Wikipedia

Talpedia

Joined 9 October 2016

Talpedia is an individually-minded Wikipedian who focuses on adding deep, nuanced content on controversial or fundamental "societal" topics surrounding medicine, law, and ideology when editing seriously and ensuring good linking when editing for learning. Interest in justice and human rights.


Values

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:-|This user is undecided.
te-I-amThis user is a not a team player
This user excoriates truthiness.
IARThis user thinks the best rule on Wikipedia is Ignore All Rules.
This user believes in being good.
Tries!This user tries to be kind to you, and prefers you do the same. If I didn't, I'm sorry.
exoThis editor is an exopedian.
immThis editor is an immediatist.
This user strives to maintain a policy of neutrality on controversial issues.

Goals

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Increase coverage on

  • A social understanding of the profession of medicine problem the perspective of all
    • Medical ethics
    • Patient rights
    • Sociology of medicine
    • Sociology of medical knowledge
    • Sociology
  • Obtain applicable skills for elsewhere

Protocol badges

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How I tend to innteract with wikipedia
This user is a WikiOgre.
This user is a participant in WikiProject Medicine.
This user primarily edits using the VisualEditor.
*This user can be referred to using any/all gender pronouns.
This user likes to use the thank button.
This user supports the right of anonymous users to edit Wikipedia.
1RRThis user prefers discussing changes on the talk page rather than engaging in an edit war.

Skill / Interest badges

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Things that are true about me and that I do for fun.

  • Adding wikilinks while learning about things
  • Reading and summarizing books
This user spends most of his free time thinking about random things...
This user is interested in sociology.
This user is interested in law.
ipa-2
ə		This user has an intermediate understanding of the International Phonetic Alphabet.
de-2Dieser Benutzer hat fortgeschrittene Deutschkenntnisse.
fr-1Cet utilisateur peut contribuer avec un niveau élémentaire de français.
BLAHThis user is interested in linguistics and etymology.
math-5This user can contribute with proficient mathematical skills.
prog-3This user is an advanced programmer.
This user is interested in medicine.

Note to self- tools

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Todo list

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Agency: Write more about Planning and goals.

"The project"

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Increase individual freedom by allowing individuals to actively conceptualise social forces, ideologies and institutions with which they interact and which would control them, and conceptualise their own agency and identity.

The assumption in this is a lot of the lack of agency that individuals house derives from unconceptualised coercion and ideology, as well of course as acccess to more "physical" knowledge of how to do things.

All of this within the constraints of wikipedia: a respect for truth, completeness and objectivity crystalized in their proxies of WP:VERIFY, WP:DUE and open criticism in public.

There are many ways that this sort of freedom can be obtained and the best interventions to create it will vary from time to time and individual to individual. Indeed for some the concept of social forces being at all relevant to them seems absurd, or course this can often be because others have handled the social forces for them - perhaps at some personal cost... and if you are dead with a heart attack - perhaps all your social and theoretical understanding is of no cost... but then if you are going to have complicated treatment by the medical system well you might end up needing a social understanding to not end up dead... or worse... while and sometimes as a result of treatment itself.

Others are free to take inspirtion from this but it would be fair if they would cite their sources (maybe secondary sources) rather than leave things as a puzzle for readers in the future.

Project: Medical sociology

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Build medical sociology and the sociology of professions into something high quality and complete, that will cause readers to understand what actually goes on in medicine. Focus on the experience of patients and social motives of practictioners.

The page: https://pageviews.toolforge.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&redirects=1&start=2019-01&end=2021-09&pages=Medical_sociology%7CInvoluntary_commitment%7CInvoluntary_treatment%7CEliot_Freidson%7CProfession%7CNhs

Pages that I created

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  • Lockdown Files ; UK news story leaking details of Government handling of the pandemic
  • Counter disinformation unit; UK organization for monitoring social media and media during the pandemic for "narratives"
  • Profession of Medicine Perhaps the book that solidified Medical sociology as a field by Freidson
  • Eliot Freidson The founder of medical sociology
  • Esther Lucile Brown Perhaps the founder of the sociology of profession
  • Fitness to practise A concept in internal medical professional standards that can be used to regulate the professional behaviour of doctors
  • Special Allocation Scheme a scheme in the NHS to remove patients access to non-emergency medicine apart from areas with mitigation for the risk of violence.-
  • Informal coercion A common practice in healthcare where a practictioner forces a patient to do something for a reason other than decided that the medical intervention is the best intervention as would be expected as part of Informed consent
  • Acute behavioural disturbance A "condition" that is a symptom of some conditions that professionally justifies the forced treatment and detention by medical services
  • Independent mental health advocacy A professional role that helps address abuse of institutional and personal medical power and crystalize the desires of those experiencing medical coercion as a result diagnosis with mental health conditions. Such interventions include detention, and forced drugging with drugs with extreme side effects (including cognitive impairments that make accessing legal aid impossible)
  • Emergency State (book) a book by Adam Wagner that explores human rights and democratic process in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic
  • Open Dialogue An alternative treatment to psychosis based on a model of psychosocial model of psychotic symptoms containing meaning
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Sidebars make me happy, because it feels like I create a unified understanding of a field so that a reader can learn an entire topic for themselves

Pages which I made a (self-defined) major contribution to

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  • Involuntary treatment (created sociology, prevalence, effects,, and coercion in voluntary setting sections. Also section on children)
  • Medical sociology (wrote history section, section on social construction of disease, sick role)
  • Psychoanalysis (wrote about relationships to CBT and attachment theory and about early schisms)
  • Gene therapy Discuss types of therapy, integrative vs non-integrative therapies, cancer treatment, expand on vectors, and vectors used for different interventions, statistics on trial prevalence, and how the definition of gene therapy has varied over time. This issue was politicised during COVID where incorrect claims about the implications of the vaccine being arguably a gene therapy were made, resulting in reactionary responses by fact checkers extending to attempting to deplatform podcasters and remove politicians.
  • Patient abuse (Discussed history in the UK, institutional contract, boundary violations)
  • Duty to protect Legal duty the healthcare workers can use to violate patient confidentiality
  • CONTEST UK ideological extremism reporting process (has a lot of overlaps with norms from medicine
  • Chemical restraint
  • Patient abuse
  • Controversies about psychiatry

Pages which I have made a smaller contribution to

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Project: Society and law

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Pages created by me

Pages I have a smaller contribution to

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  • Fixed penalty notice; A defacto extrajudicial scheme used during COVID to influence behaviour without the means for legal oversight. While FPNs are in theory merely an offer for immunity the legalities surrounding FPNs are actively hidden from the public by bodies inclined to threaten and mislead individuals. Added a reasonable amount of material about COVID.
  • Feminist legal theory; A principle deployed by some judges when making decisions (including UK supreme court judges) that embeds some elements of feminist and intersectional theories within a legal context. Added information about application in the UK supreme court.
  • Justice; Added material on psychological- and agency-based models of justice

Project: Agency, ideology and the self

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An individuals ability to act in the world, epre Pages created:

Smaller contribution

Project small groups

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Values, interactions in small groups.

Task list

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  • More information about patient empowerment
  • More medical sociology authors
  • More medical sociology high-level content
  • Something on various theories of justice

Notes about wikipedia

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Wikipedia:Categorization

  • Categories should be defining apparently - but most pages have multiple categories
  • To add a subcategory mark a category with the category of its parent. (identification of membership with subset)
  • Lede is a dliberate misspelling of lead for editors to unambiguously communicate with printers.

Philosophical musing on Wikipedia

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Rhetorical strategies on wikipeda

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The wikilawyer gallop:

An attempt to get someone to stop by quoting all the policies at them, whether they apply or not, insulting their intelligence, their writing style, calling their views and sources fringe and then repeatedly changing the policy you talk about they stop.

Thoughts on this: What do you want to do here. Any editor on wikipedia can block a change until you have enough people around to get get consensus. One approach is to reduce your attack surface. Trying to make a smaller change, try to argue for a certain topic being included, don't take the bate, practice assertive defense while avoiding attack.

What is wikipedia for?

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What exactly is Wikipedia for? And why write articles on Wikipedia?

I am struck by how when writing wikipedia most of my activity consists of illegally reading textbooks and papers and then summarizing the content. Would wikipedia be better replaced by copyright infringement? Should people just read the sources I use to write wikipedia? What does wikipedia actually offer.

Here are some possible answers:

  • Sometimes the papers are hard to read. Professionals often summarize in a biased way. Wikipedia has a broader editorship, so can produce less biased summaries.
  • Wikipedia can be ahead of other summary sources in terms of looking at papers
  • Wikipedia can be cross discipline in a way that other publications produced by an author from one field cannot
  • Wikipedia can index material in a cross disciplie manner.

Part of my reason for writing wikipedia are selfish. Writing and editing on a topic is a good way to learn about a topic.

I have a complicated relationship with advocacy. I think a lot of the stuff about advocacy is made up - people who write on wikipedia are often advocating for a position implicitly. The question is whether this advocacy leads people to violate readability, accuracy, etc. I must admit I often start looking at a topic for "advocacyish" reasons, but stay for intellectual curiosity and editing. I also think it is reasonable to ensure that contentious issues are well-cited rather than merely "reflecting consensus".

Influence, legitimacy, and disagreement

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An aim of wikipedia is to be seen as legitimate. This means readers will trust what is written on wikipedia. This is useful because you want people to read and trust you writing.

There are various ways to create legitimacy. One is to actually *be* legitimate, and perhaps demonstrate this. That is, things on wikipedia should be likely to true and balanced. Another way is to create a process that is likely to create these things.

One way of having this process is having people who disagree with you around. This is slightly perverse, since people who disagree with you are the people who are most likely to make edits that you disagree with, or change your edits in ways that you disagree with. But this disagreement creates legitimacy which is what you want - if you to have influence.

You trade off being able to say what you want, with being able to say a modified (and hopefully truer) version of what you want to a larger audience by virtue of legitimacy.

Wikipedia democraticizing truth

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I would argue that wikipedia is part and individual that give individuals the ability to shape what other people understand as true. Such a viewpoint would seem at odds with the seeming objectivity of Wikipedia:DUE and Wikipedia:Verifiability. It's not about truth! It's about veriability and due weight! We are trying to represent the mainstream.

To which I reply, kinda sorta. Wikipedia democratizes the ability to define what is true subject to the theory actually being true. The "truth" that people are normally met with is a filtered and simplified truth, it is often out of date, simplified in such a way that accentuates the power, interest and agency of one group over another, that hides important details, that lines up with a professions "common sense", and that implicitly supports moral judgment and practical reasons. The truth that wikipedia provides is of a slightly better nature. That is, it is understanding of actual researchers in a topic, in different fields, viewed from many sides.

In a way wikipedia can be seen as stripping away the sociological and moral influence that can be applied to knowledge through professional education, by democraticizing and replacing the text book. Influence cannot be applied to wikipedia in the same that it can be by the author of a textbook (and by a body *through* the author of a textbook).

But why would the influence of "wikipedians" be less biased or self-serving that that of the author of a book. Here I would argue that ability to enforce neutrality or correctness is important. An editor cannot necessarily *enforce* their own tone or spin, but they can very much remove or contextualize someone elses. So wikipedia democratizes through by giving individual the ability to correct text and make it less biased.

A strange form of democratization to be sure, where your only act is to find justified critique and update it in line with the best literature. But then, why would you want to do anything else? You can't magically change the truth of the world to be what you want it to be. You can't make someone's argument less true by pushing it away, you have to understand it, critique it where it can be critiqued and see how you can act within someone else's truth. There is of course a problem where research will not provide you with the details you need to correctly understand a topic, and I guess the only solution to this is to become a researcher, or have ome influence over what researchers do. Probaly a sacrifice you are not willing to make.

Does this framing put me at odds with wikipedia's policies. Well firstly I would argue it is not my responsibility to do precisely what wikipedia wants me to do, rather I should act within the bounds of what is not detrimental to wikipedia. And what I have layed out here might be described as "what I am interested in my someone else". Amongst many wikipedians I do detect a certain overconfidence and alignment with the mainstream.

To parody their position, they would say that we are not experts and it is wikipedia's job to find the best sourcs and to summarize them to be consistent with mainstream thought on a topic.I would argue that in practice these goals are contradictory since the best sources with tend to *conflict* with mainstream thought because research moves faster than education and practice, and because professional and education bodies engae in a process of misrepresenting knowledge to align with their morality, understanding of the world, individual, and professional interests. In truth, most wikipedians are not trying to summarize mainstream understandings of a topic, they are implicitly undermining through finding the best sources and actively summarizing them.

The Wikiphone

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Wikipedia gives its editors a large megaphone. It's difficult to not be aware of this. For all the people talk about wikipedia being an unreliable source for a number of readers on a number of topics wikipedia is fact (and this includes academics - though they are at times more studious about checkign their sources). Now of course, there are some wikipedia's who are completely unaware of this; who view the acts of creating wikipedia as similar to creating a work of art - that needn't be seen by anyone to be of values; and others might view this audience as more of a means to an end than something that should concern them: wikipedia is a collaborative project and it needs fundering and collobarators hence requires reach. But I am unconvinced, I think reach is large factor in many people's choice to be editors - and on a personal reach my one.

This reach comes with odd trade offs. Given that the wikipedia entry on a topic, is in many ways more influential than the front page of some newspapers, it is strange to imagine the situation that you could log into the New York Time website and alter the min page, and yet you can do that. How can this possible work. It works because the use of this megaphone comes with massive constraints. Have the words you write be considered authoritative and have a huge reach... in exchange for only being able to "speak" by quoting sources accurately and having large numbers of people be able to disagree with you and change your work if you are wrong. This in many ways is similar to the reach and legitimacy provided to professions, but the constraints of professional obligation are to some degree created through process rather than professional qualification. (Though it would be foolish to argue that reputation and the associated potential for bias in process doesn't exist on Wikipedia)

In this regard I would say that Wikipedia is an institution of sorts.

Big consensus

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I think the concept of "scientific consensus" is a fallacy and a damaging one at that. This is not to say that the concept of consensus is not salvageable about the concept of consensus and it is not at times of value, but applied too broadly it becomes damaging.

Let's start with what annoys me. The tendency of editors and scientists and doctors and healthcare professionals to cling to this idea of what "should be true" and conflate it with what is true and filter content based on their own artificial idea of a consensus that does not exist. An imaginary consensus of what "science says" based more on biased, trust and respect than it is on fact. This is big consensus. Science is not monolithic and the consensus that exist are small, partly hidden and carefully fought. What's more these consensus will often conflict with big consensus, because big consensus is big visible and maintained by social processes.

The processes of wikipedia

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The process of wikipedia is what happens on wikipedia, and probably too complicated to fully understand, but let's talk about a few of the processes that turn up whe writing an article.

Material dumping

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Early in writing an article may mostly follow a single source because you are getting the material down.

A second coat of paint

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Going through with a second source and adding context to the first source.

Painting all of wikipedia

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Sometimes when you look at a source you find information that can be put in multiple articles as a form of serendipity. This is perhaps something that only wikipedia can collect

Sentence weeds

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A particular claim can start "growing weeds" as the best sources both for the claim, and for providing context are found. this is more likely on contentious topics. But lots of topics are contentious for people. This can both provide great value, because overlooked and important distinctions are found, but also involve a lot of work without generating much content.

What wikipedia is

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Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, and that is all... apart from it's now also other things.

The global discourse community.

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How do groups of people decide how you should think about things and what is important. Through lots of ways, but one of the ways is theory discourse communities. Papers that people cite, ideas that spread around.

But these communities and distinct, and forever changing, and each article a separate piece. Wikipedia combines and indexes these discourse communities and join them up.

An index of literature in sentence form

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You can think of a wikipedia article as referencing a variety of literature. Indexing all the information in the world is hard, so hard in fact that the index resembles an encylopedia

Truth court

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A standard for assessing what is true that is more democratic than academic published. Democracy does not generate truth, but the lack of democracy can very much *obscure and hide* the truth. Wikipedia acts as an antedote to this by providing a means whereby those who are motivated, and *follow a set of rules* can update the record of what is true. A democratic process can not decide what is true, but it can help highlight and correct what is not true.

This is very much "advocacy-like" in nature. But the ideas is that if the process of wikipedia are correct it can convert a number of motivations (interest, pedantry, ego, advocacy, boredom, loneliness) into easily accessible and well referenced truth.

A better referenced version of academic literature

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Academic referencing and linking often sucks wikipedia is better.

Neutrality and activism

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Activism can be damaging for wikipedia. It can produce misleading content that makes an article and wikipedia as a whole less correct. But those who have slighlty "activist" tendencies can also be more aware of inaccurate content, thus having people who care about a topic, and thing "conventional" understands are oversimplified (which they always are) can be useful. It can be slightly odd adding "neutrality" to things you write when you believe the activist interpretation is true, or adding nuance to existing text when you aren't that opposed to the narratives that underly the NPOV.

There are a few ways of doing this. You could be following the rules of wikipedia, making sure that others don't disagree with your text and revert things without trying to repair the text, you could be serving a narrative to truth and subtlety as more important than your particular opinion on any topic or theme, you could be making your material more believable by dint of being neutral and wikipedia as a whole being considered reliable.

I guess in my case I am sort of "serving the god of nuance" as the most important thing on any topic. Of course, this won't mean that my text will never contain bias (or should that be imprecise summarization). Though in practice I think more often than not my motivation is "ignore needless arguing if I don't really care about this".

When I'm picking an argument (implicitly) by editing other text which I agree with, it's more complicating. In this I suppose my motivation is more "lies always damage, and you never know which harm will be caused by the lie". I guess this a form of narrative agnosticism about where harm can come from. In my life, I have seen the peverse effects of "good intentioned" lies that play out on a large scale. On a smaller scale, perhaps some misleading simplification can stand, but as you increase the number of users, the amount of time that information is available etc, the more damaging imprecision becomes. So my opinion for wikipedia along the lines is "you think your narrative is valuable, but you'll never know this misleading fact feeds into someone else's narrative, better to keep the truth and adjust your narrative than the other way around".

Read/writing

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As I edit wikipedia, I seem to engage in a behavior called of simultaneously reading and writing. I read things with the mind of an editor looking for clarity, I write things as a reader would read (though in truth I think the "writing" has more influence than the reading).

It's an odd activity, am i have my reservations turning all your reading into an exercise of improvement, though such activities clearly result in better understanding of the topic being read, and engagement in the reading process - for me at least.

Wikipedia: A team sport?

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Some activities on wikipedia are a bit like hearding caveats. People do what they are interested in, there is no plan, no one has any obligations, there aren't necessarily continued working relationships with give and take and maintenance. On the other hand there are a lot of cats, and some of them might be interested in the same thing as you. But "given enough people, some will share interestests" is a slighlty odd basis for team work. This can give forums a slightly odd feel, with people offering advice about topics if they are interested.

Some activities are no doubt more groupish.

Too much work
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Editing all the things that need editing will be an infinite amount of work. this is okay if wikipedia is a pastime for you. I'm not sure it really is to me.

So what should you do? What should you edit?

This lines up with the question of what wikipedia is. And I guess for me personally it is this:

A democratization of the process of the determination of truth and relevance so that the things you consider important can be more true. To be clear, you are not democraticizing truth exactly, but one is democratizing the detail and legitimacy with which facts are raised. Of course there are limits, which is what makes this complicated - the price of the wikiphone. Articles are balanced, made more legitimate by this balance, address the topic as a whole.

So to me the answer is write what you think needs more legimacy or detail.

What is wikipedia for?

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  • Writing on wikipedia is influential
  • wikipedia pages promiss to be "authoritative" in the sense that they are open to criticism, edit etc
  • A topic is put in it's place.

To what degree does wikipedia support lies and half-truths of power structures?

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This is a complicated question and one that to some degree starts rqeuiring sociological understandings. So let's add a little. I think that "power structures exist" that is social processes, and organizaitons that function to perpetuate themselves. Sometimes this is done knowingly and enshrined in institutions, sometimes there are no formal institutions and sometimes those who are maintaining power structures do not fully consciously know that they are doing it.

Where I might differ from more "conventional" understandings of power structures are in a few ways:

  • I think the power structures are sometimes legitimate or provide a service. I guess this might be a functional perspective. To some degree I think power structures buy their power through being seen as useful
  • I think a lot of these structures are quite "weak" and might almost view them more as schemas that are used to understand. I view these schemas as at being over and under applied or fighting with one another
  • I don't believe in a single overarching power structure... or at least to the degree that it exists, I think that it is a weak power structure and is often overshadowed by more direct forms of group self interest.

Does wikipedia support these power structures then. Kind of, sort of.

On the one hand, much of wikipedia has a respect for process and the truth, and much of the scientific community has the same respect, and so through diligent and careful application of the rules you can make the truth clearer which undermines these power structures. On the other, as you start to "zoom out" from the facts, people's biases come into play. It is also *harder* to follow the rules if you are trying to say something that runs counter to overarching narratives or schema.

The way I sort of view things is that at a "zoomed in" level you have facts, but the more you zoom out the more "subject to interpretation" annd "socially constructured" things become. Editors will apply this narrative understanding as a heuristic to decide what edits, topics and editors to pay attention to, and so if you are saying something controversial or applying scrutiny to something controversial you are more likely to hit against the rules. There is an unfortunate process in wikipedia where inexperienced editors are essential "hen-pecked" with rules until the either give up or explode and get thrown out and in many ways *this* is how wikipedia supports power structures. If you express something controversial the rules will be applied more aggressively towards you, and you will explode and leave or give up.

Or... you might do neither and somehow find a way to stick around, learn the rules, learn the processes and make valuable contributions. Because although these processes exists wikipedia has some saving graces: a support for quite robust discussion, a desire to help people and a respect for the truth embodied by proxy through sourcing standards.

The ethics of influencing user behaviour for harm reduction

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See also: Moral foundations theory and Online Safety Bill

This is in the context of Suicide methods.

The argument for "nudging" behaviour is one of "you are manipulating people whatever you do". The counter arguments are to what degree this influences other ethics you have, and whether such nudging is in some ways damaging to your or wikipedia - a kind of virtue ethics argument. Perhaps it is better to be willfully blind to the effects of your actions to maintain your ethics.

I have real issues with this sort of manipulation when you start hiding information, especially important information, but also when you start making contentious issues about what is and isn't importaant. I guess this is analogous to Informed consent, but pehaps broader.

The real issue I have with some medics mental health interactions is the assumption that they are going to help all of the time, so it is acceptable to reduce and remove choice and informed consent about endering into interactions with health services. I suppose this is sort of analogous to informed consent but prior to treatment. But I sort of view it more as a blind faith in your own organizations benevolence - one which I don't think is always merited. Medics are not solely motivated by the wellbeing of their patients and even if they were... is it there place to judge whether they are. I acknowledge there are problems with the concept of informed consent before someone has even started talking to you... but I think when you start hiding material and funneling people into seeking treatment this does apply.

I guess the complicated question is do I actually ever think it is better for someone to die by suicide rather than attempting to interact with mental health services... and that is a hard one. I know for certain that the medical system can cause harm, and I know that there are alternatives, professional groups, friendship groups, family, churches, philosophy, books, videos, self-help. I am also aware of a general move towards the medicalization of suffering and viewing the solution as belonging to the medical community... and I don't always think this is a good thing. There are things that a community can give you that a doctor never will and the medicalization (and individualization that can come along with it) can strip the community from the individual and perhaps the value of the individuals personal suffering from the community. The community does not seem the harm it causes, and the failures of never necessarily repaired because the medic may apologise for the community.

This is the complexity you summon when you start to think about engaging in manipulation, particularly when allied with these large and amorphous social entities like the medical community. And... in a sense wikipedia's ethical task is more complicated that that of medical ethics... since we are handling the trade of between different systems and values of norms and ethics; the trade off between medicine, the church, the community, the individual and the humanities. The arguments of free speech are that this is so complicated that you do not pick a side, but rather allow for freedom of thought and speech. Wikipedia is not at all a forum for free speech (perhaps the biggest argument against online harm arguments)... but wikipedia does report on processes that allow free speech and report somewhat impartially what these processes decide is important.

Rules as aspiration, rather than strictly following

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See also: Principlism and Precedent

In law there is a saying that judges interpret rather than create law. This is completely untrue in the united kingdom the entirity of personal injury and tort is a modern creation from the last century built by judges. What *is* true is that judges try quite hard to create as a little law as possible.

I think the same goes for some of wikipedia's policies.

Take this from WP:V

Its content is determined by previously published information rather than editors' beliefs, opinions, or experiences.

Is this actually true? How does wikipedia decide that an old source has been overwritten. How does wikipedia select sources? Even if there is a process to deciding this there is a lot of interpretation. In the easy cases, it is easy. Don't directly contradict an entire body of literature. In the hard cases things are murky and what becomes true is that wikipedia pays strong attention to the literature.

I'm reminded of The UK prorogation legal case where an overactive prime ministe in the face of disagreement about the details of leaving the EU sought to force parliaments hand by preventing discussion. In this case the supreme court was presented with an important, decision that did not necessarily fit neatly into the laws. And so we find the court citing cases from 1611 in some attempt to obtain some legitimacy for its decisions.

Some thoughts on wikilawyering

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Main page: Wikipedia:Wikilawyering

Wikilawyering, which I would define as somewhat pedantic, somewhat antagonistic, highly procedural discussions on articles, can be quite tiring, best avoided needlessly, but is fundamentally necessary.

The necessity of wikilawyering

  • Drive off poor-quality additions, and editors mking poor-quality additions
  • The conflict can drive the attention to detail necessarily to ensure good soruceing and due balance
  • A highly technical bridge allowing the transformation of conflict and disagreement into an articl
    How to avoid unnecessary wikilawyering.

Unfortunately this effectively acts as a guide to civil pov pushing

  • Having a positive reputation; this can be achieved by paying attention to the rules of wikipedia, showing you understand the principles, making good additions in the area of the article.
  • In controversial areas, making you changes and argument about them, specific, clear, well sourced, free from original thought.

The benefits moving beyond wikilawyering or antiwikilawyering

The problem with wikilawyering discussion is that they can be pointlessly timeconsuming. The problem with antiwikilawyering is that it can be a a little boring...

It is nice to apply your whole brain to the task of writing a wikipedia article to be clear sourcing, rule following and accuracy is one part of this but it's not all. The "dark arts" of original research and "editorializing" synthesis and linking can at times, identify questions that can then be addressed with careful application of the rules. The discussions that follow from a broader and trusting interaction can be more fun, generally make wikipedia a better place.

There are various ways of avoiding the constraints. Have a good reputation with your fellow editors on a page through positive interactionl. Edit in less controversial areas. Mostly edit alone!

A guide to wikipedia for the non-librarian

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I think I was a moderately "scholarly" person before starting to edit wikipedia extensively. I did well in school, read books, had interact a bit with literature, had a university degree, had lots of conversations about academic topics, wrote essays to myself, wrote note on books. And yet, I think it's accurate to say I didn't *get* wikipedia initially. Perhaps this is not quite getting scholarship.

I think the issue was quite a blurry relationship between other ideas an my own. To be clear, this is not a bad thing. The act of automatically building theories synthesizing everything you know is a pretty useful trait to have at times, it's what people often want out of writing, and it's pretty good for being useful - and you can often "revert" to the fact / expert form that wikipedia takes. In addition it has a form of honesty to it, if everything you think and understand is your opinion based on analysis.. .well it's your opinion based on analysis. Just you, just true or false, good or bad reasoning for people to follow and critique. A failure mode of the scholarly mindset is that you can push around sources to get the conclusion you like and the "reliability" of sources provides less protection than thought. I'm sure I should mention conspiracy theories here - but a least your conspiracy theories will be *unique* if derived from original research.

But none of this is wikipedia. The rule of wikipedia is basically that every sentence and thought and idea not matter how simple must come from someone else and be written down. Now... you'd think this would make things highly uncreative and there is an element of truth to this, but there is some virtue as well. The entirity of wikipedia is linked to a discourse community where every idea can be checked and criticized and alternatives found.

Additionally, you creativity doesn't cease to exist when creating wikipedia, rather your creativity results in you thinking of ideas that you search for, find in literature and contextualize... and if there is no literature... well you have actually found the coal face of original research.

Dumping ground

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Summary of Ssasz myth of mental illness

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Szasz looks at the historic diagnosis of hysteria and argues that this was a form of suffering rather than a mental illness and through this lens proceeds to criticize much of mental health.

He argues that the psychiatric and psychological professions gain status by defining non-illnesses as illnesses. He draws a distinction between disorders than can be identified through some physical of mechanical process and those that are forms of suffering. Ssasz redefines psychiatry as the study of symbols and their meanings.

Ssasz looks at the social setting of psychiatry contrasting a collective view of the medicine, where the physician represents the state and an another where the clinicians is an agent of the patient. He notes that within the psychiatric relationship both parties have some control over one another, the psychiatrist to commit the patient, the patient to sue the doctor. He argues that mental health can be used as a form of social control, but notes that one must distinguish between the act of curing the sick and the act of controlling the deviant.

Ssasz discusses communications through the language of object relations theory. He argues that one of the reasons for language, particular in infants to constructions of "objects", things in world that satisfy a need.

Szasz argues that it does not make sense to classify psychological problems as diseases or illnesses, and that speaking of "mental illness" involves a logical or conceptual error.[1] In his view, the term "mental illness" is an inappropriate metaphor and there are no true illnesses of the mind.[2] His position has been characterized as involving a rigid distinction between the physical and the mental.[1]5


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