Wikipedia talk:What FRINGE is not

Great conclusion needs better lead in

Noticed this and a few comments. To start with the good news, the conclusion "Where WP:FRINGE is abused" is excellent and only needs a bit of expansion. The arguments coming to that conclusion are rather week, unfortunately.

• Lead: What issues are "unrelated to scholarship and science". Academics and scientists study almost everything (for example even psychiatrists have studied reincarnation through past-life regression). And there are all sorts of things they use science to try to debunk, from reincarnation to astrology to Scientology. So it's a bit confusing.
• "Politics and opinion" - Unfortunately, political science (like economic science and social science and gender science, etc) all are subsumed under the above.
• "If research has not been conducted on the subject, differences of opinion cannot be labeled fringe." Way too broad a statement. No one has conducted research on the relation between thunderstorms and politicians raping interns, but I'm sure if a group of people came up with such a theory it would be labeled "fringe" pretty dang quick. And then there is whole issue of conspiracy theories, proven, possible, not likely, politically tainted and just plain crazy. We could have fun with examples there, just listening to the news regarding current wars in Syria, Ukraine and Israel/Palestine.

I'll think about how better to put it all and report another day... Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 18:58, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Absolutely and my focus was more on specific topics rather than broad topics. Media bias, for example, may have scientific scholarship. However, Fox News lying about issue X wouldn't have scientific scholarship and Fox's views on X couldn't be called fringe unless X had scientific scholarship.--v/r - TP 19:16, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Prior discussions on scope of FRINGE

Here are some links to prior talk pages on the scope:

• Wikipedia_talk:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard/Archive_1#Project_crossovers.2C_or_not – early discussion. Reading between the lines, it looks like the scope had included politics.
• Wikipedia_talk:Fringe_theories/Archive_5#proposed_new_section_-_guideline_for_fringe_article_structure – 2008
• Wikipedia_talk:Fringe_theories/Archive_4#request_for_new_section_in_the_article – 2008
• Wikipedia_talk:Fringe_theories/Archive_11#Scope_of_this_guideline – 2008
• Wikipedia_talk:Fringe_theories/Archive_9#Fringe_is_about_disproportionate_importance – 2008
• Wikipedia_talk:Fringe_theories/Archive_13#Clarification_needed_for_political_views – 2010

• Wikipedia_talk:Fringe_theories/Archive_18#RfC_on_the_scope_of_WP:FRINGE – 2012 RFC asking "broad or narrow". Closed without consensus.

– S. Rich (talk) 19:53, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

My mind boggles. But I do hate to think that a revolutionary process like Wikipedia is dominated by individuals who think the least trespass outside the various orthodoxies of the day is "fringe." Sigh... Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 05:08, 25 July 2014 (UTC)