User:Tisane/Strategies for effectively purveying minority and fringe opinions on Wikipedia

Many Wikipedians, myself included, are purveyors of minority, or even fringe opinions. I do not see this as a bad thing, since we fill an important (albeit sometimes underappreciated) role in the ecosystem of ideas, as potential early adopters or even innovators in the intellectual diffusion of innovations. As Murray Rothbard pointed out, a free future may depend on such people successfully overcoming institutional opposition:

“ The greatest danger to the State is independent intellectual criticism; there is no better way to stifle that criticism than to attack any isolated voice, any raiser of new doubts, as a profane violator of the wisdom of his ancestors. Another potent ideological force is to deprecate the individual and exalt the collectivity of society. For since any given rule implies majority acceptance, any ideological danger to that rule can only start from one or a few independently-thinking individuals. The new idea, much less the new critical idea, must needs begin as a small minority opinion; therefore, the State must nip the view in the bud by ridiculing any view that defies the opinions of the mass. "Listen only to your brothers" or "adjust to society" thus become ideological weapons for crushing individual dissent. By such measures, the masses will never learn of the nonexistence of their Emperor's clothes. ”

Wikipedia's rules, like those of the Commission on Presidential Debates requiring polls to show 10% public support for a third political party candidate before he can participate in the debates, can at times seem like a catch-22. A viewpoint will remain a minority viewpoint until it is publicized. But it is harder to get minority viewpoints publicized by institutions that favor giving majority viewpoints greater weight. With Wikipedia articles rising in the Google PageRank and becoming an ever more important source of information, the project's bias in this regard may seem disturbing.

The purveyor of fringe opinions may have a tougher time on Wikipedia than other editors. Decisions are made by rough consensus, and the rough consensus is almost by definition opposed to views held by a small minority. Before even proceeding further, you should make sure that there is at least enough coverage of your fringe viewpoint in reliable sources to ensure your article meets notability standards; if not, you are wasting your time because the content pertaining to the fringe opinion will eventually (and perhaps quickly) be removed from the encyclopedia. But, if you have sufficient reliable sources, then community consensus is not necessarily as much of a barrier as it may appear. It is simply necessary to get creative sometimes about how to purvey minority opinions without violating the rules pertaining to undue weight.

As a purveyor of minority opinions, you want to raise readers' awareness of certain ideas by editing the encyclopedia, or you wouldn't be here. Articles with a broad scope tend to get a lot of readership. Therefore, it often useful (from the purveyor's point of view) to include the minority opinion in those articles, or at least link those broadly-scoped articles to an article about the minority opinion. However, it is on these broadly-scoped articles that the most resistance to inclusion of significant discussion of minority opinions will be encountered. Other users are more concerned with safeguarding the encyclopedia against bias and, probably, safeguarding the time of the reader against unjustified intrusions from flawed viewpoints. (As Rothbard noted, there tends to be a presumption that a fringe viewpoint is fringe for a reason.) How to deal with this dilemma? WP:FRINGE points out:

“ Fringe theories should be mentioned in the text of other articles only if independent reliable sources connect the topics in a serious and prominent way. However, meeting this standard indicates only that the idea may be discussed in other articles, not that it must be discussed in a specific article. If mentioning a fringe theory in another article gives undue weight to the fringe theory, discussion of the fringe theory may be limited, or even omitted altogether. If no independent reliable sources connect a particular fringe theory to a mainstream subject, there should not even be a link through a see also section, lest the article serve as a coatrack. ”

In accordance with BRBRB, you can try including your minority viewpoint in a broadly-scoped article, and see if it sticks. But if you anticipate resistance, or if you get reverted, then it is better to retreat and just include a see also to an article on your viewpoint. If that gets reverted too, then you may need to retreat even further by including a see also to a broad article on minority viewpoints which includes a mention (or at least a see also) of your particular fringe viewpoint. See also Wikipedia:General overview article.

An example would be a situation that occurred with the child pornography article. I added a section on "Proposed legalization" (a decidedly fringe public policy proposal) that included a description of the anarcho-capitalist viewpoint on the subject. The content on those anarcho-capitalist views was trimmed to one sentence by another editor concerned about undue weight, so I changed it to a see also to libertarian perspectives on child pornography. But then the whole "Proposed legalization" section of the child pornography article was removed. So, I retreated still further and just put a link in the See also section of the child pornography article to criticism of child pornography laws. This article, in turn, includes a see also to libertarian perspectives on child pornography. So, in a very indirect way, the full content that was removed is still readily accessible to a reader of the main article on child pornography, but the editors concerned with undue weight have evidently been satisfied.

Sometimes this process works in reverse, in that users object to a fringe opinion having an article to itself, especially if they feel that the article will have no potential for growth (e.g. because it only receives a small amount of discussion in reliable sources). In this case, your retreat takes the form of moving the content into a more broadly-scoped article. This is not necessarily such a bad thing either, because as I say, the broadly-scoped articles get more traffic.

The important thing in this whole process is to keep a cool head and think through every action you take. Remember that you start out with other users being bound to assume good faith, but if you give them cause to believe otherwise, you'll be facing even more of an uphill battle. Don't edit war, and before posting a rant to a talk page about your content being removed, take a moment to read over the pertinent policy and guidelines, and try to back up your post with those rules. If you can't, then you're probably going to lose the argument. In that case, you should just retreat as described above. Don't give up the final ground, though, unless you lack the reliable sources to show that your minority viewpoint deserves a place on the encyclopedia.

See also

• Wikipedia:Main article fixation