RationalWiki talk:Dealing with Disagreement

OK, I think it's going in the right direction - but then I was arguing for something of this nature anyway. I do not think the example "Recent studies from the American Enterprise Institute have shown that there is an unlimited amount of oil available in Poland." is very good though. I think a fact tag might be more appropriate. We need something that would be potentially offensive. "All Martians are inferior species who should be shot or enslaved." or something of that nature.--Bob^{bing up} 06:21, 27 November 2008 (EST)

A dispute template with a link here is probably worthwhile, as is the inclusion of this into the help files. The idea of dealing with disagreements occured during the last HCM when there was some hoo-har about getting rid of the mobocracy. RW is getting to the size where pure rule by mob is going to cause more problems than it solves. It needs to be cemented so people can refer to it and say "look, this is right, this is wrong". ArmondikoV^narchist 06:47, 27 November 2008 (EST)

This means having to define right and wrong, and determine the boundaries. Nothing can be clear yet unless we start taking a poll of editors. Obviously we're opposed to that Jihad Forever bloke, but what's the line between controversy and unacceptibility? And will the line be stable, or will it move depending on the pool of editors? Will doing it by vote encourage an invasion of (eg) Encyclopedia Dramatica types twisting our boundaries for the lulz? what is to be done? Totnesmartin 07:11, 27 November 2008 (EST)

It would be nice if the world was black and white wouldn't it... I have no idea what would have to be done. I suppose the line is drawn by the majority at the right time depending on context, which isn't exactly helpful. The only thing that needs to be made clear is that a minority can get disgruntled by a decision but isn't allowed to make life hell for everyone else by whining about it. ArmondikoV^narchist 08:34, 27 November 2008 (EST)

AV, the only problem with the majority/minority concept is we don't know how many "voters" there are. This is also an issue as mentioned above, we could be overrun by a mildly devoted group of people inimical to our mission. ħuman 23:28, 27 November 2008 (EST)

That issue is something which has always disturbed me about the mobocracy anyway. Any group of people, if they set their minds to it, could take the wiki over under the current system. Obviously it wouldn't actually happen because they wouldn't have they keys to the site, but it might be well to put something formal in place so that Trent didn't have to use his superpowers.--Bob^{bing up} 04:26, 28 November 2008 (EST)

Christians won't take over this wiki unless they convert User:Tmtoulouse. Is that likely? Proxima Centauri 05:01, 28 November 2008 (EST)

My point is that Trent shouldn't have to do anything extraordinary. He maintains that he's just another user. But in the light of a (perhaps highly) invasion by by diligent axe-grinders he would need to act as the God King. Which would exceed is his stated (though not actual) powers. It would be a good idea to be proactive and have some measure in place - I don't know what - which would eliminate the necessity of his acting "unconstitutionally".--Bob^{bing up} 05:23, 28 November 2008 (EST)

A more important issue

This is all very well and good, but I think there is a more important issue that hasn't been addressed yet. That issue is what to do about topics where there is significant disagreement over fundamental interpretations of reality. A good and current example is the discussion about the relationship between National Socialism and religion, where some editors have asserted that there exists a strong connection between the two, while others (such as myself) assert that this is a complete misunderstanding. Both of these viewpoints are reasonable and valid enough in themselves, and have significant support in the historiography, but they are not mutually compatible, and probably can't be joined together in a traditional article, or at least not in a very satisfactory way.

Wikipedia attempts to deal with this problem (not very well IMO, but that's another issue) through such policies as NPOV and No Original Research and liberal use of the phrase "Some people think... while others think...", but we don't use these policies. It can't be solved simply by requiring references, either, because you can always pull out another historian or another source to support your own particular interpretation, but that doesn't mean that you get anywhere closer to an agreement. That's just not how things work in the social sciences and humanities.

Personally, I believe a better solution would be to slightly rethink the way we understand articles, which I think is still to a certain extent the "encyclopedic" Wikipedia way of thinking. Articles don't necessarily have to be along the lines of an intro that says "<Topic X> is this and that, characterised by A, B and C" followed by a number of sections that attempt to describe those characteristics in greater detail. On the contrary, it's okay for an intro to say outright "<Topic X> has been the subject of a strong debate over the interpretation of A, B, and C" - basically, you'd first present a short introduction to the debate and then go on to actually describe these different viewpoints in the following sections, in effect shifting the focus slightly away from the subject itself and towards the different interpretations and the debate over it. Or to look at it in another way, such an article would actually be a collection of brief essays, each presenting a different interpretation of the main topic.

I'm not sure this is the best way to do this, but I think it would significantly improve the quality of these contentious article and perhaps indeed their usefulness for our audience. Imagine if people could come here and actually learn something about these things. (Sorry about the slight sarcasm). --AKjeldsen^{Cum dissensie} 06:52, 28 November 2008 (EST)

I didn't know this sort of thing was an issue. Isn't it generally hashed out? I mean, inasfar as my experience has gone, if two editors have different positions on things entirely, then they discuss it on the talk page. After some discussion and maybe debate, then one usually sees an error in their approach. Sometimes they do not, and in that case both perspectives are reflected in separate sections in the article. Do you think that there is a better way to do it than this, or do you just want to write up guidelines to tell people how to do this?--Tom Moore^{fiat justitia ruat coelum} 07:05, 28 November 2008 (EST)

Generally we (the regular article writers anyway) pretty much are in agreement anyway. Where we tend to have pretty radically different ideas is when we come to differences of opinion between atheists and theists. As the majority of the site is either atheist or agnostic the atheist/agnostic viewpoint tends to dominate. I've obviously got no particular problem with this - but I can understand how theists might be less well disposed to it. On the other hand, our mission statements and our definition of an RW article (which includes the words: As a site we have a point of view, and that point of view is that the scientific method and the information gained from its application is better than almost anything else humanity has come up with), would also probably also tend to push us in this direction.--Bob^{bing up} 07:23, 28 November 2008 (EST)

Okay. So how do we apply that in practice to e.g. the "Hitler Question"? How does our point of view and our mission statement help us to reconcile "Hitler was a Christian" vs. "No, he wasn't" and "Nazism was significantly based on Christianity" vs. "No, it wasn't"? --AKjeldsen^{Cum dissensie} 07:53, 28 November 2008 (EST)