Raw foodism wikipedia page

[TylerDurden]

I had more or less given up on the Raw Foodism Wikipedia page because of a desperate attempt by 1 or 2 anti-raw fanatics to ruin it a couple of years ago. There is nothing more irritating than to debate with people who pretend to be unbiased but who want to wreck a wikipedia page solely because they think the practice involved is somehow "dangerous". However, I had a look at it, and some of my own writings had been largely unchanged, which surprised me. There were some shockingly stupid and completely outrageous additions by anti-raw fanatics, which I have now removed. Here's an example thereof :-

" [[Steve Jones (biologist)|Professor Steve Jones]] asserted on a BBC TV programme, ''The Gene Code'', in April 2011 that the loss of enzymes during human evolution make a human being incapable of surviving on entirely raw food for more than three months."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_foodism

The point is that the Raw Foodism Wikipedia page seems only to be checked occasionally, with major changes only occurring once every year or two, and minor edits being, of course, more frequent. So, if just a handful of people on rawpaleoforum were to check the Raw Foodism Wikipedia page once a year each, at random, and add more useful data, every now and then, or delete the more ridiculous anti-raw rubbish, we could maintain it as a useful info-site. That said, people should, first, read up on the standard Wikipedia rules. The more one is familiar with the rules(and how to use them in one's favour) , the easier it is to defeat people in discussions. Sometimes, it's not remotely relevant whether one is 100 percent correct in terms of one's data, but far more important how one can justify its inclusion in Wikipedia.

[cherimoya_kid]

Your tirelessness is impressive, man. I'd have given up long ago.  The trolling and tremendous numbers of very ignorant people are pretty overwhelming to me.

The way I see it is, people find out, sooner or later, that even degreed, published, respected scientists can be very, very wrong, even on topics closely related to their field of expertise (like Wrangham).  It takes a few years (although being on the internet a lot speeds that up), but people do wake up to that.

Also, if someone really cares about a topic, they will do more than just basic research.  Serious inquiries into diet and health will eventually lead you to raw foodism, and serious inquiries into raw foodism will eventually lead you to this diet.  There's a ton of misinformation out there, but I think we're providing an excellent beacon of light, so to speak, with this forum and the rawpaleodiet.com website. 

I don't feel responsible for doing much more than that. I salute you, though. Your hard work is inspiring.

[CHK91]

What baffles me is that people love to bitch about politicians all the time saying they are untrustworthy (which they are), but give scientists a free pass thinking they are all people of integrity and can do no wrong so they are somehow immediately worthy of trust. Scientists should not be out to prove something in order to gain some fame/success, since it is a big no-no in science, but obviously this will not always happen.

I can't stand dumb smart people (who are smart in the institutional sense). The problem is that they think that they are smart enough to know what is best for everyone.

[raw-al]

Tyler,

I call it Wackipedia for the very reason you discuss, however a lot of people think or refer to it as if it is sacrosanct and accurate.

I think you can subscribe to the page/s, so if changes occur, you'll be notified. Also I've noticed that some pages are considered suspect and are locked or issued with warnings of the accuracy. The Wicki people basically close it to revisions pending a panel of people who supervise or act as moderators for the site. I have noticed this on some pages where there is a note that the content may not be reliable or it is temporarily unavailable.

The one example of problems that I recall was the one on doctor/medical system screwups otherwise known as iatrogenic disease being the third largest killer in the US in hospitals which makes it the largest if non-hospital deaths are taken into account.

The docs naturally didn't like the report that studied the US hospital system (because they looked so bad) and arrived at this number, so they went in and massaged it, removed stats and changed numbers (sometimes referred to as lying) to reflect their fear of losing their cherished position at the top of the medical hoax heap. 

They're also self-regulated and don't want to give up that little gem.

There was a fight obviously, so wicki must have stepped in because if you notice the numbers of deaths at the end of the 3rd paragraph, there is a statement that starts off saying 44,000 to 98,000 (by the tobacco institute er american docs, oh well same mentality) but some say as high as 581,926 deaths annually. This study was done in 2000 or 2001. The annual deaths in 2007 was 2,423,712 (CDC USA)

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2004/07/07/healthcare-death-part-one.aspx
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/medicine/usamed.htm

[raw-al]

Wicki has a stake in it's accuracy, because if it is considered suspect on a massive scale it will lose it's popularity/trust and thus it's relevance.

Just FYI, Wickipedia started off as an online venture with paid people setting it up like Encyclopeodia Brittanica etc., but after (I believe it was) a year, the owner realized it was going nowhere fast as they had bugger all entries, so at some point he said to heck with it, dumped his authors/researchers and opened it up to the public to fill in the blanks and the rest is history.

From Wickipedia also some more trivia;

A wiki (i /?w?ki/ WIK-ee) is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor.[1][2][3] Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include community websites, corporate intranets, knowledge management systems, and note services. The software can also be used for personal notetaking.
Wikis serve different purposes. Some permit control over different functions (levels of access). For example editing rights may permit changing, adding or removing material. Others may permit access without enforcing access control. Other rules can be imposed for organizing content.
Ward Cunningham, the developer of the first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as "the simplest online database that could possibly work."[4] "Wiki" (pronounced [?witi] or [?viti]) is a Hawaiian word for "fast".[5]"