Conspiracy Theories Useful Notes

While tracking some potential misbehavior, I found this article: Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic.

I'm just going to throw it out there: not only is this in very poor taste, but it seems to be contributing to certain people acting out in On-Topic Conversations, possibly because they genuinely believe things in it. I just locked it, and I think it may need to be cut.

In fact, I'd like to look rather sharply at the whole Conspiracy Theories section, because there's a fine line between writing about them and spreading them. I think the ROCEJ needs to be invoked here.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 9th 2020 at 11:53:01 AM

It's far too soon to make such a page. Maybe it would have made sense in hindsight, but not while the pandemic is still ongoing — that's a ROCEJ nightmare.

I can see some value in documenting conspiracy theories that have common representation in media, but as-is it seems like an unconstrained breeding ground for chatter and ROCEJ.

How about make Conspiracy Theories a trope wih In-Universe Examples Only restriction?

I remember having peeked at the documented Conspiracy Theories in that page a few years ago. I got traumatized. I'm not sure if straight deletion is the solution, but at least a major curation may be necessary.

Edited by MyFinalEdits on Apr 9th 2020 at 12:14:04 PM

We have Conspiracy Theorist as a trope already, and it's actually better that way, since a theory is not a trope; it's the behavior of a character who believes in them that is the trope.

As far as the hypothetical value of documenting them and debunking them, Snopes does that way better than we can.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 9th 2020 at 12:14:05 PM

Ah, I see.

Then how about give some restriction, like only allow a page on this topic if it's referenced in certain number of work already?

Edited by Kuruni on Apr 9th 2020 at 11:28:55 PM

Or only reference the most famous ones, or the ones that have some connection to the media we discuss (like the "Paul Is Dead" theory).

Pretty sure that's already covered by Pop-Culture Urban Legends (or Urban Legends if they aren't directly media-related), so I'm defaulting to being in favor of cutting the Conspiracy Theories page.

At the very least, nuke the COVID page.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 10th 2020 at 2:29:20 PM

Yeah, that page has to go. And fair enough.

I also support the nuking of that particular page as well.

Edited by gjjones on Apr 10th 2020 at 4:22:27 AM

Throw out the COVID-19 theories page.

I agree with deleting the Conspiracy Theories/ page. It's one thing to document a conspiracy theory as a "work," like in the hypothetical Conspiracy Theory/ namespace, but this is not on mission. I say cut.

We also have the following pages:

• NoHoperRepeat.Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic
• ReleaseDateChange.Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic
• TroubledProduction.Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic

All of these pages should be cut with the individual works getting these entries on their respective pages. For example, there's an entry for Avatar that should go on Trivia.Avatar but instead it is on TroubledProduction.Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic. That isn't kosher, at the very least.

EDIT: Should ConspiracyTheories.Zero To G also be locked so nobody moves the information from ConspiracyTheories.Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic to that page?

Edited by WaterBlap on Apr 10th 2020 at 2:49:56 PM

Okay, I want to highlight a few things (at least I want apologize for my behavior in the On-Topic Conversation).

For starters, I kinda created this page because I thought it would be a good idea to highlight all of the common misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic and debunking the said misinformation about it (The other wiki actually had this).

With that being said, if you find this page tasteless, then I want to apologize for creating this page and feel free to delete this. I have no intentions of spreading misinformation about COVID-19, I just want to highlight the popular misinformation about the pandemic and debunk them. But with that being said, I think the problems with the conspiracy theory useful notes pages (as well all the related subpages, not just the COVID-19 one I've created), is that many of them cover a lot of controversial issues that would fall into the Rule of Cautious Editing Judgement sections (I also had to do a few cleanup in The New '10s sections and try to rephrase several of the current events in a more neutral point of view to avoid flame wars).

In fact, looking through all of Conspiracy Theories subpages, it looks like many of them are subject to Flame Bait and heavy edit wars. With that being said, I do offer two possible solutions to the Conspiracy Theories Useful Notes pages:

• Nuke every Conspiracy Theory subpages.
• Lock every Conspiracy Theory subpage, and put a Rule of Cautious Editing Judgement section on every single one of them.

EDIT: Also, I was wondering if it's appropriate to even create separate subpages to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic like the Troubled Production and Release Date Change pages.

Edited by DarkPaladinX on Apr 10th 2020 at 2:08:01 AM

So looking through every single conspiracy theory subpages. I'm beginning to see there are a lot of problems with it. the Zero To G has a folder section listing a bunch of 9/11 conspiracy theories while H To N had separate folder sections dedicated to homosexual and Jews. Looking through these sections, their respective folders have a lot of homophobic and anti-semetic conspiracy theory content without any debunking. Since trying to debunk conspiracy theories will probably take too much effort, I think the best effort to nuke all of those subpages and lock them at red so that no one can create the said subpages.

So here a few problematic conspiracies theories that I found in each page that would probably cause edit and flame wars:

Judging by these examples, is this something that you guys would either nuke or slap a Rule of Cautious Editing Judgement in them?

Edited by DarkPaladinX on Apr 10th 2020 at 2:48:46 AM

I think the pages should be nuked because of the Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment. That rule is why there's so much support for at least deleting the COVID page.

Anyway, I think we should have a crowner for this at some point (not yet, per the Three-Day Rule), with one option for deleting all Conspiracy Theories pages, and another option for just deleting the COVID subpage. Maybe also an option for deleting the other COVID pages that were previously listed, which wouldn't be mutually exclusive with the options for the Conspiracy Theories page(s).

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 10th 2020 at 7:03:52 AM

As always, a "do nothing" option should still exist, even if we more or less know we're doing something.

That, too.

I also would request for the other Conspiracy Theory subpages (not just the COVID-19 one) to be locked starting today until we made a conscious agreement on what to do with the conspiracy theory subpages.

Locked all the existing subpages. Someone put the coronavirus subpage on the cutlist basically as soon as this thread was started.

Nuke the coronavirus one.

These should definitely stay locked, but I could see some value in keeping the pages if cleaned up and debunked. Restrict it to examples that show up often in media or are about media itself (a lot of the media-related ones are variants on Everyone Is Satan in Hell).

Edited by naturalironist on Apr 12th 2020 at 3:24:09 PM

Well, it depends. Trying to debunk every single one of these conspiracy theories will take a long time to debunk them (at least the coronavirus page I've created, I went to the extent of debunking the common myths and misinformation). And some of the examples I've seen so far aren't really debunking them. In fact, the examples I've listed from the said pages end up highlighting and reinforcing negative stereotypes on gays, Muslims, Jews, etc. (especially the last one, which indicate to the reader that Muslims/Arabs and Jews hate each other even though there are actually Arabs that identify themselves as Jewish and Muslims and Jews have live together peacefully for the last couple centuries until modern history).

I'll skim through the other conspiracy theories in each subpages to see whether or not it's worth keeping or nuking. The 9/11 one needs a serious cleanup though, since it's ridiculously long (and maybe several sections may need to be cut out).

But the examples I've listed in the subpages really needs to be nuked hard. But if you ask me, I'm more in favor in trying to nuke the more generalized ones that would cause Unfortunate Implications.

Edited by DarkPaladinX on Apr 11th 2020 at 6:52:01 AM

Made a crowner since it's been three days. Feel free to make any changes if I made any mistakes or missed anything.

Edit: Went ahead and put UsefulNotes.Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic on the crowner. I personally don't think it's as problematic as the Conspiracy Theories pages (mainly, it violates Examples Are Not Recent, but that's a case of Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking compared to everything else here), but since this discussion started because of a different COVID-related page, I figured I might as well add it.

Clarification: Another reason I added the Useful Notes page for the disease is in case it were to come up elsewhere on the site, such as ATT, TRS, or the COVID OTC thread. For convenience's sake, if that page comes up again after this thread's crowner has concluded, we'll have a consensus to point to if it gets brought up elsewhere.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 12th 2020 at 8:33:13 AM

I also suggest taking several of the other content from different pages (NoHoperRepeat.Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic, ReleaseDateChange.Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic, TroubledProduction.Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic) and move into the main Useful Notes page and have their own separate folders. Or, we can move the content into their respective pages as Trivia if necessary.

Edited by DarkPaladinX on Apr 12th 2020 at 8:33:10 AM