Talk:Fringe

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No talk page?

No talk page? Strange. For a site that is about debunking this is really odd. I feel like Indiana Jones.Roo (talk) 01:15, 22 February 2017 (UTC) Roo (talk) 01:15, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Scientific fringe

Sometimes 'which type of fringe' is only evident with hindsight/when sufficient information has been gathered/research has been done - the Tunguska event, until the second event, could have been either 'an iced rock' or 'a dirty snowball' - with the 'alien spacecraft blowing up, lump of antimatter and similar possible SF stories' being the other sort of fringe. Anna Livia (talk) 11:17, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Demarcation problem?

How do you differentiate between fringe and mainstream in non-scientific context? It's easy to label as fringe/loonie/extremist someone inconvenient when there's no visible distinction between them and the group disowning them.Arisano (talk) 12:47, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

You don't. It's a snarl word. The truth value of individual claims made by ideologies are irrespective of their particular ideology. The label of "fringe" or "mainstream" also do not impact the truth value of those ideologies, which are interpretations of reality informed by the evidence (whether or not the evidence supporting such a view is of good quality or not is irrelevant). White genocide conspiracy theorists can easily point to the South African farm attacks as "evidence" for their conspiracy, and it is evidence. Not good evidence, mind you, but that doesn't matter. Nobody believes their views to be ill-informed or contrary to observed reality. Or alternatively, what determines whether or not something is "fringe" is contingent on societal context. Liberalism was once a "fringe" ideology, and certainly is a fringe ideology in a place like the PRC. It's a very biased narrative which assumes the political center of a highly specific social context is the universal center. That's extremely questionable to put it lightly. Carthage (talk) 19:49, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Why do we need a listicle here?

It's very arbitrary and no reasoning is given (I had to remove David Icke, an antisemite, and Cathy Brennan, a TERF, from the category of "fringe left", neither of them are leftists by any means). I don't know enough about some of the figures on the "fringe right" section, but I know enough that Icke and Brennan belong there more than on the "fringe left" section, that's assuming we need such a listicle in the first place. Vee (talk) 03:33, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Neither antisemitism nor feminist transphobia preclude people from being on the left. On the broader point though, I hate lists like these. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 04:15, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

It's just, is there anything explicitly leftist about Icke's views, or Brennan's? Our own article on Icke has him categorized as a libertarian (although libertarianism isn't an explicitly right wing position, just see my user page, in terms of American political parlance libertarianism is viewed as being synonymous with right-libertarianism, which is what I presume is the POV whoever classed Icke as a libertarian was taking). Vee (talk) 04:21, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

No, you’re right, I don’t think Icke is on the left. Brennan, I don’t know. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 19:56, 22 October 2022 (UTC)