Censorship at work

And by “vandalism” it means honest attempts to remove the fraudulent and discredited hockey stick graph. William Connolley, climate editor in chief at the ‘pedia (and coincidentally Green party activist), still up to his old tricks, and since Lawrence Solomon’s article earlier in the week (see here), the plot has thickened further, as Solomon reports again:

With the hockey stick graphs so thoroughly discredited, you’d think they would become a footnote to a discussion of the Medieval Warm Period, or an object of amusement and curiosity. But no, on the Wikipedia page for the Medieval Warm Period, the hockey stick graph appears prominently at the top, as if it is settled science.

Because the hockey stick graph has become an icon of deceit and in no way an authority worthy of being cited, fair-minded Wikipedians tried to remove the graph from the page, as can be seen here. Exactly two minutes later, one of Connelley’s associates replaced the graph, restoring the page to Connelley’s original version, as seen here.

Battles like this occurred on numerous fronts, until just after midnight on Dec 22, when Connolley reimposed his version of events and, for good measure, froze the page to prevent others from making changes — and to prevent the public, even in two-minute windows, from realizing that today’s temperatures look modest in comparison to those in the past. In the World of Wikipedia, seen as here, the hockey stick graph, and Connolley’s version of history, still rules. (source)

Let’s look at Wikipedia’s own definition of “vandalism” in respect of content:

Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia. Vandalism cannot and will not be tolerated. Common types of vandalism are the addition of obscenities or crude humor, page blanking, and the insertion of nonsense into articles.

Any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, even if misguided or ill-considered, is not vandalism. Even harmful edits that are not explicitly made in bad faith are not vandalism. For example, adding a controversial personal opinion to an article once is not vandalism; reinserting it despite multiple warnings is (however, edits/reverts over a content dispute are never vandalism, see WP:EW). (source)

And the following is listed as an example of what is not vandalism:

Repeated deletion or addition of material may violate the three-revert rule, but this is not “vandalism” and should not be dealt with as such.

So by labelling such attempts at editing “vandalism,” Connolley isn’t even complying with Wikipedia’s own editorial guidelines. But Connolley has the final say anyway, and has the power to disable editing of pages where such edits don’t fit with his personal views.

So the moral is: you still can’t trust Wikipedia on climate.