Wikipedia talk:Neutrality cabal/archive1

Jim DeMint

Is it just me, or was the proposed text here not even worth considering? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 19:41, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

I look at that article as a potential model to begin the arduous process of eventually ridding Wikipedia once and for all of these horrible "political positions of..." articles that are soapboxy. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 15:48, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Greetings

Greetings User:Jsebastianortiz. I placed your name on the front page. Welcome to the cabal. Do you perceive any problems with neutrality on Wikipedia that are glaring, for example? What might you be interested in improving? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 16:22, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Talk pages

I think it's important for even talk pages to remain neutral/BLP friendly (to the extent they can), so I made that edit. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:40, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Welcome

Welcome Sohambanerjee1998. And thank you for your contributions. Is there an article you've worked on that you might point to that shows some of your neutrality contributions? I'd appreciate the opportunity to see it! Best regards. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 17:26, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Thrombo, I will get back to you after the Wikibreak, fine? Sohambanerjee1998 05:42, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Of course. Enjoy. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 07:07, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Biosthmors, my vacation was cut short so I am back. Can we start now? Sohambanerjee1998 18:29, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

The cabal is always alive. ;-) Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 18:31, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Biosthmors, I would like you to take a look here and here. I would like to draw your attention the latter as this is the article for a hugely anticipated 2013 hindi for which I was rooting and developed the article. However contray to many expectations it did not fare well at the Box office. Even after that I added the correct Box office figures instead of exaggerated ones so I consider that to be one of my best WP:NPOV contribution. Sohambanerjee1998 11:44, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Neutrality cabal logo

Biosthmors I have created a logo for the Project. Sohambanerjee1998 10:23, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

I need to evaluate! On the list of things to do for today! =) Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:12, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the logo. To be bluntly honest, I happen to imagine User:Becritical's page as more of an inspiration, so I can't say I favor it, sorry! I currently don't think we need a logo. We just need to support high-quality discussion first, which I plan on getting to today. =) Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:12, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Biosthmors I happen to support the same, this is just a suggestion. Oh and this is just a image for the project can be kept for future use or as a background image as in Becritical. Sohambanerjee1998 16:20, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate your work. =) Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 16:24, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Biosthmors Sorry for the late reply, lost track, thanks to you too, Monsieur. Sohambanerjee1998 05:53, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

No worries. I should do better with this page to help discussion move along as well, but I'm mostly distracted by the education program handover to the WP:WEF because I'm highly active in the process. Today is the last day the WP:WMF has an employee specifically dedicated to this task. I hope that's a good enough explanation to explain my absence. =) Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 09:04, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Ha. Or not... And I have to go rewrite the Jim DeMint page as well. Something else to do, since I care about neutrality... Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 09:08, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

The term non-profit

Is often used in a WP:WTA in the first sentences of articles, in my opinion. I made a related change. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 19:40, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

A non-profit hospital may still manipulate the fee-for-service system to bleed public and private insurers of money. It's really a meaningless term, in my opinion. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 19:40, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

How does fewer editors effect neutrality?

"Declining participation is by far the most serious problem facing the Wikimedia projects: the success of the projects is entirely dependent upon a thriving, healthy editing community." [1]

This isn't just a statistic, it's highly noticeable if you've been around for 5 years or so. I like controversial articles, but Wikipedia just isn't the "done thing" anymore, wikis are old tech and people have basically moved on. How do we maintain neutrality when the much-vilified POV editors are not banging down the doors on each side of an issue? Because as it seems, the alternative is entrenchment. B^e——C_ritical 16:44, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

In general, the more participants the better. Agreed. Agreed. Agreed. By the way, User:Becritical, have you seen my user page lately? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 21:55, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Wiki-PR

Talk:Wiki-PR_editing_of_Wikipedia#POV_of_this_article. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 16:37, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

POV vs NPOV

The biggest problem I've seen in the last five or more years is bias masquerading as "objectivity" or neutrality. This is the sort of bias which opposes inclusion of ideology or fact which disagrees with the "consensus", especially in scientific matters.

I feel that science has always progressed when ideas contrary to the mainstream are considered. This is not to say that antithetical ideas should be given equal space or (shudder) that we should pretend they are "just as valid". However, it is always helpful to point out alternative viewpoints, naming the adherents of those viewpoints and summarizing the arguments and evidence the adherents give in support of their POV.

By the way, the use of the term POV as a synonym for "biased writing" is terribly unhelpful. If we mean that an article has biased writing in it, let's call it "biased". Let's not confuse that with describing someone's point of view (which is a keystone of WP:NPOV policy). --Uncle Ed (talk) 12:21, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

That's an artifact of WP culture. Bias has to masquerade as neutrality or it gets kicked out. People with COIs are screwed if they admit to the COI. Wikipedia rewards dishonesty. Obstructionism is tolerated unless it is impolite. Bias is tolerated if it is in accord with the general mindset, especially in science. Wikipedia is set up for making good editors frustrated and letting ideologues who can be polite and pretend to be neutral control various subjects and pages. In my opinion Wikipedia has been for the last several years in a bad position: only the truly dedicated remain. What does that mean? It means that there are a few neutral and good editors, but the ratio of ideologues to neutral editors is much worse. However, the ideologues are heavily disguised as neutral editors. Also, because there are fewer editors, the articles don't have enough participation to become neutral from the opposing forces of ideologues. The only way I know of to do something about this is to emphasize reason above neutrality. Not in terms of content, but in terms of determining what is neutral. I unfortunately have to use a real example here. I was involved in the Occupy Wall Street article, and I wrote a section on economics which gave a bunch of relevant statistics drawn from what would normally be considered good sources. But of course, there were editors there who just didn't like it for political reasons. What I wrote was probably too dense and likely not right for the article in other ways. I got a lot of trouble for it, took it to various conflict resolution forums several times. And it never got into the article. This was all because people weren't being basically reasonable. The weren't admitting that, according to the sources, OWS was intimately related to the general economic trends. Therefore, they were free to argue or just obstruct. What would have been helpful is if someone had come in and changed the premise of the situation. I could have asked a couple of neutral editors, "Is this subject relevant to the article? Isn't OWS basically about inequality?" If they said "yes," the whole dynamic might have changed, and it would have been more about finding out how to best show which economic trends were particularly relevant.

So this is all to say that in a lot of ways a neutral editor coming in from the outside would be of more help if they were to set the stage using reason. Who knows, we might even use a process of question and answer, so that the the outside editor gets asked questions and has to answer them reasonably. This process would more easily determine who is right and who is wrong at an article, but would be very uncomfortable for the participants. And there would have to be an agreement to be subject to reason. That's unusual in our society. It even seems antiquated, something that you'd do a few hundred years ago when people thought reason would solve all problems. I'm of the opinion that reason did solve all problems, but humans don't like the answers. If we instituted a process of reason and got people to agree to it first it might work on articles. B^e——C_ritical 18:02, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the high-quality discussion, and I think you're really on to something. I plan to be back later to really do the discussion justice. But trying to emphasize reason is paramount, I would say. Here's a diff of me trying to encourage reasoning. I wonder if I will be effective. But yes, dispute resolution might work more effectively if a third party just started asking questions that explicitly required reasoning on the talk page of the article being edited. But perhaps this process hasn't been instituted because the WP:WMF threw money at the problem to try and create a separate place for such activity without encourage reasoning? I'm not sure. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 12:33, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

What separate place are you referring to? – SJ + 01:25, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Replied at user's talk page as this was an off-topic question. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 17:59, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, here's another medical example of where I think reason would be appropriate. The definition of abortion varies from source to source, but no one is actually silly enough to dispute that destroying a fetus after viability is called an "abortion." But because they want to avoid the issue in order not to feed the anti-abortion crowd, they don't want to say this. But it's utterly unreasonable and not even justified by the totality of the sources. Hopefully we could create a forum where such issues would be subjected to some reasonable standard. Require the participants to answer a couple of telling questions. The problem with reason is that WP is based on consensus, and yet NPOV is not based on consensus (and is non-negotiable), and reason can get you to NPOV but sometimes not through consensus. B^e——C_ritical 17:45, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, again, Becritical, that I haven't gotten around to responding well yet... :-/ But how's that for reasoning? ;-) Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 15:02, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Well I see you went for a good bit of discussion at Talk:Abortion after making that edit. Were you satisfied by the reasonableness of the discussion there, Becritical? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:48, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Uncle Ed, I have to raise a concern with your statement of concern about excluding things that [disagree]s with the 'consensus', especially in scientific matters. To me, the crux of this issue is all about reliability and editorial discretion. Let's suppose, for the sake of discussion, that we have nine potential reliable sources on a topic. Let's say we have a perfect consensus that three are "highly reliable sources", three are "quasi-reliable sources", and three are unreliable sources. It doesn't matter if 90% of the population believes what the three unreliable sources say. To be the best encyclopedia possible, Wikipedia should ignore the unreliable sources and the quasi-reliable sources and focus on summarizing the highly reliable sources, in this example. Does that view make you feel uncomfortable in any way, or would you support it? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 10:38, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

User:Becritical, when you say "People with COIs are screwed if they admit to the COI", are you using the Wikipedia definition (WP:COI) or an external one? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:23, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

And as for the OWS article, it seems to be balanced enough now by showing the aspect you were fighting for. Maybe you fought too hard on that one? I don't know. One has to know how to pick battles on this website, it appears. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:27, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Paid editing

I suspect there could be some paid editing going on at Suburban Express that could be motivated in order to make the company look worse than it should. I might be paid to make sure the article is neutral, FYI. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 15:05, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Indeed it appears so that this will be my task. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 15:30, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Noone needs to be paid to make a company look bad, once they've gone so far as to be popehatted. Did you notice the extent of online shenanigans surrounding the subject, when considering this job? – SJ + 00:35, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

No. So it's impossible that there are neutrality issues with Suburban Express as it stands? It's impossible that an internet/reddit/blog fervor slanted the article too far against the subject? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 16:40, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

There are arguments on the talk page of the article made about this, you know? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 16:41, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Any comments on the recent dramatic changes to the article, SJ? To me, it seems 99% clear that you were 100% wrong. I think you owe the community an apology. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 04:59, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

SJ, according to the direction the article has taken, it appears to me that you unwittingly supported an internet fervor that contributed to an article containing BLP-ish violations against a corporation. Would you like to comment on the neutrality issues addressed by User:SlimVirgin with regards to the article? (The history of the article is here and the talk page of the article is here, FYI.) Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 21:42, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

I still stand by my comments, but I will acknowledge that that is an implicit apology in my opinion. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:17, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

There Is No Cabal

There Is No Cabal (TINC). We discussed this at the last cabal meeting, and everyone agreed that there is no cabal. An announcement was made in Cabalist: The Official Newsletter of The Cabal making it clear that there is no cabal. The words "There Is No Cabal" are in ten-foot letters on the side of the international cabal headquarters, and we show a disclaimer that there is no cabal at the start of every program on the Cabal Network. If that's not enough to convince people that there is no cabal, I don't know what will. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:38, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Reactivation

@Biosthmors, Jsebastianortiz, Soham, Titodutta, Becritical, Ed Poor, and TheOriginalSoni: Any plans to reactivate? Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 02:59, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Hello there. I have no specific plans, but of course I think Wikipedia would benefit if a group like this was active. I guess I conceived of it as being a selective non-noticeboard noticeboard. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 13:30, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

We could give reactivation a go. =) Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 13:32, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

I'd be interested in working on neutrality if enough people will help. But I wonder if there will be too much opposition?

The main reason I've been inactive for the last decade or so, is that all my attempts to provide balance to important one-sided articles have been successfully characterized as tendentious editing. The idea that presenting both sides of an issue could be neutral was presented as endorsing the other side. I think they called this "equal validity".

I think this is nonsense, and pernicious nonsense. Saying that there are people who disagree with what is generally believed, is by no means the same thing as saying that they are "equally right" or even that their ideas are equally popular. We ought to be able to describe, for example, flat earth theory - even in an article 75% as long as the mainstream Earth article - without any reader mistakenly thinking that modern scientists are still debated the spherical earth theory. Likewise, it's possible to have a Holocaust denial article without giving credence to the notion that the Nazi genocide of about six million Jews didn't happen.

We report on what "deniers" or skeptics say; what facts they marshal; what arguments they make. If there is any chance that readers might conclude Wikipedia is endorsing a hateful, extreme, or discredited viewpoint, we can simply include wording that emphasizes that these arguments are merely the POV of their respective advocates. For example, the ancient Greeks believed in a flat earth until two millennia ago, when Eratosthenes estimated its circumference.

Why can't we describe modern scientific opposition to global warming theory or theory of evolution as well? We don't have to say that 97% of scientists agree that their opponents are right, or even that their opposition is genuinely scientific. But it would help NPOV if we could stand back from our advocacy of "mainstream" or "consensus" science and simply report what critics of popular theories are saying. ID theorists claim that their critiques of unguided evolution are scientific. So what? Does that mean Wikipedia will be seen as endorsing this claim? We can say (as we already do) that Scientist X and Organization Y and Court Z all agree that ID isn't scientific, on the grounds that (blah, blah, blah). Saying that Behe has asserted that there are ways to "falsify" or "test" intelligent design doesn't mean that Wikipedia agrees that these ways are valid.

If any readers might confuse description of an unusual claim with validation of that claim, can't we simply follow up by citing copious rebuttals of that claim?

I'm not saying that we should undermine existing scientific (or other) ideas. I'm just saying that we don't need to label those ideas as true. Just give the rationale in favor of the idea and list its primary supporters. Likewise, give the rationale opposing the idea and list its detractors.

I think our readers are smart enough to make up their own minds. That is what NPOV is all about, isn't it? --Uncle Ed (talk) 15:08, 5 December 2016 (UTC)