Conservapedia talk:Editing etiquette

My reversion of Alexjohnc3's edits

Alexjohnc3 removed quote marks and the word "secular" in the example sentence "Secular geologists believe that the world is 5.6 billion years old", with the edit comments:

• What's with adding the word "secular" to "geologist"? It makes Conservapedia look like it's run by a bunch of Creationists or something.
• No need for quotes around the word "facts". Use a different word, like "statements" if you feel like it.

As the author of this page, I thought I'd explain my rationale for the way it was, and thus why I have reverted it.

Alexjohnc3 unwittingly provides a good example of why the quote marks were there. He changed the sentence to read "Geologists believe that the world is 5.6 billion years old", presumably believing that statement to be factual. And that's the point. When an editor includes a statement that he considers to be factual, it doesn't mean that it actually is. The quote marks around the word "fact" were to indicate that, at the point in time when the editor includes the statement, whether or not the statement is factual is not something that has been agreed. It may be factual, but it may be that he thinks it's factual when it's not, so the quote marks are to indicate that the supposed "fact" may not be a fact, just as have used quote marks around one use of the word in this sentence.

The reason that the word "secular" was there was in an attempt to make the statement factual, i.e. correct, because it is not correct to make the statement that "geologists believe..." if this indicates that there is unanimity on the issue. For the record, many of the people running Conservapedia are creationists, and Alexjohnc3's edit comment insinuating that this is something undesirable is offensive.

Philip J. Rayment 21:11, 4 November 2007 (EST)