So when someone makes a video attacking Islam, he's called "far right" and it is the moderates who make his film illegal and ban him from their country (as the UK did to Geert Wilders). But when someone makes a facebook page attacking Orthodox Christians, he's a moderate and the people who want the facebook banned are called "far right".
Just trying to make sure I understand the definition of "far right".
Ok, now I'll make a somewhat snarky but also serious comment. You wrote, "i realize that your looking after your interests when you vote for the guy that cheats for you." Actually I haven't done that. Rush Limbaugh never ran for office and has never received a large number of conservative votes. Al Franken, on the other hand, who wrote they weighty political tomes "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot" is currently a Democratic senator.
I too would rather we have fair refs. My cable doesn't include CNN, but from what little I've seen Anderson Cooper seems decent enough. I can't speak for many of the others because I've mostly stopped watching. When I do catch some news show - whether the traditional big 3 or one of the all news networks, it just reminds me why I stopped watching. I do listen to NPR regularly on my way to and from work, but only because the other choices are so much worse (some right wing guys who have perfected the art of being permanently indignant and resentful).
I don't know if we've ever had a press that was unbiased and fair, but I think that is probably too much to ask. We can't expect them to completely abandon their judgment. But at least they should be working to make sure all sides of a debate have a reasonable hearing rather than trying to hide reasonable positions in order to make the other side seem like extremists. For example, on immigration, how about we hear more from the people who want to build a secure and permanent border (something that isn't just de-funded the following year) along the Mexican border and want to grant amnesty to all the illegal aliens? That is an idea that is largely ignored while NPR, Washintong Post et al. try to portray everyone as either intolerant racists or as being in favor of "comprehensive reform" (change the laws but it doesn't matter because there is no border). If you listen to them you'll hear no middle ground - which means we continue to have the problem.
What, What the left controls the media and the right has nowhere to speak. Except that then you talk about all the places where the right not only speaks, but allows no other points of view.
So the right gets Fox News and Talk Radio. The left has its media sources that are just as biased but they generally aren't as popular. Why? Because the left has so many other sources that, while they aren't completely one-side, lean very heavily to the left. I'm sure the most people on the right would gladly trade Fox News and talk radio for CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, and NPR.
The left wing controlled media you disparage in your first paragraph allows discussion from both sides. While it might lean to the center or center left it allows the debate from both sides to be heard.
Too often it only makes a show of doing so. For example, I regularly listen to NPR. A typical program might have 1 moderator (a liberal), one openly partisan commenter (from the left), one openly partisan commenter (from the right) and two reporters (liberals). And NPR is about as good as it gets.
Fox news and its ilk simply call all who disagree communist Unamerican traitors. We hear this lie from the right so often that people begin to believe it. The loudest most heard political talk comes from the far right. Please stop with the victim of the lame stream media act. It wears very thin. Poor poor right wing victims.
Oh please don't say "lame stream media". It is sooo annoying. It's just as annoying as "RMoney" and "I can see Russia from my house" (which Palin never said - that was one of those mainstream TV shows that you seem to think isn't very liberal). As for Fox News calling folks who disagree "Unamerican traitors", I'll have to take your word for it since I don't watch it. But I guess it's a bit like the rest of the news channels calling anyone who disagrees with them "racists".
The reason violent intolerance is so rare on the left is that they control the levers of power by controlling most of the media (both news and entertainment). When the left finds something that makes them extremely angry, they talk about it on their news shows and TV shows. They are able to laugh about it on late night talk shows and SNL. They control the debate to the point that even Republicans (who are, after all, politicians) feel they must give in.
Conservatives, on the other hand, are silenced. We don't see our views respected and heard. Instead we see "two-sided" debates in which the person supposedly representing our voice is apologizing for us and accusing us of being extremists. Or we read newspaper articles in which our side is misrepresented or ignored entirely.
That's why Rush Limbaugh and Fox News have become so popular. Sometimes you want to hear your views stated out loud in a forum where you know others can hear them so you feel like you have a voice in the debate. Even though Rush says so much I disagree with, and makes so little logical sense, I will always have gratitude for him because he was the first media personality I ever heard throwing arguments back at liberals. He wasn't logical, and he wasn't fair, but then neither was all the liberal trash I heard and saw on nightly news and TV shows. When your team is losing because the refs keep favoring the other side, you can't help but feel grateful when a ref enters the field who makes unfair calls in your favor. Sure you would rather have all the refs be fair, but since that isn't happening, you're at least glad to have one of the refs on your side.
one mutated birth isn't going to suddenly diffuse across an entire species.
It doesn't happen suddenly. That one mutation spreads through one family, who suddenly has the ability to survive without eating fish (substituting vegetables, instead). Over the next thousand years or so, that family (and the associated mutation) spread across the local region, and the knowledge of "it's okay to eat vegetables" spread with it. Since that group could wander further (carrying longer-lasting vegetables rather than fish), they spread farther than other groups, until they eventually became dominant.
How one random gene in one birth suddenly afflicts an entire population?
Just to be clear, it doesn't. The one random change will be in one family line, and only really become widespread if it allows the family to outgrow the rest of the population, or if the the rest of the population dies off.
Actually it does spread across the whole species and it doesn't rely on all other families dying out. That's one of the benefits of no longer using asexual reproduction. The one tribe doesn't have to become the only tribe, it just has to have some members leave and introduce the beneficial genes to other tribes who in turn have members leave and bring the genes to still more tribes.
"So, not sure why your mainstream press isn't covering this story?"
I think two of the primary reasons are Al Gore and Michael Moore. A losing presidential candidate and a filmaker famous for leftist hatchet jobs took the lead role in publicizing global warming. That made at least half the population of America immediately suspicious or simply unwilling to listen. Then the methods that were used - e.g. Al Gore famously declaring the debate over before most people had even started paying attention - just made things worse. The trend continues to this day when it seems that attempts at meaningful debate are shouted down usually by people claiming AGW is real.
In my personal experience I tried reading some AGW pages on Wikipedia because I wanted to learn more and get a better idea of whether AGW is real (it certainly seems plausible). I found a few minor mistakes that I attempted to correct. Instead of reasoned debate or explanations I mainly encountered vitriol and ridicule. Based on what I read, I would think AGW is definitely real, but based on the attitudes of the people editing the Wikipedia page I have to question whether the article I read is sufficiently unbiased to be useful.
There are a lot of people for whom, unfortunately, the decision has largely been made largely by prejudices based in politics - I'm pretty sure this applies to both sides. Al Gore and Michael Moore created that situation. However I'm sure there are a lot of people who are still open-minded but who feel they can't get good trustworthy information because the debate (or lack thereof) became so politicized.
My favorite part of living in a foreign country was not being able to understand the ads. I missing being able to go for days on end without having my intelligence insulted, without having products crassly attached to my fond emotions and memories, without having to constantly deaden my reactions to the constant mental assault.
So you need both. You need an expectation on the part of the passengers and crew that cooperating with the hijackers won't lead to survival, and you need reinforced doors to help passengers and crew in their efforts to keep the hijackers from reaching the cabin.
Without the change in expectations, the crew just open the cabin to the hijackers to that hostages don't get killed. Without the reinforced doors the passengers and crew might be able to stop the hijackers - but it is a much more difficult task because they have to prevent the hijackers from interfering with the flight during the fight (they don't have to gain control of the plane to crash it).
1) Really American's don't think they are special? How about whenever people get into chants like USA USA USA. Naaa nothing special at all.
Americans chant USA USA USA because they don't realize just how special they are. If Americans realized how much of an advantage we have in so many sports because of their population and wealth, they wouldn't flaunt it so much. When it comes to sports, they think they're just like every other country and can cheer just like every other country. They don't realize how obnoxious our cheering comes across because they don't realize that everyone already knows they're number one.
So, who's up for making a browser addon that automatically cross-references online political ads to various fact checking sites?
But since ad-checking sites have their agenda too, we'd need another app to cross-reference the fact checking sites to fact checking site verfication sites...
For some of use, sharing information is more of a goal than attaining GA or FA status. It's sort of like going to school to learn things rather than going to school to get a perfect score on the SAT. Sure, you'll learn a lot if getting a perfect score is your goal. But you'll learn even more if you just have a love of learning.
Nitpick: Then how do you really know them to be true?
The goal of secondary sources, as I understand it, is to get independent confirmation of facts. In this case, it seems unlikely that the primary source would be false, but consider a sentenced criminal who says "I'm innocent, and I should know! Why doesn't my wikipedia page reflect this?"
Case by case basis. A lot of my editing involves a foreign country and other foreign countries near it. If nearly all the editors who have been there has observed something in person, often that includes me, but no one has bothered to document it in a scholarly paper, then we'll probably let it in (provided it is notable). Obviously we need to avoid "old wives tales" that "everyone" knows to be true.
Having his kind of undocumented information is the exception rather than the norm.
I have read it, but rules aren't always followed. If the topic is controversial enough for people to appeal, then the odds of the rule being followed go up tremendously. But just as in other areas of life there are times when people agree the rules don't fit the situation. Sometimes rules get adjusted to try to fit every situation, but other times peole just use common sense and ignore the rules when the time comes.
I don't know what this has to do with a blog, unless somebody writing in the blog is talking about this particular issue and that is the only quick reference you can find on Google.
My point was that sometimes standards are relaxed for things that are known to be true but difficult to find documentation for.
Who decides who these official arbiters are? Does it have to be an established, traditional publishing house? What if it's a self-published e-book?
The "who decides" is those who give a damn enough to help write the article and help to determine what counts as a reliable source. That is sort of the point of the article talk pages, where things like this is actively discussed. Sometimes it may simply be a blog that is accepted, other times it may need to come from a published scientific journal which has been cited by other publications a number of times.
For contentious edits blogs are rarely considered reliable. They're not really supposed to be considered reliable at all.
For some articles where very little information is available editors might decide that a blog, or that simply the fact that some of the editors are very familiar with the subject and all agree, is sufficient. There was recently a discussion on the common English name for one of the many transliteration systems used for Chinese. Anyone know where we could get a reliable source for that? One name, "bopomofo" that was known to be in use was also claimed to be not simply the name of that one system, but also a common for any of the transliteration systems for Chinese (since those are the first four sounds they use). Anyone know where we can find an English language reference?
It was funny when Borges did it, but now that we all depend on Wikipedia, it's probably about time that some adults started exercising actual editorial control.
It's about as funny as someone taking a poop in a public park.
Some things are shared, and it's wonderful if people can be civil enough to not destroy such things. What Borges did wasn't funny, it was a hurtful act to the whole community of people who use Wikipedia.
The response that we should fix the acts of a few A-holes like Borges by having "some adults...exercising actual editorial control." is like saying we stop people from pooping in parks by having a cop or a remote camera watching every single corner of every park. It might solve the problem, but it would make everyone's lives a lot less pleasant.
A better solution would be to have a culture where people like Borges are shunned rather than treated like comedians and where all adults are expected to act like adults rather than acting like bored adolescent vandals.
I would have agreed with you in the past. I've edited Wiki pages and been involved in heated disagreements but in the end we would work something out and compromise. However not all pages have those kinds of editors.
Not too long ago I decided I really should learn more about this global-warming stuff. How serious is it? Is it caused by man? Will natural processes dampen it or reinforce it? I started reading some of the wiki articles on the subject and found a few minor issues. I made one change and took the rest to the talk pages (not being an expert on the topic I figured it made sense to do that). Rather than encountering the mix of uncivil and rational arguments I had come to expect from Wikipedia, I found 95% vitriol. The one change I had made was reverted with a comment accusing me of violating NPOV. The talk page became filled with such accusations of both ignorance and POV-pushing. The arguments I made made were answered not with reason but with invective.
My experience on Wikipedia, even though I often worked on a controversial topic, was fairly positive. People had strong POVs but after a fair amount of pushing and shoving the rules were generally followed.
However when I tried making a few minor edits on a AGW related page I observed the behavior people here have often described. There were a group of editors who seemed to own the page who immediately jumped on me, accused me of nefarious purposes, refused to answer my explanations except with insults and accusations of bad motives. Even the admin who briefly stepped in was of no help. Rather than acting on the countless of violations of WP:CIVIL and general lack of rational discussion, he simply closed the thread saying there wasn't consensus. There wasn't consensus because there wasn't even discussion.
On the other pages I've edited I was used to heated give-and-take with a few uncivil comments thrown in but with the anger backed up by reason. I came to respect some of the editors that I disagreed stongly with (and still often disagree with). But on the AGW-related thread there was no substance to the comments.
You're right about the mods changing. The previous time I posted something conservative (and I believe at least somewhat insightful), a whole day after the thread was pretty much dead my post which had been +1 insightful was suddenly hit with three -1 mods. I think I'm going to have to follow jmorris and post as AC whenever politics are involved, or maybe create a separate account for political posts. For now my karma is "excellent", but I don't know how long that will last with this kind of biased modding going on. Even though the description of my karma hasn't changed, I've noticed that I'm suddenly being given far fewer modding opportunities - and the most recent time I only got 5 mod points to use instead of the usual 15. I don't know if that is because I'm losing karma or for some other reason.
Slashdot Mirror
So when someone makes a video attacking Islam, he's called "far right" and it is the moderates who make his film illegal and ban him from their country (as the UK did to Geert Wilders). But when someone makes a facebook page attacking Orthodox Christians, he's a moderate and the people who want the facebook banned are called "far right".
Just trying to make sure I understand the definition of "far right".
'blasphemy' is anachronism from middle ages. 'disrespect to the religious beliefs of others.' is exactly what he have done.
And it should be legal.
Ok, now I'll make a somewhat snarky but also serious comment. You wrote, "i realize that your looking after your interests when you vote for the guy that cheats for you." Actually I haven't done that. Rush Limbaugh never ran for office and has never received a large number of conservative votes. Al Franken, on the other hand, who wrote they weighty political tomes "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot" is currently a Democratic senator.
I too would rather we have fair refs. My cable doesn't include CNN, but from what little I've seen Anderson Cooper seems decent enough. I can't speak for many of the others because I've mostly stopped watching. When I do catch some news show - whether the traditional big 3 or one of the all news networks, it just reminds me why I stopped watching. I do listen to NPR regularly on my way to and from work, but only because the other choices are so much worse (some right wing guys who have perfected the art of being permanently indignant and resentful).
I don't know if we've ever had a press that was unbiased and fair, but I think that is probably too much to ask. We can't expect them to completely abandon their judgment. But at least they should be working to make sure all sides of a debate have a reasonable hearing rather than trying to hide reasonable positions in order to make the other side seem like extremists. For example, on immigration, how about we hear more from the people who want to build a secure and permanent border (something that isn't just de-funded the following year) along the Mexican border and want to grant amnesty to all the illegal aliens? That is an idea that is largely ignored while NPR, Washintong Post et al. try to portray everyone as either intolerant racists or as being in favor of "comprehensive reform" (change the laws but it doesn't matter because there is no border). If you listen to them you'll hear no middle ground - which means we continue to have the problem.
What, What the left controls the media and the right has nowhere to speak. Except that then you talk about all the places where the right not only speaks, but allows no other points of view.
So the right gets Fox News and Talk Radio. The left has its media sources that are just as biased but they generally aren't as popular. Why? Because the left has so many other sources that, while they aren't completely one-side, lean very heavily to the left. I'm sure the most people on the right would gladly trade Fox News and talk radio for CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, and NPR.
The left wing controlled media you disparage in your first paragraph allows discussion from both sides. While it might lean to the center or center left it allows the debate from both sides to be heard.
Too often it only makes a show of doing so. For example, I regularly listen to NPR. A typical program might have 1 moderator (a liberal), one openly partisan commenter (from the left), one openly partisan commenter (from the right) and two reporters (liberals). And NPR is about as good as it gets.
Fox news and its ilk simply call all who disagree communist Unamerican traitors. We hear this lie from the right so often that people begin to believe it. The loudest most heard political talk comes from the far right. Please stop with the victim of the lame stream media act. It wears very thin. Poor poor right wing victims.
Oh please don't say "lame stream media". It is sooo annoying. It's just as annoying as "RMoney" and "I can see Russia from my house" (which Palin never said - that was one of those mainstream TV shows that you seem to think isn't very liberal). As for Fox News calling folks who disagree "Unamerican traitors", I'll have to take your word for it since I don't watch it. But I guess it's a bit like the rest of the news channels calling anyone who disagrees with them "racists".
The reason violent intolerance is so rare on the left is that they control the levers of power by controlling most of the media (both news and entertainment). When the left finds something that makes them extremely angry, they talk about it on their news shows and TV shows. They are able to laugh about it on late night talk shows and SNL. They control the debate to the point that even Republicans (who are, after all, politicians) feel they must give in.
Conservatives, on the other hand, are silenced. We don't see our views respected and heard. Instead we see "two-sided" debates in which the person supposedly representing our voice is apologizing for us and accusing us of being extremists. Or we read newspaper articles in which our side is misrepresented or ignored entirely.
That's why Rush Limbaugh and Fox News have become so popular. Sometimes you want to hear your views stated out loud in a forum where you know others can hear them so you feel like you have a voice in the debate. Even though Rush says so much I disagree with, and makes so little logical sense, I will always have gratitude for him because he was the first media personality I ever heard throwing arguments back at liberals. He wasn't logical, and he wasn't fair, but then neither was all the liberal trash I heard and saw on nightly news and TV shows. When your team is losing because the refs keep favoring the other side, you can't help but feel grateful when a ref enters the field who makes unfair calls in your favor. Sure you would rather have all the refs be fair, but since that isn't happening, you're at least glad to have one of the refs on your side.
one mutated birth isn't going to suddenly diffuse across an entire species.
It doesn't happen suddenly. That one mutation spreads through one family, who suddenly has the ability to survive without eating fish (substituting vegetables, instead). Over the next thousand years or so, that family (and the associated mutation) spread across the local region, and the knowledge of "it's okay to eat vegetables" spread with it. Since that group could wander further (carrying longer-lasting vegetables rather than fish), they spread farther than other groups, until they eventually became dominant.
How one random gene in one birth suddenly afflicts an entire population?
Just to be clear, it doesn't. The one random change will be in one family line, and only really become widespread if it allows the family to outgrow the rest of the population, or if the the rest of the population dies off.
Actually it does spread across the whole species and it doesn't rely on all other families dying out. That's one of the benefits of no longer using asexual reproduction. The one tribe doesn't have to become the only tribe, it just has to have some members leave and introduce the beneficial genes to other tribes who in turn have members leave and bring the genes to still more tribes.
CORRECTION: GameboyRMH made me realize it wasn't Michael Moore who produced "An Inconvenient Truth". I'm sorry for including him in my post above.
You're right, my bad. I thought Michael Moore produced "An Inconvenient Truth".
"So, not sure why your mainstream press isn't covering this story?"
I think two of the primary reasons are Al Gore and Michael Moore. A losing presidential candidate and a filmaker famous for leftist hatchet jobs took the lead role in publicizing global warming. That made at least half the population of America immediately suspicious or simply unwilling to listen. Then the methods that were used - e.g. Al Gore famously declaring the debate over before most people had even started paying attention - just made things worse. The trend continues to this day when it seems that attempts at meaningful debate are shouted down usually by people claiming AGW is real.
In my personal experience I tried reading some AGW pages on Wikipedia because I wanted to learn more and get a better idea of whether AGW is real (it certainly seems plausible). I found a few minor mistakes that I attempted to correct. Instead of reasoned debate or explanations I mainly encountered vitriol and ridicule. Based on what I read, I would think AGW is definitely real, but based on the attitudes of the people editing the Wikipedia page I have to question whether the article I read is sufficiently unbiased to be useful.
There are a lot of people for whom, unfortunately, the decision has largely been made largely by prejudices based in politics - I'm pretty sure this applies to both sides. Al Gore and Michael Moore created that situation. However I'm sure there are a lot of people who are still open-minded but who feel they can't get good trustworthy information because the debate (or lack thereof) became so politicized.
Your spouse is a man?
My favorite part of living in a foreign country was not being able to understand the ads. I missing being able to go for days on end without having my intelligence insulted, without having products crassly attached to my fond emotions and memories, without having to constantly deaden my reactions to the constant mental assault.
How long will it be before accusations of profiling based on race or religion start to fly?
So you need both. You need an expectation on the part of the passengers and crew that cooperating with the hijackers won't lead to survival, and you need reinforced doors to help passengers and crew in their efforts to keep the hijackers from reaching the cabin.
Without the change in expectations, the crew just open the cabin to the hijackers to that hostages don't get killed. Without the reinforced doors the passengers and crew might be able to stop the hijackers - but it is a much more difficult task because they have to prevent the hijackers from interfering with the flight during the fight (they don't have to gain control of the plane to crash it).
Gag gag gag...
1) Really American's don't think they are special? How about whenever people get into chants like USA USA USA. Naaa nothing special at all.
Americans chant USA USA USA because they don't realize just how special they are. If Americans realized how much of an advantage we have in so many sports because of their population and wealth, they wouldn't flaunt it so much. When it comes to sports, they think they're just like every other country and can cheer just like every other country. They don't realize how obnoxious our cheering comes across because they don't realize that everyone already knows they're number one.
So, who's up for making a browser addon that automatically cross-references online political ads to various fact checking sites?
But since ad-checking sites have their agenda too, we'd need another app to cross-reference the fact checking sites to fact checking site verfication sites...
Good point. Get rid of money and 90% of the people will likely die in the resulting wars and famines.
For some of use, sharing information is more of a goal than attaining GA or FA status. It's sort of like going to school to learn things rather than going to school to get a perfect score on the SAT. Sure, you'll learn a lot if getting a perfect score is your goal. But you'll learn even more if you just have a love of learning.
Nitpick: Then how do you really know them to be true? The goal of secondary sources, as I understand it, is to get independent confirmation of facts. In this case, it seems unlikely that the primary source would be false, but consider a sentenced criminal who says "I'm innocent, and I should know! Why doesn't my wikipedia page reflect this?"
Case by case basis. A lot of my editing involves a foreign country and other foreign countries near it. If nearly all the editors who have been there has observed something in person, often that includes me, but no one has bothered to document it in a scholarly paper, then we'll probably let it in (provided it is notable). Obviously we need to avoid "old wives tales" that "everyone" knows to be true.
Having his kind of undocumented information is the exception rather than the norm.
I have read it, but rules aren't always followed. If the topic is controversial enough for people to appeal, then the odds of the rule being followed go up tremendously. But just as in other areas of life there are times when people agree the rules don't fit the situation. Sometimes rules get adjusted to try to fit every situation, but other times peole just use common sense and ignore the rules when the time comes.
I don't know what this has to do with a blog, unless somebody writing in the blog is talking about this particular issue and that is the only quick reference you can find on Google.
My point was that sometimes standards are relaxed for things that are known to be true but difficult to find documentation for.
Who decides who these official arbiters are? Does it have to be an established, traditional publishing house? What if it's a self-published e-book?
The "who decides" is those who give a damn enough to help write the article and help to determine what counts as a reliable source. That is sort of the point of the article talk pages, where things like this is actively discussed. Sometimes it may simply be a blog that is accepted, other times it may need to come from a published scientific journal which has been cited by other publications a number of times.
For contentious edits blogs are rarely considered reliable. They're not really supposed to be considered reliable at all.
For some articles where very little information is available editors might decide that a blog, or that simply the fact that some of the editors are very familiar with the subject and all agree, is sufficient. There was recently a discussion on the common English name for one of the many transliteration systems used for Chinese. Anyone know where we could get a reliable source for that? One name, "bopomofo" that was known to be in use was also claimed to be not simply the name of that one system, but also a common for any of the transliteration systems for Chinese (since those are the first four sounds they use). Anyone know where we can find an English language reference?
It was funny when Borges did it, but now that we all depend on Wikipedia, it's probably about time that some adults started exercising actual editorial control.
It's about as funny as someone taking a poop in a public park.
Some things are shared, and it's wonderful if people can be civil enough to not destroy such things. What Borges did wasn't funny, it was a hurtful act to the whole community of people who use Wikipedia.
The response that we should fix the acts of a few A-holes like Borges by having "some adults...exercising actual editorial control." is like saying we stop people from pooping in parks by having a cop or a remote camera watching every single corner of every park. It might solve the problem, but it would make everyone's lives a lot less pleasant.
A better solution would be to have a culture where people like Borges are shunned rather than treated like comedians and where all adults are expected to act like adults rather than acting like bored adolescent vandals.
I would have agreed with you in the past. I've edited Wiki pages and been involved in heated disagreements but in the end we would work something out and compromise. However not all pages have those kinds of editors.
Not too long ago I decided I really should learn more about this global-warming stuff. How serious is it? Is it caused by man? Will natural processes dampen it or reinforce it? I started reading some of the wiki articles on the subject and found a few minor issues. I made one change and took the rest to the talk pages (not being an expert on the topic I figured it made sense to do that). Rather than encountering the mix of uncivil and rational arguments I had come to expect from Wikipedia, I found 95% vitriol. The one change I had made was reverted with a comment accusing me of violating NPOV. The talk page became filled with such accusations of both ignorance and POV-pushing. The arguments I made made were answered not with reason but with invective.
My experience on Wikipedia, even though I often worked on a controversial topic, was fairly positive. People had strong POVs but after a fair amount of pushing and shoving the rules were generally followed.
However when I tried making a few minor edits on a AGW related page I observed the behavior people here have often described. There were a group of editors who seemed to own the page who immediately jumped on me, accused me of nefarious purposes, refused to answer my explanations except with insults and accusations of bad motives. Even the admin who briefly stepped in was of no help. Rather than acting on the countless of violations of WP:CIVIL and general lack of rational discussion, he simply closed the thread saying there wasn't consensus. There wasn't consensus because there wasn't even discussion.
On the other pages I've edited I was used to heated give-and-take with a few uncivil comments thrown in but with the anger backed up by reason. I came to respect some of the editors that I disagreed stongly with (and still often disagree with). But on the AGW-related thread there was no substance to the comments.
You're right about the mods changing. The previous time I posted something conservative (and I believe at least somewhat insightful), a whole day after the thread was pretty much dead my post which had been +1 insightful was suddenly hit with three -1 mods. I think I'm going to have to follow jmorris and post as AC whenever politics are involved, or maybe create a separate account for political posts. For now my karma is "excellent", but I don't know how long that will last with this kind of biased modding going on. Even though the description of my karma hasn't changed, I've noticed that I'm suddenly being given far fewer modding opportunities - and the most recent time I only got 5 mod points to use instead of the usual 15. I don't know if that is because I'm losing karma or for some other reason.