Is RationalWiki a crackpot site?

[Trebuchet]

I agree that accusations of Putin-friendliness (and hence the accusation of disinformation) should not be directed on persons who make purely technical arguments, but on the other hand you must also understand that in this area it can be difficult to decide what sources are disinformational, and which sources are factual.

Especially when other sources disagree with the technical argument being presented.

Caveman, you seem to be excessively emotionally invested in this. You might want to give it a rest and save your blood pressure.

 

[caveman1917]

I agree that accusations of Putin-friendliness (and hence the accusation of disinformation) should not be directed on persons who make purely technical arguments, but on the other hand you must also understand that in this area it can be difficult to decide what sources are disinformational, and which sources are factual.

My sources predate the incident[*], so how would they be disinformational? Also, one of my sources is the Ukrainian air force, what possible reason could they have to be disinformational?

* in fact, as you can check, the wikipedia article on the Su-25 used to have the 10km figure - also long before the incident.

 

[caveman1917]

Especially when other sources disagree with the technical argument being presented.

What other sources? The only one that I can find is a page on Sukhoi's website on the Su-25K. Wikipedia, RationalWiki, pop-science articles, newspaper articles etc all trace back to that page. There is no disagreement here, that page is about a specific old export version with reduced flight characteristics. To be exact, it lacks any pressurized life support - technically you could probably fly an Su-25K at 10km, maybe 12km, as well, it's just that the pilot would probably suffocate before even getting there.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Interesting to see this. Someone agrees with you without showing any evidence you praise them. Someone else disagrees with you the same way and you flame them. Biased much?
Seems pretty clear that you already made up your mind, and only posted this topic to receive some confirmation.

I don't know these posters from adam... but I don't think what you've portrayed here reflects the events as they occurred.

Here's some parsed commentary:

Of course it is.

Thank you, my experience with it is limited to this one instance so I wasn't sure if this was a general thing with that site.

You present this as if caveman's "thanks" was bias, whereas it's equally likely to have simply bee a response to the first answer he got. I'd take ven odds that if the first response had been catsmate's "no", it would also have received a "Thank you"

But it's a little bit more complicated than that even, isn't it? Becuase not only did catsmate respond with a "no"... he immediately followed it with:

Sigh. There's a thread for conspiracy theories about MH-17.

Catsmate immediately assumed that caveman is a CT-er. Catsmate provided some not-exactly-nice insinuations of caveman's intent. It is my impression that this is what caveman was responding to - the pattern of posts seems to support my interpretation.

At the end of the day, however, that's my interpretation of events, without the benefit of facial expression or inflection. I could be wrong.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Yes I am. I'm also capable of understanding why people make such claims.

It seems that you're capable of making assumptions about why people might make a statement.

The entire nonsense about MH-17 being shot down by a Frogfoot is a conspiracy theory;

Agreed. So what? If one of the pieces of evidence being used to refute that nonsense is incorrect, should it not be corrected? Or do you only support correcting errant information on the other side of the argument?

Indeed it would be nice for caveman, or anyone else who believes in the Frogfoot shoot-down nonsense, to show some reliable sources for the claim.

Again, you're making a gross assumption here. caveman does NOT appear to support the frogfoot claim. He DOES, however, dispute a piece of evidence being used to counter the frogfoot claim. Again - are we only allowed to challenge the evidence provided by the CTer?


I challenge the evidence provided by the side I support all the time - if it's wrong it isn't evidence. It's entirely possible to be right for the wrong reasons... but I dearly prefer to be right for the right reasons. I fully expect that if I make a claim, and some of my supporting evidence is incorrect, that EVERYONE will jump in to say so, regardless of whether they agree with my main point or not.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Is RationalWiki a crackpot site?

No, it is not a crack-pot site. As Trebuchet said, it's an anti-crack-pot site.

That said, however, it is also not an objective site. It is not based exclusively in the presentation of facts (ala Snopes). RationalWiki has its own biases, and it's own position, and its articles reflect that.

It's not a bad site; it's often a very helpful site for a quick run down of some new "they can't be serious" discussion. They frequently provide good descriptions of the most commonly used arguments to support whatever they consider to be crackpottery... and also provide the "debunking" argument to go with it. But I suggest reading it with a grain of salt.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Caveman, here is where I think your problem lies:
You appear to be trying to correct technical specifications of the airplane, and not just to support Russian conspiracy theories about the shootdown of MH17. However, you edited RW as a BoN (Bunch of Numbers) rather than joining up, at a time when such conspiracy theories were being promoted, including on Wikipedia by people with Russian IP addresses changing airplane performance information. It seems natural to me that the RW editor figured you to be another such vandal. The fact that you seem so stubbornly set on the issue doesn't help.

RW is not a crackpot site. It is an anti-crackpot site. I find it a great resource for info on various forms of woo, without being handicapped by Wikipedia's NPOV restrictions.

Trebuchet's response here is a very good response, and I give it good odds on being the true nature of the situation.

This is ad hominem reasoning. The truth-value of a proposition is independent of who produced it. If that edit were even made by, say, a cat accidentally walking over a keyboard then it still wouldn't change one iota about whether the claim is true or not.

This is true, but it doesn't refute what Trebuchet said.

Yes, it's poor logic on the part of the admin at RationalWiki... but it's also decent reasoning.

Consider a scenario, if you will: Let's say there's a hot topic blowing up, with a bunch of very determined conspiracy theorists taking one side. The CT side has made the argument that their fallacious CT is supported by a particular fact - that the plane can fly at 15K altitude. The Admin has been dealing with a deluge of people editing the article, flipping this piece of evidence back and forth. Most of the people editing aren't registered on the site - they're anonymous drive byes. Now comes a new anonymous person, who also edits that piece of information.

It is reasonable for the admin to assume that you are yet another CTer making the same fallacious argument.

It may not be the truth, and it may not be kind to you individually... but it's still a reasonable assumption for the admin to make.

That doesn't change the accuracy of the data involved. But it does account for the attitude.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Why is it important to you to ensure that RationalWiki gives (what you believe to be) the correct operational ceiling for the Su-25 "Frogfoot"?

If false data is being used to refute a false claim, then the false claim is not refuted.

 

[caveman1917]

Consider a scenario, if you will: Let's say there's a hot topic blowing up, with a bunch of very determined conspiracy theorists taking one side. The CT side has made the argument that their fallacious CT is supported by a particular fact - that the plane can fly at 15K altitude. The Admin has been dealing with a deluge of people editing the article, flipping this piece of evidence back and forth. Most of the people editing aren't registered on the site - they're anonymous drive byes.

Why assume that conspiracy theorists have only taken one side of the topic? The way I've seen this play out, not just recently on RationalWiki but in general, both sides seemed to be trying to outdo eachother in crackpottery on this one. However, only one side was simultaneously claiming how "anti-CT" and "rational" and "skeptical" they are, and it wasn't the side you're defining as "the CT side".

Now comes a new anonymous person, who also edits that piece of information.

One would've thought that, if this admin were so troubled by a "deluge of people editing the article and flipping this piece of evidence back and forth" that he by now could've bothered to actually do a bit of research into said piece of evidence. It's not like this stuff is hard to find.

It is reasonable for the admin to assume that you are yet another CTer making the same fallacious argument.

Is it reasonable for me to assume that the admin is yet another CTer making the same fallacious argument?

That doesn't change the accuracy of the data involved. But it does account for the attitude.

Maybe one just shouldn't let one's attitude get in the way of the accuracy of one's data in the first place.

 

[caveman1917]

Consider a scenario, if you will: Let's say there's a hot topic blowing up, with a bunch of very determined conspiracy theorists taking one side. The CT side has made the argument that their fallacious CT is supported by a particular fact - that the plane can fly at 15K altitude. The Admin has been dealing with a deluge of people editing the article, flipping this piece of evidence back and forth. Most of the people editing aren't registered on the site - they're anonymous drive byes. Now comes a new anonymous person, who also edits that piece of information.

I checked the change log of that RationalWiki article on MH-17. Before me there was a total of 3 edits by anonymous editors. 2 of these edits consisted of adding in these exact claims that I had tried to correct, and these claims were at the time not challenged by registered editors - let alone admins.

It seems that the data does not support your interpretation of the sequence of events, and even suggests the opposite of your interpretation. The few anonymous editors involved in that page were there to add in the false information.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Why assume that conspiracy theorists have only taken one side of the topic?

It was an illustrative scenario, intended to convey a particular point. You seem to have either missed or ignored my point.

It seems that the data does not support your interpretation of the sequence of events, and even suggests the opposite of your interpretation.

Again - illustrative scenario.

You seem to have completely missed all of the things I said supporting your view of factual data, and instead latched on to the one case where I ask you to have some degree of understanding for the simple humanness of someone else.

 

[caveman1917]

It was an illustrative scenario, intended to convey a particular point. You seem to have either missed or ignored my point.


Again - illustrative scenario.

You seem to have completely missed all of the things I said supporting your view of factual data, and instead latched on to the one case where I ask you to have some degree of understanding for the simple humanness of someone else.

It would be more understandable if your illustrative scenario had some sort of relation to reality, which a look at the history of that RationalWiki article shows it does not.

 

[Marasmusine]

In RW's etiquette guide, they say that controversial edits should be discussed on the talk page first. This is also the etiquette I am familiar with as an admin on several wikis, particularly if an edit has been reverted. It doesn't look like much discussion has taken place at the talk page.

I also find it helpful to look at Wikipedia's verifiability policy when dealing with content conflict: the article should cite reliable secondary sources; and editors should refrain from original research.

 

[caveman1917]

I also find it helpful to look at Wikipedia's verifiability policy when dealing with content conflict: the article should cite reliable secondary sources; and editors should refrain from original research.

This isn't wikipedia

By encouraging original research and essays, RW has also incorporated many aspects of the blogging community.

Besides, the book on the Su-25 cited is a secondary source.

 

[Jono]

I wouldn't call it crackpot site, at least not technically. It's quite hyberbolic and biased on some issues though, e.g their pee-poor work of Steven Pinker.

 

[Nowhere Man]

Thread necromancy alert, 6+ years.

Fred

 

[theprestige]

Glad that's finally settled.

 

[catsmate]

Thread necromancy alert, 6+ years.

Fred

Ah, the old days where the Putinistas were merely lying about a single mass murder.

 

[George F Haley]

Now I'm bemusedly scratching my head and wondering if there's such a thing as a centrist bias. A person I used to talk to on Usenet once described himself as a "moderate centrist," which had me wondering if there were, you know...fanatical centrists and radical centrists.

Hmm, this may be two pipes and a pot of sumatra, this problem.

 

[Jono]

Now I'm bemusedly scratching my head and wondering if there's such a thing as a centrist bias. A person I used to talk to on Usenet once described himself as a "moderate centrist," which had me wondering if there were, you know...fanatical centrists and radical centrists.

Hmm, this may be two pipes and a pot of sumatra, this problem.

In particular american online contexts, I've had the amusement of being called a "radical centrist", which appears from my perspective as applied to be a bit oxymoronic.
Though. perhaps it has some proper place of usage? I haven't really grasped what that would be.