Talk:RationalWiki/Archive4

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Content updating on article page

The statement "RationalWiki is a small site and rarely makes it into the top 100,000 sites at Alexa" needs updating. My Alexa bar shows a ranking of 59,438 for RationalWiki as of 21 June 2011. That's well into the top 100,000 sites! — Ekompute (talk) 03:08, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Go ahead, if you'd like. P-Foster (talk) 03:13, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

that's us, that is

Rennie McGreet (talk) 12:07, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Questions about the purpose of RationalWiki

From the page, a summary, Our objective here is not to collect hits or increase the article tally for their own sakes, but to disseminate true and accurate information whilst debunking pseudoscience and other anti-intellectual "information". Remember, the truth is not a popularity contest.

Wikis often have "policies" that are at great variance with how they actually operate, for wikis are highly vulnerable to mob rule, which is effectively a popularity contest. So content can go south, from "true and accurate."

"Pseudoscience" does have some reasonably objective definitions, but the term gets used in polemic entirely outside of those definitions. It can mean "anything I think is wrong." The effect on a wiki is that real scientists, even, can be blocked (on other wikis, not so easily here), harassed (which does happen here), and real skeptics can be discouraged from contributing knowledgeable content, because of the Skeptics from Skokomo who have their beliefs to defend. To prevent this, there must be some process or some core of users who will support process to filter out pseudoskepticism from skepticism. The latter is science-based, that is, is firmly committed to the scientific method, which incorporates rational skepticism at its core, whereas pseudoskeptics tend to be committed to specific content and theories, to what they believe. Genuine skeptics are aware that their own beliefs are fallible, and they maintain appropriate skepticism about them.

So, what is the protection here against mob rule driving away genuine and careful skepticism? If an expert in a field comes here and writes an article, or improves an existing one, teasing apart real skepticism from pseudoskepticism, is there anything to inhibit the ignorant from just deleting it, reverting improvements, and otherwise harassing the user?

One of the characteristics of pseudoskepticism is a lack of restraint, and pseudoskeptics will lie about sources, lie about persons, use ad hominem arguments and employ other logical fallacies, and deliberately harass and suppress, all in the name of protecting "science" from "pseudoscience." And when there is a group of such users, even if small, they can overwhelm the defenses of a wiki, which is not generally designed to handle groups editing with an agenda. Wikipedia never figured this out, it was and remains vulnerable to groups that act as if coordinated (through watchlists, it doesn't take off-wiki coordination), the Arbitration Committee has been powerless and practically toothless about this, only acting if the editors are obviously members of an easily-rejected minority group, while much worse behavior from editors, whose views are closer to those of the arbitrators, is tolerated. Only when the behavior becomes so outrageous that it simply can't be ignored has ArbComm acted with such.

Because there is no authoritative Journal of Mainstream Opinion, the mob sometimes gets it wrong, and attacks what has become acceptable to the mainstream (as seen in the journals), simply because it doesn't know the state of a field. The delay can last for decades, persistence of belief can be strong.

The result on Wikipedia is very poor quality in articles where there is substantial live controversy, only somewhat fixed through hurculean efforts by many editors. If the topic is more obscure, forget about it.

The result of this problem here is some pages dominated by pseudoskepticism. The content position of a pseudoskeptic is not necessarily wrong, it is "pseudo" because it is plainly coming from bias, not from knowledge of science and history. Where a page is about some pseudoscience or fringe science, the pseudoskeptic will present false evidence and misrepresent sources, and make logically fallacious arguments, which discredit the skeptical position, if anyone checks. It weakens public understanding of pseudoscience, rather than increasing it.

Pseudoskepticism not uncommonly crosses into pseudoscience itself, proposing non-falsifiable theories (presented as fact) in response to alleged pseudoscience.

Because some of RationalWiki is pure snark, i.e., satire and parody and the like, and because this is fun and popular with this community, lack of caution about truth can seem to be okay here. However RW has articles on controversial fields in science, where scientists themselves are divided, where there is basis in the journals for more than one position. Does RW have a commitment to "true and accurate information" in these articles? Or is it willing to be dominated by a faction?

I'd like to know, because, while snark can be fun, I also have other things to do, and it's a waste of time to work on pages to clean them up and present reliable and verifiable information, if pseudoskeptics and the careless can just trash it all, with a community not caring to check things out. I'd like some guidance from those who care about RationalWiki.

If specific examples are needed, I could provide them, but this is not a complaint about individuals. It's about the wiki and the community. --Abd (talk) 21:57, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Much of the community function of RW works to prevent the problems you discuss. To just pick a completely random example out of the air without any forethought, the community knows and generally trusts an established user like Tweenk, particularly with regard to certain areas of expertise in which he has demonstrated his capability and an appropriate level of skepticism. Accordingly, his judgment will generally be relied upon in encounters with new or anonymous editors with viewpoints that are controversial and deviate from the consensus view.

This is rarely a problem, because in most cases, articles that attract attention and conflict are ones in which we have redundant expertise, as seen recently in discussions over Eve. In this conflict, several established editors had differing points of view and sorted it out amicably.

Certainly there remains a danger: the user we happen to trust on a topic may be wrong! But it has worked fairly well, as it does in most places, because it exists as a necessary safeguard. After all, were it not for the community's trust in such a person's judgment, then virtually any crank could come along and rewrite things into inanity. Just as we must have a guard against groupthink, we must also have a guard against the ceaseless babbling of a crazy world.--^talk 22:31, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

There certainly is that danger, it's a reality. RationalWiki cannot achieve its stated goal as it is. You have cranks writing and rewriting things into inanity, misrepresenting what is in sources, blatantly. The mob works well as a first defense against vandalism and even crankery, and it works reasonably well if you have multiple cooperating established users who care about content quality, and who aren't overwhelmed. When you don't, and when you don't have a rational appeal process, you get what you have got. Content that any academic would recognize as crankery, but which you may think is just skeptics having fun. In the name of science.

Tweenk is, from what I've encountered, the best of what you have, and he's a grad student, working on his Master's in Chemistry. He's quite bright, and knows a lot, but there is a lot he doesn't know, and he especially doesn't know his own limitations. Nevertheless, he actually engaged with me on cold fusion, actually read some sources, and his comments were not rapid pseudoskepticism, he occasionally conceded a point. But he is, apparently, a pseudoskeptic, because he does not seek to falsify his own quick opinions, he's still looking only for flaws that he can assert in what others have written, to prove that he was right. He is smart enough, and young enough, that he might move beyond this. If he wants to be an actual scientist, instead of merely a technologist, he'll need to. His engagement with me, by the way, created voluminous discussion on Talk:Cold fusion, which is being fast-archived by the mob, before being complete. I saw this on Wikipedia: the mob cannot stand discussion in depth. It's not enough that they can ignore it. They must eradicate it, and drive away anyone who creates it.

Thanks for your response, AD. Good luck with RationalWiki. You'll need it. --Abd (talk) 14:37, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

LMAO!!!! That fast archiving by the mob you speak of is Pibot doing its job of keeping the page from becoming sooooo long that we can't edit it anymore. The Noisy Orchestra ^{Oi! Oi! Oi!} 14:46, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

No, the fast archiving refers to the setting of the Pibot instructions at two days (originally 1 day), with active discussion going on, though that, itself, hasn't yet done much damage, of any, but even more to the placing of an unlabelled archive "do not edit" collapse on an active discussion with Tweenk, which made it very cumbersome to edit by disabling the subsection headers. So, watch out, laughing your ass off,[1] that your brains don't fall out. --Abd (talk) 17:59, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Abd, I am perfectly aware I don't know everything. But looking for flaws and gaps in reasoning should be the first thing you do when you read a paper, regardless of the field. This is how science can advance. You might have noticed that I still haven't made a judgment with regards to Kim's papers, and it's good you brought them up. On the other hand, it's unfortunate that you passionately defend rambling nonsense from Cook and Takahashi.

Regarding our discussion so far - I learned a few important things, so overall it wasn't a complete waste of time. However, you should improve your discussion skills. The length of your responses is bordering on the unmanageable even for me. You are making broad accusations of pseudoskepticism and censorship, engaging in amateur psychoanalysis and adding irrelevant stuff to your posts just to make them longer. Instead of doing all this, you should let the evidence speak for itself and link to sources. Keep your responses short and to the point. If you are right, sooner or later cold fusion will be accepted by science. This is part of its self-correcting nature.

On the other hand, you should also entertain the possibility that you might be wrong. Avoid being too strongly attached to your views, otherwise confirmation bias will get you. I was once a truther, but over time I began to see that the evidence is tenuous, and the claims absurd. I do not feel ashamed that I had to change my mind - I am proud that I am no longer in error. --Tweenk (talk) 02:53, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Tweenk. There is a difference between identifying errors in the central reasoning process of an author, and identifying errors in language and expression, which will distract you from following the central theme. In any case, cold fusion has already been accepted by science, based on clear scientific evidence. That process is not politically complete, that's all. You are quite correct that I should "entertain the possibility that [I] might be wrong." That's an essential part of the scientific method, in fact. Now, am I wrong on something here? What? I'm not aware that you pointed something out. You did not criticize Takahashi's "reasoning," but rather faulted his language, because it was unfamiliar to you, or you thought it "wrong." I'm not competent to judge the soundness of Takahashi's math. Are you? As I wrote, if you have questions, I can take them to him. I do know a bit about the guy's credentials, though.

Great that you are looking at Kim. His work and that of Takahashi dovetail, as far as I can tell. (For others, a cold fusion theory paper by Kim was recently published in Naturwissenschaften.)'Nuff said. --Abd (talk) 05:50, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Alexa

I haven't looked at Alexa or Quantcast for well over a year... but what the bollock happened in November? It's like everything went of the charts for a couple of weeks. ^theist 01:50, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Their random number generator went haywire? Peter ^{Monomorium antarcticum} 01:54, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

58,706, Global Rank 25,912 US Rank for 9th March 2012. Proxima Centauri (talk) 08:26, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

35,000 on Alexa's top 100,000 websites and 13,000 in the US. Ranking for 22nd November 2012. Statistics for rationalwiki.org That's quite an improvement over about 6 months. Either Alexa is flattering us or something special is happening. I suspect we're in yet another traffic spike just now so things might go down a bit when the spike is over. Proxima Centauri (talk) 18:05, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

I suspect Alexa may be onto something about the popularity of websites. Why? I don't know when traffic spikes happen directly, I don't have access to RW servers. Still times when RW's Alexa ranking suddenly goes down seem to correlate with times when we have server overload. Now the servers have been upgraded we won't be able to check this any more. I guess we have a traffic spike just now. Proxima Centauri (talk) 18:00, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Alexa is a shit tool that can, at best, show an increase in back links over a long time. To focus on the hills and valleys of the rankings is fools gold. I took the actual Alexa ranking over the last week and correlated it with actual measured traffic. The correlation was 0.19 over those 7 days, I then did a whole month but since determining the actual Alexa rank over the month looked like a real PITA I just did slope sign inversions between Alexa and measured traffic. Correlation was 0.18. These are not significant, not even close, random chance fully explains any correlation. I am not going to bother doing larger time diffs.

As far as "spikes" go you have to differentiate between base traffic increases and spike traffic. RW is actually seeing significant base traffic increase but not much increase in spike traffic. In other words are average "spike" as about 15k-20k more visits in a day 6 months ago, and our average "spike" this month is 15k-20k above baseline. The difference is that 6 months ago our base traffic was 15k unique visitors a day, while Novembers is about 32k. Tmtoulouse (talk) 18:45, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Why not be an encyclopedia, _also_?

Hi, fairly new to RationalWiki here.

I like the general concept. And while I enjoy arguing politics as well as the next person, I personally would have probably tackled pseudoscience and politics in seperate fora. But there we are.

I also like the idea of including original research. I have always felt that Wikipedia policies in this regard were far too rigid. After all, in some cases they have people writing articles who literally -wrote the book- on certain subjects; barring them from including original research seems pretty, well, dumb.

Given all that, why not think of RationalWiki as a nascent encyclopedia of skepticism and skeptical commentary on pseudoscience? As it moves up in the Google search tree, that is how people are going to start using it. ^{— Unsigned, by: Dr H / talk / contribs}

I think RW is an encyclopedia of skepticism and commentary. The "not an encyclopedia" bit is just so that the scope is narrowed down. Basically, there's no point in competing with Wikipedia on the front of trying to get all knowledge into one place, that generally doesn't work very well. I have preferred the description that's been used in the past that RW is a series of collective essays on related subjects more than "articles" though. ^sshole 20:37, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Furthermore, some Russian web-sites refer to ru-rw as to "encyclopedia of scientific criticism".--Mr. B 15:19, 12 March 2012 (UTC) ^{— Unsigned, by: Pibot / talk / contribs} 06:34, 16 January 2013 (UTC)