Lukeno94 wrote:I'm still curious to know why you returned from a four year break to jump into the Rupert Sheldrake debate, and why you didn't do anything else bar argue about it.
My impression of that was that it wasn't so much a "break," he just already had the account from his earlier foray (to create an article on "AL 0 1 2") and figured it would look better to use that than to create a whole new account. Established Wikipedians (such as yourself?) would see this as a "break" because they've been inculcated into the belief that everyone takes the whole thing really seriously.
Even so, the original version's paragraph on this was not only scant, but completely inaccurate - and brazenly so, because it even linked to the actual material it refers to. Also, note that Robert McLuhan is not currently the subject of a Wikipedia BLP article, thereby eliminating him as a target for Wikipedians and leaving Sheldrake as the only option for WP-based revenge-seekers.
Rupert mentioned this [Guerrilla Skeptics] as a brief note in his newsletter, implying his concern along with Robert's and requesting anyone with Wikipedia experience to reach out to Robert if they wanted to help.
When in fact the actual material reads thusly (emphasis mine):
Robert McLuhan has recently drawn attention to the phenomenon of guerrilla skeptics, who devote a great deal of time and energy to modifying Wikipedia entries so that they reflect a skeptical point of view about psychic phenomena, and
try to portray research on these subjects as pseudoscience. His blog on the subject is here:
Guerrilla Skeptics
Some people regard Wikipedia as a lost cause, but Robert thinks it’s important to do something about it,
and I agree with him. If you have some experience in editing Wikipedia, know something about parapsychology and would like to help Robert
and me with this project, please let
me know.
My email address is below.
As you can see, he doesn't "imply" his concern, he states it outright, and more importantly, he directs people to contact
him, not McLuhan. (He also wants people who "know something about parapsychology" in addition to having experience with Wikipedia, but I'll let that one slide.)
It may be that Mr. Viharo was the most enthusiastic of those responding to this query, or it may be that he didn't respond at all. Mr. Viharo claims to have met Mr. Sheldrake "once," about a year ago, and liked him - but also claims not to know much about his beliefs, much less actually share those beliefs. Personally, I could probably accept that he just decided, for no particular reason other than his casual familiarity with (and liking of) Sheldrake, to take a close(r) look at the situation - and having seen what the WP'ers were doing, became convinced that action had to be taken and that he was the one who should take that action. However, I suspect I'm in a small minority on that one, even among people here.
Another thing that strikes me, having written all this, is that Mr. Viharo may be feeling a bit guilty right about now for having misrepresented himself to Sheldrake as someone with "Wikipedia experience" - he had an existing account that had been active at one point, but that's obviously not the same thing. What Sheldrake needed was a Wikipedia
expert, someone who understood how to navigate the minefields and, more importantly, actually defuse the mines. Mr. Viharo apparently didn't even know the minefields existed, and maybe even thought the whole thing was going to somehow be "easy."
