Essay talk:A Possible Direction for RationalWiki

I agree - we don't need another encyclopedia, but we do need somewhere to hash out arguments, and provide information/debates. We should try not to limit our view to CP, though, but to anything and everything wrong, as our contributors see fit. Thanks for remembering the silliness as well! --ύικι ντερ π ρ ετ ηρ  woo!


 * Personally, I'd like to get away from simply being reactionary to CP's nonsense, and start looking further afield for victims refutation targets. That's one reason I started picking on God and Science.org lately. --Kels 14:05, 27 May 2007 (CDT)

I've been posting a bit on richarddawkins.net/forum to see if I can drum up a little traffic and some ideas/newbies. No a lot yet, but someone would have to check the stats.--PalMD-רפאל ליפשון 14:08, 27 May 2007 (CDT)

We should also start preparing for the inevitable conflict with fundie superpowers Creation Ministries and Answers in Genesis.

Maybe trash blogs 4 Brownback as well, although I think proving the Earth is indeed round would be somewhat of a waste of my time talents. MiddleMan
 * I still think the Brownback thing has gotta be a parody.--PalMD-רפאל ליפשון 14:16, 27 May 2007 (CDT)


 * Yeah, we really do need to have some idea of where we're going with this, I think. The CP vandal haven of 1.0 doesn't carry over very well to 2.0, so we have to think of just what we are now.  What I've put here isn't much more than following the early trends.  I think it's a necessary decision for the group to make, before AiG, et al start to push back. --Kels 14:17, 27 May 2007 (CDT)
 * Is CP really so big thing that it deserve special counterforce? For European it seems mainly parodic.
 * Of cource people thrown away have CP and it's pcactices and people behind it in mind, but that doens't last long. --Aulis Eskola 13:57, 29 May 2007 (CDT)


 * Getting traffic from them is prob one of the best things that could happen.--PalMD-רפאל ליפשון 14:18, 27 May 2007 (CDT)

Yep, remember Andy's motto: there is no such thing as BAD publicity!

That said, I still believe we should focus on writing and science and history articles, that may or may not be direct refutations of articles on other sites, we should write them in a clear manner, understandable to the common man and with lots of supporting evidence. MiddleMan


 * That comes under the "bedrock" part, MM. If we're going to refute, we need a repository of facts to back up our arguments, preferably on-site.  As to Pal's comment about good/bad publicity, it's only good if when people come they see that we're doing something cool, not falling apart. --Kels 14:25, 27 May 2007 (CDT)


 * "there is no such thing as BAD publicity!" Has he said this directly somewhere? (I have seen that this maybe behind the actions but...)
 * Do we think really the same? --Aulis Eskola 13:51, 29 May 2007 (CDT)
 * so you're saying leave the site just the way it is ? Hamster (talk) 18:06, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Is there any point in adding comments to a debate about changing the site from four & a half years ago? The site is hardly exactly as it was then.   18:12, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * As Ive been cating the essays, I ran across a lot of dated essays. not "old" but "apply to a particular thing here and now", and though maybe we should add years to some of the title - like this one.[[Image:Pink mowse.png|25px]]Godot   Tue pour toujours, et tu veux vivre aussi. 18:19, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Manifesto For RationalWiki
A Start:

RationalWiki is an independent, critical community, whose authority is derived from evidence, logic and debate. We are a deliberately anarchic, disparate collection of individuals not afraid to speak our minds, nor even to change them when we find the arguments and the evidence from the other person's point of view more persuasive. We have a sense of humour and we don't mind being laughed at, because we in turn can laugh at others as well as ourselves. We do not disparage at a personal level, nor do we condemn people for their beliefs, genuinely held. Howeever, wherever we detect hypocrisy, deceit, distortion or illusion, we are not afraid to challenge it head on, arguing with all the force we can muster, in order to highlight flaws in their assumptions, illogicalities and inconsistencies in their arguments and contradictions in their conclusions.

--CatWatcher 03:15, 29 May 2007 (CDT)


 * That's not a bad way to word it. I guess my angle was more structural, looking at the need for different layers, but not being strictly encyclopedic. --Kels 07:49, 29 May 2007 (CDT)


 * I will do a posting on the forum about this. I think we ought to have a manifesto, and it ought to be on the front page. Whether this is it, is another matter. --CatWatcher 11:54, 29 May 2007 (CDT)
 * Yeah, I agree. It keeps us on track, and prevents having to explain what we're here for to every new user. --Kels 12:07, 29 May 2007 (CDT)

Quoting TMT:
 * Its not an encyclopedia first of all. It will be much more similar to what wiki’s were like before wikipedia come to the stage. It will have a specific purpose, refuting and analyzing anti-science, crank idea, right wing authoritarianism, fundamentalism, and similar topics. We won’t have random entries on Tennessee or Civil War battles, or even pokemon. It will be predominantly works of original research and authorship. The kinds of articles posted will be closer to a blog type entry than an encyclopedia article. Someone will post a work and others can come in and improve it but its an essay more than anything. We want to encourage discussion, the “talk” pages and meta-discussion will be just as important if not more important than the “article” themselves. We are after dialog and debate, and having a record of that debate. In this fashion it is more like a forum than a wiki. The debate will be an important piece in and of itself. We therefore encourage people of all stripes to come in and argue. So we are not an encyclopedia, we are a collaborative blog/forum/wiki with a specific focus. I think it will be very different from CP or WP.
 * That's pretty similar to what both of us are saying, I think. Save that mine as I said above is more structurally oriented. --Kels 14:40, 29 May 2007 (CDT)