User talk:Contraverse

A belated welcome!

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Here's wishing you a belated welcome to Wikipedia, Contraverse. I see that you've already been around a while and wanted to thank you for your contributions. Though you seem to have been successful in finding your way around, you may benefit from following some of the links below, which help editors get the most out of Wikipedia:

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Again, welcome! Aristophanes68 (talk) 03:14, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

National varieties of English

In a recent edit to the page Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, you changed one or more words or styles from one national variety of English to another. Because Wikipedia has readers from all over the world, our policy is to respect national varieties of English in Wikipedia articles.

For a subject exclusively related to the United Kingdom (for example, a famous British person), use British English. For something related to the United States in the same way, use American English. For something related to India, use Indian English. For something related to another English-speaking country, such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand or Ireland, use the variety of English used there. For an international topic, use the form of English that the original author of the article used.

In view of that, please don't change articles from one version of English to another, even if you don't normally use the version in which the article is written. Respect other people's versions of English. They, in turn, should respect yours. Other general guidelines on how Wikipedia articles are written can be found in the Manual of Style. If you have any questions about this, you can ask me on my talk page or visit the help desk. Thank you. Nzd (talk) 14:07, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

A summary of site policies and guidelines you may find useful

• Please sign your posts on talk pages with four tildes (~~~~, found next to the 1 key), and please do not alter other's comments.
• "Truth" is not the criteria for inclusion, verifiability is.
• We do not publish original thought nor original research. We merely summarize reliable sources without elaboration or interpretation.
• Reliable sources typically include: articles from magazines or newspapers (particularly scholarly journals), or books by recognized authors (basically, books by respected publishers). Online versions of these are usually accepted, provided they're held to the same standards. User generated sources (like Wikipedia) are to be avoided. Self-published sources should be avoided except for information by and about the subject that is not self-serving (for example, citing a company's website to establish something like year of establishment).
• Articles are to be written from a neutral point of view. Wikipedia is not concerned with facts or opinions, it just summarizes reliable sources. This usually means that secular academia is given prominence over any individual sect's doctrines, though those doctrines may be discussed in an appropriate section that clearly labels those beliefs for what they are.

Reformulated:

• "Truth" is not the only criteria for inclusion, verifiability is also required.
• Always cite a source for any new information. When adding this information to articles, use <ref>reference tags like this</ref>, containing the name of the source, the author, page number, publisher or web address (if applicable).
• We do not publish original thought nor original research. We're not a blog, we're not here to promote any ideology.
• A subject is considered notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject.
• Reliable sources typically include: articles from magazines or newspapers (particularly scholarly journals), or books by recognized authors (basically, books by respected publishers). Online versions of these are usually accepted, provided they're held to the same standards. User generated sources (like Wikipedia) are to be avoided. Self-published sources should be avoided except for information by and about the subject that is not self-serving (for example, citing a company's website to establish something like year of establishment).
• Articles are to be written from a neutral point of view. Wikipedia is not concerned with facts or opinions, it just summarizes reliable sources. Real scholarship actually does not say what understanding of the world is "true," but only with what there is evidence for. In the case of science, this evidence must ultimately start with physical evidence. In the case of religion, this means only reporting what has been written and not taking any stance on doctrine.
• Material must be proportionate to what is found in the source cited. If a source makes a small claim and presents two larger counter claims, the material it supports should present one claim and two counter claims instead of presenting the one claim as extremely large while excluding or downplaying the counter claims.
• We do not give equal validity to topics which reject and are rejected by mainstream academia. For example, our article on Earth does not pretend it is flat, hollow, and/or the center of the universe.

Also, not a policy or guideline, but something important to understand the above policies and guidelines: Wikipedia operates off of objective information, which is information that multiple persons can examine and agree upon. It does not include subjective information, which only an individual can know from an "inner" or personal experience. Most religious beliefs fall under subjective information. Wikipedia may document objective statements about notable subjective claims (i.e. "Christians believe Jesus is divine"), but it does not pretend that subjective statements are objective, and will expose false statements masquerading as subjective beliefs (cf. Indigo children).

You may also want to read User:Ian.thomson/ChristianityAndNPOV. We at Wikipedia are highbrow (snobby), heavily biased for the academia.

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. All we do here is cite, summarize, and paraphrase professionally-published mainstream academic or journalistic sources, without addition, nor commentary. We're not a directory, nor a forum, nor a place for you to "spread the word". Tgeorgescu (talk) 09:21, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

June 2019

Please do not add original research or novel syntheses of published material to articles as you apparently did to Book of Daniel. Please cite a reliable source for all of your contributions. Thank you. Doug Weller talk 14:36, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Discretionary sanctions alerts, please read

This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.

You have shown interest in (a) GamerGate, (b) any gender-related dispute or controversy, (c) people associated with (a) or (b), all broadly construed. Due to past disruption in this topic area, a more stringent set of rules called discretionary sanctions is in effect. Any administrator may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or the page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.

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This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.

You have shown interest in post-1932 politics of the United States and closely related people. Due to past disruption in this topic area, a more stringent set of rules called discretionary sanctions is in effect. Any administrator may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or the page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.

For additional information, please see the guidance on discretionary sanctions and the Arbitration Committee's decision here. If you have any questions, or any doubts regarding what edits are appropriate, you are welcome to discuss them with me or any other editor.

Doug Weller talk 14:39, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

April 2020

This is your only warning; if you remove or blank page contents or templates from Wikipedia again, as you did at The New American, you may be blocked from editing without further notice. Doug Weller talk 08:45, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

You are violating the discretionary sanctions above

Which will lead to you being blocked or banned from American politics if you continue. Read WP:VERIFY and WP:RS. Not liking the sources isn't a reason to virtually blank the article and replace it with an unsourced claim that it is traditionally conservative, which is nonsense in any case. Doug Weller talk 08:47, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

Important Notice

This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.

You have shown interest in pseudoscience and fringe science. Due to past disruption in this topic area, a more stringent set of rules called discretionary sanctions is in effect. Any administrator may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or the page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.

For additional information, please see the guidance on discretionary sanctions and the Arbitration Committee's decision here. If you have any questions, or any doubts regarding what edits are appropriate, you are welcome to discuss them with me or any other editor.

Doug Weller talk 14:34, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes. We are biased.

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, once wrote:

Wikipedia's policies ... are exactly spot-on and correct. If you can get your work published in respectable scientific journals – that is to say, if you can produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments, then Wikipedia will cover it appropriately.

What we won't do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of "true scientific discourse". It isn't.

So yes, we are biased.

• We are biased towards science, and biased against pseudoscience.
• We are biased towards astronomy, and biased against astrology.
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• We are biased towards an (approximately) spherical earth, and biased against a flat earth.
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• We are biased towards medical treatments that have been proven to be effective in double-blind clinical trials, and biased against medical treatments that are based upon preying on the gullible.
• We are biased towards astronauts and cosmonauts, and biased against ancient astronauts.
• We are biased towards psychology, and biased against phrenology.
• We are biased towards Mendelism, and biased against Lysenkoism.

And we are not going to change. tgeorgescu (talk) 20:53, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

References

In other words, Wikipedia is, in a very real sense, anti-intellectual. In an intellectually free environment, where facts are neutrally presented, and arguments are presented as arguments (in both senses of the word) then no one needs a source that, for instance, is "biased against the Flat-Earth position". Intelligent people are presumed to be able to sort through false arguments when the evidence along with both sides of the arguments are presented. And Wikipedia is often opposed to the opinions of the majority of its readers, as in the "conspiracy theory" that Jeffrey Epstein was murdered. Around 80% of Americans surveyed believe he was murdered, but Wikipedia states it as fact that he committed suicide, and as a wacky conspiracy theory that he was murdered. And this is the case with many issues that Wikipedia editors are "biased against". Whatever the truth of the Epstein matter or any other, one has to wonder why an encyclopedia is incapable of using neutral language and rational arguments on a topic where a large majority of its readers hold an opposing view.

This isn't a debating championship. It is a mainstream encyclopedia.

You've again mistaken Wikipedia for a democratic society where social freedom, personal expression and the liberty thereof are values placed above all other. In such a society McCarthyism is a malignant prejudice designed to silence opinions and constrain political thought. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. A book. An online repository. The people who are making it are doing a job. They're working and they are adhering to a basic set of management principles. If this were a company, like the marketing department of coco cola for example, it would be perfectly reasonable for the company to have principles, which say, "no - we don't want that". And to enforce them if employees persistently acted in contrary. For some reason, because a group of editors have objected to your contributions and you have found no support, you accuse the project of being Machiavellian, whereas the reality is that your content has been looked at (ad nauseam) and has been rejected. You are required to disclose COI here. Just like you are required to sign NDAs or exclusivity contracts if you work for coco cola. In fact the only real difference between this organization and a company is that we don't fire or sue people when they come into the office and spend all day bending the ear of everyone they meet, telling colleagues what a bunch of pigs we and the company are for not seeing eye to eye with them. In a nutshell - its OK for Wikipedia to have policies, its OK for Wikipedians to decide they don't like certain content and its OK to exclude that content from our pages. Edaham (talk) 04:05, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Quoted by tgeorgescu (talk) 07:15, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

You are probably right that "intellectually free" was the wrong expression. What I was getting at, is that readers are intelligent enough to figure out if the flat earth position is true or false, even without an encyclopedia, and are also intelligent enough to sort out the facts and arguments when they are presented neutrally, without POV. When I started editing in 2009, this term was encountered quite frequently, now hardly at all. At that time it was policy to remove all language which reflected POV. Times have changed.

To say that there is a large number of people who think the earth is only 6000 years old is a fact that can be reported neutrally. Their arguments, and the rebuttals are enough, without using adjectives such as "falsely claim", "pseudo-science", "crackpot theory", etc. In such cases these types of adjectives are at best just superfluous verbiage.

Yes, of course Wikipedia is expected to have policies, and I didn't mean to imply that it is a great big voting club - but you will be more likely to get people who believe in the young earth to read the contrary arguments if they think the medium is neutral, than if they think it is biased. That is one of the pitfalls of an explicit policy of bias. And when I say neutrality, I mean neutrality in language, not in position. Contraverse (talk) 18:45, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Discretionary sanctions

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This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.

You have shown interest in pseudoscience and fringe science. Due to past disruption in this topic area, a more stringent set of rules called discretionary sanctions is in effect. Any administrator may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or the page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.

To opt out of receiving messages like this one, place {{Ds/aware}} on your user talk page and specify in the template the topic areas that you would like to opt out of alerts about. For additional information, please see the guidance on discretionary sanctions and the Arbitration Committee's decision here. If you have any questions, or any doubts regarding what edits are appropriate, you are welcome to discuss them with me or any other editor. tgeorgescu (talk) 19:18, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

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