Philosophy of "RationalWiki"

"But I thought this was supposed to be RATIONALWiki!" Drink!

Please read RationalWiki for a start.

Ok, i did read the first part, which looked like the gist of it:

Our purpose here at RationalWiki includes: Analyzing and refuting pseudoscience and the anti-science movement. Documenting the full range of crank ideas. Explorations of authoritarianism and fundamentalism. Analysis and criticism of how these subjects are handled in the media.

But didn't that part, which now appears to counter the first, most important points, especially the fourth point "analysis and criticism": It's best to think of RationalWiki as a bunch of drunken skeptics down the pub pointing at bullshit and loudly shouting "BULLSHIT!" and then returning in the morning to add their references, maybe. Our good stuff is great, though.

So this makes me lose interest in this wiki. Either you go for it and be a critical thinker, do the research, provide the references or you're just another webpage on the internet doing nothing particular interesting except providing another place for people spewing out whatever they want.

If you post your issues specifically on the talk page of the relevant article rather than simply going to someone's talk page and bitching, people might be able to follow what you're saying.

From this, all I gather is another "you don't agree with me therefore you're irrational". You could be talking about anything from saying that racialism is a rational course of action (we've had that) or that creationism is valid (we've had a lot of that) or that libertarian approaches to economics are superior (gawd we get so much of that). A post standing alone on a talk page with no context invites people to make inferences about what you're saying, and usually those inferences involve the poster being a complete idiot, because that's what happens 99 times out of 100.

I'm going to go take the drink now.

I don't know where you are coming from, but what I've said was, if you can't back up the statement you're making and just inserting your opinion, that sits outside of the rational realm and does not conform with the ideology of this wiki. But I stand corrected, this is not that type of wiki.

And I'm doing a personal response because he was the one undoing my changes and it seemed like ZooGuard has a personal stake in this wiki so it seemed relevant to me to approach it this way, even if you don't agree. So this is a personal discussion, I clicked on the "talk" button next to his name, not yours and not the discussion page of the one I was working on.

Either way, I should know better, talking with drunks never gets anyone anywhere. Enjoy!

Note that this is the talk page of User:Reckless Noise Symphony, who is not me. I suggest looking through the article history of the article to see who did what.

You still didn't provide context of what you're talking about, which is what I was specifically asking for. Without context of what you're complaining about what was reverted, no one can judge. All you said above was "why did you revert me!!!" and then espoused the glory of facts. That could have referred to anything.

I've since spotted the complaint that I think you're referring to - even in your second posts you provide no context as to what incident you're referring to - and found no posts on the talk page, but a lot of very indignant edit comments. Now, if I guessed correctly, I believe reasons for that revert were given that sufficiently supersede your own reasoning. If it's about whether the Zeitgeist Movement is apolitical, then the fact that it wants to change society and all its own self-aggrandising gumph says puts it in the realm of politics. You may have meant non-partisan, but that's not quite the same thing. Claiming to be apolitical isn't the same as acting in an apolitical manner. I can claim to be blonde, but it doesn't magically dye my hair. I thought someone claiming to be the ultimate authority on rationality would understand that.

Then you went on a personal attack that merely dismisses everyone else "a drunk", which I'm sure you can tell that I'm not because I know what my typing is like under various mental states (this is currently "before coffee" typing, not "6 pints down" typing).

Then you said that this was a personal discussion between you and one user - yet addressed your complaints to the wiki in general, which is composed of multiple users which, therefore, opens the comments up to everyone. Using a user's talk page for discussions like "hey dude, how was your holiday" implies a personal discussion - few people will be even interested - but using a user's talk page, which remains a public forum here, to say "RationalWiki all sucks because beans" invites more people to comment.

Is this clear enough? Did I miss anything? Are there places where I be more condescending?

Indeed, I seem to have confused the names.

The context would have been apparent for the person I was posting this message to, no need for me to be redundant (though I've clearly done the opposite in other posts and edits).

About The Zeitgeist Movement: TZM proposes to use the scientific method for social concern, a way they claim to achieve sustainability and make money, politics, power, obsolete. It's a technical process, no voting, no political structure, no opinions, arriving at decisions through (again) using the scientific method. I am not making the claim to be the ultimate authority on it, I am just correcting things that are obvious even for someone that just learned about this movement.

On the drunk thing: seeing it was pointed out to me that I shouldn't take it too seriously (this wiki)(and I've copy-pasted the section in a previous message), I've called the whole thing into question. An overreaction on my part but I attempted to diffuse it later by adding the "Enjoy!" at the end when I made that drunk comment in my reply to you.

I was under the assumption that this was a private post at first, but I have learned otherwise.

Yes it's is clear, you didn't miss anything and you were plenty condescending, top notch.

I do hope the same things apply about my reply.

Let me clear this up for a second: the only reason I reverted is because I thought you were making significant changes to the article that seemed very radical for the time based on the old tone of the article. Once I actually had a chance to read everything that you had done with the article, and look everything up, I abandoned my reverts based on the fact that I liked what I saw for the end result. I will cede that you were right: having looked into it more, it isn't really as much about conspiracy as I was under the assumption it was. And if I came off as kind of a prick before I had a chance to explain what was going on (i.e: I had to work and leave RW) then I apologize. But in the future, please don't assume that, just because I am doing something you don't like, I am doing so in bad faith. On the contrary, I was actually, genuinely wondering why you were making the changes in tone you were making and, once I figured it out, I was OK with it all.

Oh I see, no worries :) I'm just trying to help this be as objective as possible. But I'm seeing other people adding a lot of personal opinions on there, guess I'm gonna have to follow this for a while and work on each problem I see (re)appearing.

Thanks for clearing it up, I appreciate it.

Glad to see you understand where I was coming from. :-) As I've told countless people over the years: just because you are engaged in an edit battle doesn't mean that it is all out war. The best way to go about handing what seems to be a conflict on the Wiki is to try and see where the other party is going first. To eb honest, I'm glad you brought it here so I could clear things up.

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