A small group of Wikipedia admins with a grudge against ID have been running amok with no oversight performing and/or allowing hatchet jobs on ID and its leaders. It’s long past time to expose what they’ve been doing. Wikipedia is far too popular and reliable source of information, especially for school children, to let this travesty of justice continue. Please keep comments on topic. The Wiki horror stories are great!
Update: I have three people who have biographies on Wiki who’ve written to me privately with similar tales as those in the comments. I expect several more as word gets around. FeloniusMonk’s name is coming up more often than JoshuaZ’s. I’ll collect all the complaints for a couple days then see how each wants to proceed.
Ringleaders: FeloniusMonk and JoshuaZ
Rubberstamps: Guettarda and KillerChihuahua
JoshuaZ has been the most egregious. He deletes anything on the talk pages he doesn’t like and has even gone as far as deleting my attempt at dispute resolution on the Biographies of Living Persons Notification Board. Fortunately, through persistence on my part and the aid of a dynamic IP address so I could avoid Joshua’s IP block, I was finally noticed by an oversight member named Crockspot on the BLP dispute resolution board who has no grudge against ID. Joshua’s extreme prejudice seems to stem at least in part from his claim that he was banned from Uncommon Descent for “correcting” Bill Dembski.
Almost certainly not. It should probably be removed, and someone should probably send Demsbki an email asking him for permission to use it (I’m already banned from his blog for correcting him on something, so I probably shouldn’t be the one to do that.). JoshuaZ 03:51, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I couldn’t confirm the banning as there have been no comments by anyone named JoshuaZ here.
At any rate, while we have the attention of a neutral point of view editor it’s a great time to get the hatchet job on Bill Dembski cleaned up and also go around fisking the biographies of other ID leaders and Intelligent Design related articles. Look for things that are poorly sourced or not sourced at all, things that are not written from a neutral point of view, and things that are just plain wrong. Moreover, the content is supposed to encyclopedic. If it looks like a witch hunt being updated in real time it’s not enclyclopedic. If you find something that needs to be changed and can’t get it resolved on the talk page take a complaint to the BLP page and follow the instructions there. I’m being blocked at every turn and have gotten burned out trying to reason with these biased admins so volunteers from our community are needed. Consider this a call to arms.
Another hatchet job is on Phillip Johnson. Notice there is a criticism section but no praise section. Wiki’s NPOV (neutral point of view) policy demands there be equal time given to the other side of the story. Check this out. I could hardly believe my eyes:
The most serious specific allegation leveled by a number of critics is that Johnson, like most proponents of intelligent design, is often intellectually dishonest in his arguments advancing intelligent design and attacking the scientific community.
If you have a blog, please add an article about Wiki’s bias against ID and refer to the URL for this article so it gets spread around far and wide. This is going to take a concerted effort but if enough people from our community get involved we can fix it. If Denyse O’Leary and some of you managed to get us relisted at Google by making a big fuss I can’t help but believe the same thing can work with Wikipedia. The truth will out. Thanks in advance.