(work in progress)
Overview edit
Current Wikipedia policies are inadequate for dealing with fringe topics in an encyclopedic manner, and need to be added to or amended. While Wikipedia:Fringe theories is a step in the right direction, it is neither clear enough nor specific enough to deal with the problem.
The Problem edit
The current Wikipedia policies of verifiability, sourcing and neutral point of view, have resulted in many poor quality articles on fringe topics. Fringe topics, especially lesser known and partially synthesized topics, frequently have little printed about them except by advocates. This creates a situation in which the only reliable or quasi reliable sources advance a particular point of view favorable to the topic. No matter how ridiculous this favorable view is, the neutral editor applying wikipedia policies has little choice but to present the issue as it recorded in secondary sources. Anyone attempting to do otherwise can be plausibly wikilawyered and challenged with policy by fringe proponents, effectively creating a very lopsided article.
The above situation is a major cause of many of the ongoing edit wars and unstable articles in a number of fringe topics.
Examples edit
There are hundreds of examples; below are a few which will be added to as I get time.
Buddhism and science edit
Littered with uncritical nonsense sourced to books published by university presses (and therefore considered somewhat reliable under policy). These books have titles such as: Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics and Consciousness, and cover rejected and/or unfounded new age ideas such as a quantum mechanical basis for consciousness. Yet I am unable to remove the commentary attributable to these books, as:
- I don't have the books in question and don't intend to buy them for a Wikipedia article.
- There have been few if any impartial analyses of the relationship between Buddhism and science to rebut these points. Such books don't sell very well, especially if they are critical, and therefore don't get written, especially in fields which use positive synthesis (i.e. Attempts to give Buddhism glamour and credibility by association with science) and wouldn't otherwise be the topic of scholarly investigation.
- Removing such statements reduces the article to a few lines, which gets the inclusionists and expansionists up in arms.
The problem is such that a permanent lack of reliable sources discrediting the synthesis (and the discouraging of original thought in articles) means that the article is always going to be biased heavily in favor of the proponents of a particular fringe idea. Hopefully I don't need to explain why this is terrible for Wikipedia's goals.
Cold Fusion edit
Mainstream science completely rejects this field, and many of the top journals ignore it completely. The fact that the field is ignored and discredited means that mainstream reviews of the field or individual claims are almost never undertaken. This creates a situation in which the weight of published material is heavily in favor of proponents. Proponents are sometimes able to get their ideas published in quasi reliable sources and by reasonable publishers, requiring the inclusion of such ideas in the article by currrent policy and a very lopsided view of the field. This has made it very difficult under current policy for NPOV editors to include reliably sourced mainstream views with the weight and article space it requires. The lack of a clear policy has wasted a lot of the community's (and good editors') time and patience, resulted in arbitration cases, and allowed POV pushers to destroy former featured and good articles.