User talk:JzG/EL abuse/Econlib

Critique
"One of the bloggers there is free-marketeer Bryan Caplan." Yeah, although sometimes we call him free market economist Bryan Caplan, or professor Bryan Caplan.

"Vipul wrote or re-wrote a large number of articles, and paid for even more." If that's true, then what a naughty boy! But I hate to see good edits by other users who had nothing to do with him, blocked because of unnecessary spam blacklisting. We need to set a pretty high bar for spam blacklisting, e.g. the content is either so spammy or so unreliable as to be a source that's worse than useless (like in the case of Examiner.com).

"He and Caplan have at the very least a mutual admiration society, and it looks to me very much as if they are actually associates." Not surprising; of course people in the same movement, working for the same goals, and believing in the same ideas, will tend to admire each other and/or be associates. Does it matter?

"Every article where a link could plausibly be included to Caplan, Econlib or the others above, then they were." Can we get some evidence here? If it's "plausible" inclusion, then what makes it spammy?

"many of them on high-level topics where the view of economics (libertarian or otherwise) is not relevant." Like what?

"A large number of articles where there were multiple External Links to econlib." Are these to relevant books, encyclopedia articles, etc. that just happen to be hosted by econlib? Not that I necessarily care all that much, since external links are usually not very important to the article, or else they would be citations rather than external links. What I'm more concerned with is the removal of citations, and with the potential for blacklisting to deter the adding of relevant citations.

"First, think tanks will not offer full text of sources that are not ideologically consonant." Okay, so now you're bringing up a systemic bias concern. But I don't think it's the kind of concern that historically has warranted blacklisting.

"Second, partisan websites often editorialise with footnotes and callouts." Is econlib one of the offenders in this area? Or do they just include the author's footnotes, and non-editorializing editor's footnotes (e.g. explaining the meaning of words)?

"Third, even if the text is presented exactly as it should be, the rest of the site is promoting an agenda." Why is this a big enough deal to warrant blacklisting?

"Analogy: you want the text of Roe v. Wade. Would you link to it from either the National Right to Life Committee or Marie Stopes International? No, because neither of these is neutral in respect of the source material." It's not ideal to link there, but I would say that it would be going too far to blacklist either of those sites. Let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. A mediocre source is better than no source.

"That is a seriously bad idea, and it seems that all these sources were available via the Gutenberg links already included in the article." Okay, agreed, but if I'm not doing that, then why should I blocked from using that domain anywhere? I'm concerned about situations where the Gutenberg links aren't already included and someone isn't aware of their existence.

"Smith's work was not published by the Liberty Fund or the Library of Liberty." It wasn't? If I put something on my website, aren't I publishing it? But maybe they just picked the wrong parameter ("publisher" instead of "website"). Either way, the actual rendered template doesn't claim that's the publisher.

"using primary self published sources in other articles goes directly against WP:RS." It depends on the situation. If he's just stating his opinion, rather than a fact, then the lack of fact-checking in a self-published source is not as big of a deal. That seems to be the spirit of the rule, as expressed in Identifying_reliable_sources.

"Many articles included links to an online encyclopaedia published by the Library of Economics and Liberty. This is a problem because economics is not a science: if you ask three economists you will get four distinct opinions" Economics is a soft science, like psychology. Like psychologists, they do experiments sometimes, but a lot of their doctrine is the result of applying logic to a priori assumptions. Let's suppose the Library of Economics and Liberty online encyclopedia is biased. Is there a problem with citing that encyclopedia, and then citing a bunch of other works from sites that disagree with them, in order to have a balanced article?

"I hate spammers" Yeah, well, I'm not a spammer, and neither are a lot of the users adding these links.

"Wikipedia editors are not qualified or permitted to make the judgment of significance and reliability directly form the primary source" So what about the quoting of books (as opposed to the quoting of articles about the books)? That happens all the time, e.g. in the article, The Market for Liberty. WP:NOR says that primary sources can be used, but they're not preferred, and you have to be careful not to misuse them.

"Most of the links to OMICS Group journals were not added by OMICS employees, but we still clean them up." Is that an apples-to-apples comparison?

"I am removing spam, if you think a specific piece of text is of peerless value and must be included and sourced then feel free to find a reliable independent source for it, but I am not obliged to replace sources when removing one that fails the tests of RS." Except that it doesn't fail the tests of RS.

"There are many different opinions on Wikipedia of what the precisely correct approach is here, and numerous discussions lead me to believe that mine is broadly correct" It seems to me that a lot of people are telling you your approach is wrong, but I guess through these discussions you keep coming up with more and more arguments for why you're right, and that's why you become more convinced?

"Happy to talk about this, but I am not bringing shrubberies for anyone." I don't get the reference. N I H I L I S T I C (talk) 02:02, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
 * That's great, but please get some experience at Wikipedia (your account was created 3 April 2017) before launching into tirades about how people should be free to post the external links they like. Checking a few articles in other topics would show that (in most cases) they are remarkably free from undue promotion and excited attempts to highlight external websites. That's because it's the way things are done here. Johnuniq (talk) 02:59, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Critiques you disagree with = "tirades"?


 * "how people should be free to post the external links they like" I don't believe that's what I argued. I said that I was more concerned about citations being removed (potentially leading to article deletion, as in Articles for deletion/Libertarian perspectives on natural resources), or deterring people from adding useful citations to begin with (since adding content requires citing sources, due to verifiability policy). I also disputed that there was undue promotion going on when people are citing a perfectly good source, that happens to be hosted on a partisan or think tank website. It's not optimal, but doesn't merit blacklisting either.


 * Looking at some of the discussions linked from User:N I H I L I S T I C/JzG discussions, e.g., Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive950, it seems that a lot of users have expressed opinions like "Think tanks have an interest in being linked from a site like wikipedia, so I would tend to agree with Guy that if a another source is available for the same information it should be preferred" which is a far cry from saying that the links should be deleted wholesale. N I H I L I S T I C (talk) 03:41, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Special:Contributions/N I H I L I S T I C Johnuniq (talk) 05:14, 9 April 2017 (UTC)