User:EnWikiAdmin/Essays/On neutrality, sources, and content

(This was prompted by questions from an editor which can be seen in Ikwipedia:Help. Much of the below probably belongs amongst the "Ikwipedia:" policy page. This will hopefully be put in there eventually so as to be in a more readable format.)

Disadvantages of some source limitations

I want to summarize some of our thinking and clarify our guidelines. If an encyclopedia article's content theoretically reflects a "weighted-average" of available evidence or sources, then its content depends on the choice of allowed sources, the extent to which editors can synthesize sources (i.e., act as investigators producing secondary works), and the "esteem" conferred to (or the implied reliability attributed to) each source (i.e. how much weight it is given). As just one example, a wiki article could only refer to an alleged paranormal event as a hoax (without further qualification) if a vast majority of allowed sources refer to it that way. As you alluded to, these choices are significant, and it may be difficult to draw consistent lines. I personally think that Internet Archive and Wikipedia are among the most important websites on the internet, and Wikipedia, to its great credit, appears to have achieved consensus on source allowability in way that that is more or less internally consistent throughout the scope of its coverage (and produced many superb articles in the process). I could wax poetic about Wikipedia.

That said, we saw instances where we felt the article was not fair to its subject matter, including, in some instances, the same problems that you alluded to — certain apparently well-researched works by apparently competent investigators not being allowed as sources for certain topics to which they're well-suited. Another type of thing we noticed is when articles on alleged witnesses of alleged conspiracies, coverups, aliens, exotic technology, etc., such as Bob Lazar, fail, in our view, to faithfully describe the witness's key claims because no acceptable secondary source covered them seriously and/or because doing so would presumably amplify the claims in an undue or unbalanced manner. We also felt the problem extends to topics — such as the paranormal claims of Jonathan Reed and Dan Burisch — for which an article does not exist on Wikipedia and probably would not be allowed to stay if it did, also due to a lack of serious coverage by mainstream sources. We wanted to have a set of rules that — yes, definitely — allows for a wider range of sources than Wikipedia, but is also internally consistent and administratable.

Deviations from Wikipedia's guidelines

We tried to analyze why Wikipedia's rules, if applied neutrally and uniformly, might lead to what we saw as potentially misleading coverage, or undue lack of coverage, of certain notable topics. The subject matter that we want to cover, such as alleged elite conspiracies and alleged paranormal events, may be hard to verify, due to their nature or other reasons. From Wikipedia:Verifiability:

"Verifiability, no original research, and neutral point of view are Wikipedia's core content policies. They work together to determine content, so editors should understand the key points of all three."

And from Wikipedia:Reliable sources:

"When editors talk about sources that are being cited on Wikipedia, they might be referring to any one of these three concepts: the piece of work itself (the article, book), the creator of the work (the writer, journalist), the publisher of the work (for example, Random House or Cambridge University Press). Any of the three can affect reliability."

I don't think we would dispute that these policies, along with ancillary policies like which theories are considered fringe, are interdependent. It does appear that an alternative encyclopedia cannot logically modify only one aspect of them without changing other aspects or leading to unmanageable problems. To enable an encyclopedia resembling Wikipedia that nevertheless allows for coverage of the range of topics that we're interested in at the level of detail that we think they merit, our guidelines probably have to be different from Wikipedia in multiple related ways. After a lot of consideration, it seems to us that possibly the most logically consistent way to deviate from Wikipedia's guidelines is to simultaneously

• greatly broaden the range of allowed sources to include any testimonial sources
• greatly broaden the range of possible topics to include any whose mere existence would be "paradigm-shifting" if proven true, and
• possibly allow editors to synthesize information from multiple sources, adding reasonable but potentially unsourced or not reliably-sourced conclusions,

possibly along with other, less significant differences. While I think we've been able to fairly well define the parameters of the first two, we are less certain about how much original research and synthesis, if any, should be allowed. We're not certain that these rules are optimal, and, as with anything, we are open to feedback.

Under these guidelines, articles may certainly have a more "credulous" tone than a mainstream encyclopedia. In part, this is simply because covering a speculative topic that many people do not believe exists and/or for which there may be no reliable sources (such as time-viewing devices) probably requires assuming despite this that the topic is real or valid in some way. But it is also because "non-reliable" evidentiary and testimonial sources are permitted — although there are probably sources that don't necessarily fall on either side of the line, I want to clarify what definitely will be allowed under these guidelines (unless the guidelines change): The articles on history of Earth, history of the universe, origin of biological life, etc. can cite the statements about these topics allegedly from a crash-landed alien in 1947 who conveyed information telepathically to an alleged Army nurse who allegedly mailed the transcripts of the statements to a writer around 2007. (These statements are "testimonial" as we use the term: for them to be true, the three beings in the chain — the alleged alien, the person who claimed to be Mathilda MacElroy, and the writer Lawrence Spencer — would merely have to be not lying and not mistaken in their respective accounts.) We strongly suspect that difficult or impossible line-drawing problems will be unavoidable unless these kinds of references are allowed — indeed, unless references to any published testimonial or evidential accounts are allowed and references to (at least) some investigators who rely entirely on testimonial evidence are allowed.

That said, articles should reflect the claims regarding their subject matter even-handedly (and, hopefully, in a way that presents claims on the same subject together as opposed to segregated based on the theories they supposedly support, unless the article is about a theory itself). An article on the early history of Earth civilizations, for example, might incorporate, in the same chronological narrative, the claims/findings of mainstream researchers and experts (who are, generally speaking, considered "high-quality" sources and obviously evidence-based), as well as "alternative" evidence-based researchers, and people to whom information was allegedly "revealed" (and perhaps transcribed for further dissemination, e.g. Alien Interview, Lacerta file, etc.). An article should, generally speaking, provide context as to the source of any assertions, and use appropriate caveating language (e.g., "allegedly", "according to", etc.). The article and/or related articles might also further discuss an alleged witness's credibility and/or an investigator's qualifications/methodology/reputation (to the extent that is relevant to the claim or theory at hand), supported by citations to sources from which the points are taken and potentially, although it wouldn't be ideal, by an editor's limited inferences and reasoning).

Neutrally counteracting alleged systemic suppression of counter-mainstream viewpoints

The above can be summarized as (as Millipede put it) "seeing what happens if you use a wider range of sources than Wikipedia does". However, we think there is another layer of consideration to this that we suspect we won't be able to articulate without articulating substantially the encyclopedia itself. This probably also ties in to the synthesis/editorialization rule that we haven't fully defined yet. We accept, at least for the purposes of argument, that Wikipedia's core content policies referenced above are being applied uniformly, in good faith, and so on, and that, therefore (to state it simplify) the coverage by Wikipedia and other tertiary sources merely reflects a "weighted average" of available secondary sources. However, according to some (conspiracy) theories, there might be a systematic tendency, promulgated through various mechanisms, against the inclusion of various counter-mainstream viewpoints in mainstream scientific, journalistic, and other publications. Such a suppressive effect might theoretically lead to a viewpoint being considered "fringe" by Wikipedia editors and treated as such, when, in the absence of that effect, it might be a "significant-minority or majority view". Hypothetically, the existence of such a suppressive effect and the mechanisms by which it operates might itself constitute fringe theories and thus the information about the suppressive effect itself might be suppressed in mainstream sources and therefore in Wikipedia.

Furthermore, according to some conspiracy theories, the alleged targeted throttling (e.g., in mainstream media and social media) of certain non-mainstream-aligned views, such as certain false flag conspiracy theories, Covid-19 vaccine conspiracy theories, satanic ritual conspiracy theories, etc. — and the witness claims that support them — is ultimately, in some way, due in part to these views' being allegedly factually accurate (rather than due to their being exceptionally/egregiously false or malicious or due to their undermining public health, etc.), i.e. they allegedly correctly describe real conspiracies. If that is true, then a thorough article on the subjects of these claims would preferably lay out all the information and evidence from the theory as to why the claims are allegedly suppressed; it should explain in neutral language what is allegedly going on in order to show the "complete picture" — including the understanding of why there may be few or no sources on a given topic in the first place. For example, it might include citations to scholarly works by researchers of conspiracy theory belief and also point out, ideally with support from acceptable sources, supposed shortcomings and blind spots in the researchers' analyses, failures to engage with the premises of a given conspiracy theory, alleged conflicts of interest stemming from personal and/or financial relationships with entities that may be subjects of the conspiracy theories, other allegedly unacknowledged or downplayed biasing influences, etc.. I guess what I'm saying is that we're implicitly open to these conspiracy theories about information presentation and dissemination itself, and that this may affect the tone of articles in ways we might not be able to articulate or even predict right now.

When a fringe claim is included in a Wikipedia article alongside claims based on reliable sources, such an article would probably be considered to have false balance or to irresponsibly amplify the fringe claims — until and unless they becomes non-fringe. It appears, at least from the point of view of "the mainstream", that amplification of fringe views can't be helped in an encyclopedia that uniformly allows unverified claims. Even the existence of an article in the absence of reliable sources may be considered a violation of the notability and undue weight guidelines or "amplification". Referring to it as "amplification" in the Motivations for Ikwipedia is kind of a pre-emptive acknoowledgement of potential criticism along those lines, an attempt to clearly state our intent, and part of a defense of what we think is the right course. Although this encyclopedia is intended in part to be a response (of a kind) to Wikipedia, we certainly do not intend to introduce a new bias to directly counteract Wikipedia's perceived biases.