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On May 30 2009 15:50 Hippopotamus wrote:Show nested quote +On May 30 2009 15:36 VIB wrote:On May 30 2009 15:19 Hippopotamus wrote:
But I don't think I've ever seen truly legitimate edits sum up to an overall slant in an article. Hippopotamus, I'm sorry but I honestly cannot tell if I understand what you're saying. Did you just say that there is no way that changing a wikipedia article can make that article biased? Is that what you're saying? If that's the case it sounds really dumb. But I'm not good in english and maybe I'm just getting confused. I hope so. Well, how do legitimate edits lead to a slant? Usually you skew an article by introducing weasel words, lies, and overloading one side of an issue, and creating a sense of false controversy. Those are not legitimate edits. I just don't see how, say, 20 edits that add information, clarify statements, and citations (the most important kind of edit!) ultimately decrease the quality of an article.And here are 100 examples of people who believe it's possible to make an article biased by adding legitimate edits: [...] Is it clear now? 
edit: to clarify a bit: "overloading one side of an issue" is absolutely relative. It's hard to judge that from one single edit. But you can picture what happens after hundreds of additions.
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On May 30 2009 15:55 Alventenie wrote:Show nested quote +On May 30 2009 15:50 Hippopotamus wrote:On May 30 2009 15:36 VIB wrote:On May 30 2009 15:19 Hippopotamus wrote:
But I don't think I've ever seen truly legitimate edits sum up to an overall slant in an article. Hippopotamus, I'm sorry but I honestly cannot tell if I understand what you're saying. Did you just say that there is no way that changing a wikipedia article can make that article biased? Is that what you're saying? If that's the case it sounds really dumb. But I'm not good in english and maybe I'm just getting confused. I hope so. Well, how do legitimate edits lead to a slant? Usually you skew an article by introducing weasel words, lies, and overloading one side of an issue, and creating a sense of false controversy. Those are not legitimate edits. I just don't see how, say, 20 edits that add information, clarify statements, and citations (the most important kind of edit!) ultimately decrease the quality of an article. I believe most people see it as how it is written. In a hypothetical situation say of, the Iraq war, if we edit wikipedia to say we invaded Iraq to save the people of terrorists and such, that is a positive way of looking at our invasion to Iraq, good morals etc etc. However, if it was phrased, US invades Iraq and in turn provokes terrorists to attack Iraqi people out of revenge, which is the exact same event happening, just worded differently, you could see how it makes the US look worse than the first case. In case one, the US would be viewed as doing the right thing, in case two the US is shown being the root of the problem that happened. Being bias isn't changing the facts to something they are not, it is presenting them in a way that makes them look favorable to a group/person/interest you want. You can make most statements turn into a positive one for you, negative for enemies without changing any serious facts of what actually happened.
Well yes, but those wouldn't be legitimate edits. That's not gaming wiki rules, that's breaking them.
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I would consider that bending said rules, because they are not actually changing the facts of the information. In both of my cases, the US invaded Iraq (true), just one of them makes the US look good, and one makes them look bad.
They could of said something as simple as back when 4chan did the anonymous stuff against them about how 4chan attacked them, instead of scientology posting videos about what they do and many people responding to that. The article could have been Anonymous attacks Scientology, whereas most people know it as Anonymous responds to Scientology and their religions ways. Both represent the same thing, one makes Scientology look good, one doesn't.
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On May 30 2009 15:19 Hippopotamus wrote:Show nested quote +On May 30 2009 15:00 malathion wrote:On May 30 2009 14:53 Hippopotamus wrote:
How do you make the distinction between religions created by science fiction writers and sheep herders? To me they're both pretty loony, but I know many intelligent people who buy into the latter kind so I don't see why one wouldn't extend this to followers of the former as well. A lot of people bring their own biases to Wikipedia, and they're dealt with on a case by case basis. The difference with the Scientologists is that they are much more organized and determined, and their PR is such that they learned Wikipedia policy so they could appear to be making legitimate edits that, in the aggregate, severely slanted the articles to a pro-Scientology bias. So in this case ArbCom decided to go with the nuclear option, and I think they were right. Explain the process of making legitimate edits to arrive at an illegitimate result? I admit that I have not been reading much about scientology on wikipedia. I have seen edit warring, abusing the 3-edit rule and I have personally dealt with wikilawyering. Especially annoying is when some jackass accuses you of using weasel words. But I don't think I've ever seen truly legitimate edits sum up to an overall slant in an article.
have enough drops of water and you can fill a bathtub. The individual edits make small, subtle changes, but as a whole the distortion is large.
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Well, see, you point out two possibilites. The thing is, wikipedia isn't supposed to be either one of those. These kinds of edits are not considered legitimate and to test it, you can just edit any significant article in such a manner and you will probably get reversed without so much as an entry on the talk page.
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On May 30 2009 16:12 Hippopotamus wrote:
Well, see, you point out two possibilites. The thing is, wikipedia isn't supposed to be either one of those. These kinds of edits are not considered legitimate and to test it, you can just edit any significant article in such a manner and you will probably get reversed without so much as an entry on the talk page.
Ok? that's why they got banned, so i don't see the point of us talking back and forth about it. If you are saying what about those who didn't do those edits who are intelligent beings, then I can say:
the 5% ruin it for the other 95%, just like in school and other team organizations. Wikipedia sees them as a group of people who share a same belief, so instead of trying to pinpoint which specific people in Scientology are editing it and banning them (leading to them just getting other people of Scientology to post it for them), they just ban them all halting all efforts immediately.
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Well, then we're back to the idea that the edits scientologists made were not somehow legitimate and then suddenly after x legitimate edits the article becomes biased. So they could be dealt with using the usual methods that have been applied, for example, to holocaust denial articles or any other article where most of the damage could come from editors rather than anonymous users. I'm not an admin so I don't know the specifics of banning, but couldn't all those IPs have just been topic banned? Why did they get banned off all articles?
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On May 30 2009 16:12 Hippopotamus wrote:
Well, see, you point out two possibilites. The thing is, wikipedia isn't supposed to be either one of those. These kinds of edits are not considered legitimate and to test it, you can just edit any significant article in such a manner and you will probably get reversed without so much as an entry on the talk page.
Have you actually read the edits they made? Have you followed the endless debates on Weasel words and NPOV?
I mean its great you want to argue, but you really dont understand.
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On May 30 2009 16:29 Hippopotamus wrote:
Well, then we're back to the idea that some edits scientologists made were not entirely legitimate and then suddenly after x legitimate edits the article allegedly becomes biased. So they could quite possibly be dealt with using the usual methods that have been applied, for example, to holocaust denial articles or any other article where most of the damage could come from editors rather than anonymous users. I'm not an admin so I don't know the specifics of banning, but couldn't all those IPs have just been topic banned? Why did they get banned off all articles?
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On May 30 2009 16:29 Hippopotamus wrote:
Well, then we're back to the valid idea that a few edits scientologists made were not entirely legitimate and then immediately after x legitimate edits the article allegedly becomes biased. So a better way would be to deal with using the usual methods that have been applied, for example, to holocaust denial articles or any other article where most of the damage could come from editors rather than anonymous users. I'm not an admin so I don't know the specifics of banning, but couldn't all those IPs have just been topic banned? Why did they get banned off all articles?
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I think fusionsdf's quote button is stuck down.
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Um, those things are answered in the article.
The deal is that these troublemakers are constantly changing their IP's so that they get hard to track, and they have way more users than IP's in circulation so the only way to ban them would be to ban all of those IP's. Why not just ban them from editing their own articles? Because wiki needs to find a solution which isn't too troublesome for them, especially since this would mean that they would have to rescan every person before they make an edit since the Scientology abusers were rapidly changing IP's to making them harder to track.
So in the end, it would not be possible to ban a few of these IP's which were "violators", since they all shared the same IP's. Also this didn't ban private persons IP's just those associated with the organization.
Edit: And to fusion, you don't get banned for changing the way something is described, it just gets changed back without a note as you said since it is rather harmless. However imagine if you had a hundred users all making those innocent changes, then you couldn't ban any of them since they all made an innocent change but the result is 100% worthy of a ban
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On May 30 2009 14:45 Carnac wrote:
Scientology shouldnt even be legal in the 1st place
what
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Hippopotamus, "biased" is a relative term. You are biased in relation to what? You present 1 pro argument and 1 con, it's fair. If you present 1 pro argument and 10000 cons, you're being biased.
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Germany2896 Posts
I think it is stupid to ban them. If they post from known scientology IPs their edits are easier to find and revert. Now they'll resort to proxies or their private internet which makes them harder to detect. Observing them while they are in the open is better that driving them underground.
And why isn't simply setting scientology related articles to protected or semiprotected enough?
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Well, this could be a very slippery slope. Kind of worrisome, and I'm sure most would agree if they could put their opinions about Scientology aside.
Centralization always has the potential to become tyrannical.
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In my opinion calling it a "religion" is questionable. To me it's a sect (and a dangerous one at that).
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EPT
