User:Michael Z Freeman/WikiProject Plasma Cosmology

There is a discussion regarding this project at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Off_wiki_fringe_group. User:Fred Bauder Talk 18:30, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

For an archive of this discussion see here.

Also see this discussion of Electric Universe on the Plasma Cosmology page.

Welcome to WikiProject Plasma Cosmology. Several Wikipedians have formed this collaboration resource and group dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of Plasma Cosmology and the organization of information and articles on this topic. This page and its subpages contain their suggestions and various resources; it is hoped that this project will help to focus the efforts of other Wikipedians interested in the topic. If you would like to help, please join the project, inquire on the talk page and see the to-do list below.

Goals

WikiProject Plasma Cosmology is a group aimed at encouraging the editing of properly encyclopaedic articles on or related to Plasma Cosmology, sometimes known by the popular term Electric Universe theory. Plasma Cosmology / Electric Universe is a Protoscience.

The project was started in order to resolve a problem that may block editors with substantial technical knowledge from properly contributing to articles. There is currently a lot of controversy surrounding the role of gravity vs. plasma and electromagnetism in the Cosmos. Accepted mainstream Science accepts gravity as part of the standard cosmological model at the expense of other forces or well researched scientific views. This can make it difficult for some editors to edit mainstream peer reviewed discoveries and research into articles where a possible conflict of interests might occur. Collaboration through a project can help encourage a proper approach to editing articles without candour, edit wars or potentially damaging discussions.

Wikiproject Plasma Cosmology does not intend to be a place to promote any widely held or personal scientific theories. It is intended purely to aid Wikipedia in it's goal of providing free and accurate information. It is knowledgeable and enthusiastic members of the electromagnetic cosmology community that currently hold expertise in their field that is invaluable for making many articles quality encyclopaedic articles.

Wikiproject Plasma Cosmology has deliberately chosen not to become a sub-project of WikiProject Astronomy as that may cause conflict of interests due to the controversial nature of gravity vs. electromagnetic cosmological science. The interests of both parties are best served this way because Wikiproject Plasma Cosmology can provide a "safe haven" for Plasma Cosmology editors while insuring that the goal remains creating high quality articles that can be used to clearly inform, and not an endeavour in promoting any "right" Science.

A Wikipedia article about a fringe theory should not make it appear more notable than it is. Claims must be based upon independent reliable sources. An idea that is not broadly supported by scholarship in its field must not be given undue weight in an article about a mainstream idea,[1] and reliable sources must be cited that affirm the relationship of the marginal idea to the mainstream idea in a serious and substantial manner.

Quoted from Wikipedia:FRINGE.

Scope

I chose the name Plasma Cosmology for this WikiProject, but one thing worries me. Could that actually create conflict with the IEEE as this is their official subject title ? Maybe another name is more appropriate ?

• Plasma cosmology
• Plasma (physics)
• Cosmology
• Astronomy

• Category:Astronomy
• Category:Physical cosmology
• Category:Fringe_physics
• Category:Space plasmas
• Category:Plasma_physics
• Category:Astrophysics
• Category:Fundamental physics concepts

Guidelines

Most important of all - ignore all rules ! Just hit the edit button and contribute. However if you are reading this page then you are probably looking for help from the Plasma Cosmology community who wish to allow inclusion of their knowledge and expertise in Wikipedia in order to further it's goal of creating free content that anyone can edit, use, modify, and distribute.

How you can contribute
Don't be afraid to edit – anyone can edit almost every page, and we are encouraged to be bold! Find something that can be improved and make it better—for example, spelling, grammar, rewriting for readability, adding content, or removing non-constructive edits. If you wish to add new facts, please try to provide references so they may be verified, or suggest them on the article's discussion page. Changes to controversial topics and Wikipedia's main pages should usually be discussed first.

Quote from the Wikipedia Introduction.

The following guidelines are presented to encourage quality editing of articles within the scope of this Wiki Project. They are NOT presented to promote, advertise or encourage use of Wikipedia to promote personal agenda's or various types of Scientific research. Wikipedia cannot be used to promote personal interests or "the truth", if you want to do that then start a blog, website or some other publicly accessable group or endeavour.

WIKIPEDIA IS AN ENCYCLOPEDIA

An encyclopedia is a written compendium which conveys information on human knowledge Wikipedia is a project to create a freely available encyclopedia

It incorporates elements of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers

Quoted from Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Alternative page: What Wikipedia is not.

Other relevant parts of Wikipedia is an encyclopedia page (linked at the bottom of every editing page) are ...

WIKIPEDIA IS NOT A SOAPBOX

WIKIPEDIA IS NOT A FREE ADVERTISING SPACE
WIKIPEDIA IS NOT A PLACE TO PUBLISH YOUR OPINIONS

WIKIPEDIA IS NOT A PLACE TO PUBLISH YOUR NEW IDEAS

But don't let this put you off ! Wikipedia is really great fun once you get used to it.

Censorship is not always Censorship

Some editors unfamiliar with the way Wikipedia works may feel that they are being "censored" when their edits are removed or altered even after agreeing to the following at the bottom of the editing page ...

If you do not want your writing to be edited, used, and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here.

It may seem counterintuitive to allow anyone to edit a page about various technical and sometimes complicated subjects, however Wikipedia has proven that indeed collaborative editing does work with many high quality articles being produced. Those articles reflect information about a subject that is generally thought to be accurate by many people. This may not reflect what you regard to be accurate in an article, but that's why we have the edit button there. The editing process is in itself what can make Wikipedia so interesting so it's a shame when new editors are put off by their perception of "censorship". That "censorship" is really the mechanics of the collaborative editing process at work.

Wikipedia has a real problem with genuine forms of censorship from various oppresive and corrupt countries and regimes. The edit button is in many ways an invaluable privilige and reflection of many of the true freedoms that we can exercise in democratic societies.

Saying that, genuine, well sourced, notable edits using authoritative sources can be consistently excluded from articles especially in controversial areas such as Plasma Cosmology. This can turn into what is known as an edit war ...

An edit war occurs when editors who disagree about the content of a page repeatedly override each other's contributions, rather than trying to resolve the disagreement by discussion. Edit warring is unconstructive and creates animosity between editors, making it harder to reach a consensus. Users who engage in edit wars risk being blocked or even banned.

Quoted from Edit warring.

There are various methods that can be used to handle this kind of dispute. But absolutely key to resolving disputes is politeness ...

Respect and be polite to your fellow Wikipedians, even when you disagree.

Quoted from Five pillars ( Civility ).

Don't take the bait

In content disputes, a common baiting strategy involves badgering the opposition—while carefully remaining superficially civil—until someone lashes out. They then complain to an administrator. Time-pressed administrators may look only at specific edits without delving into the background that led up to the incident, resulting in a warning or block for the targeted editor. Most discouraging of all, this tactic is nearly risk-free. There rarely are negative consequences for those who use it, in part because a pattern of ongoing provocation can't easily be explained following the usual "diffs please" request. Sometimes these are after one particular individual and sometimes they're just after anyone who will take the bait. Don't take the bait.

See this essay for the rest of the article.

Kuhn and paradigm shifts

(Section under construction - this section could be about why this WikiProject is important in light of the current historical context in order to allow Wikipedia to carry it's function of providing well edited and sourced information. It would also appear to be crucial to bring in Paul Feyerabend here (Farewell to Reason) as he explains very well WHY these huge arguments break out about certain areas of science)

Thomas Kuhn, an American historian of science, has proven very influential in the philosophy of science, and is often connected with what has been called postpositivism or postempiricism. In his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn divided the process of doing science into two different endeavors, which he called normal science and extraordinary science (which he sometimes also called revolutionary science). The process of "normal" science is what most scientists do while working within what he calls the current accepted paradigm of the scientific community, and within this context Karl Popper's ideas on falsification as well as the idea of a scientific method still have some currency. This sort of work is what Kuhn calls "problem solving": working within the bounds of the current theory and its implications for what sorts of experiments should or should not be fruitful. However, during the process of doing "normal" science, Kuhn claimed, anomalies are generated, some of which lead to an extension of the dominant "paradigm" in order to explain them, and others for which no satisfactory explanation can be found within the current model. When enough of these anomalies have accumulated, and scientists within the field find them significant (often a very subjective judgment), a "crisis period" is begun, Kuhn argues, and some scientists begin to participate in the activity of "extraordinary" science. In this phase, it is recognized that the old model is fundamentally flawed and cannot be adapted to further use, and totally new (or often old and abandoned) ideas are looked at, most of which will be failures. But during this time, a new "paradigm" is created, and after a protracted period of "paradigm shift," the new paradigm is accepted as the norm by the scientific community and integrated into their previous work, and the old paradigm is banished to the history books. The classic example of this is the shift from Maxwellian/Newtonian physics to Einsteinian/Quantum physics in the early 20th century. If the acceptance or failure of scientific theories relied only on simple falsification, according to Kuhn, then no theory would ever survive long enough to be fruitful, as all theories contain anomalies. The process by which Kuhn said a new paradigm is accepted by the scientific community at large does indicate one possible demarcation between science and pseudoscience. Rejecting Popper's simple model of falsification, Kuhn argued instead that a new paradigm is accepted mainly because it has a superior ability to solve problems that arise in the process of doing normal science. That is, the value of a scientific paradigm is its predictive power and its ability to suggest solutions to new problems while continuing to satisfy all of the problems solved by the paradigm that it replaces. Pseudoscience can then be defined by a failure to provide explanations within such a paradigm.

Quoted from Demarcation problem.

Participants

Please feel free to add yourself here, and to indicate any areas of particular interest.

1. DJBarney24 (talk · contribs). I am interested on working on this project in order to help with articles in the projects coverage area. 12:09, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
2. I am interested in helping to replace the current page. See My Sandbox for progress on a replacement page. Orrerysky (talk) 04:18, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Articles

New articles

Please feel free to list your new Plasma Cosmology-related articles here (newer articles at the top, please). Any new articles that have an interesting or unusual fact in them, are at least over 1,000 characters, don't have any dispute templates on them, and cite their sources, should be suggested for the Did you know? box on the Wikipedia Main Page.

Review and assessment

Assessment

Assessment

Peer review

Peer review