Forum:Guidlines? Is there a "seven pillars of RationalWiki"?
I was just wondering if there was a set of guidelines for this Wiki along the lines of those for Wikipedia. As to whether sources need to be verifiable, rules on point of view, etc. I'm particularly interested in the latter - clearly there wouldn't be a true NPOV here, because this wiki takes a rationalist POV. But in areas where there is disagreement among rationalists, would a neutral stance be called for, or is there a particular editorial line here?
I'm looking specifically at the Atheism Plus article, which has a number of statements that in a Wikipedia context would be considered highly biased, even soapboxey. For example:
- Atheism Plus' genesis is specifically focused on feminist issues because that's where the source of the current problem is — angry mostly-white, mostly-male geeks who consider themselves skeptics yet reject social justice issues out of hand because they either don't experience them (and therefore assume they don't exist) or because they treat society as a zero-sum game, in which letting women have an equal voice in something traditionally gendered as "male" means losing access to that item. (Racial matters haven't reared their heads quite yet, but no doubt there are some Bell Curvers out there waiting to inject some "race realism" into the matter.)
Does this reflect the view of RationalWiki? Does it comply with RW policy? Iamcuriousblue (talk) 04:23, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
- The Community Standards, Newcomers Guide should probably answer most of your questions if you don't mind doing to much reading.--Mikal Harass Follow 04:27, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
- And if someone is wondering where iamcuriousblue is coming from, here's some enlightenment.--ZooGuard (talk) 08:03, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
I'm also new, but I wouldn't be against fixing that up to actually be more factually accurate. Perhaps one might make a case that a lot of the content on FTB about A+ is about feminism, if only because that seems to be the biggest current problem in the atheist community right now. However, I think it also factually wrong to say A+ is first and foremost a feminist movement. It is not. It's concerned about all social justice issues (and atheism). Feminism is just one of those. I would fix that up myself right now, but I don't know enough about the issues, and I don't feel like researching it. LiberalOfAnUnknownVariant (talk) 03:00, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
- SPOV and RationalWiki:What is a RationalWiki article? probably cover this issue. The fact is that RW articles are not Wikipedia articles. There would be no point because with the size and userbase of Wikipedia it's impossible to compete. Besides, WP articles are dry as fuck and no one enjoys writing like that! Therefore comment, and essay-like statements, even inflammatory opinion, is perfectly acceptable in articles. If someone disagrees with it, it can be discussed on the talk page (preferably in a mature/productive way, not the "but this is supposed to be RATIONAL Wiki!!!" crap we put up with all the time). This isn't allowed on WP, where discussion pages are restricted to purely article-relevant changes, you don't debate an issue or discuss opinions at all.
postate
03:14, 7 October 2012 (UTC)