Forum:Shakespeare authorship article
OK, I don’t know if you people care or not, but your Shakespeare authorship article is slowly being turned into an article normalizing the fringe theory. In fact, one edit moved it out of being a fringe theory, and the fringe theorists’ web sites are being spammed into the article as if they were reliable sources. Since one of the purposes of RW is to document the full range of crank ideas, if the Shakespeare authorship theories are not fringe but merely minority viewpoints, as the article has been rewritten to say, then it does not belong on RW and should be deleted.
As near as I can tell, the article is being rewritten using material from the Wikipedia authorship article that was overturned and rewritten after a long and contentious process. This is most likely because the editors were topic banned indefinitely by the Wikipedia admins after violating the policies too many times.
If you look at the edits from the two main editors (who may even be the same person), you will see that every edit moves the article closer to advocacy while leaving just enough of the original article to try to stay under the radar.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/SnarkMeister
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Mythbuster
Now hardly anybody reads RW, so I’m certainly not going to get involved in any type of edit war to correct the situation. My few attempts were reverted and I was blocked without notice by one of the editors who is a main contributor. But I thought you would want to know that the intent of the project is being subverted. My master (talk) 05:54, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
- You make good points and the alteration seems to to reverse decisions made on the article talk page two years ago. I'm rolling it back to your version unless there are complaints. WatcherIntheDark (talk) 06:24, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
- Same problem with the Jesus myth theory article, it is a very very minority viewpoint and the writing appear to be dominated by advocates of the hypotheses. Given that both Jesus and Shakespeare are accept mostly by tradition nobody seriously defends the idea they don't exist because on the surface it is absurd to suggest otherwise. So our counterist are given a free run. It is a pretty big shambles all round. - π 06:27, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
You also might want to take a look at this: http://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_conspiracy_theories&diff=1332499&oldid=1331555. Again, if I reverted, I feel like I'm sure to start an edit war. My master (talk) 15:14, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
- I rolled that one back, and reinstated the substitution of a Guardian link
for the Fox link. Will revisit to see if the link thing was a wise choice. Alec Sanderson (talk) 15:30, 21 June 2014 (UTC) - The Guardian link looks good. Alec Sanderson (talk) 15:37, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
- Based on the comments I received here, I went ahead and reverted Mythbuster's edit: http://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Shakespeare_authorship&diff=1336470&oldid=1336467. My master (talk) 04:55, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Advocating against anti-Stratfordianism is a great cause. You also might want to make an edit on the education section. In Shakespear's day, not only were public schools more rigorous, you studied from sunup to sundown, and didn't have nearly as long breaks as we do in the US. Shakespeare also made some notable errors in his work that show he hadn't been to the places he wrote about. He thought Padua had a harbor, Bohemia had a coastline, France had lions, and Ancient Rome had clocks. I found a pretty good video on the subject http://blip.tv/brows-held-high/shakespeare-month-anonymous-6896889. Hell, this site should probably have a page dedicated to Roland Emmerich. His movies contain as much outright nonsense as almost anyone in Hollywood, including Robert Orci and Oliver Stone.*Asterisk* (talk) 16:27, 29 June 2014 (UTC)