Alright... I have a confession to make. I was wrong. About what, you ask? Oh, nothing about my political views... Don't worry. Those are spot on, as usual. No, I was wrong about Wikipedia's stance on sources. You know, the one where they say they only accept verifiable sources, which so happens to be published sources and not self-published sources such as blogs and forums. I just wanted to say that in an odd moment of "shoe on the other foot" (paw?), I realized that their way of treating information is the way I treat information.
Quick story: Had a comment on my Patriot Day post... From a radical liberal. He even spouted the leftist trash that President Bush is a war criminal. Wow. Didn't think I'd attract one of those folks.
(The comment in question, by the way, is currently in the moderation queue because the guy pretty much pasted other blog posts in an effort to prove the point of the first comment... In fact, all comments, for the time being, will be held in moderation, whether you've been previously approved or not. The reason for this is that, in a lapse of judgment, I left the comments open for my Patriot Day post hoping that someone would come along and share positive thoughts. Of course, this is the Internet... People who agree with you don't comment. (Except Jesthar did for the Patriot Day post, yay!) Only the people who have a problem with you will! Thus, until further notice, all comments are moderated as a sort of experiment... I'm trying to find a balance. I don't like having obnoxious comments sit there in the open while I formulate an idea of what to do with it. I'm still debating whether or not I should even respond to it, since it's pretty much just a rough copy/paste job from two other opinion blogs... It's really, really long and really, really boring and it doesn't have sources... Which leads me back to the original thought!)
Morton (the name provided by the fellow) splattered a bunch of liberal spew from other blogs on this comment of his... I took one look at it and choked on the cookie I was eating. Chocolate chip cookie, actually. Yum. Anyway! I started to read it... I did, I swear. I read every comment posted here, even if it doesn't make it to the public for one reason or another. I found the two links he had buried in the thing and I went to visit them, too. One was pretty much the blog of some self-professed journalist who went on and on and on about "common truths" that "wouldn't be colored by his opinion" regarding the Iraq War. It started off true enough... But quickly degenerated into paragraphs of things I'd never heard of before, things that couldn't be called anything short of a rumor, and things that were obviously colored by his opinion even after he said it wouldn't be. In short, it was a blog... Blogs make no bones about having bias. They have no editor... They have no third party out there to hold them to a sense of accountability. I read this post and the very first thing that came to mind, having been through an English Composition course in college, was: "Where are the sources for these so-called common truths?"
I said that to myself... Literally. And then skimmed over the rest of the article looking for sources that weren't there and then I checked out the second link which was also an opinion piece. It had sources, but not sources for the claims that would prove Morton's point. More liberal spew without anything to back it up. Which is sort of why I haven't even bothered to post it... They're not even his ideas. He lifted them from other blog articles (from last year) and dumped them in my lap to read and sift through on my own. Not the way to get your point across... I can understand handing someone a link from a reliable source and telling them to read it, but handing someone a link to someone's opinion is NOT something I can understand. This is, in fact, what I mulled over in my head while I was taking a shower. (Which is how my phrase "Showertime Speculation" came into being.) I was thinking about how I would react to this post and then... It hit me. Morton (and the bloggers he linked to) considers these points to be "common truths" that don't need sources to verify the claims... The thing is, I'm someone who needs facts before I'll even consider changing my mind. Don't even try to convince me of something unless you have undeniable proof on your side or I won't change. If you've attended any seminar from the Institute in Basic Life Principles, you'll know what I mean when I say that I have the spiritual gift of Teaching... One of the perks of being a Teacher is that once you believe something, nothing will sway you unless you have comprehensive proof to the contrary. I won't take anyone's opinion as truth... I just won't. It's unacceptable to me.
And then I realized that's what I said was so insane about Wikipedia... They they don't accept "common truths" and that you need a verifiable source. They hold themselves to a strict standard so nobody's opinions get in the way... (Well, that's the theory. Mainstream media is considered a verifiable source and their opinions clearly get in the way of their reports, but that's another story entirely.) It's easy to think you're in the know of something important like Spore's DRM and to think that it's a perfectly fine thing to put in the article... But the fact is, someone else might not believe you and if you don't have hard evidence to back you up, then you're out of luck. Now... I still think Wikipedia has some problems with the sources thing. I mean, clearly Spore has nasty DRM and you can actually test it for yourself and find out it's true, so I still take issue with that. But the foundation behind my arguement was flawed... I made it too broad and I was wrong. For things that can't be tested on your own and for things that can't be witnessed on your own, you need verifiable sources to prove it... And that's what Morton neglected to provide, and that's what the other bloggers neglected to provide: Verifiable proof. It took someone trying to disprove me so I would go and look at the evidence they were providing to startle me out of one of my own beliefs. In all definitions of the phrase, the shoe was on the other foot!
So there you have it... It's incredibly difficult to sway my opinion on something, but it's not impossible. I'm not above fallibility, and if given the right information, I will change my mind on things. And just for the record, TW tried to defend the stance of Wikipedia earlier today... (Or yesterday now, I guess.) But I have to say that he wasn't presenting his idea very well, either, so I wasn't buying it. Which raises another point... If there's something that's true, but you can't relay that information in a strong way, then you might as well not know anything at all. Which is something worth thinking about for Christians especially, who are notorious for claiming all sorts of things about the Bible, but when they're questioned about it, don't know exactly how to answer for whatever reason... Even in that case, even if they know the truth, they may as well not know anything if they don't know how to tell people. I recall that in a sermon I heard some time ago... Or maybe from Peter Heck... Maybe both! I don't know...
In conclusion, I've retracted my opinion on Wikipedia's policy on verifiable sources, though I still think things that can be tested by any single person should have different rules... But for things that can't be witnessed in realtime, the policy is quite solid, because that's what I adhere to. After all this, I still haven't decided to post that comment or not... I recall having someone paste a bunch of jargon like this before and I held it back for the very same reasons. I don't think it's fair that I'm here, coming up with my own ideas and spending sometimes hours to come up with an intelligent post and response, and someone slithers in (most likely without any intention of returning) and deposits a bunch of unverifiable blog entries from other people, takes a shot at my character, and then slithers off again without any real discussion going on. I'll tell ya' what... This is my blog. I try to be fair, but sometimes I think people cross the line and I get fed up. I'm all for healthy discussion, but if you're not going to put any effort into what you write, then I'm not going to dignify it with a response or even let your comment grace my site. Like I said earlier, I don't like it that hateful comments are left floating out there without a response... It's not that I don't know how to answer it, it's because I either haven't had the time to research and think or because I don't think it's worth answering to begin with. I actually read and research and formulate my own opinions, thank you very much. I don't regurgitate some baseless opinion from another site across the Internet. Honestly, one of the articles Morton linked to me had a source to The Daily Kos... Seriously. The Daily Kos is probably the epitome of unverifiable, self-published diarrhea of the mouth. What a source to use to try to convince me, a conservative, that President Bush lied to us about the reasons for the war. If you're going to use a biased outlet, you'd be better off using Rush Limbaugh instead.
