Then your point should have been that the Wikipedia statement is poorly documented, not “false and/or undocumented”.
I know your objection was. Undocumented claims (or poorly documented ones) may be true, false or undecidable. Whether or not a claim is documented has no logical relationship to whether it is true.
Only a pedant would harp on that when subsequent discussion made clear that I acknowledged there was some documentation, and even specified what it was (references to book reviews and to judgements made by groups such as the NABT), and explained why all of those opinions taken together did not constitute the opinion of “the scientific world”. But then, since you’ve never displayed anything but pedantry here, why should I expect anything different? You’re not interested in addressing the substance of anything I write, but only in trying to “catch me out”. You, and Mercer, and Faizal, and Tim all end up looking like ridiculous style-parsers when you do that. But then, when you have no scientific substance to contribute to the discussions, I guess style is all you can comment on. You guys leave me entirely unimpressed. If the thought-level and debate-level of contemporary atheism is typified by the contributions of you guys here, theism has a long future ahead of it.
You’re describing yourself here Eddie. You refuse to discuss even whether Wikipedia’s claim is true, let alone anything scientific. When the threads you post in become devoid of scientific substance, that’s because people are replying to your substancelessness.
Obviously. But so eager are you to jump in on discussions you didn’t witness the start of, in order to put me down, you don’t take stock of the situation before opening your mouth. The situation was that Tim said:
Tim was expecting Marty to just lie down and die because Wikipedia made a claim about “the scientific community”. But even supposing (for the sake of argument) that Marty should lie down and die if “the scientific community” did pronounce against Behe, the Wikipedia article provided nowhere near enough evidence to warrant the claim that “the scientific community” did not like Behe. It might be entirely true that the scientific community thought that way, but Wikipedia did not provide sufficient reason for believing that. So Marty would be entirely justified in simply brushing off the disguised appeal to authority that Tim was trying to employ.
Yes, obviously. So you should not have said Wilipedia’s claim was “false and/or undocumented”, only that it was poorly documented.
That would be the discussion upthread of which I’ve just read the start.
Don’t assume that because you can’t remember anything above the current screenful and can’t be bothered to look (and don’t know how to use a search bar) that others are equally handicapped.
So you eagerly jumped in on a discussion.
@Eddie, you are (still) a hypocrite.
Your background is computer science/information science, right? Did you ever take any university courses where you had to write essays which were corrected by professors for style, logic, argumentative flaws, etc.? You know, essays in philosophy, or history, or the like? If so, then you will know that any essay making a claim with inadequate documentation would be marked down by the prof. If not, then you will have to take my word for it. Wikipedia is a crap encyclopedia, because it’s filled with bad writing and documentation like that. And it will never change, as long as it is written/edited by amateurs who can control whole areas of content by acting as a cabal (as on origins issues), responsible to no one but other members of their cabal.
Wikipedia keeps asking me to donate money. I have a standing offer for them: I will donate $1,000 a year to Wikipedia if they immediately change their policy so that all writers, editors, etc. of articles (1) have to provide their real names (and proof of those identities), so that every word they write in every article, and every word of discussion they write in the Talk pages, can be seen by their wives, children, relatives, friends, neighbors, colleagues, bosses at work, ministers, priests, etc.; and (2) have to reveal all academic degrees, training, publications, professional qualifications etc. (again, all verifiable), so that everyone can know whether or not the people writing the articles have a friggin’ clue what they’re talking about. A thousand bucks a year I’ll give to Wikipedia if they make those changes. The first payment will come three months after the full institutionalization of the change. (But of course, all further payments will stop if they revert to pseudonymity.)
My biology isn’t even that good. I’ve gone further in physics, chemistry, geology, oceanography, astrophysics, mathematics, computer science, statistics, ecology and logic.
Yeah, but still a lot better than Eddie’s.
I’d bet my house that you know that RIBOzymes are made of RIBOnucleic acids.
Yet if you had read the Wikipedia page on peptidyl transferase, you wouldn’t have looked so foolish by regurgitating Meyer’s lie that it is a protein, after arguing in support of it for months.
Wikipedia is crap on some things and amazing on others (particularly linguistics).
Tim was “expecting” NOTHING OF THE SORT Eddie.
This is a GROSS MISCHARACTERISATION of my post, made by taking a single point BLATANTLY OUT OF CONTEXT!
If Eddie had exhibited even the lowest level of competence to read my original post, he would have known that I was explaining that repeated misrepresentation (such as that displayed by Michael Behe, or by Eddie-the-Broken-Record her on this forum) is an alternate explanation for the anger and vituperation displayed to certain individuals and their viewpoints. That it was an expectation that anybody would “just lie down and die” is another example of Eddie’s patent ludicrous and substance-free hyperbole.
Eddie objects to Wikipedia.
He doesn’t like the fact that it is anonymously written, by ‘editors’ who may not be (and very frequently aren’t) experts on the topics they are writing about.
This is ironic on a number of levels:
Eddie himself is anonymous, and has provided no substantiation of expertise whatsoever. Further, his complete lack of competence on even fairly basic research tasks is a running joke among many members of this forum, further accentuating doubts over his expertise.
Wikipedia is fully cognizant of the lack of expertise of its editors, and has policies in place to ensure that statements made are traceable to competent sources, rather than being the opinions of the inexpert editors. Eddie on the other hand has no such filter, and tends to make wild and unsubstantiated accusations and claims with complete abandon.
Eddie objects to the fact that Wikipedia’s statement is based on reviews of Behe’s book, and that these reviews were made by “partisans”. The scientific community’s appraisal of the ideas contained in a book will, perfectly naturally, be initially, and in its most explicit form, be contained in reviews of a book. More implicitly, it will later be contained in the degree to which the ideas are relied upon, and expanded on, in later scientific work (which can be determined by the level and tone of citations) – but there is no indication that this implicit appraisal contradicts the explicit appraisal of the reviews. That the reviewers would tend to be partisan is fully to be expected for two reasons. Firstly interest in, and awareness of, ID works would be very low outside of partisans on either side of the ID/evolution divide. Most disinterested scientists, even those working in fields that Behe’s claims touch on, are likely to respond “Michael who?” and “Irreducible what?” and be unwilling to expend time reviewing obscure, fringe claims. Secondly, reviewing Behe’s books is likely to further harden any skeptical scientist’s view of ID.
Given the lack of accuracy, lack of substance, and rank hypocrisy of Eddie’s objections, and the fact that my original comment wasn’t even addressed to him, I think I’ve wasted more than enough time on this topic. I think I should discipline myself to avoid any further response to Eddie further flogging this dead horse.
Not when I write encyclopedia articles (which I have written) or other academic articles. I sign my full name. It is only when I debate on blog sites that I disguise my identity. Anyone who is writing for a
reference work to be used by the public owes it to the public to reveal who he or she is, what his or her qualifications are, etc. Wikipedia is wrong, and more than wrong, but irresponsible, to put out a reference book which does not require full disclosure of the identities and qualifications of all authors and editors.
You’ve made this generous offer before, and I’d be more than pleased if you ever followed up on it.
You want Wikipedia editors to do something you refuse to.
If he had read the two separate Wikipedia[1] pages on (i) Intelligent Design and (ii) the ID movement, he wouldn’t have looked even more foolish by suggesting Wikipedia have two separate pages covering (i) Intelligent Design and (ii) the ID movement.
Which isn’t a book. ↩︎
As I said before:
I would add the following quote from Harlen Ellison:
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.
Until I see evidence that Eddie’s opinion is informed by anything more than his vacuous fanboying of the Disco 'Tute, and his equally vacuous and bitter rancor against the anti-creationist scientists for demonstrating what incompetent clowns constitute that 'Tute, I see no point in engaging further.
(Parenthetically, I would point out that I had already pointed out that Eddie’s preferred model to Wikipedia has already been tried, but doesn’t scale well – so Eddie is yet again flogging a dead horse.)
Wrong. I don’t refuse to use my full name when I publish research work or general reference works for the public. Wikipedia has the moral, intellectual, and cultural obligation to compel its authors to do that, but negligently fails to do so.
My preferred model to Wikipedia would be any traditional encyclopedia edited and written by trained scholars who are completely up front about their names, qualifications, and institutions. That can easily be done online, just as peer-reviewed journals are now regularly produced online. In fact, a traditional “expert-written” encyclopedia could even incorporate suggestions and corrections from lay, amateur contributors – but the decision which suggestions or corrections to include would remain in the hands of the trained experts in the subject areas, not in the hands of the lay amateurs. The basic flaw in Wikipedia is not the incorporation of a democratic element in its production; the basic flaw is that the democratic element is the ruling principle. Readers of Plato and Aristotle will understand why democracy, untempered by the wisdom of trained minds, is dangerous to truth rather than helpful to it.
Of course, it’s not all surprising that the people here (you and Tim) who are most vigorously defending Wikipedia are people who, based on their performance here, could not get an article published in a traditional encyclopedia to save their lives. The thought of being able to hijack a supposed online reference work and use it for culture-war purposes (which exactly describes the Wikipedia treatment of origins subjects, and doubtless other areas of Wikipedia with which I’m less familiar) is too tantalizing a prospect for culture warriors to resist, and so they have moved into Wikipedia in force, forming cabals that control articles that touch on their political, religious, and social agendas.
Oh this is priceless. 
An online encyclopedia that is done “just as peer-reviewed journals are now regularly produced online”. Now where have I heard of that before? 
Oh yes, it was in this post where I informed Eddie 22 days ago about the existence of Scholarpedia, " an English-language wiki-based online encyclopedia with features commonly associated with open-access online academic journals". 
And by some amazing coincidence, that was the very post that I linked to in my above post where I talked about “Eddie’s preferred model”. 
As I mentioned in my (22 day old) post, “the relatively tiny number of articles it has (1,804) demonstrates, the model doesn’t scale nearly so well.” I might also mention the fact that (almost) nobody has even heard of Scholarpedia as another drawback of this model. It’s profile is in fact so low that people like Eddie cannot even remember it’s existence after being told about it within the last month. 
All this goes to show that whilst Eddie’s interminable and inane bluster may be of no informational value, it is a constant source of unintentional humor. 
I said nothing against Scholarpedia; I have not up to this point consulted it. I did consult a few articles, some years back, on Conservapedia, which attempted to redress the obvious bias on Wikipedia with articles slanted in the opposite direction. But the point is that Conservapedia and such efforts would never have become necessary had Wikipedia been anything like fair or objective. (Which it isn’t, on origins issues, according to the co-founder of Wikipedia and the man responsible for Wikipedia’s Neutral Point of View policy, who said that the article on ID was “appallingly biased”.)
Tim apparently has not considered the possibility that the price of having more articles is to have by far the greatest number of the articles written by untrained and unqualified people in the subject area. And he thinks this is a gain why, exactly?
To be sure, if the article is on who won which Academy Award in which year, or who was the first Black President of the USA, untrained lay people can write a passably good article, and that may cover, say, half of the sort of topics people look up on Wikipedia; but when the article is on anything requiring deep thought or understanding, only a very small fraction of the people in the world are going to be capable of writing about it. And if you open up the writing of that article to anyone who imagines himself to know something about it, or who has a passionate culture-war commitment that he wants to use the article to further, you are going to get a lower quality of articles, and in some cases dangerously misleading articles. I personally would rather have an Encyclopedia of only 1804 articles of very high quality (because produced by experts) than an Encyclopedias of 1804 million articles mostly of low to very low quality (because produced by cranks, autodidacts, ideologues, and assorted malcontents).
At the very least, an Encyclopedia with millions of articles written mostly by non-scholars would be more useful if the reader could tell which parts of it were written by real scholars and which parts were written by self-appointed lay contributors (whether of benign or malign intentions). I note that Tim has not yet provided any reason why Wikipedia articles can’t indicate their authorship. Even granted they are written collectively, the Talk pages could show who contributed what elements of the article, and how credible their contributions were, by giving the real names and qualifications of the contributors. But they don’t. Any guesses why people who enjoy erasing the contributions of others, defending their own words by reversing all edits, and violently abusing other contributors in the Talk pages, might not want their names and education level known to the other Wikipedia contributors, and to their wives, friends, work colleagues, employers, etc.? Tim must have limited powers of imagination regarding human motives if some answers don’t occur to him.
Side point: I thought Tim had resolved (yet again) never to respond to me, yet here he is, responding again. Maybe he will make a New Year’s resolution not to continue doing so in 2023. That would make 2023 a more pleasant year for both of us, and he would have my full support if he embraced such a resolution.
Of course, if you have never published a single such article, your statement would still be true. Interesting.
No, since wikipedia is intended to reflect a consensus view from multiple authors. As such, to ascribe authorship to an article would misleadingly suggest that particular individuals deserved credit or blame for specific statements and claims made in an article.
That is exactly the point. I recently had a question about the history of a shopping mall near my home. The only source that provided the answer was Wikipedia. This is one of the primary strengths of Wikipedia. I would be very unlikely to have found such information, or information regarding a supporting actor on a 1970’s sitcom or anything else of that nature, in an on-line version of the Encyclopedia Britannica. A lower level of scholarly rigor is an acceptable tradeoff for such breadth of coverage. If I need that degree of rigor, I know where to go.
You didn’t read all of what I wrote. I addressed your objection.
I already conceded this, and gave similar examples. I’m quite happy to have “fan” types write the articles on TV shows and comic books and local shopping malls. That’s no excuse for having pseudonymous culture warriors with no degrees in any science writing about RNA world or irreducible complexity or quantum entanglement or people with no training in history writing about the causes of the French Revolution. At the very least, such people should have to sign their names and indicate their lack of formal education.