User:Petrus4
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I once read Wikipedia being described on Slashdot as a place where "bloggers who are too lazy to have a blog go to mouth off," and I suspect that, to be honest, I would fall into that category myself. I do actually have a blog, but the thing about having a blog is that you then have to do a lot of work to promote it in order to ensure that anybody will read it, and even then it's not certain that they will. Wikipedia is very convenient from the point of view that it already has a large established readership, hence, my opinions are infinitely more likely to get read here than they would anywhere else. ;-)
It's still no guarantee, however. I've written fairly large edits of the article about the TV character Angel before, and most of what I put there is gone now. I didn't think I'd been too biased, but apparently someone else thought I was "rambling." I also almost entirely rewrote the article on Steven Hassan, (who I've always been a big fan of, by the way - Go Steve ;)) but that got reverted too. I tend to find that my reverts last longest when they are made to fringe articles which the "powers that be" here generally do not care about, or that do not rail against Wikipedia's pseudo-empiricist bias in any meaningful way.
Not that I'm exclusively complaining, mind you...I wrote the original version of the Profile section in the Abduction Phenomenon article, (UFOlogy is something I know quite a lot about, all false modesty aside) and not only has that been largely kept, it's been expanded on as well. I made a minor edit to Tony Robbins' article (someone else who I think is pretty cool) as well, and it's still there.
One of the things which makes writing here a bit tricky is that you're only meant to list facts, and not interpretations. (That's the rule, but a lot of people still do it anyway unfortunately) Although I guess what that means is that I can put my interpretations of certain things here.
I think Wikipedia is a great idea in theory, but in practice it's less even. I don't actually really like the fact that it seems to have become more controlled over the past little while, as well; part of me wonders if I'd have an account with as much access as I've got now if I'd made it more recently. I also think it would have been more realistic and honest if instead of trying (and failing, much of the time) for the NPOV policy, they'd simply listed a disclaimer that a lot of the material here was likely to be subjective opinion, since in trying to claim authority, it means someone is likely to mistake opinion as fact in circumstances where material has been allowed in that *is* biased and non-factual. (It does happen...frequently actually) The other problem with trying to be authoritative is that one of the criteria for accepted info here is that it only be stuff which is accepted by the mainstream scientific establishment, and as I've been learning recently, there's a heck of a lot that some people know that mainstream science either isn't aware of, or won't accept. Hence, it means the skeptics rule the roost.
Anywayz, here's a list of stuff/people I'm interested in. (and hence topic pages where you're likely to see my edits)
- Psytrance/Organic/semi-indigenous Ambient music. (Such as Shpongle, This Morn' Omina, Etnica, Infected Mushroom, PPK, Alien Ambient Galaxy)
- Alternative/"Free" energy - This article is fairly horribly dismissive/perjoritive IMHO, so I am planning on editing it at some point. Although in all honesty, most of the stuff I'm interested in isn't actually free energy at all, or I don't define it as such anywayz. I think when people try and wrongly call it that, it can discredit things which aren't actually unscientific.
- David Wilcock and the associated philosophy.
- Astrology - Considering Wikipedia's emphasis on info from the "right" sources, this article actually isn't too bad.
- Terraforming/Habitat generation/Environmental reclamation. I find pages like this and this to be of a rather exceptional level of interest, and would like to see these types of technologies deployed on a large-scale basis, since I think they could go part of the way towards reducing our environmental problems.
- Mind control and (in Steven Hassan's terminology) "destructive cults." (primarily Amway/Quixtar and Scientology)
- George W. Bush and his ongoing attempts to convert the American Republic into a Facist dictatorship. (Before you call me a moron on my talk page, go and read these two articles, and then come back and tell me with a straight face that that isn't what he's trying to do)
- UFOs, Extraterrestrials (such as the Reticulans) and UFO propulsion systems.
- My resident web site!
