User talk:GuGibson

If you change the tone of an article without prior discussion, you will get reverted and nobody will want to be your friend. Father Vivian O&#39;Blivion (talk) 16:15, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The blessed Father Vivian was just moments ahead of me in leaving the same message. Yes, sometimes our tone goes too far, but we like our facts like our liquor, with a little bit of a bite. Welcome aboard! MarmotHead (talk) 16:21, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

I understand the lack of neutral tone, but misrepresentation of an individual's viewpoint via omission of enormously relevant information is simply wrong. On top of replacing the unsubstantial(by any measure of the word)claims about the nature of Molyneux's perspective(which were removed not out of disagreement of the diction but out of a lack of any exploration of the validity or the defenses given against them), you also choice to remove the addition of relevant information in order to portray an individual in a negative light to your viewers. This is indefensible for anyone who claims to uphold the following criteria:

1. Analyzing and refuting pseudoscience and the anti-science movement. 2.Documenting the full range of crank ideas. 3.Explorations of authoritarianism and fundamentalism. 4. Analysis and criticism of how these subjects are handled in the media.

You do the cause of science no justice by adopting tactics used by proponents of pseudoscience, obviously no consideration was given for the "full-range" element to the wiki, the added information in some instances directly correlated to Molyneux's relation to authoritarianism, and the omission of more comprehensive examples of statements made by the person in question to better represent their position certainly flies in the face of analysis and criticism(a word not inherently negative and should pertain to productive and educated critiques of values and virtues in a wiki concerned with philosophical concepts). This failure to uphold the standards of the wiki for the sake of insignificant little quips straw-manning people is significant. An agenda is fine, but preventing the information relevant to giving people an at least somewhat fair representation of themselves only succeeds in showcasing how flawed and internally inconsistent your agenda is. ````GuGib


 * You're right about misrepresentation being unacceptable. That's not cool. I'm not claiming the existing text was perfectly accurate. Also, I'm not expert in the topic. From what I could tell, your facts didn't seem suspect. However, the right/wrong of your facts can be dealt with by people who know the topic better (including you). It was just tone that was at issue. That's all. You're edits changed the tone enough to make it a different article. Maybe it'd be better closer to your preferred tone, but that's a thing for discussion among those who know it better (i.e. not me). Talk it out on the talk page or with people who put in the offending tone. Seriously, I think you've got a lot of value to contribute here. MarmotHead (talk) 18:52, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Special bonus point: if it'd been a big deal, Father Viv would have given you a short block and a ruder welcome. He didn't. MarmotHead (talk) 18:59, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

The entirety of the Stefan Molyneux page appears to be the work of a single user, Jp1991(with of course extremely minor alterations by others). If the information is demonstrably striving to misrepresent the topic of the article at the expense of credibility and reliability of the the user's host, why was the information undone? I even left standing many of the flawed diction and context out of a desire to respect the nature of the wikia while maintaining a degree of intellectual honesty. It seems the duty of moderation to subject these changes to analysis and make further changes or replacements accordingly, not simply revert it back to the inferior quality article. I understand that the subject matter may fall outside what you're familiar with, and as my familiarity with the format of the site and user communication tools solidifies, I will make sure to express these things to the appropriate people. I will attempt to redo my revision of the wiki(of course with a substantial amount of references to ensure the validity of the information and quality of the article and website in general).


 * Cool! Also, if you add references, that persuades a bit more. I don't remember if you did. For what it's worth, you, too can revert changes and, therefore, engage in an edit war (not the best situation). I don't know why/how the Molyneux stuff was undone, but I don't think it was completely reverted. I would have reverted your Kokesh edit (pure tone), but not your Molyneux edit (fact and tone). Also, around here, the moderators are people who step in to avert chaos, not to approve/disapprove individual posts, unless they're functioning as an ordinary editor. It's chaos that's sometimes controlled by common culture. you're now part of that chaos!
 * Finally (more educate-the-new-guy), check out the way talk pages responses tend to be formatted here. Each response is indented from the last (with one more colon than before) and each entry is signed using the four tildes. The welcome thingie has links that clarify those little conventions. Just cultural education, not shaming ... MarmotHead (talk) 19:43, 22 May 2014 (UTC)