I was wondering if it would be OK to create a few less tin-foily articles that would be dual-use, good for both conspiracy research and political/news posting.

Case in point: the recent Hezbollah missile attack on the INS Hanit has made the normally non-conspiracy related topic of Chinese weapons systems very relevant to researching whether or not the Israeli media is conspiring to create a false casus belli against Iran.

We could either include these in the topics they are most likely to affect or we could create a "scrap yard" catagory full of mixed goodies that can be referenced for whatever they may become relevant to.

I think it would be nice to have an onsite resource for fact-checking and dot-connecting so that outstanding research isn't limited just to those who have the time and skill to scour the web for reliable info elsewhere, but I didn't think it would be cool for me to just start throwing up non-tinfoil articles without asking.

Comments?

I think that the tin-wiki should stick with conspiracy topics. THe regular wikipedia is the place for non-conspiracy topics.

But thats just my opinion.

I think those are both wonderful articles Justin, and I also think they would have a good place on the tinwiki if you were ever so inclined. The tinWiki isn't just for strictly tin topics, like Martians, but also includes articles that have a conspiratorial slant to them. How to research conspiracies, as well as your other article would fit in nicely. As for weapons, anything that is cutting edge could be considerd for the tinWiki. For example, the tinWiki has a large section on aircrafts, some of which aren't so exotic any longer.

Okay, then. I don't have scholar status. Who do I need to see about making all this happen?

Edit:

I have received instructions, and I'll get right on this.

[edit on 27-6-2007 by Justin Oldham]

Here is a general comment/thought that I have, I think that certain articles that are not directly related to conspiracy theory or fringe stuff need to be in tinWiki, otherwise, if such articles are ruled out, that means some kind of self inflicted weakness and blind spots will happen in the encyclopedia.

My thought comes basically from, which I am thinking of now, that I made an article called Earth; it's just a general article, short little text about the basic stuff even I know, so to speak. Obviously a general article about Earth doesn't have anything inherently conspiracy theory related in it (that I can think of immediately right now), but considering that a fair amount of the subject matter of tinWiki has to do with outer space, planets, aliens, and all this sort of thing, even if basic Earth info could be found in other general non-wiki websites, ruling out having a tinWiki article to just put down the basics of what our planet is would be an unreasonable, as I see it, undercutting of the, lets say, power and usefulness of tinWiki. That's just an example of the thing about non-conspiracy articles, though. (For the record, there's been no complaint about the Earth page, it's just my own thinking around that page as sort of outside tinWiki's subject matter which I am basing this comment on.)

This is just a general comment, like I mentioned. Anyway, my conclusion is that, in my personal opinion, certain supportive articles that may seem unrelated to conspiracy theories are justified for the sake of the coherence and sensibleness of tinWiki as an encyclopedia. Of course the core topic of tinWiki is hower what those articles must support, as opposed to being just random and totally non-related articles. For example those Marvel comics articles from a while back, they were really great articles but I think it's obvious that those particular articles didn't belong...

Anyway, I just wanted to express this thought right now when I read this thread. Of course this is just an opinion, and I know and respect that the administrators decide.

Optimist