Wikipediocracy

Did you know that Vice President Dick Cheney admitted that on 11 September 2001 he, as President George W. Bush’s brief stand-in during the 9/11 attacks that hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, issued an order (and it was carried out) to shoot down United Airlines Flight 93 while it was in the air near Pittsburgh? ... I edited the Wikipedia article by adding a sentence at the end of its opening paragraph.

He complains that he was immediately reverted.

Modern Diplomacy.

...which he should have been, because it's bullshit. But Ming notices that he doesn't give enough info to identify an edit.

Ming wrote:...which he should have been, because it's bullshit. But Ming notices that he doesn't give enough info to identify an edit.

Yes, he's a conspiracy nutcase. Thare are lots of them about, and of course sometimes they do manage to influence Wikipedia articles.

Ming wrote:...which he should have been, because it's bullshit. But Ming notices that he doesn't give enough info to identify an edit.

Eh? I had no trouble finding this.

Articles like that, where there are known crank/ideologue parties, are watched by various anti-fringe commissariats. It's really the only way to do things in WP's current social structure: the party that represents orthodoxy simply has to own the bejeezus out of the topic. That of course leads to what we've seen here a bunch of times, and to what causes fights over in medical articles. We had fights about Rupert Sheldrake and his partner-on-WP-in-crime Brian Josephson which basically came down to attack upon the whole notion of how science gets done; in medicine, it's more problematic due to the sate of the field (which is why it is easy to attack DocJames) but the real point isn't getting at the uncertainties of medicine: it's making room for the certain nonsense of old alt-quackery. It seems to put every WP criticism site into a bind: "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" lets these people in, so that on That Other Madhouse Ming sees TDA going on pushing what is plainly rot, but that's OK because he's attacking WP. It's hard for outsiders to take the worthwhile criticism seriously when it's surrounded by this.

Ming wrote:We had fights about Rupert Sheldrake and his partner-on-WP-in-crime Brian Josephson which basically came down to attack upon the whole notion of how science gets done

Brian Josephson (T-H-L) is of course a Nobel prizewinner. Maybe this is a good example of why even a very distinguished person should not be treated with due respect on Wikipedia?

I suspect Josephson gets more respect on Wikipedia than he does amongst his scientific colleagues.

Did anyone actually believe this?

MadManz wrote:Did anyone actually believe this?

Which thing?

I mean, it wouldn't take much to make me believe that Dick Cheney would have ordered fighter jets to shoot down Flight 93, in fact it wouldn't surprise me if he routinely got into a fit of pique and ordered fighter jets to shoot down lots of airliners for no reason at all, because that's pretty much what Dick Cheney is all about. But that's not quite what he was saying in the video, so it's also not surprising that the edit in question was reverted.

Aside from that, the question is too open-ended; obviously there are some people who believe it, because after all there are people who will believe anything, and this story is not even all that implausible given what we know about Dick Cheney.

Midsize Jake wrote:

MadManz wrote:Did anyone actually believe this?

Which thing?

I mean, it wouldn't take much to make me believe that Dick Cheney would have ordered fighter jets to shoot down Flight 93, in fact it wouldn't surprise me if he routinely got into a fit of pique and ordered fighter jets to shoot down lots of airliners for no reason at all, because that's pretty much what Dick Cheney is all about. But that's not quite what he was saying in the video, so it's also not surprising that the edit in question was reverted.

Aside from that, the question is too open-ended; obviously there are some people who believe it, because after all there are people who will believe anything, and this story is not even all that implausible given what we know about Dick Cheney.

Yeah, but the original post says he "admitted it". Now come on, "admission" is not indicated as a strong character trait here...

AndyTheGrump wrote:I suspect Josephson gets more respect on Wikipedia than he does amongst his scientific colleagues.

Is being blocked on Wikipedia really a greater honour than the many he has received from the scientific community?

Poetlister wrote:

AndyTheGrump wrote:I suspect Josephson gets more respect on Wikipedia than he does amongst his scientific colleagues.

Is being blocked on Wikipedia really a greater honour than the many he has received from the scientific community?

Tricky question. Is being blocked an honour?

Jim wrote:

Poetlister wrote:

AndyTheGrump wrote:I suspect Josephson gets more respect on Wikipedia than he does amongst his scientific colleagues.

Is being blocked on Wikipedia really a greater honour than the many he has received from the scientific community?

Tricky question. Is being blocked an honour?

Rather depends on what you were blocked for.

AndyTheGrump wrote:Rather depends on what you were blocked for.

Fair answer.

Back a decade ago Ming spent a great deal of time going over 9/11 conspiracy stuff, in order to take down a couple of nitwits who were clogging a couple of religious forums Ming was party to. Ming doesn't recall that this clip was in major circulation at the time, but it has all of the hallmarks of the thing, particularly the credulity-stretching notion that there would be this elaborate governmental conspiracy which the VP would just blurt out on TV.