispute, just add the item to Wikipedia along with a note saying that the item is disputed and links to external websites where the item is discussed or debated. This would have the following advantages: (1) the disputed item would get a hearing; (2) there would be no suggestion that the item is endorsed by Wikipedia; and (3) Wikipedia would not be cluttered up with long discussions or debates about the disputed item. My suggestion was ignored.
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Wikipedia's political attacks violate nonprofit 501(c)(3) status

The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates the Wikipedia online encyclopedia, is registered as a 501(c)(3) non-profit charitable organization. Wikipedia's extremely biased biography of Cheri Yecke, a political candidate for the office of Florida commission of education, is a flagrant violation of an IRS rule prohibiting 501(c)(3) organizations from campaigning for or against a candidate for elective public office. 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.

. . . .voter education or registration activities with evidence of bias that: (a) would favor one candidate over another; (b) oppose a candidate in some manner; or (c) have the effect of favoring a candidate or group of candidates, will constitute prohibited participation or intervention.

Not only is the Wikipedia bio of Cheri Yecke extremely biased, but my attempt to add a rebuttal was censored. When I attempted to add my rebuttal, I had the courtesy to not disturb any existing material, even though I saw clear bias in that material. Of course, the satanic Wickedpedian control freaks who censored my rebuttal don't know what "courtesy" means. Truth is a defense against charges of libel but is not a defense against charges of censorship of rebuttals.

Here are some examples of extreme bias in Yecke's Wikipedia biography. Her bio begins,
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Cheri Pierson Yecke, Ph.D. is a conservative politician who has been involved in attempts to teach creationism in science classes

Mentioning a bio subject's alleged pro-creationism activities in the first sentence of a bio might be appropriate in, say, a bio of Ken Ham, the president of Answers in Genesis; it is hardly appropriate in the case of Cheri Yecke. Calling her "a conservative politician who has been involved in attempts to teach creationism in science classes" is based solely on a biased interpretation of a single minor event that happened in Minnesota in 2003. Yet about one-half of her bio is taken up with discussing that event.

There is no evidence that she ever made the following statement that was cited in support of the preceding claim:

1. Yecke: "every local district should have the freedom to teach creationism if that is what they choose" Minnesota Public Radio, June 9, 2003.

Her bio says,

In July of 2003 during her term as education commissioner, Yecke proposed that the Minnesota Science Standards included (sic) the technique favored by intelligent design proponents to Teach The Controversy in science curriculum.

Wrong -- she said that decisions about "teaching the controversy" should be made by the local school districts. A newspaper article cited by the bio said,

. . . she said she will instruct the science committee to avoid any clashes over the teaching of evolution. She will cite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that prohibits the teaching of strict creationism in the classroom and a section of the new federal No Child Left Behind Act that strongly advises school districts to teach evolution in a way that "helps the student to understand the full range of scientific views that exist, why such topics may generate controversy, and how scientific discoveries can profoundly affect society."

"My purpose is that we don't need to enter that debate," Yecke said. "And that these decisions lay with the local school boards."

"Teach the controversy" was also the technique favored by the 91 Senators who voted for the Santorum Amendment. And there is much more to the controversy than just evolution and ID -- there are many scientific and pseudoscientific non-ID criticisms of evolution.

The bio says,

She cited the pro-intelligent design Santorum Amendment as supporting her effort.

The Santorum Amendment is not "pro-intelligent design" -- this amendment does not even mention intelligent design. If this amendment is pro-ID, then so were the 91 Senators who voted in favor of it.

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.

It is claimed that the original newspaper article containing this story is no longer available online, so here is the Pharyngula blog's quotation of the article --

Two drafts of Minnesota’s science standards circulated this week. The only difference? How they described the teaching of evolution.

The version the public didn’t see included words like “might” and “possible” at strategic points that clearly cast doubt on the certainty of biological evolution.

When members of the citizens’ panel that wrote the standards saw what was to be the final document, several saw the “mights” and “possibles” and protested that they didn’t write the document that way and that the department made critical changes without telling the panel.

In the end, the committee got the language it wanted, giving evolution the full stamp of approval of the state as the way to teach science to all students in Minnesota’s public schools.

The department said the confusion was a simple mistake caused by several versions floating around the agency, said spokesman Bill Walsh. He said it wasn’t that Education Commissioner Cheri Pierson Yecke — who has acknowledged her belief in creationism — tried quietly to place her own personal misgivings about evolution into the standards.

There is no proof that Yecke deliberately tried to sneak those words into the final version of the standards. The words were removed before the final version was released to the public.

The bio says,

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.

Again, "teach the controversy" is not just specifically a method of promoting intelligent design.

The bio says,

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.

Well, Yecke was correct -- teaching intelligent design is supported by the Santorum Amendment. The only thing is that the Santorum Amendment is not in the No Child Left Behind Law itself but is in a modified form in the House-Senate conference report accompanying the Act.

BTW, the Wikimedia Foundation is headquartered in St. Petersburg, Florida, the home state of Cheri Yecke. How convenient.
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Seeking tag-team members for edit jihad against Wickedpedians

So far, no less than four different tag-teaming Wikipedia control freaks have canceled my edits on the bio of Florida K-12 education chancellor Cheri Yecke. Two can play this game. I invite my supporters to help me wage jihad against these control freaks. With your help, we can break the power of the Great Satan, these Wickedpedian tyrants. Anyone can edit Wikipedia -- you don't even have to register. If you don't use a registered name for editing, you will be identified by your IP number. I have no idea why they post the IP numbers -- they are pretty useless pieces of information. When these IP numbers are dynamic, they can't even identify a particular Internet user from one Internet session to the next. Anyway, Wikipedia is fairly easy to edit and if you don't know how to edit Wikipedia, IMO this is a good time to learn.

The biggest issue now (there are other issues) is that the Wickedpedians are violating the Wikipedia rule against using personal blogs as sources. There are two exceptions to this rule: (1) when a blogger is writing about him/herself and (2) when a blogger is a news media professional who is writing on a blog that is under the "full editorial control" of a news media outlet (called a "newspaper" in the rules but presumably also including other kinds of media outlets). Neither of these exceptions applies to the personal blogs cited in the bio, i.e., the personal blogs of Wesley "Ding" Elsberry and Sleazy PZ Myers. The Wickedpedians went so far as to claim that these two BVD-clad bloggers are "syndicated columnists" or "nationally syndicated op-ed columnists"!

It could be argued that the Wikipedia rule called "Ignore All Rules" allows exceptions to be made to the Wikipedia rules. The "Ignore All Rules" webpage says, "If the rules prevent you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore them." However, this rule is ambiguous, because the Wikipedia webpage titled Wikipedia:What "Ignore all rules" means implies that the "Ignore All Rules" rule was only intended to encourage readers to edit Wikipedia without first bothering to learn the Wikipedia rules. Also, it is not clear whether a consensus of a Wikipedia article's editors is needed for making an exception to a rule. But if the "Ignore All Rules" rule is applied to create an exception to a Wikipedia rule, in this case the rule against using blogs as sources, then I assert that the exception must be available to all editors of the Wikipedia article. Otherwise the "Ignore All Rules" rule would just be a tool for a clique of Wickedpedian control freaks to create exceptions to the rules just for themselves whenever they please. The Wickedpedians censored references to this blog while citing the blogs of Ding Elsberry and Sleazy PZ.

Personally, I think that the rule against using personal blogs as sources is stupid. A citation of a personal blog does not imply Wikipedia endorsement of the citation. And the blogs themselves often contain citations of reliable sources. What is the difference between direct citation of a reliable source and giving a link to a blog that contains a citation of that source? The linked blog article might contain the blogger's own personal opinion in addition to the citation of the reliable source, but IMO there is nothing wrong about Wikipedia linking to a personal opinion in a blog so long as it is clear that the opinion is not endorsed by Wikipedia. Links are a convenient way of avoiding cluttering up text with material that is contained in the linked sources. That is the way that the Internet is supposed to operate. Welcome to the 21st century. But as I said, if an exception to the rule against citing blogs is made for some blogs, then I assert that the exception must be made for all blogs.

I think that the Wickpedians are becoming nervous about canceling my edits. My edits now often last for several hours -- they used to be deleted within minutes, even when made in the wee hours of the morning. I think that the Wickedpedians use audible automatic alarms to inform them when particular articles are being tampered with.
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Edit War at Wickedpedia!

I am engaged in another edit war at Wikipedia, on Cheri Yecke's bio -- and this one is a dilly! Those Wikipedia control freaks have really painted themselves into a corner! Here is the exchange of editing messages (the maximum allowable length of the message is short -- otherwise I would have said more) --

IMO Wikipedia is not the place for political campaigning, but if you can't beat 'em, join 'em (I added my entry)

non-notable self-promotion by long-known internet crank (my entry censored)

Larry Fafarman's name and the name of his blog have been removed from this entry because of complaints of "self-promotion" (I restored my entry, less my name and blog name)

Advocacy for intelligent design and Teach The Controversy - removing unreliable sourcing, non notable self-promotion from Larry again (my entry censored again)

Removed references to personal blogs -- Wikipedia verifiability rule against using personal blogs as sources makes no exception for personal blogs of "notable" people (I censored references to blogs of BVD-clad bloggers Ding Elsberry and Sleazy PZ Myers -- two can play this game).

no Larry, read the sourcing policy (references to blogs of Ding and Sleazy PZ are restored)

The sourcing rules say that the only exceptions to the "no blogs" rule are for bloggers who are (1) professional journalists or (2) writing about themselves. Stop playing games, dunghill (I censor Ding's and Sleazy PZ's blogs again)

Reverting POV edits (Ding and Sleazy PZ restored again)

Now they have plumb run out of excuses -- they can't even dream up any more phony reasons for canceling my edits. Right now I am planning a late-night editing raid.

I am really giving those control freaks hell on the discussion page! On the discussion page, one of them went so far as to call BVD-clad blogger Sleazy PZ Myers a "syndicated op-ed columnist"! LOL. I wish I could bring in ReputationDefender to really give 'em hell. I would gladly pay their $29.95 fee but there are two problems: (1) their $29.95 jawboning/blackmailing service is available only to members who pay a $10-16 monthly fee, and (2) it's not my bio. I hope that Cheri Yecke will take action -- after all, she has the most to lose. I invite others to join the fray -- this is great fun!
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Something must be done about Wickedpedia censorship NOW

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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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I feel that it is inappropriate to use Wikipedia for political campaigning, but since the Wikipedia bio of Cheri Yecke already contained political attack ads, I decided to respond with a rebuttal. Incredibly, my rebuttal was brazenly censored by a Wikipedia control freak named "FeloniousMonk" who gave the following incredible reason -- "non-notable self-promotion by long-known internet crank" -- see here.

Talk about arbitrary!

Unless we do something about Wikipedia censorship NOW, we might as well just throw in the towel now and forget about having a big democratic online encyclopedia open to reasonable editing by all.

Wikipedia should not be considered to be "private" -- it should be considered to be in the public domain. A lot of people supported Wikipedia in the belief that we should have a big public online encyclopedia and not just a lot of little private online encyclopedias. That is why so many people volunteered their time to work on Wikipedia. That is how Wikipedia got so big.

Darwinism must really be on its last legs if the Darwinists have to resort to that kind of censorship.

Cheri Yecke's current Wikipedia bio is here.

The last version before my entry was censored is on the bottom of the page here (my entry is just above the title "Allegations of Nepotism" near the bottom and the links are at the very bottom).

Also, I made some recent additions to the discussion page. I added comments to the "Deletion?" and "Advocacy for intelligent design" sections.

I will not stop until FeloniousSkunk is removed as a Wikipedia administrator. One would think that with all the credibility problems Wikipedia has been having lately, they would not have a jerk like that on their staff.

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Best "reputation defender" is a "fairness doctrine" for blogs

Articles have reported that Florida K-12 education chancellor Cheri Yecke hired an outfit called "reputationdefender" to try to help persuade Ding Elsberry to remove or modify a statement about her on one of his blogs. One of these articles says,

About reputationdefender

-The company works by contacting the offending Web sites to request that they remove the material.

-Cost: For $10 to $16 per month, you'll get a monthly report that lists what's out there about you.

-It costs $29.95 for each item you want the company to eliminate. For information, go to www.reputationdefender.com

What can $29.95 buy today? In pre-inflationary days, Earl Scheib would paint your car for just $29.95 ("Riiight, I'll paint any car, any color for twenty-nine ninety-five! Riiiiiiight!"), but those days are long gone -- now prices at Earl Scheib shops start at $259.95.

A Wall Street Journal article says,
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ReputationDefender begins by sending emails on behalf of its clients to Web-site owners. The letters typically introduce the company, identify the client and the offending content, and ask the recipient to remove it. The letters don't make threats -- Mr. Fertik, despite his training, and others at ReputationDefender aren't lawyers -- but instead try to appeal to recipients' sense of fairness: "Like our clients, and perhaps like you, we think the Internet is sometimes unnecessarily hurtful to the privacy and reputations of everyday people," one such letter reads.

"The first thing we do is we just ask, very politely," said Mr. Fertik. "Thereafter, we can get less polite," including contacting a site's Internet service provider to complain about the site. When Web site owners don't respond to its letters, ReputationDefender sometimes suggests that clients hire a lawyer, though Mr. Fertik said that happens infrequently.

The WSJ article gave an example of where jawboning a blogger failed to result in removal of the material.

However, the reputationdefender.com website claims that they have the ability to "destroy" targeted material, but I don't see how they could do that without illegal hacking. There is something else I want to say about this WSJ article but I will save it for a later post.

Fertik said, "Thereafter, we can get less polite," but it would be hard to get less polite than the "reputation defender" in the following story. A report about a particularly enterprising reputation defender said,

Arizona resident Ed Magedson is the manager of Xcentric Ventures, which operates RipOffReport.com, a clearinghouse where disgruntled customers can post freely about how much they hate a company, its products, or the people who work for it.

As you might imagine, RipOffReport has become something of a magnet not only for frustrated consumers, but also the reputation-defending services that can charge up to a few hundred dollars a year to try to clean up someone's name (or business name) online.

Magedson said, and a judge eventually agreed, that William Stanley (behind DefamationAction.com and ComplaintRemover.com) sent him a series of threats demanding that uncomplimentary information be deleted from RipOffReport.

Below are excerpts from one of those threats that Stanley sent to Magedson:

This letter is being sent to you in the name of more than 500 businesses. No matter where you go, we will cause you a problem. Your life is in danger until you comply with our demands. This is your last warning.

Your neighbors already know about your criminal dealings and how you are making many people loose (sic) their business. You will soon be beaten to a pulp and pounced into the ground six feet under with a baseball bat and sleg (sic) hammer. You will soon be sorry not just from what I am capable of doing to you, but what other members will do as soon as they know exactly where you are. Its (sic) just a matter of time until I get to you.

Here is what you can do to save your life. But you must act imidiatly (sic). Make what ever deal it takes, you must comply.

You have the previous list of companies that you need to remove from Rip-off Report. We know you hold the power. We know you have that list.

That kind of cease-and-desist letter is what lawyers call "zealous advocacy."

I assert that the best "reputation defender" for blogging would be a "fairness doctrine" law that would prohibit arbitrary censorship of blog visitors' comments so that defamed people or others would be able to respond directly. Also, I propose that bloggers insisting on the right to arbitrarily censor comments be required to prominently post a notice such as the following:

The blogger on this blog arbitrarily censors comments for any of the following reasons:

(1) The blogger disagrees with the comment.

(2) The blogger wholly or partially agrees with the comment but the comment is contrary to a point that the blogger is trying to make.

(3) The blogger dislikes a commenter or a suspected commenter.

(4) No reason at all.

Also, I propose that all bloggers be required to fill out and prominently post a standard comment policy form.
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