P points me at "Wikipedia knowledge: air-forger Connolley: The man who rewrote our worldview" and so on [cite]. Not even original there; earlier at here]. I'm reading it via google translate, of course. Its mostly a re-hash of the Solomon nonsense which I discussed in A child’s garden of wikipedia, part I. Obviously, the bit about me is the interesting bit, but they also whinge on about...
After a short pseudo-debate is from Wikipedia EIKE even on the blacklist has been set
This is the bit I'll tell you about, as part of your continuing education in the odd corners of wiki.
EIKE themselves seem to be trivia (I've never heard of them, neither has the English wikipedia. A friend calls them a "local version of the Cooler Heads Coalition, i.e. a group of blockheaded non-scientists with a strong political agenda"). But what they are complaining about is that they've been put onto the Spam blacklist. This is, as it says, a control mechanism that prevents an external link from being added to an ... Wikipedia page when the URL matches one listed. There is a global one, across all wikipedia projects, and a per-project one (so being added to the German one doesn't block you from using links on the English one).
I can't read the discussion, and google refuses to translate it for me (Eli provides a helpful translation), but my source tells me that (somewhat humiliatingly) they weren't blocked for being actively harmful, just for being useless. This illustrates a difference between the English wiki and the German one (and arguably between the countries as a whole): de is better at keeping out junk, because they are more discriminating in their judgements.
If you look at the discussion page for additions on en you can see the kind of thing its used for. Sometimes, its easier to just blacklist the additions than it is to block the anon's who are doing the spamming.
Refs
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The European Institute for Climate &. Energy or EIKE (in reality, the "institute" only has post-office box) is a very active group in mainland Europe, holding conferences similar like the Heartland Conferences. And of course they write the occasional open letter. And of course everything they've written on science is plain wrong. Basically it's just a bunch of retired libertarians yelling global warming i hoax.
Onmy interesting thing about EIKE is The director (Holger Thus) is the director of CFACT-europe, and the post-office box is shared with CFACT-germany. Sounds like originally it was set up as an astroturfing organization..
Michael's climate blog had a closer look at the organisation : http://michaelsclimate.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/eike-ein-institut-stell…
Yawn ?
William, I think it already says enough that EIKE puts a story of Wisnewski on their homepage. The guy could easily have been one of the nutjobs who responded to Lewandowsky's questionnaire.
Supposedly the septics don't hold such crazy theories (or so they claim), but Wisnowski has actually written a book in which he claims NASA faked the moon landings.
Of course, he also has made claims that 9/11 may have been an inside job (or at least many knew it would happen), the Titanic did not sink due to a collision with an iceberg, and the L'Aquila earthquake may well have been caused by CERN shooting neutrino's in that direction.
In other words, don't even try to argue with the man (or EIKE); clearly they have no ability to discern reality from fantasy.
German libel laws are even more interesting than British ones, truth is no excuse, hurting people's feelings can be enough.
Prosper
[Someone else mentioned that. I can't see myself bothering, though -W]
Das Kaninchen ist deutschsprachig. Leider ist das Hermelin ungebildet.
["The rabbit is in German. Unfortunately, the ermine is uneducated"? -W]
Eli is always helpful
Somewhere along the way in looking up EIKE a couple of years ago I came across a strong connection with CFACT. Just can't remember where I found it. Perhaps it was EIKE's site?
Rattus, Thuss, the president of EIKE, is the founder of CFACT Europe. They also share a postal address. There's your "strong connection".
Yes, there is a strong connection between CFACT and EIKE, but EIKE is more like the poor European cousin or so. From what I can see (including the buggy website), they don't receive corporate funding. Their biggest danger lies in their connections to our currently co-ruling neolibertarian party FDP and some conservative circles.
I would think the rudeness and near obscenity W ufeels it proper to use here against those who ask easy questions of the alarmists might make a reasonable defence against any legal accusation he might make of "hurt feelings".
If you find somebiody has lied about you that would be a different matter but since you say that professor Lovejoy, who says alarmists are insane, is supporting you it is difficult to imagine what accusation would be serious enough.
Of course if you find anybody
Add libel laws to something else that Neil Craig is ignorant of. Of course, starting with Hi Krauts won't help Wm. much:)
[I'm not sure whether they noticed that -W]
It always comes back to the cabbage.
Extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of krauts...
But were the krauts sauer?
On a side note, It is really a shame that knowledge of Europe´s by far biggest language is relatively limited in many large countries (certain lagomorphs excluded). I understand and respect that wikipedia is a user-driven and interactive encyclopedia that cannot allow themselves to offend too many users, but it does appear to me that German wikipedia people are less concerned about hurting the feelings of trolls/spammers among the users than are (sometimes) their English wiki counterparts.
When teaching science to fellow Danish students/pupils, I always recommend German wikipedia to anybody just somewhat proficient, exactly because the content is usually strictly selected and of high quality and credibility, especially when it comes to sensitive scientific subjects.
To pile on Marco´s list of conspiracies that Wisnewski subscribes to, it is worth mentioning that according to this guy, RAF´s terrorist attacks were part of a major CIA-led government plot, and the terrorist attacks against the British-American forces in Iraq apparently also bear the fingerprints of a British-American covert plot. Even trying my best to see the world through the lenses of standard conspiracy nutters, the logic of this pretty much escapes me.
On this background, I guess one should add it to his credit that at least CIA or other sinister Anglo-British forces apparently were not involved in the secret terrorist ploy that he claims faked the deadly car crash of Jörg Haider.
Apparently there's a name for the malady that afflicts Wisnewski and kindred souls. It's called crank magnetism: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Crank_magnetism
"A birther, a creationist, an anti-vaxxer, and a conspiracy theorist walk into a bar. They are the same person."