This is my first post on Skeptico, so hello everybody.
A bit over a year ago, I got involved in Rome's battle on RationalWiki. Why? Not because Rome is any more deserving of support than any of the other people who (and ideas which) are misrepresented on that platform, but because I know him personally as a friend, and because he had chosen to fight the misrepresentation. I didn't want to see him fight alone. I made it clear that I know Rome in my first edit to his article's talk page (now archived) under the heading "An argument for deletion", but which I can't link to because this is my first post. I had no expectation of a positive outcome other than showing that Rome was not alone, and validating his position (and I take Craig's point about Rome's mission being akin to being entertained by one's abuser - and yes, I'm deliberately choosing to adjust the specific words of Craig's analogy given their controversy).
Eventually, I recognised that whilst my efforts had garnered a little support (e.g. Kels seemed to come around), generally, my points were being ignored, so I chose to stop participating in recognition of the futility of it all. I had not provided an email address, so I had no means of being informed when the article and/or its talk page were updated. I only discovered that things had gotten active again a few days ago or I would have (re)involved myself in the (now lost) vote for deletion.
So, I have been in the position that FuzzyCatPotato is in now, except in reverse. That said, I'd like to respond to this:
Please bring up specific problems [with the article on Rome --Laird] on our talkpage.
FuzzyCatPotato, with respect, that's a pretty oblivious suggestion. Both Rome and I have already done that
in spades. The problems we have raised are simply not taken seriously. I'm not sure what, if anything, was deficient in my original argument for deletion (which I am as-yet unable to link to), and if there was something deficient in it, then nobody bothered to point it out
rationally. All I got in response was a bunch of pejoratives ("wikilawyering" and "wall o' text") and irrelevancies ("what makes Rome feel happy in his pants", "what makes Rome finally stop ranting and go away" and "your only edit on this wiki"). I would be interested to know if you can find anything wrong with it from a
rational perspective over a year later.
I even took the time to rewrite the article for fairness and balance (again, as a new poster I am unable to provide the link), even justifying my rewrite on the talk page (again, I would provide a link if I could), and even though nobody refuted that justification, and even though at least one long-time RW editor (again, Kels) supported it, my rewrite was nevertheless reverted.
So, your implication that not enough has been done to outline the specific problems with the article is more than a little... questionable.
To take just one "specific" point that I made in that argument for deletion:
How about Rome's TEDx talk with his friend, Maf? Could this in any way be considered to be crankish? Perhaps the most "crankish" possibility of this talk is that Rome is asserting that Google actually *is* conscious. But did he really make that assertion? In fact, he did not. Read what he actually said in that talk: "I look at this idea of Google Consciousness as really a snarky rebuttal to Daniel Dennett's idea [...] I didn't expect anybody to take the idea seriously". In other words, Rome didn't even take the idea seriously himself - he put it out there simply as a challenge to Daniel Dennett's model of consciousness, not as a serious idea in its own right. Yet, some serious people took it seriously - so, he and Maf discuss this a little further in the talk, and, in that light, Rome sums up in the talk with: "So we bring you the story of the meme 'Google Consciousness' so far, and, our conclusion: Google may be conscious. May be [shrugging non-committally; audience chuckles]". Nothing remotely crankish there, just an acknowledgement that some serious folk took seriously an idea that he didn't intend seriously himself.
Yet how is that talk
still represented in Rome's page on RW?
Admitting that he didn't know what consciousness is, Viharo cited philosopher Daniel Dennett's musings that consciousness involves parallel processes which compete... and concluded that since Google sorts and ranks competing websites, Google itself is conscious.
Obviously, this is a blatant misrepresentation. Even were Rome's tongue-in-cheek speculations misunderstood as serious, his "conclusion" was in any case not definitive, but "maybe", and the audience clearly recognised through their laughter that he was not serious.
The whole article even today, with your - very welcome - intercession, is still extremely misrepresentative, not solely in the blatant sense as above, but also through selective reporting and focus, including a focus on irrelevancies and trivialities. I hope that you can do more about this than you already have done.
Sincerely,
Laird
P.S. Bertha, I really love your "call it as it is" approach, I think you do a great job. And Craig, I appreciate and enjoyed your book, which I read some time back.
P.P.S. Anyone denying a "war of ideas" would do well to consider the implications of the "Guerilla" in "Guerilla Skeptics on Wikipedia".