User talk:Contraverse

A belated welcome!
Here's wishing you a belated welcome to Wikipedia, Contraverse. I see that you've already been around a while and wanted to thank you for your contributions. Though you seem to have been successful in finding your way around, you may benefit from following some of the links below, which help editors get the most out of Wikipedia: Also, when you post on talk pages you should sign your name on talk pages using four tildes ( ~ ); that should automatically produce your username and the date after your post.
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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! If you have any questions, feel free to leave me a message on, consult Questions, or place helpme on your talk page and ask your question there.

Again, welcome! Aristophanes 68  (talk)  03:14, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

National varieties of English
In a recent edit to the page Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, you changed one or more words or styles from one national variety of English to another. Because Wikipedia has readers from all over the world, our policy is to respect national varieties of English in Wikipedia articles.

For a subject exclusively related to the United Kingdom (for example, a famous British person), use British English. For something related to the United States in the same way, use American English. For something related to India, use Indian English. For something related to another English-speaking country, such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand or Ireland, use the variety of English used there. For an international topic, use the form of English that the original author of the article used.

In view of that, please don't change articles from one version of English to another, even if you don't normally use the version in which the article is written. Respect other people's versions of English. They, in turn, should respect yours. Other general guidelines on how Wikipedia articles are written can be found in the Manual of Style. If you have any questions about this, you can ask me on my talk page or visit the help desk. Thank you. Nzd  (talk)  14:07, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

A summary of site policies and guidelines you may find useful

 * Please sign your posts on talk pages with four tildes ( ~, found next to the 1 key), and please do not alter other's comments.
 * "Truth" is not the criteria for inclusion, verifiability is.
 * We do not publish original thought nor original research. We merely summarize reliable sources without elaboration or interpretation.
 * Reliable sources typically include: articles from magazines or newspapers (particularly scholarly journals), or books by recognized authors (basically, books by respected publishers). Online versions of these are usually accepted, provided they're held to the same standards.  User generated sources (like Wikipedia) are to be avoided.  Self-published sources should be avoided except for information by and about the subject that is not self-serving (for example, citing a company's website to establish something like year of establishment).
 * Articles are to be written from a neutral point of view. Wikipedia is not concerned with facts or opinions, it just summarizes reliable sources.  This usually means that secular academia is given prominence over any individual sect's doctrines, though those doctrines may be discussed in an appropriate section that clearly labels those beliefs for what they are.

Reformulated:


 * "Truth" is not the only criteria for inclusion, verifiability is also required.
 * Always cite a source for any new information. When adding this information to articles, use, containing the name of the source, the author, page number, publisher or web address (if applicable).
 * We do not publish original thought nor original research. We're not a blog, we're not here to promote any ideology.
 * A subject is considered notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject.
 * Reliable sources typically include: articles from magazines or newspapers (particularly scholarly journals), or books by recognized authors (basically, books by respected publishers). Online versions of these are usually accepted, provided they're held to the same standards.  User generated sources (like Wikipedia) are to be avoided.  Self-published sources should be avoided except for information by and about the subject that is not self-serving (for example, citing a company's website to establish something like year of establishment).
 * Articles are to be written from a neutral point of view. Wikipedia is not concerned with facts or opinions, it just summarizes reliable sources.  Real scholarship actually does not say what understanding of the world is "true," but only with what there is evidence for.  In the case of science, this evidence must ultimately start with physical evidence.  In the case of religion, this means only reporting what has been written and not taking any stance on doctrine.
 * Material must be proportionate to what is found in the source cited. If a source makes a small claim and presents two larger counter claims, the material it supports should present one claim and two counter claims instead of presenting the one claim as extremely large while excluding or downplaying the counter claims.
 * We do not give equal validity to topics which reject and are rejected by mainstream academia. For example, our article on Earth does not pretend it is flat, hollow, and/or the center of the universe.

Also, not a policy or guideline, but something important to understand the above policies and guidelines: Wikipedia operates off of objective information, which is information that multiple persons can examine and agree upon. It does not include subjective information, which only an individual can know from an "inner" or personal experience. Most religious beliefs fall under subjective information. Wikipedia may document objective statements about notable subjective claims (i.e. "Christians believe Jesus is divine"), but it does not pretend that subjective statements are objective, and will expose false statements masquerading as subjective beliefs (cf. Indigo children).

You may also want to read User:Ian.thomson/ChristianityAndNPOV. We at Wikipedia are highbrow (snobby), heavily biased for the academia.

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. All we do here is cite, summarize, and paraphrase professionally-published mainstream academic or journalistic sources, without addition, nor commentary. We're not a directory, nor a forum, nor a place for you to "spread the word". Tgeorgescu (talk) 09:21, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

June 2019
Please do not add original research or novel syntheses of published material to articles as you apparently did to Book of Daniel. Please cite a reliable source for all of your contributions. Thank you. Doug Weller talk 14:36, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Discretionary sanctions alerts, please read
Doug Weller talk 14:39, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

April 2020
This is your only warning; if you remove or blank page contents or templates from Wikipedia again, as you did at The New American, you may be blocked from editing without further notice. Doug Weller talk 08:45, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

You are violating the discretionary sanctions above
Which will lead to you being blocked or banned from American politics if you continue. Read WP:VERIFY and WP:RS. Not liking the sources isn't a reason to virtually blank the article and replace it with an unsourced claim that it is traditionally conservative, which is nonsense in any case. Doug Weller talk 08:47, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

Important Notice
Doug Weller talk 14:34, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes. We are biased.
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, once wrote:

Wikipedia's policies ... are exactly spot-on and correct. If you can get your work published in respectable scientific journals – that is to say, if you can produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments, then Wikipedia will cover it appropriately.

What we won't do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of "true scientific discourse". It isn't.

So yes, we are biased.


 * We are biased towards science, and biased against pseudoscience.
 * We are biased towards astronomy, and biased against astrology.
 * We are biased towards chemistry, and biased against alchemy.
 * We are biased towards mathematics, and biased against numerology.
 * We are biased towards medicine, and biased against homeopathy.
 * We are biased towards venipuncture, and biased against acupuncture.
 * We are biased towards solar energy, and biased against esoteric energy.
 * We are biased towards actual conspiracies and biased against conspiracy theories.
 * We are biased towards cargo planes, and biased against cargo cults.
 * We are biased towards vaccination, and biased against vaccine hesitancy.
 * We are biased towards magnetic resonance imaging, and biased against magnetic therapy.
 * We are biased towards crops, and biased against crop circles.
 * We are biased towards laundry detergent, and biased against laundry balls.
 * We are biased towards augmentative and alternative communication, and biased against facilitated communication.
 * We are biased towards water treatment, and biased against magnetic water treatment.
 * We are biased towards mercury in saturated calomel electrodes, and biased against mercury in quack medicines.
 * We are biased towards blood transfusions, and biased against blood letting.
 * We are biased towards electromagnetic fields, and biased against microlepton fields.
 * We are biased towards evolution and an old Earth, and biased against young Earth creationism.
 * We are biased towards holocaust studies, and biased against holocaust denial.
 * We are biased towards an (approximately) spherical earth, and biased against a flat earth.
 * We are biased towards the sociology of race, and biased against scientific racism.
 * We are biased towards the scientific consensus on climate change, and biased against global warming conspiracy theories.
 * We are biased towards the existence of Jesus and biased against the existence of Santa Claus.
 * We are biased towards geology, and biased against flood geology.
 * We are biased towards medical treatments that have been proven to be effective in double-blind clinical trials, and biased against medical treatments that are based upon preying on the gullible.
 * We are biased towards astronauts and cosmonauts, and biased against ancient astronauts.
 * We are biased towards psychology, and biased against phrenology.
 * We are biased towards Mendelism, and biased against Lysenkoism.

And we are not going to change. tgeorgescu (talk) 20:53, 25 May 2022 (UTC)


 * In other words, Wikipedia is, in a very real sense, anti-intellectual. In an intellectually free environment, where facts are neutrally presented, and arguments are presented as arguments (in both senses of the word) then no one needs a source that, for instance, is "biased against the Flat-Earth position".  Intelligent people are presumed to be able to sort through false arguments when the evidence along with both sides of the arguments are presented.  And Wikipedia is often opposed to the opinions of the majority of its readers, as in the "conspiracy theory" that Jeffrey Epstein was murdered.  Around 80% of Americans surveyed believe he was murdered, but Wikipedia states it as fact that he committed suicide, and as a wacky conspiracy theory that he was murdered.  And this is the case with many issues that Wikipedia editors are "biased against".  Whatever the truth of the Epstein matter or any other, one has to wonder why an encyclopedia is incapable of using neutral language and rational arguments on a topic where a large majority of its readers hold an opposing view.


 * This isn't a debating championship. It is a mainstream encyclopedia.




 * Quoted by tgeorgescu (talk) 07:15, 24 June 2022 (UTC)


 * You are probably right that "intellectually free" was the wrong expression. What I was getting at, is that readers are intelligent enough to figure out if the flat earth position is true or false, even without an encyclopedia, and are also intelligent enough to sort out the facts and arguments when they are presented neutrally, without POV.  When I started editing in 2009, this term was encountered quite frequently, now hardly at all. At that time it was policy to remove all language which reflected POV.  Times have changed.
 * To say that there is a large number of people who think the earth is only 6000 years old is a fact that can be reported neutrally. Their arguments, and the rebuttals are enough, without using adjectives such as "falsely claim", "pseudo-science", "crackpot theory", etc. In such cases these types of adjectives are at best just superfluous verbiage.
 * Yes, of course Wikipedia is expected to have policies, and I didn't mean to imply that it is a great big voting club - but you will be more likely to get people who believe in the young earth to read the contrary arguments if they think the medium is neutral, than if they think it is biased. That is one of the pitfalls of an explicit policy of bias.  And when I say neutrality, I mean neutrality in language, not in position. Contraverse (talk) 18:45, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

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