(June 6, 2015 at 10:49 am)Dystopia Wrote:(June 6, 2015 at 10:38 am)TheMessiah Wrote: 1. If the wiki is going to be reliable, it needs to cite peer-reviewed, respected and academic research; because I've looked at Rational-Wiki and seen half-asset agenda-driven blogs cited as ''evidence'' and upon questioning the editors just say ''Oh, we don't investigate claims'' etc. It's a sham of a system
2. Dawkins is just a man; there's no organised ''Dawkins followers'' - most of them are just You-Tube commenters. Most Atheism Plus nutters were in a movement, had their own goals and attempted to ostracize people who didn't toe their line. Hell, there's a thread on this forum about it, but those people were insanely irrational
3. That's the problem, the Wiki decides whether it's ''reasonable'' - so if they have a Feminist page, and the admin is a Feminist....guess what? He'll cite sources which ideologically agree with him.
There's nothing wrong with that, but I'm not going to use that as reliable
4. Any specific examples? Seems to me that the people he ridicules deserve ridicule, he doesn't debate scholars, he makes fun of the loonie side of Feminism
Rationalwiki is, like wikipedia, an internet website that attempts to provide easy to grab information. Like Wiki, it isn't perfect and has flaws, but there's also people working to write reasonable articles and despite your opinion in many articles you can find pieces of information from diverse sources like famous people, scholars, articles, universities, etc.
Are you kidding? Dawkins wrote a bestselling book, gives lectures to people who love him, created his foundation and set his ideological goal very clear. There's people on his twitter commenting that his book is a must read for every atheist. You may not have a church worshipping Dawkins officially, but there's people that clearly love him and use him as a role model for life and atheism. That's dogma. Dawkins doesn't need to incite anything, he already has a legion of followers on Twitter and people who buy his books (let alone illegal downloads and watching youtube lectures) so his goals have possibility of being achieved. It's extremely easy to predict what someone who has read the God Delusion is going to use as an argument, like a bunch of sheep lining up to be slaughtered. I don't like organized atheism, I think it behaves like a religion, and I don't care if this gets me hate from both sides, it's irrelevant.
3 - How do you define reasonable? Do you need to interview raped women so see how horrible it can be? Do you need all the women in the world to tell you catcalling sucks? Do you need 1000 witnesses to prove sexual harassment at work is terrible? Do you need 100% irrefutable proof for everything or are you willing to admit deductive evidence is sometimes the only thing we have? Also, do you realize that feminists (specially older ones) created a whole branch of social sciences and thus feminist theory and its arguments are basically a form of sociology, right?
4 - Let's see - There's a video where he criticizes the "yes means yes" about sexual consent by saying that sometimes yes means no, and no means yes, etc. He completely misses the point just to ridicule because the "yes means yes" isn't a literal verbal "yes" but it's a form of saying that you need clear consent before having sex. He then talks about body language without ever mentioning credible sources. I guess half-decent sources are better than nothing at all, right?
The comparison with Wikipedia proves my point; there's a recent why teachers are now telling their students ''don't use Wikipedia'' - it can easily be manipulated and used for propaganda. When it comes to Scientific pages, then it's quite reliable because verifiable, proven research can be cited; which is rich in validity. But when it comes to political pages, then it becomes a battle ground and pissing war of which editor can cite which piece of propaganda; ''Rational'' wiki just happens to harp onto agenda more than Wikipedia does, but they are both dishonest platforms; Feminism, is a political ground - hence if there are pro-Feminist editors, you'll most likely get one side of the story.
So what if people love Dawkins? There isn't a cult surrounding him - there's no organised movement which pledges allegiance to Dawkins, none of that is there - they moreso like his Atheistic arguments, that's not the same as a cult of personality, where the person in question is glorified, like say, Justin Bieber. Atheism Plus is a movement with a bunch of Atheists saying ''I am an Atheist and I support ____ ideology and I support ____ ideology'' etc - far more organised, clear and open with their goals. So while many people may love Dawkins, the comparison to a movement like Atheism Plus is disingenuous.
- I don't know why you're bringing up rape, but Wiki admins are humans, and if Wiki admins are Feminists, more likely their page will be full of info they ideologically agree with; that leads to a lack of counter-arguments and dishonest assertions. The fact that Rational-Wiki bans people for dissenting people is good enough for me.
Here is an article which documents the ideological bias of ''Rational'' Wiki
http://lesswrong.com/lw/f5b/the_problem_...onal_wiki/
http://theatomstew.com/2014/02/07/the-pr...ionalwiki/
- Link please?