trying to bully us? - WikiEN-l

8 Sep 2012

I am baffled by this conversation. Roth is not trying to "bully" anyone; he
is trying to clarify a very bad situation. There is no reason he should
give over his creative spirit to Wikipedia. He is fighting for his artistic
life. And many many people al over the literary landscape are taking note.

I have sent other messages that have not appeared so I will just say again,
that tone of editors needs to be more self-aware.
BTW, the "Roth vs. Wikipedia " issue is being discussed on many many lists
by librarians, literary scholars, and students.
It is important. It is a time to learn.

On Sat, Sep 8, 2012 at 12:20 PM, Fred Bauder &lt;fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net&gt; wrote:

...
  This is the comment I made to The New Yorker article:

 If you, or anyone else, has a similar problem please contact the
 Wikipedia:Volunteer Response Team Directions are on that page in
 Wikipedia.
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Volunteer_Response_Team We are
 sorry this matter was not handled better.

 Read more

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/09/an-open-letter-to-wikip…

 Now, a factual inquiry, if he had done that would this problem have been
 solved? Or would he still ended up trying to bully us?

 Fred

  It's not a crazy train of thought though;
people naturally feel they
 are the authority on their own opinions.

 We usually don't do brilliantly in explaining why that doesn't work.
 Because we start with explaining reliable sources, and often glaze
 over the most important bit.

 I DO see these sorts of issues all the time. When I log into OTRS
 there is sure to be at least one.

 I've taken to explaining that Wikipedia only summarises other sources.
 So inaccuracy needs to be addressed either with a retraction from the
 source, or another source appearing to rebut it.

 This is much more palatable than "your word isn't a reliable source".

 If for no other reason than the phrasing sounds like your impugning
 the reliability of him/her as a person.

 Tom Morton

 On 8 Sep 2012, at 17:00, Charles Matthews
 &lt;charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com&gt; wrote:

  On 8 September 2012 16:55, Thomas Morton
 &lt;morton.thomas(a)googlemail.com&gt;wrote;wrote:

  No it doesn't.

 I'll give you good odds on me being right.

 Because I see the same thing week after week.

  You mean leading author almost synonymous with "rare interview" assumes
 his
 word is good enough for WP? Complaining that people make up stuff about
 your inspiration is fair enough: bookchat, as Gore Vidal called it, has
 a
 percentage of drivel. But The Human Stain was published 12 years ago.
 Really, nothing on the record?

 (I know that isn't what you mean. But Wikipedians in this kind of
 situation
 do have to explain policy to those who don't get it, and act on it,
 even if
 dealing with someone famous.)

 Charles
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