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Where does the phrase "Lunatic charlatans" come from?
Yes, the quote from him is in the essay: "What we won't do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of "true scientific discourse". It isn't." —Jimbo Wales, March 23, 2014 --
Brangifer (
talk)
21:50, 14 June 2014 (UTC)reply
I've added three (3) citations that back this up. The headlines of the articles themselves use the quote in their article titles. Please see
DIFF. Thank you, — Cirt (
talk)
11:54, 12 October 2015 (UTC)reply
Change title?
I think we have a useful essay here with the exception of the title which is pretty much guaranteed to disrupt any situation where it might be useful. How about WP:ACEP Petition or something similarly descriptive that won't immediately trigger hostility when it is mentioned? --
Ronz (
talk)
16:35, 23 May 2014 (UTC)reply
Oppose changing the title. The current title is derived from the quote by
Jimmy Wales: "What we won't do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of "true scientific discourse". It isn't." -- we should keep the page as is, namely, located at
Wikipedia:Lunatic charlatans. Thank you, — Cirt (
talk)
11:39, 12 October 2015 (UTC)reply
Oppose title change The strong statement from a WMF representative is the leading story here, not the petition. The phrase "lunatic charlatan" is one person's characterization of the posture that
WP:WikiProject Medicine and other groups take to contributors who make health claims without citing scholarly medical publications. I think this is a fair title to inform contributors who are outside the established norm that they are being held not to their own standards, but to the standards which are defined in other ways including
Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine).
Blue Rasberry (talk)14:43, 22 October 2015 (UTC)reply
Oppose. Who would ever refer to it, or click on it, or remember where to find it, again if it was called "Scientific discourse"? Plus, I agree that Jimbo's statement is the story here.
Bishonen |
talk14:50, 22 October 2015 (UTC).reply
Just to be clearer, I think the essay would be much more valuable if we reduced the name-calling and drama. --
Ronz (
talk)
19:43, 20 July 2014 (UTC)reply
I am really not sure how it would be possible to "avoid the drama" while trying to get True BelieversTM to drop their campaigns. Being brutally blunt from the start may in fact be the best way. --
TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom20:16, 20 July 2014 (UTC)reply
I've added these three (3) citations to the page. They all use the phrase that is the title of this essay, namely,
Wikipedia:Lunatic charlatans, in the headline title of the articles themselves. Clearly multiple sources think this is noteworthy. Thank you, — Cirt (
talk)
11:53, 12 October 2015 (UTC)reply
There is such a thing as gilding the lilly. That is, I'm not sure that adding a fake wikiproject would be helpful, although
User:JzG/WikiProject Self-serving bullshit is pure gold. As humor, yes, it's good but this essay has an important purpose and over-decorating the talk page would interfere with that.
The reason I am looking at this talk at the moment is because
your diff is seriously unhelpful, and that conclusion was formed before noticing your
previous effort. The
removed comment confirms an unhealthy obsession with Wales. Use a userbox to express personal dissatisfaction, but you know full well that
righting great wrongs is off-limits on all pages—it's just not helpful to the encyclopedia. Start a blog or join one of the attack websites.
Johnuniq (
talk)
05:33, 3 July 2017 (UTC)reply
"Wikipedia’s policies [...] are exactly spot-on and correct. If you can get your work published in respectable scientific journals – that is to say, if you can produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments, then Wikipedia will cover it appropriately.
What we won’t do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of 'true scientific discourse'. It isn’t.[2][3][4][5]"
I just came across this essay. It made me laugh, and I agree with the basic message; but as someone else commented above back when it was written, its provocative name makes it difficult to invoke in practice. It's hard to imagine any circumstance where referring to another editor as a 'lunatic' would not be a violation of
WP:NPA.
Robofish (
talk)
11:34, 11 April 2020 (UTC)reply
The essay does not call any Wikipedia editor a lunatic charlatan and thus does not violate NPA. It calls people who call themselves "scientists" but who cannot get their work published in respectable scientific journals - that is to say, they cannot produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments -- lunatic charlatans.
As for invoking it in practice, why would you want to do that? It never works. The target audience you are trying to reach is pretty much immune to any "WP:..." wikilinks. They have been bombarded with them again and again and have learned to ignore them. --
Guy Macon (
talk)
16:09, 11 April 2020 (UTC)reply