User talk:Contraverse

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, once wrote:^[1][2][3][4]

Wikipedia's policies ... are exactly spot-on and correct. If you can get your work published in respectable scientific journals – that is to say, if you can produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments, then Wikipedia will cover it appropriately.

What we won't do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of "true scientific discourse". It isn't.

So yes, we are biased.

• We are biased towards science, and biased against pseudoscience.
• We are biased towards astronomy, and biased against astrology.^[5]
• We are biased towards chemistry, and biased against alchemy.^[6]
• We are biased towards mathematics, and biased against numerology.^[7]
• We are biased towards medicine, and biased against homeopathy.^[8]
• We are biased towards venipuncture, and biased against acupuncture.^[9]
• We are biased towards solar energy, and biased against esoteric energy.^[10]
• We are biased towards actual conspiracies and biased against conspiracy theories.^[11]
• We are biased towards cargo planes, and biased against cargo cults.
• We are biased towards vaccination, and biased against vaccine hesitancy.^[12]
• We are biased towards magnetic resonance imaging, and biased against magnetic therapy.^[13]
• We are biased towards crops, and biased against crop circles.^[14]
• We are biased towards laundry detergent, and biased against laundry balls.^[15]
• We are biased towards augmentative and alternative communication, and biased against facilitated communication.
• We are biased towards water treatment, and biased against magnetic water treatment.
• We are biased towards mercury in saturated calomel electrodes, and biased against mercury in quack medicines.^[16]
• We are biased towards blood transfusions, and biased against blood letting.
• We are biased towards electromagnetic fields, and biased against microlepton fields.^[17]
• We are biased towards evolution and an old Earth, and biased against young Earth creationism.^[18]
• We are biased towards holocaust studies, and biased against holocaust denial.^[19]
• We are biased towards an (approximately) spherical earth, and biased against a flat earth.^[20]
• We are biased towards the sociology of race, and biased against scientific racism.^[21]
• We are biased towards the scientific consensus on climate change, and biased against global warming conspiracy theories.^[22]
• We are biased towards the existence of Jesus and biased against the existence of Santa Claus.^[23]
• We are biased towards geology, and biased against flood geology.^[24]
• We are biased towards medical treatments that have been proven to be effective in double-blind clinical trials, and biased against medical treatments that are based upon preying on the gullible.^[25]
• We are biased towards astronauts and cosmonauts, and biased against ancient astronauts.^[26]
• We are biased towards psychology, and biased against phrenology.
• We are biased towards Mendelism, and biased against Lysenkoism.

And we are not going to change. tgeorgescu (talk) 20:53, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

In other words, Wikipedia is, in a very real sense, anti-intellectual. In an intellectually free environment, where facts are neutrally presented, and arguments are presented as arguments (in both senses of the word) then no one needs a source that, for instance, is "biased against the Flat-Earth position". Intelligent people are presumed to be able to sort through false arguments when the evidence along with both sides of the arguments are presented. And Wikipedia is often opposed to the opinions of the majority of its readers, as in the "conspiracy theory" that Jeffrey Epstein was murdered. Around 80% of Americans surveyed believe he was murdered, but Wikipedia states it as fact that he committed suicide, and as a wacky conspiracy theory that he was murdered. And this is the case with many issues that Wikipedia editors are "biased against". Whatever the truth of the Epstein matter or any other, one has to wonder why an encyclopedia is incapable of using neutral language and rational arguments on a topic where a large majority of its readers hold an opposing view.

This isn't a debating championship. It is a mainstream encyclopedia.

You've again mistaken Wikipedia for a democratic society where social freedom, personal expression and the liberty thereof are values placed above all other. In such a society McCarthyism is a malignant prejudice designed to silence opinions and constrain political thought. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. A book. An online repository. The people who are making it are doing a job. They're working and they are adhering to a basic set of management principles. If this were a company, like the marketing department of coco cola for example, it would be perfectly reasonable for the company to have principles, which say, "no - we don't want that". And to enforce them if employees persistently acted in contrary. For some reason, because a group of editors have objected to your contributions and you have found no support, you accuse the project of being Machiavellian, whereas the reality is that your content has been looked at (ad nauseam) and has been rejected. You are required to disclose COI here. Just like you are required to sign NDAs or exclusivity contracts if you work for coco cola. In fact the only real difference between this organization and a company is that we don't fire or sue people when they come into the office and spend all day bending the ear of everyone they meet, telling colleagues what a bunch of pigs we and the company are for not seeing eye to eye with them. In a nutshell - its OK for Wikipedia to have policies, its OK for Wikipedians to decide they don't like certain content and its OK to exclude that content from our pages. Edaham (talk) 04:05, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Quoted by tgeorgescu (talk) 07:15, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

You are probably right that "intellectually free" was the wrong expression. What I was getting at, is that readers are intelligent enough to figure out if the flat earth position is true or false, even without an encyclopedia, and are also intelligent enough to sort out the facts and arguments when they are presented neutrally, without POV. When I started editing in 2009, this term was encountered quite frequently, now hardly at all. At that time it was policy to remove all language which reflected POV. Times have changed.

To say that there is a large number of people who think the earth is only 6000 years old is a fact that can be reported neutrally. Their arguments, and the rebuttals are enough, without using adjectives such as "falsely claim", "pseudo-science", "crackpot theory", etc. In such cases these types of adjectives are at best just superfluous verbiage.

Yes, of course Wikipedia is expected to have policies, and I didn't mean to imply that it is a great big voting club - but you will be more likely to get people who believe in the young earth to read the contrary arguments if they think the medium is neutral, than if they think it is biased. That is one of the pitfalls of an explicit policy of bias. And when I say neutrality, I mean neutrality in language, not in position. Contraverse (talk) 18:45, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

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Hello Contraverse, and thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia.

While your contributions are appreciated, I wanted to let you know that I've started a discussion about whether an article that you created, List of intellectual standouts of African descent, should be deleted, as I am not sure that it is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia in its current form. Your comments are welcome at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of intellectual standouts of African descent.

Deletion discussions usually run for seven days and are not votes. Our guide about effectively contributing to such discussions is worth a read. The most common issue in these discussions is notability, but it's not the only aspect that may be discussed; read the nomination and any other comments carefully before you contribute to the discussion. Last but not least, you are highly encouraged to continue improving the article; just be sure not to remove the tag about the deletion nomination from the top.

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Sadads (talk) 15:06, 24 December 2025 (UTC)