On 5/5/06, Cheney Shill <halliburton_shill(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a socially defined
collection of original research.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia which subverts the usual definition of an
encyclopedia and expands far beyonds the bounds of typical
encyclopedias because of its social model, one based on collective
authorship. You can't get around the social interaction, it is what
makes the entire thing work. I should think such is fairly obvious.
"In particular, to elaborate on the last comment
above, if you are able to prove something that nobody currently believes, Wikipedia is not
the place to premiere such a proof."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Undue_weight
In other words, there is even less need for social interaction. No need to petition
funding for a laboratory to test a hypothesis. No questions about which researcher should
have his name placed first next to a theory.
I think you misunderstand what I mean by social interaction. I do not
mean funding or interactions with "society" (a slippery term), I mean
something roughly like "practices by which human beings interact with
one another to establish knowledge." The social practices cannot be
avoided. Especially since we do not do original research (though even
establishing what "original research" is a social practice here as
well, one based on collaboration, discussion, and compromise!). But
even in the scientific laboratory, facts do not just spring out of the
air, nor do they cling onto the pages of journals by themselves, nor
do they maintain themselves under the sheer weight of their own
conviction.
We need to accept the social nature of Wikipedia's claims to truth
(even if we do not want to bother trying to accept the social nature
of truth itself), and understand that 1. it does not devalue
Wikipedia's claims to truth, and 2. it is not something which can be
avoided anyway. The value of accepting such a thing is not that we
throw our hands up and say "Well, that's just how it is and we've got
to accept it, whatever it is!" of course, but it directs our lines of
inquiry away from things such as "How does one know whether something
is Original Research or not?" and instead re-frames the question into
something like, "What policies and social mechanisms will produce the
sorts of content we want, in the end, given our system of knowledge
production?" And again, by "social" I mean only that which refers to
the interactions and mediations between users themselves, and that's
all.
You could view the scientific method as a social system meant to
produce a certain type of knowledge, for example. It (ideally)
organizes researchers in a way which attempts to develop reliable and
hopefully incremental knowledge, to fact-check and self-police itself,
to standardize vocabularies and agreed-upon sets of beliefs, and so
forth. Calling something a social system does not devalue it in the
slightest; it is a system for organizing human interactions.
I apologize if this all sounds terribly academic or pedantic but I do
have a point in all of this -- I think too many of these discussions
are based on some sort of abstract way of trying to define things like
"Undue weight" or "Neutral Point of View" or "Original
Research" as if
these were just natural categories sitting out there in the world. I
think considering them to be guidelines by which a social process will
produce certain types of knowledge, at the deliberate exclusion of
others, will help better focus exactly what sorts of policies we
should have and also help us avoid dreaming of a day when there will
be no ambiguity or disagreements between users on these issues. Rather
than viewing ambiguity and disagreement as things which should be
eliminated, I think they should be viewed as necessary elements of a
larger system, things which can probably be channeled or transformed
or mediated to certain degree by policies but something which will,
and must, always be a part of a relatively communitarian system as
Wikipedia uses.
(Even relatively authoritarian systems of knowledge production, with
top-down hierarchy and clear guidelines worked under by people of a
similar mindset, have their internal conflicts. But their lack of
transparency just keeps it out of sight, something we can't do under
our system.)
It seems the policies and problems of the foundation
in general (i.e., which projects and enhancements to fund, which gets a new server, which
gets a new lawyer, etc.) are being confused with those of the encylopedia itself. Yet
another area in need of clarification, not ambiguity.~~~~Pro-Lick
I don't quite see that particular slippage going on, myself...
FF