DeepNorth

Oh my

There is actually info on me elsewhere in wikimedialand.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:DeepNorth

DeepNorth 16:12, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Climategate

Can somebody with 'mega-admin' privileges please remove the 'Climategate' redirect and create and protect a page called 'Climategate'. This simple neologism is in use on millions of pages elsewhere, including other language Wikipedia wikis. The fact that a small group of decidedly non-neutral Wikipedia editors has improperly influenced a wide variety of pages on the subject of climate is disturbing.

Anyone who thinks that there is no controversy here should ask themselves: "where's the beef". That is, if 'the science is settled' and evidence of AGW (let alone catastrophic AGW) is 'overwhelming', where on earth are they hiding the raw data on this? If you remove things based on data from suspect sources and remove the 'consensus' opinion of the people involved in the Climategate scandal, what is left? There should be a mountain of evidence. Where is it?

The 'Climate Scientists' (really, the 'hockey stick' people) only have their own highly suspect journals to point to. Were the 'science settled' and the evidence 'overwhelming', there would be tons of things they could point to in untainted (non 'hockey stick') journals that support their contentions.

Note that a variant of the 'hockey stick' accompanies many articles (at least more than half a dozen last I looked) associated with climate even though it has been thoroughly and soundly discredited.

The people responsible for the POV articles on Climate should find neutral third-party scientists to replace them and recuse themselves from editing until the whole 'Climategate' thing is settled. That is the only decent thing to do under the circumstances. Instead, they appear to be circling their wagons and editing (or reverting) more madly than ever. Surely, if this 'settled science' has such 'overwhelming evidence' they should have no problem finding neutral scientists to prevent true vandalism. From what I can tell of the vast majority of activity lately, vandalism is being redefined by a cadre of editors here as any change not in accord with their opinions.

The current situation with Climate articles (only made noticeable by Climategate, not caused by it) and the current highly politicized treatment of the topic and editors who dare challenge (alleged) orthodoxy is bringing all of Wikipedia into disrepute. Those editors have a perfect right to their opinions, but it is clear that they have far overstepped reasonable boundaries in forcing those opinions into the encyclopedia.

At the very least, someone higher up the food chain should allow a proper Climategate article to exist rather than the egregiously POV redirect it points to. Most of the other language Wikipedia sites have a Climategate article, as they should. Most people think of the 'thing' as 'Climategate'. It is 'Climategate' and not some (alleged) computer hacking that is pertinent. It is certainly notable.

Wikipedia has had its share of difficulties in the past, but I can think of no situation that has done any where near the damage that this 'Climategate' situation has done.

If the damage is contained right now, it will still be a long while before Wikipedia recovers its credibility (such as it was). As long as this continues, it continues to add permanent injuries to the entire project.

This goes beyond just the tampering to the many climate articles, none of which appear to be sound. It injures faith in the governance of the project and its ability to self-heal properly. It shows dramatically how short-term vandalism can be controlled. However, it also shows how a concerted long-term campaign to influence entries is nearly impossible to correct. Thus far, it is demonstrating that a long-term effort to control a subject cannot be corrected at all.

The current situation can only serve to embolden others to mangle the project to promote their own views.

I am hopeful that Wikipedia will recover from this eventually. However, it is looking increasingly dire as we go into months since this long term tampering has been exposed. It would appear that literally hundreds of people have attempted to correct this only to be banned from making edits. Every dispute appears to be caught and squelched by either vested interests or administrators convinced that people with seniority of some kind should be supported without question.

I made only one edit to the discussion page of (what should have been) Climategate. It was quickly edited to make it harder to spot and subsequently moved far enough away from the discussion (to another page) to make it hard for even me to find. The gist of my (necessarily long) edit was that Climategate deserved its own page rather than the current redirect to a page whose title essentially denies the substance of Climategate's existence. Heavens.