User talk:SmithBlue

/Archive 1 User talk:SmithBlue/Archive 1

MINIMAL editing activity occuring

WIki-life is very reduced at preent - hopwe to have time again in near-medium term Please feel free to leave a message - I'll get round to it eventually. It could be years before I read it though.SmithBlue (talk) 04:27, 14 May 2008 (UTC) SmithBlue (talk) 06:39, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

WP - blah

The less time I spend here the happier I am. Good luck to you all and get out as soon as you can. Go dancing. Or play music. Meditate. Agitate. SmithBlue (talk) 05:18, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

On BLP violations

If you can show verifiable content from RS that Person B, whether pro or anti whatever, is an ice addict psychopath who owns a pedophile brothel and is a ISIS supporter, then go ahead and write the article. Just ask and I'll support you.

If you have strong feelings around the subject and you have to misrepresent sources, use non-RS ranting blogs and OR to create an attack piece that matches your view of the subject then either you are supported by WP community standards or you not.

I do wish that it was obvious to everyone whether you are supported by WP community standards. So far you have been supported by WP community inaction. Especially the on-going inaction of administrators. After many weeks of inaction things did get fixed up. But many people will have been put off WP by then. And much time and energy wasted. And the naive readers of the BLP misled. And the Disruptive Editing that produced the attack piece is still unaddressed. As is the training that co-editor-activists recieved in DE. And the disruption to relationships between editors goes on. SmithBlue (talk) 02:17, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

integrity of system

See ANI: "WP:Brian Martin (social scientist) : other editor is feeling stalked/harassed. And is also attacking me."

Science, anti-psuedoscience action and anti-science: a continuum

Science is a method of enquiry. The current understandings of sciences are always provisional. Science depends on social space for enquiry. (Enquiries that are not given social space do not happen. For the most part this is good. Who wants Nazi or Japanese WWII science experiments happening?)

Action against pseudo-science, in terms of identifying it, challenging it's sillinesses, educating as to the actual effects of the belief in the pseudoscience, refusing to let it masquarade as real science, and, using it as a foil to educate in critical thinking, is well placed. It is very instructive to present the histories of how theories have been investigated and the different views expressed about them on their way to being undestood in the current best provisional understanding. Jenkins in "Tools for Critical Thinking in Biology" does exactly this.

When activism becomes mobbing, and seeks to starve refuted scientific theories of social space, it is functioning to prevent enquiry and is treating science's provisional understandings as dogma. Examples of scientific hypothesises, etc, that have been rejected and then, because there was social space in which enquiry could occur, years later been accepted as provisionally correct include; lateral gene transfer, the germ theory of disease, continental drift. It's arguable that the length of time that it took for germ theory to be re-accepted, and the many lives lost as a result, was directly related to the hostility that greeted it's initial proposal and hence the loss of social space in which it could be scientifically enquired into.

Such anti-pseudoscience activism is anti-science. SmithBlue (talk) 06:39, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Why Civil-POV pushing is an inaccurate portrayal of my editing pre-2011

Talking about editing from years ago so working on my memory of my ethos, approach, frustrations and motivation.

• My aim has been to present accurate information that is RS, Weight, Verify. I may have failed at this a few times. The Balkan incident for one stands out spectalulary. But no lives were lost as a result.
• On sensitive areas of fringe topics I did not edit the main page unless I could get (informed) concensus on the talk page.

As to my post-2012 edits - none of them have had any aim, or functional effect, what-so-ever, towards pushing any POV other than NPOV. Claims otherwise that are not reasonably argued and clearly evidenced are a sign that misportrayal is occuring. The functional effect of such mis-portrayal is to preserve a power and social structure that is signfiicantly different to that described in WP's self-description. This goes to the integrity of WP. SmithBlue (talk) 06:39, 22 March 2016 (UTC)