Heheh.

I can see why it’s wrong to argue that the lack of land caused World War I—the classic post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. But “Bush is pro-war” + “Bush didn’t go to Vietnam” = “Bush is pro-war but didn’t go to Vietnam”? Where’s the fallacy in that? Atque hoc ergo… atque hoc?

Great job, guys, having a preview box that doesn’t give an actual preview, NOT letting me view any actual preview, and interpreting my input via a little-known standard, making markup under that standard mandatory when it’s supposed to be optional.

No wonder you guys think Macs have good user interfaces…

(To give a past example of such a violation, the Liberalism article used to say something like, “With all land on the earth claimed, and nowhere else to expand their empries, the major world powers were forced to turn against each other to secure further resources, culminating in World War I.” While the events are valid to include, and the timeline is correct, characterizing history in this fashion would be original research and non-neutral.)

Now, to the extent that people criticized Bush for this, and that criticism was notable, that should be included, if those critics can be cited.

To summarize:

acceptable:

-listing Bush’s National Guard involvment during Vietnam, and how he never went to Vietnam in his Bio
-listing Bush’s position on the Iraq War and policies he advocated
-listing criticism of the above two as inconsistent

not acceptable:

Saying in the article’s normal prose, “Bush avoided combat in Vietnam but is prowar”.

That one’s easy, bi: the money they get for being denialists has a much greater effect on their individual lives than the generalized harm that will come to people who are alive now through global warming. And, being evil, they don’t care about future generations.

For my part, I’d also like to introduce a new term of my own: “un-denialism”. This’ll refer to people who deny that they’re disputing the consensus position on global warming — even while they do exactly that! Folks such as the AEI will fall into this group.

Let’s stick with denialism. If they think it’s unfair that they are being put in the same category as David Irving, well boo hoo. They are in all likelihood going to be responsible for the deaths of a lot of people; Irving, no matter how noxious his denialism is, probably is not going to actually get people killed.

The anti-AGW movement is all about the manufacture and consumption of convenient delusions.

Tell me again why “Bush is pro-war but did not go to Vietnam” is “not encyclopedic”?

Is it because it’s unsourced? (That’ll be a valid reason.)

Or is it because they’re inconvenient facts which you prefer not to deal with?

And I persist: Based on being 42 years old, having read a lot and written a lot: I find that Wikipedia is full of silly flame wars and of people from both sides trying to get in digs.

Didn’t ExxonMobil announce that they’re no longer denying the harm of anthropogenic climate change, even while they continue with their old antics?

= = =

TCO:

“for instance ‘Bush was pro-war, but did not go to Vietnam’. This may be an interesting point, but it’s not encycolpedic. It belongs in an op-ed, not a biographical entry.”

Which Wikipedia policy says it’s not “encyclopedic”? Both parts of this statement are matters of fact which have nothing to do with what the writer thinks—Bush is either pro-war or he’s not, and Bush either did go to Vietnam or he did not. These aren’t matters of opinion.

“I find about 95% of people are willing to believe, validate and use sophistry on ‘their side’”

Not 99%? Or 80%? How do you know?

“none of that changes my points made”

And your “points made” have nothing to do with whether the material on Wikipedia agrees with reality. A sticking point which you continually ignore.

= = =

(By the way, I’m planning to turn my web site into some sort of encyclopedia on global warming denialism skepticism. If anyone would like to help out, please do. :) )

As regards the entries on president, the summary of Carter’s legacy is “While at the time he left office Carter’s presidency was viewed by many as a failure, his activities since leaving office, especially his many peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts, have led to a more favorable view in some circles, but his foreign and economic policy continue to be viewed as disastrous”

which is more critical than anything in the Reagan article.

The article on Bush is, I think, far too kind, reflecting the difficulty of assessing a currently active politician in an encyclopedia. In future editions, he will be correctly ranked among the worst of US presidents.