User:HoaxMiner

SLAYING HOAXES, ONE ARTICLE AT A TIME
Hoaxes are a menace to the integrity of Wikipedia. But beyond the confines of this digital ivory tower, hoaxes can cause real damage to public discourse, contributing to the culture of 'fake news' and disinformation. We need the truth more than ever; a 'post-truth' society should never be accepted. Whilst Wikipedia (by its own admission) is a non-reliable resource and is certainly not regarded as such in academia, it's often the first point of contact for members of the public when researching a new topic. The encyclopedia should thus strive for accuracy and reliability, even if absolute accuracy is not achieved in practice.

THE HOAX PROBLEM ON WIKIPEDIA
Wikipedia has a vandalism problem; that much is obvious. As stated on Wikipedia's 'Don't Create Hoaxes' page, misinformation is a 'more obscure' type of vandalism, and is a natural consequence of being an open-source encyclopedia. Whilst I believe open-source culture has a fundamental role in upholding the right to freedom of expression and should thus be pursued by Wikipedia, it is likely impossible to effectively curtail vandalism in the context of an open-source encyclopedia. The question then turns to how vandalism can be managed.

Most hoaxes are purportedly detected swiftly, using algorithmic logic and plain old common sense. Blatant and obvious hoaxes can be summarily (speedily) deleted as vandalism, though the words 'blatant' and 'obvious' may have different interpretations. The 'ordinary, reasonable reader' could be used as a standard here. If a hoax is not blatant or obvious to the ordinary reasonable reader, it may escape speedy deletion and, if other deletion criteria such as lack of notability are not met, may go on to populate the article space. There is thus plenty of scope for hoaxes to remain in the article space, possibly for significant lengths of time, particularly if the subject matter is more obscure. Articles on esoteric subjects necessarily receive less traffic, and by extension less scrutiny, than articles dealing with popular culture. The 'Jared Owens' hoax (2015) is a particularly good example.

The potential for hoaxes to 'slip the net' is further compounded by the general Wikipedia policy of 'Assume Good Faith'. This is analogous to the fundamental burden of proof in criminal law, popularly known by the aphorism 'innocent until proven guilty'. Simply put, we must start from the proposition that editors act in good faith, which necessarily assumes that an editor is not predisposed to create hoax articles. This presumption should be rebuttable. It is my view that new contributors to the Project need to be vetted carefully, lest they turn out to be one of these malicious actors.

A WAY FORWARD
A logical and permanent solution to the hoax problem would be to require a rigorous peer review process for all articles on Wikipedia. I am in support of such an approach, provided the culture of an open-source encyclopedia is preserved to its greatest extent, and freedom of expression is upheld. However, this approach is not favoured by the custodians of the Project- and for good reason. Peer review would necessarily take time, and thus fewer articles would be available to the public. Would this harm freedom of expression? And who decides what is worthy of peer review in the first place? These are not rhetorical questions. On one hand, peer review could be fatal to the ideals of Wikipedia. But the inclusion of misinformation is necessarily antithetical to the ideal of a good encylopedia.

There is no way these tensions can be resolved. So what is the way forward? If we want an open-source encyclopedia, we must accept that vandalism- including hoaxes and other misinformation- are inevitable. A concerted effort must then be made to catch as many hoaxes as possible.

That's where I enter the frame. I intend to work as a 'Wiki-Gnome', using the 'random article' feature to try and spot extant hoaxes within Wikipedia. This will take an unusual amount of persistence. This narrow focus will be my sole contribution to the Project.

BUNGENDORE'S CLIMATE
(The table below is an extrapolation only. Temperatures are extrapolated from Braidwood Racecourse AWS. Bungendore is roughly 0.5C warmer in summer and 0.5C cooler in winter for maximum temperature. Minimum temperatures are roughly the same in all months. Precipitation and sunshine closely follows Canberra Airport rather than Braidwood, since Braidwood is on the opposite side of the Great Dividing Range).

An interesting thing to note is the mean temperature of 12.7C, which is similar to Lyon in France. It's no wonder that there is an award-winning French restaurant in Bungendore, and the homoclime to central France is reflected in the wineries that populate the Lake George escarpment. These are cool climate wineries.