Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy
-
What I like about articles like this is just the sheer quantity of wankery that goes into Wikipedia. Just read the kind of language Wiki editors use to communicate with each other. It's insane.
-
@blakeyrat :citation_needed:
-
@Gribnit said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
@blakeyrat :citation_needed:
-
@PJH Operation {{Citekill}} Is Go
-
@Gribnit said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
@PJH Operation {{Citekill}} Is Go
{{Citation needed}}[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111][112][113][114][115][116][117][118][119][120][121][122][123][124][125][126][127][128][129][130][131][132][133][134][135][136][137][138][139][140][141][142][143][144][145][146][147][148][149][150][151][152][153][154][155][156][157][158][159][160][161][162][163][164][165][166][167][168][169][170][171][172][173][174][175][176][177][178][179][180][181][182][183][184][185][186][187][188][189][190][191][192][193][194][195][196][197][198][199][200][201][202][203][204][205][206][207][208][209][210][211][212][213][214][215][216][217][218][219][220][221][222][223][224][225][226][227][228][229][230][231][232][233][234][235][236][237][238][239][240][241][242][243][244][245][246][247][248][249][250][251][252][253][254][255][256][257]
-
I propose that all editing in this post0 except to add citations1 be banned for 6 months, with potential for review after that period.
-
@Gribnit [citation needed]
-
Shit like this (and their money wasting habits) are why I stopped donating.
On the other hand, I understand it's not easy to maintain objectivity in today's atmosphere. Also, if you don't pay your editors, the ones most likely to remain long term and rise in rank will be the ones most motivated by ideology.
-
@cartman82 said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
On the other hand, I understand it's not easy to maintain objectivity in today's atmosphere.
It was never easy. It just feels like people are less objective now because in the past, most people's social circles mostly consisted of people who mostly agree with each other, so they were never exposed to different opinions (and often actively avoided them due to them being called "conspiracy theories"). The problem has always existed, it's just that it's more visible now.
-
@cartman82 said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
On the other hand, I understand it's not easy to maintain objectivity
in today's atmosphereon any non-objective topic.Wikipedia is (more or less) fine on purely technical topics, where there is one single answer. But even the idea to have "objective" articles on topics that, by nature, are not objective (such as politics) should have been seen from the start as "not a very good idea". I understand how, even if they initially didn't want to write this kind of article, they might have unwillingly slipped to that (e.g. through history or geography, where a lot of basic facts are, well, facts), but they should have found a way to draw a line and stop at some point. I dunno, just replace controversial sections by a standard blurb "this is a controversial topic, go elsewhere to find information on it".
But that's also what you get with these hubristic projects of "do ALL the things!" (kind of like SO).
-
@remi the point of Wikipedia is not necessarily to find answers. It's to present the (more or less) wide variety of possible answers on a topic. It's up to you to then delve into the topic more thoroughly. Are "regular" encyclopedias more objective and detached? They are generally less objective and detached. Wikipedia is not perfect but it can be (assuming the topic has been deemed interesting by enough people) often better than the alternatives.
By the way, the reactions to whatever WTFery there is in any open source/collaborative effort stem from the fact that it is all wide in the open. You don't have the opportunity to scrutinise and criticise what you don't know.
-
@admiral_p said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
Are "regular" encyclopedias more objective and detached?
Absolutely - if only because they're shorter.
-
@remi said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
@cartman82 said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
On the other hand, I understand it's not easy to maintain objectivity
in today's atmosphereon any non-objective topic.Wikipedia is (more or less) fine on purely technical topics, where there is one single answer. But even the idea to have "objective" articles on topics that, by nature, are not objective (such as politics) should have been seen from the start as "not a very good idea". I understand how, even if they initially didn't want to write this kind of article, they might have unwillingly slipped to that (e.g. through history or geography, where a lot of basic facts are, well, facts), but they should have found a way to draw a line and stop at some point. I dunno, just replace controversial sections by a standard blurb "this is a controversial topic, go elsewhere to find information on it".
The only way to maintain objectivity in controversial topics is to matter-of-factly explain each side's point of view. You can do this even with an article about Hitler: He held the position that there is a class of human being that is superior to other classes, and he believed he would better the world by exterminating those inferior classes, and he used this idea of justify the killing of millions of people. It's a heinous point of view, but that was, objectively, the principle of Nazi ideology. Now, you could read that and react negatively to that, but that doesn't make the statement at all subjective. You're simply subjectively reacting to an objective fact about someone's point of view. There is no weasel words or exaggeration to artificially invoke feels. That's exactly what Hitler actually believed.
The same concept can be extrapolated to controversial articles, such as abortion, the death penalty, or Donald Trump. It's still difficult for a biased author to be perfectly objective, but that's the benefit of having something like Wikipedia which has thousands of editors coming to some kind of hopefully objective middle-ground that simply states what people have said on the matter and why they believe what they believe.
-
@The_Quiet_One look at trolleybus garage. Even when people claim to be 100% factual and objective in their description of other views on some subject, others still perceive it as very biased, and can even precisely point out which parts are actually zero facts and pure opinion. It's because the basic words have different meanings to different people, and what one person considers neutral term, another sees as straight out insult (example: gay).
-
@Gąska omission is bias.
-
@The_Quiet_One said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
simply
-
This post is deleted!
-
@admiral_p said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
@Gąska omission is bias.
Depends on what you omit. If you omit everything except basic facts, and classic encyclopedias usually omit everything except basic facts on most subjects, you have a very high chance no one will ever disagree with you.
-
@Gąska said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
@The_Quiet_One look at trolleybus garage. Even when people claim to be 100% factual and objective in their description of other views on some subject, others still perceive it as very biased, and can even precisely point out which parts are actually zero facts and pure opinion. It's because the basic words have different meanings to different people, and what one person considers neutral term, another sees as straight out insult (example: gay).
Yes, but that's because a poster in the trolleybus garage (or any forum discussion for that matter, trollish or not) has the intention of provoking a specific view point. Whether that view point is abortion is okay versus deplorable, or the death penalty should be or shouldn't be abolished, the intention is to back up your opinion with facts.
The intention of a wikipedia article on the matter is to simply describe the different philosophies behind each topic. It isn't supposed to say one way or another if something is good or bad, just that a debate on the matter exists and why. There shouldn't be any essence of "abortion is bad" in the article, but rather, "opponents of abortion have argued that a fetus is subject to the same right to life as a born human." Whatever your viewpoint is on abortion, that statement is an accurate description of what people have said on the matter, which is encyclopedic and noteworthy in a Wikipedia article.
-
@The_Quiet_One said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
Whatever your viewpoint is on abortion, that statement is an accurate description of what people have said on the matter
You'd be surprised. Example: the actual Wikipedia article on abortion says that "when performed legally and safely, induced abortions do not increase the risk of long-term mental or physical problems." Good luck getting that universally accepted as fact, especially among the traditionalist Christians like the ones who made the movie I was forced to watch back in high school about the mental problems women face even decades after the fact, and how unlucky you are to ever have a baby if your first one was aborted.
-
@Gąska said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
in the past, most people's social circles mostly consisted of people who mostly agree with each other
What do you mean by "in the past"? Have you ever visited Tumblr, Twitter or Facebook? They're perfect examples of echo chambers.
-
@Zerosquare said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
@Gąska said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
in the past, most people's social circles mostly consisted of people who mostly agree with each other
What do you mean by "in the past"?
The 90s - when all the controversial topics of today, weren't even topics (except for abortion). No one demanded preferential treatment of black children on tests, so there was no one to disagree on that with.
-
@Zerosquare You do not need to look so far afield to find a good echo chamber.
-
@Zerosquare said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
@Gąska said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
in the past, most people's social circles mostly consisted of people who mostly agree with each other
What do you mean by "in the past"? Have you ever visited Tumblr, Twitter or Facebook? They're perfect examples of echo chambers.
Obviously you can sequester yourself if you try, but it's very easy to communicate (or just let them communicate something to you) with people from all over these days. One interesting case is newspapers. They used to be very much biased, then we believed (whether it was true or not) that they sort of weren't and that they shouldn't be and we've (largely) forgotten that they weren't always that way and that the new bias is a new thing unique to our era.
-
@Gąska said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
The 90s - when all the controversial topics of today, weren't even topics (except for abortion). No one demanded preferential treatment of black children on tests, so there was no one to disagree on that with.
In Europe, that's probably true. In the USA, it seems that many hot-topic subjects of today were already brewing back then.
@Gribnit said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
@Zerosquare You do not need to look so far afield to find a good echo chamber.
You wouldn't be suggesting that his very forum could be one, for sure?
-
@Gąska heh, what's a basic fact? By not providing unorthodox viewpoints you are inherently biased against them.
-
@admiral_p You are now advocating the teaching of Creationism in public schools. Stop. Back up. Look around.
-
@Gąska said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
@The_Quiet_One said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
Whatever your viewpoint is on abortion, that statement is an accurate description of what people have said on the matter
You'd be surprised. Example: the actual Wikipedia article on abortion says that "when performed legally and safely, induced abortions do not increase the risk of long-term mental or physical problems."
I agree that's a dubious statement, and although it is cited with a clinical review, a more accurate statement would be to start that statement with "Research by Dr. Patricia A. Lohr found that..." and perhaps removed from the top of the article but put in a more suitable section of the page. And, of course, accompanied by contradicting research papers that no doubt exist. Because let's face it: I've even seen research that challenge the notion that people should shower more than 3 times a week, which doesn't necessarily make that research at all true, especially in the context of finding a good number of friends.
-
@Gribnit as far as I'm concerned they could very well talk about Creationism in school. I mean, it is a world view. I think they hypothetically do that in Religious Education in Italy. (Religious Education could be an interesting class, instead it is a way to hand out wages to people close to the Church and in practice it's a useless class students use to chill out and study for the next classes' "interrogations" - basically surprise oral tests, each student must do three of them per semester, per each class, and they don't know when they will be called to the teacher's desk). Telling something exists does not amount to supporting it. Actually grading students on their knowledge of creationism in actual scientific subjects, on the other hand... I mean, it's not science.
-
@The_Quiet_One said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
@Gąska said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
@The_Quiet_One said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
Whatever your viewpoint is on abortion, that statement is an accurate description of what people have said on the matter
You'd be surprised. Example: the actual Wikipedia article on abortion says that "when performed legally and safely, induced abortions do not increase the risk of long-term mental or physical problems."
I agree that's a dubious statement
But the thing is, there's a large part of population for whom it's entirely objective!
-
@Gąska said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
@The_Quiet_One said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
@Gąska said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
@The_Quiet_One said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
Whatever your viewpoint is on abortion, that statement is an accurate description of what people have said on the matter
You'd be surprised. Example: the actual Wikipedia article on abortion says that "when performed legally and safely, induced abortions do not increase the risk of long-term mental or physical problems."
I agree that's a dubious statement
But the thing is, there's a large part of population for whom it's entirely objective!
Research papers and studies have merit, but citing a single study or research paper without looking at the consensus, as well as other studies on the matter is what makes it biased. Just because one says it's objective doesn't make it so.
I do think Wikipedia does have a problem with this aspect of these kinds of fallacies. Often times, all you need to fix a [citation needed] is to, well, add a cite. But with certain topics, especially leading edge scientific and psychological or sociological topics, you can't just look at one paper to come to any conclusion. Confirmation bias is no doubt a flaw in Wikipedia's model, as much as they try to avoid it by requiring reputable citations.
-
@The_Quiet_One how did you eliminate all doubt as to whether they suffer from confirmation bias...
-
@Gribnit When you cite a single study to make a definitive statement such as "Abortion doesn't raise the risk of mental or physical problems." then you're suffering confirmation bias.
-
@The_Quiet_One I'd really call the behavior you're referring to
cherry-picking
.Confirmation bias
happens over time as observations are remembered or discarded.Also, :citation_needed:
-
@The_Quiet_One said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
Research papers and studies have merit, but citing a single study or research paper without looking at the consensus, as well as other studies on the matter is what makes it biased.
Also, there are many (many!) topics on which nobody currently knows the answer, even if there has been tons of papers published about it (well, there wouldn't be tons of papers published about a topic on which the answer is known!), or even if there is a cogent answer. You can't avoid bias when writing about those.
There are whole philosophical schools about it, but I am of the opinion that there is no such thing as a pure unbiased fact, because facts do not exist outside of a framework in which to make sense of them. I'm not talking SJW bullshit of "math is a white man's oppression tool", of course, but anything complex (such as, this that example was brought up, abortion) can only be debated in relationship to the complexities of the real world (such as morals, economic situation, crime...) and it's impossible, IMO, to do so without biasing the "facts" (if anything, by cherry-picking). Actually, maths might be one discipline where they are pretty honest about it, with some people acknowledging that there are basic axioms and that a fact is just a deduction from those axioms (see Bourbaki).
Back to Wikipedia, and how I still maintain that it should stick to non-controversial topics:
@The_Quiet_One said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
The only way to maintain objectivity in controversial topics is to matter-of-factly explain each side's point of view.
As I said, I don't believe it is possible. But that is just my opinion, so don't take my word for it. However, there are also now literally decades of history of Wikipedia (OK, 1.7 decades... is it plural when >1 or when >=2?) that shows that matter-to-factly explaining each side's point of view simply doesn't work. Whether it's because it's impossible, or because some people are jerks, or because they haven't found the right rules, it simply doesn't work.
Again, they have the hubris of thinking they can gather all the sum of human knowledge, and while this is a very noble goal, it's also a totally unrealistic one. That might have gotten them of the ground, but now they should IMO stick to the bits where it works pretty well and admit there are some bits where their model won't work.
-
@remi said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
Actually, maths might be one discipline where they are pretty honest about it, with some people acknowledging that there are basic axioms and that a fact is just a deduction from those axioms (see Bourbaki).
Moreover - there are branches of mathematics that reject basic axioms, and see where this leads them - and it often leads to interesting things, e.g. rejecting the parallel postulate gave birth to entire new field of non-Euclidean geometry.
-
@remi Does that mean you think Wikipedia shouldn't have an article about abortion at all, just because it's controversial?!
Doesn't make sense to me. You can explain what abortion is very matter-of-factly. You can also explain that there is a controversy. There's no need to put any value judgment in any such article.I'm personally happy that Wikipedia exists. Yes, the editor rule-nazis are super annoying when you try to contribute, but that's a symptom of trying to keep the subjectivity as low as possible for something edited by humans.
-
@topspin I think that Wikipedia should have the balls to say "this topic is controversial, so much so that we can't even properly list arguments of both sides without it turning into a flamewar, so this article is going to be a stub giving just the basic facts, and stop there".
Basically, taking the Abortion article as example, keep the introduction and some of the most hard-facts parts such as the medical methods or some of the historical perspective, and leave out all the Motivation/Society part. That would cut out at least half of the article (maybe more, given that half of the article is actually citations, and I don't know how equally spread out they are along the article itself and I don't care enough to do more than quickly glance at it).
Of course, any kind of rule about what can or cannot be included would be hotly debated, but at least if they had a rule to stick to stuff where a real degree of objectivity can be obtained, they would avoid some of the polemics like the one that started this thread: "discussing the politics of live individuals/parties? Too controversial, fuck off."
I know, it's not going to happen and I'm kind of playing devil's advocate here, I don't even fully believe what I'm saying.
-
One thing to remember is that before Wikipedia, the same people tried to build another crowd-based encyclopedia, called Nupedia. The major difference is that instead of allowing anyone to write about anything, the articles were written and reviewed by people with verifiable qualifications about the subject matter. The whole thing was a massive failure, with less than 200 articles created in four years.
Someone could say this is a symptom of the "worse is better" syndrome (yes, I'm aware of the irony of using a Wikipedia link here.)
-
@remi said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
it's not going to happen
Of course. It'd let vast amounts of information get hidden just because some jerkwad somewhere has an insane position and insists that there is controversy even where there reasonably isn't (because there's no truly objective way of assessing the claims of people). Should all discussion of orbital mechanics be removed just because Flat Earthers believe things that are fundamentally incompatible?
Ultimately, sometimes you just have to clearly state that some parts of the debate are very much not settled and then just try to fairly present summaries of the positions of the relevant sides with citations (so people can follow up for themselves and confirm whether the assertions in the article seem reasonable; that's the whole point of the citations rule). If this makes one side seem deeply disconnected from the cited facts, that might be because that side is taking an insane position, but at least they should be pinned down to make an actual statement of their position rather than being allowed to slide around making discussing things with them like trying to pin smoke to a wall.
-
@dkf said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
Ultimately, sometimes you just have to clearly state that some parts of the debate are very much not settled
Yes, but my point (at least I think it's my point... I'm not even too sure...) is that Wikipedia is somehow too full of themselves that they don't even admit that clearly. Sure, there are some labels for articles under heavy edit-wars, but they tend to treat that as one-off events. What I think would be more honest from them, would be to admit that some topics will always be controversial, and that for those ones, trying to put on a varnish of objectivity will never work.
They should have a very proeminent label "controversial topic", which would kind of shield the editors and allow them to distance themselves a bit more from the topic. At the moment, even editing a typo in a controversial article will be seen as taking sides, and as a naïve reader/editor you don't really know what are the controversial topics (indeed, you might even stumble upon something that you don't even realize is controversial, because it isn't in your social circle, and unwittingly end up embroiled in some kind of edit war).
I don't know, I'm really just throwing ideas, but my opinion is that Wikipedia is bad at not recognizing that there are limits to what they can reasonably expect to achieve.
-
@remi You'll run into the problem of which articles to denotate with a "controversial subject" label, though. Where exactly do you draw the line?
And then you'll promptly get a "controversial subject" label on the article about the "controversial subject label".
-
@Rhywden I know, it's probably fraught with more problems than it solves (given that it wouldn't solve many ;-) ). But I'm sticking to my initial point, that Wikipedia (and other similar projects with far-reaching goals) should somehow recognize that some topics are out of their reach.
I mean, we all love making fun of how Jeff wants to civilize discourse through (bad) technology and how that doesn't work, and for me the same kind of applies to Wikipedia. You can't sum up all human knowledge in an abstract and objective way, and even pretending you can is, IMO, wrong.
(typically, I think something like the "5 pillars" of Wikipedia should include a clear recognition that objectivity on some topics can never be achieved)
-
@remi the thing is, how badly does Wikipedia actually do? Good enough is good enough, and certainly the world is better off with Wikipedia than without. This doesn't mean that there aren't any issues, and that those issues shouldn't be solved (or at least that we shouldn't attempt to solve). Wikipedia in its current state is fine, it'll get better in time.
-
@remi said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
@Rhywden I know, it's probably fraught with more problems than it solves (given that it wouldn't solve many ;-) ). But I'm sticking to my initial point, that Wikipedia (and other similar projects with far-reaching goals) should somehow recognize that some topics are out of their reach.
I don't mean to sound like a conspiracy theory nut, but just like TV, Wikipedia has become very influential source of "wisdom", so there is much value in controlling the content of Wikipedia and making it cover controversial topics in a particular way. I'm pretty sure Wikipedia owners realize that. Avoiding controversial topics would make it less useful for shaping people's opinions (because you don't need to shape them on non-controversial topics to start with).
-
@admiral_p said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
Wikipedia in its current state is fine, it'll get better in time.
Yes, which is why I'm proposing some ways in which it can actually become better, by acknowledging their own shortcomings. That's about it. Not saying it should be scraped entirely or whatever, just admit they're not perfect. I know, this requires not having over-inflated egos, and given that some editors look fuller of themselves than , that's a fairly big ask.
@Gąska said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
I don't mean to sound like a conspiracy theory nut
You do have a point. Maybe not in what you are saying directly, but at least in showing how, by not even acknowledging the impossibility of impartiality on controversial topics, Wikipedia ends up damaging its own credibility.
-
@Rhywden said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
denot
ateFTFY. Also, I misread that as detonate. A Freudian slip, perhaps.
-
@Gąska said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
@remi said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
@Rhywden I know, it's probably fraught with more problems than it solves (given that it wouldn't solve many ;-) ). But I'm sticking to my initial point, that Wikipedia (and other similar projects with far-reaching goals) should somehow recognize that some topics are out of their reach.
I don't mean to sound like a conspiracy theory nut, but just like TV, Wikipedia has become very influential source of "wisdom", so there is much value in controlling the content of Wikipedia and making it cover controversial topics in a particular way. I'm pretty sure Wikipedia owners realize that. Avoiding controversial topics would make it less useful for shaping people's opinions (because you don't need to shape them on non-controversial topics to start with).
Making things a 'controversial opinion' then becomes the way you control the content of wikipedia. Say you're a PR person for some product that causes significant harms and you're trying to avoid regulation - think cigarettes or asbestos.
In a world where Wikipedia covers controversial topics, you try to get your bullshit studies and paid misinformers present on Wikipedia. You know the sort of thing: "Some scientists claim that $PRODUCT causes $ISSUE [1][2][3]. Others disagree [4][5][6].", followed by huge sections on the physical basis and the epidemiology and specific studies and what the US Surgeon General thinks etc.
In a world where Wikipedia doesn't cover controversial topics, you just get it marked controversial in Wikipedia and now the article just says "$PRODUCT is a thing. There is a controversy over its potential to cause $ISSUE [1][2][3]". That's it. Anyone wants further information, they have to find it from other sources, which means there's a nontrivial chance they're your PR source.
This isn't any better and is arguably worse.
-
@Gribnit said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
@admiral_p You are now advocating the teaching of Creationism in public schools. Stop. Back up. Look around.
You absolutely can teach Creationism in public schools, iff you retain context.
I have no problem with religion being taught in schools. The reason I've balked at Islam being taught in school is because the material often exceeded the context.
For example. I have no problem with teaching kids, "Muslims believe [concept]" I have no problem with kids writing "Muslims believe [concept]". The problem that I've observed is that when it's taught, kids are told to write "[concept]" on paper without the qualifier "Muslims believe", where [concept] is a specific Muslim prayer or specific belief like "Allah is the one true god."
I hold the same perspective for anything Christian being taught in school. I do not want students copying down "The Lord's Prayer". It's unnecessary to copy that specific prayer down in order to teach about Christianity within the context.
So, yes, you can teach creationism as long as the context "Christians believe [creationism]" is qualified and preserved.
-
@Gribnit said in Wikipedia is a bunch of hobbyists recreating the world's most bloated bureaucracy:
@Zerosquare You do not need to look so far afield to find a good echo chamber.
I agree.