Flaunt the stupidity

Posted by William M. Connolley on June 27, 2010
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This post is about the ridiculous “hide the decline” video. I watched it when it first came out. It wasn’t funny, it was dull. Apparently it has now been pulled from YouTube, but who cares?

But… because the thing is anti-science, the std.anti-science septics on wiki feel inclined to have an article on it. Sigh. There enough real subjects to create articles about without wasting time on vapour. I really ought to point you to the current version, and the current edit war: should this edit be included – viz, is the fact that some guy with a blog thinks the video is funny worth noting? I don’t think so, but I’ve created this post so we’ll see if that fact that some other guy with a blog thinks the video is dull is worth noting. I wonder if you can predict people’s reactions? Hopefully the whole thing will be deleted.

Perhaps I should create “Hide The Incline” instead.

Update: since I’m talking about generic stupidity, you may like to read The Trend from Wootsup by Steven Goddard.

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Comments

  1. #1 Eli Rabett
    2010/06/27

    Who dat

  2. #2 Nigel Holmes
    2010/06/28

    Ever considered just letting the crap parts of Wikipedia get as bad as their makers would like them to be? Currently: i) sceptic writes hagiographic article on pseudoscientific hero of the day, citing amazon rankings and comments on blogs; ii) defenders of the encyclopedia rush in and try and remove the unencyclopedic matter; iii) at the end of the wrangle you still have a basically misleading article, but with the spelling and grammar mistakes and the more bizarre citations removed, so that it looks more like a real article. Wikipedia is always going to be a mix of reasonable and rubbish (well the rubbish will always be there anyway). The kind of thing that someone who doesn’t want to produce an encyclopedia will put out on their own is full of signals for the reader that this is one of the dodgier bits. Fight them and you remove the warning signs, without really improving it. Leave them alone and they’ll probably put multicolour text and an animated Al_Gore_is_fat.gif in their articles.

  3. #3 Doug
    2010/06/28

    Good Grief! – We have Connolley pontificating about “edit wars”. How bizarre can you get?

    Well spin that.

    [I know a lot about edit wars. And I'm honest enough to use my own name -W]

  4. #4 Doug
    2010/06/28

    And I am careful enough having been on the receiving end of the more rabid alarmists to ensure and desire some anonymity.

    The shitstorms you in particular, William, are now synonymous with, heaped upon anyone who disagrees with the mantra places you in a particular “respect” zone that has nothing to do with admiration.

    [Or, put another way, you're happy enough to dish it out but haven't got the guts to take it -W]

  5. #5 deconvoluter
    2010/06/28

    In case we had begun to forget, BBC1′s Panorama just now repeated some of the the same old quotes… without bothering to “balance” them with a scientific interpretation.

  6. #6 Slowjoe
    2010/06/30

    I find it mildly amusing that this video is currently in Wiki.

    Does it fail to be notable? Check
    Does it libel Michael Mann? Check
    Does it make any climate debate more heated? Check

    I’m on your side on this one, WMC.

    But how come Watts Up isn’t an RS for Anthony Watts opinion?

    [Oh don't ask me about wiki's ridiculous sourcing policy. At the moment a newspaper article riddled with errors is a RS and superior to a carefully crafted blog post. Sadly the sourcing policy is in the hands of the People Who Care About Such Things and they won't let people make it sane -W]

  7. #7 Dunc
    2010/06/30

    Nigel raises an interesting idea… Perhaps it could be taken further: rather than trying to improve obviously worthless articles written by morons, why not make them even worse? See how many obviously loony “facts” you can introduce. Reference completely unrelated sources. Write IN random CAPS. See if the originators can even tell if you taking the piss… Kinda like Conservapedia.

  8. #8 dhogaza
    2010/06/30

    See if the originators can even tell if you taking the piss… Kinda like Conservapedia.

    Ahhh, who can forget the first six months of Conservapedia, when the entry for “reality” stated “Reality is known to have a liberal bias”?

  9. #9 Tony Sidaway
    2010/06/30

    Dunc, I know you’re being sarcastic, but obviously such “break the system to show just how much it needs mending” methods have been used in the past, and quite openly, to the extent that their dynamics are quite well understood within the context of Wikipedia. The relevant Wikipedia guideline is known colloquially as WP:POINT. The essence is that there are nearly always far more effective ways of achieving the desired end, and disrupting the encyclopedia to prove a point is likely to annoy people.

  10. #10 Dunc
    2010/06/30

    Tony: no, I’m not being sarcastic. I’m just very, very cynical, with Discordian tendencies. And my objective was not to “break the system to show just how much it needs mending” – it was more to see just how much bullshit the septics will swallow, for the sheer hilarity of it. Whether Wikipedia is broken and needs mending or not is something I’m not entirely sure about – I’m afraid I don’t really take it seriously enough to care. It’s not like it’s real life – it’s just the internet.

    [The septics will swallow any amount of bullshit, as long as it meets their preconceptions. However, the General Public is not too discriminating either -W]

  11. #11 Mark
    2010/07/03

    I am not agreed with Dunc comment.

  12. #12 Hank Roberts
    2010/07/05

    aw gee, the stuff Google comes up with, this is one of the top hits searching PIOMAS today:
    http://www.darkpolitricks.com/2010/05/arctic-ice-volume-has-increased-25-since-may-2008/