BCSE policy towards criticism of its wiki
BCSE has always and an unwritten and unstated policy that we respond quickly to all comments, criticisms and requests for corrections to the wiki-based part of our web site. We would now like to formalise that position and announce it publicly.
We have a few guidelines for those wishing for changes and amendments. The first is that you do have to actually contact us with what you want to say. It isn’t possible to respond to messages posted to other web sites, blogs, wikis, email forums or so on. We simply do not systematically monitor them so we are mostly not going to be able to pick them up. Secondly, requests will normally be subject to our own checks and if we feel that they are without merit or just wrong, we will not amend the wiki part of our web site (this has proven to be very rarely the case, however). Nor will we normally respond to abusive or incoherent comments.
We get a lot of private emails from creationists trying to debate their pseudo-science and/or religious opinions with us. We normally redirect such individuals to our public forum. The wiki part of the web site is not intended as a source to present the opinions of creationists and any requests to present their pseudo science or religious beliefs there will also be rejected.
Finally, we do assume that we get it wrong from time to time and that our work can be controversial or contentious. Unlike some fundamentalists we do not hide behind the statement that "we are all sinners" if we do. That is intellectual cowardice. We openly welcome valid criticisms and corrections.
Please feel free to email us with suggested corrections. You can also join the public forum part of our web site and post them there or discuss you position.
Footnote: Our web site consists of two elements - a wiki and a public forum. The wiki, by definition, uses wiki software (PMwiki in our case). What you are reading now is part of the wiki. The forum (http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum), of necessity, uses a completly different software because it is a email-based platform. Wiki is essentially an easy to use software which allows individual users to update and edit the material. It's much more flexible than normal website software. We do allow members of the public (i.e. people who are not members of BCSE) to directly input into the wiki part of our web site but it is conditional on the person being known to and trusted by us. The web site is the private property of BCSE and we have to take the normal precautions of protecting it and the intellectual property therein from vandalism, spammers and so on.
