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Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Intellectual Honesty Defense Force

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The following discussion is an archived proposal of the WikiProject below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the project's talk page (if created) or the WikiProject Council). No further edits should be made to this page.

The proposed WikiProject was not created. Closing due to insufficient interest. Ajpolino (talk) 20:46, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Description edit

A team of people dedicated to fighting disingenuity and intellectual dishonesty. These would be unbiased people who are willing to fight the good fight (agnostic of the topic itself), so that good faith contributors do not become disillusioned when their edits are reverted by trolls filibustering with paragraphs upon paragraphs of irrational twaddle.


It only works in practice (talk) 23:37, 5 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]


List of important pages and categories for this proposed group

List of WikiProjects currently on the talk pages of those articles
Please invite these and any other similar groups to join the discussion about this proposal. See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory to find similar WikiProjects.
Why do you want to start a new group, instead of joining one of these existing groups?
Did some searching; did not find a similar existing group.

Support edit

Also, specify whether or not you would join the project.

  1. It only works in practice (talk) 23:37, 5 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion edit

What Wikipedia really needs is a task force of people dedicated to fighting the disingenuous, the trolls, the intellectually dishonest lawyer types, the obsessed, the control freaks, etc.

This would be a mostly on-demand service. From what I've seen, there are plenty of people like myself who would like to contribute from time to time... but we but no longer have the time or patience to deal with trolls who build straw men, quote WPs where they don't apply, unilaterally demand multiple citations (which are never good enough for various convoluted reasons) for the most trivial of facts, etc.

I know I don't have the stamina for it any more. When this happens, I want to just flip a switch and have the Bat-signal light up and someone else--someone who doesn't have any biases except a dislike for manipulating, intellectually dishonest trolls, someone who isn't emotionally invested in either side of the issue at hand--can come swooping in and take over the battle, taking it all the way through formal dispute resolution if necessary. Perhaps you could consider it as a sort of pro-bono public defender thing. The topics themselves don't even matter. It is often very easy to see that person A is taking the time to make a sincere effort while person B is finding all manner of excuses to remove useful, relevant content (or to insert ridiculous content.)

Maybe this sounds a bit lazy--proposing a project that I can't really devote much time to. But that's precisely my point. I don't have the time, but if I were retired I'd gladly be the first one to take on this challenge. I think it would be very rewarding.

This name is provisional, of course. It only works in practice (talk) 23:37, 5 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • Question It's a good idea in theory...but, who would these people be? How would they be selected, and how would it be ensured that they are, in fact, unbiased? Howicus (Did I mess up?) 23:47, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Howicus: Presumably by the same bootstrapping process that allows Wikipedia to function in the first place. Trolls who abuse their IHDF membership have it revoked by consensus and/or by admins in charge of it.
I hadn't realized the existence of the third party opinion system when I first wrote all of this. Essentially, this would function exactly like third party opinions except they would be third party people willing to research the context of the debate and, if one side is clearly being maliciously unhelpful and destructive, engage in the debate for as long as it takes to achieve a resolution. I think that this could work mainly because it is something I would enjoy doing if I actually had the time to spare. But maybe I'm the only one... It only works in practice (talk) 20:54, 28 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the project's talk page (if created) or at the WikiProject Council). No further edits should be made to this page.
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