In a message dated 10/26/2005 4:01:02 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
Edmund.W.Poor(a)abc.com writes:
Colleges are dispensers of job training, warehouses that sell knowledge.
You go there to get certified. They used to be places where you went to
get an Education.
There's more to being an educated person than stuffing your head full of
data and info that which is useful in your career. Go to DeVry if you
want vo-tech training.
They even took Logic out of the curriculum. You don't learn obvious,
classically tried and true things like the syllogism. What's that, it
sounds dirty ("jism").
* All men are mortal.
* Socrates is a man.
* Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
If A is true, than B is true.
But B is not true!
Then A could not POSSIBLY be true.
And that's the simple stuff. Don't forget the rhetorical fallacies like
ad hominem, guilt by association, non sequitor, circular argument, and
dozens of others which are STILL BEING USED today.
The worst part is that Wikipedians use these fallacies on talk pages.
Ed Poor
I agree.
It is a sad thing to say that people just don't -- and too often even can't
-- think/reason anymore, but it's true. Critical thinking skills simply are
not taught/honed anymore -- certainly not in this nation's public education
system. I daresay the same is very likely true in our institutions of higher
learning.
(I must say, though, I detested logic class. Boring as hell.)
These days, people are as intelligent (potentially, at least) as they ever
were; they're just dull-witted and undisciplined.
I've come to realize that discussing points of contention with some
Wikipedians is as pointless as would be ramming their heads against a brick wall. I
used to think some of them were being argumentative/purposely obtuse just for
the hell of it
And while many of them are, I now know, of course, that a lot of them,
unfortunately, just don't get it.
When I encounter that sort of thing, if I'm not in the mood to continue to
engage them, I just throw up my hands, leave it be, and then go back later and
fix things. (Like "Melanin.")
The more popular/widely known Wikipedia becomes, the more frequently
sloppily written contributions will appear. I don't have a lot of respect for what
this nation's educational institutions and world schlock culture are
producing these days. Wikipedia will continue to attract mediocre, limited minds
with lots of rigid opinions backed by precious little real knowledge,
understanding or perspective. Syntax, grammar and spelling -- even, to some extent,
article structure -- can be fixed relatively easily with some dedicated copy
editing. But a populist idea like Wikipedia in the hands of anyone with
access to a computer and an ISP is doomed from the start as a reliable source of
authoritative information.
That's all there is to it.
But the idea IS a luminous one -- isn't it? :p
Wikipedia runs the gamut from stellar to squalid. I love it. I hate it.
Right now, I can live with that. And when I decide I can't/won't any
longer, then I'll simply vote with my web browser and leave.
'S as simple as that.
K
Hello
Sorry if this article gets posted twice, but I presume my subscription
was not complete when I sent the following article.
I am not sure whether this is the right list to ask, if not could
somebody please point out to me the appropriate one.
I want to write an article which relies heavily on scientific
publications. (I will of course cite the relevant articles at the end
of `my' wikipedia article). What I have in mind is a summary of their
work, maybe one of ten sentences copied literally. Do I need the
permissions of the authors of these article (one author is already
dead) or could I avoid that problem in simply not copying even a
single sentence verbatim?
Or without their explicit permission I simply could not write about
the subject?
Thanks and regards
Uwe Brauer
>From: Geoff Burling <llywrch(a)agora.rdrop.com>
[much snippage]
>There was an incident a few years back where Lir challenged the commonplace
>assertion that "Nightfall" was considered Isaac Asimov's best short story.
>Arguments flew back & forth until someone dug up a suitable quotation
>with a proper attribution, & ended that minor crisis. However, that event
>illustrated a problem with Wikipedia, in that expressing a judgement or
>making an analysis often leads (or has the likelihood of leading) to a
>revert war.
>
>Most editors aren't interested in getting bogged down in one of those, &
>will write defensively & only set forth facts (e.g., "Hamlet is a
>drama in five acts believed by most critics to have been written by
>William Shakespeare"). Our articles suffer because of this.
>
>Now the obvious solution is to do the necessary research & report what
>important critics have said about the work of literature...
>
>However, for some authors no body of secondary literature exists. For
>example, Mary Gaitskill is an author worthy of an article in Wikipedia;
>but were I to attempt to write an analysis of her works using quotations,
>I'd be forced to use only book reviews many of which are written by
>people lacking authority.
Very well said, and jibes with my thinking and experience.
Another point is that it is easier to observe that something IS opinion than
to judge whether it is well-founded, generally-accepted opinion.
Wikipedia is _replete_ with unsourced but well-founded value judgements that
are _entirely appropriate_ to an encyclopedia article: "Beethoven is widely
regarded as the greatest composer of all time;" "Shakespeare has a reputation
as one of the greatest of all writers in the English language and in Western
literature, as well as one of the world's pre-eminent dramatists;" Isaac
Newton is "widely regarded as the most influential scientist in history."
When such assertions are "commonplace" to anyone with a high-school
education, they are usually allowed to stand. When they are not, sound
judgements that are well-accepted _by anyone familiar with the topic_ are
challenged. In many cases, it would be completely appropriate to let them
stand, at least as placeholders, for a considerable length of time, before
being replaced with well-attributed quotes.
In my case, my own run-in was over an article on Harold Robbins'
"blockbuster" novel, _The Carpetbaggers_. I had written:
"Like many of Robbins' other novels, _The Carpetbaggers_ combined good
writing, a strong story, and numerous more-or-less-gratuitous scenes of
explicit sex. The sex scenes were at the extreme outer boundaries of
acceptability for a mainstream novel at its time of publication; _The
Carpetbaggers_ was probably the first New York Times bestseller to include
scenes in which characters engage in fellatio."
Now, I really don't think anyone familiar with the novel would challenge
this, not even Robbins himself. But this editor insisted that it was "POV."
When I cited something support he said "I'm assuming that you are citing
movie critics' reviews. Erm... isn't it a little obvious that those reviews
are opinions? Wikipedia is about facts, not opinions." (In fact, they were
Amazon reader reviews and arguably non-authoritative, though representative).
The happy ending was that I was able to find a New York Times book review
that said the same things I had said, only better. With regard to gratuitous
sex, he said the plot was merely "an excuse for a collection of monotonous
episodes about normal and abnormal sex?and violence ranging from simple
battery to gruesome varieties of murder." In regard good writing, he said "If
Mr. Robbins had no more talent than a verbose pulp-writer, it would be of no
importance that the book is aimed so low. In the sections in which he avoids
the lurid, he writes graphically and touchingly; on these pages, his dialogue
is moving and his people have the warmth of life."
And the article was the better for it.
But I found the experience quite irritating, and rather Wiki-energy-sapping,
and I think my original unattributed statement-of-the-commonplace was every
bit as acceptable as "Beethoven is widely regarded as the greatest composer
of all time."
Colleges are dispensers of job training, warehouses that sell knowledge.
You go there to get certified. They used to be places where you went to
get an Education.
There's more to being an educated person than stuffing your head full of
data and info that which is useful in your career. Go to DeVry if you
want vo-tech training.
They even took Logic out of the curriculum. You don't learn obvious,
classically tried and true things like the syllogism. What's that, it
sounds dirty ("jism").
* All men are mortal.
* Socrates is a man.
* Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
If A is true, than B is true.
But B is not true!
Then A could not POSSIBLY be true.
And that's the simple stuff. Don't forget the rhetorical fallacies like
ad hominem, guilt by association, non sequitor, circular argument, and
dozens of others which are STILL BEING USED today.
The worst part is that Wikipedians use these fallacies on talk pages.
Ed Poor
Sorry this is a duplicate message. I originally posted it with the
subject line of the digest that I received. Now, even though it's a
separate thread, with the right subject line, maybe somebody will read
it (maybe not).
Thanks for all your help and suggestions. It is all very interesting
-- I'm still very new to Wikipedia. That is, I've been reading it for
a while, but haven't edited much.
Tim Starling, I tried your proposed solution from the page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Advice_to_Tor_users_in_China,
and it works, after a fashion. However, as I noted on that talk page
(which I used as a test), it breaks my access to, for example, the
mailing list archives. I can't access, for example,
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-October/031345.html.
I get the following error message:
Not Found
The requested URL /pipermail/wikien-l/2005-October/031345.html was
not found on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to
use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
What is the IP address 145.97.39.155, anyway? Is that your own proxy server?
Another page I can't access is
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l. But note that,
for all of these, I can get them with Tor turned off -- i.e. they're
not blocked by the government. So I can just switch back and forth,
but it's a bit annoying.
Alphax wrote:
>RIPE WHOIS reveals that this IP is used by "Ireland On-Line Broadband
>Customers". Unless Skyring has been travelling I don't see how such a
>connection was made.
Skyring travels lots and lots and edits from around the world.
- d.
>From: David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
>Read this and work out how you would bridge this gap.
>
> http://www.csicop.org/si/2004-05/new-age.html
>
>If you have a quick formula that works, good. But how would you get
>someone to think that formula is a good idea and *want* to apply it?
Liberal arts education?
I got involved in an article that started out as listcruft--the list of the
books used in the St. John's College "Great Books" curriculum--and I got
drawn in. I've sorta gotten interested in St. John's and in Stringfellow Barr
and Scott Buchanan, the people who created it.
One of the things that really struck me is how, during the 1930s through the
1950s, there was serious concern about the rise of "the dictatorships" in
Germany and Italy. There was constant discussion of "the democracies" vis-a-
vis "the dictatorships." The title of Sinclair Lewis's novel, "It Can't
Happen Here," expressed the common attitude in the U.S., while its content
expressed Lewis's belief that it darn well _could_ happen here if we weren't
careful.
I grew up thinking of "liberal arts" as a sort of gentleman's quasi-
recreational curriculum, something that Ivy Leaguers studied if they weren't
interested in anything real. But that's not at all how Barr and Buchanan saw
it.
They believed quite seriously that the liberal arts curriculum was essential
_in developing the spirit of free inquiry._ They thought that unless all
citizens were educated in how to think, democracies would not be stable and
would be subject to transformation into dictatorships. They didn't want to
limit it to colleges.
Incidentally they were just as concerned about English majors not knowing
physics as vice versa.
I have no idea whether they were right. Their achievements certainly fell
very short of their ambitions. Certainly, the trends they feared have
progressed. I think the majority of Americans now regard college as an
activity that should be directly career-directed and that the status of the
liberal-arts curriculum has declined.
I'm not sure to what extent educators feel tasked with the job of teaching
critical thinking. Certainly in the public schools there has always been some
ambiguity about whether their task is to teach critical thinking or whether
it is to teach docility and obedience to authority....
I didn't get a liberal arts education, and I have a certain amount of
inquiring skepticism about its value, but... just a (tangential) thought.
>Why should we have articles on every single Pokemon if they are totally
>unknown outside of the Pokemon community?
* Completeness of coverage is desirable in itself - being able to say
"we have an article on EVERY city, town and hamlet in the US. Yes,
EVERY DAMN ONE." is a valuable bragging point in itself. If
completeness is *possible* it counts as a mark of quality and/or
potential quality in itself.
* If complete coverage is possible and not hard, it's a hell of a lot
easier and less work to just have articles on it all than setting an
arbitrary bar which then has to be maintained and argued over as
individual topics cross it. (And most of the "notability" markers I've
seen in various areas are in fact arbitrary.) It saves a lot of
pissfighting.
The question is "why shouldn't we?" Please do answer each of these in
turn (and the same for anyone else interested in this debate):
* A lack of resources ... what resources does this waste?
- Disk space - word from the developers when asked this precise
question is "no."
- Database/server speed - word from the developers when asked this
precise question is "no."
- Bandwidth - if the article uses bandwidth, it means people want it.
You know, those "readers" we're supposedly producing this for.
- Editor time - if they want to write about Cruftemon, they're not
going to write about British history or insects or computer functions
instead if you delete their hard work on Cruftemon articles. They'll
just leave the project.
- Balance of coverage - you achieve that by filling in what's
missing, not by deleting articles and telling editors their work is
worthless. Also, NO-ONE reads Wikipedia by browsing all articles or
comparing the size of the "computers" volume against the size of the
"molecular biology" volume against the size of the "Cruftemon" volume.
If this was an issue, we'd be deleting most of the computer articles.
Why aren't we doing that? ('Cos that'd be ridiculous. Why would it be
ridiculous?)
- Reader time - there is already far more Wikipedia than any of us
could ever read all of. So people read things they want to and remain
blissfully unaware of things they don't want to.
- "Random article" link hits - possibly. (When I joined in late 2003,
1 in 6 articles was a Rambot article on a US town.) Or the function
could be weighted in favour of high-rating articles, when we get a
rating feature.
- What have I forgotten on this list?
* Vanity articles - third-party verifiability takes care of these
nicely as far as I can see. Arbitrary "notability" bars seem like
unnecessary instruction creep.
* Reputation - it's a common stick to hit Wikipedia with. But the
problem there is that at this stage, every page on Wikipedia should
have a big 1995-style "UNDER CONSTRUCTION" sign on it. We get this
crap because people are looking inside the sausage factory and turning
greenish when they see the actual process. We need to take gentle
guidance from this but otherwise ignore it until we have a genuine
stable version up for critiquing.
*What have I forgotten on this list?
(I should probably put the list above somewhere on the wiki. Suggestions?)
>Right, the problem I see is that people with an "extreme interest" in X
>(you might even call it obsession) think that "all X are equally
>important and Wikipedia should have articles on all of them, including Y
>and Z".
>The problem is, the rest of the X community says "oh, Y and Z are just
>another couple of X's, nothing special". By including Y and Z, we are
>effectively pushing the POV that there is something different about Y
>and Z with respect to all other X.
I see that as setting an artificial barrier to possible completeness
of coverage. Why the hell not cover all we can with verifiability?
What resource are we lacking?
I also don't see your point about "NPOV" in balance of coverage - as
I note above, 1. you can't enhance coverage of one area by cutting out
work in another area, and 2. no-one browses Wikipedia sequentially or
by weight of area.
>> But your proposal seems an overgeneralisation of a way to use
>> deleting the whole article as a tool to solve *editorial* problems.
>Well, we always have the ability to merge and redirect... I really don't
>understand what you're saying here.
Ah, but many people in the deletion process *insist* that a majority
of "delete" not-a-votes means there shouldn't even be a redirect. Tell
them, not me.
>> The problem there being that many people think an article being
>> deleted means another article on that topic can never be created,
>> ever. (Some even think an article being deleted means its content
>> shouldn't be allowed in new articles anywhere else on the
>> encyclopedia, which I can't make sense of.)
>That's completely wrong...
Again, many people in the deletion process consider that's how it
works and remove material from other articles *because* it was voted
"delete" rather than "merge". Tell them, not me.
Geogre claimed on VFU that "Tony, Snowspinner, and David Gerard have
lately been taking a radical stance on VfU." I boggled at this. I have
from time to time made a point of participating in *every* VFD debate,
and you know, most things that end up on AFD do in fact deserve to die
a quick, messy and hopefully painful death, as absolutely soon as
possible. But these people. Their arguments make knifing people's
babies look like a bad idea or something.
- d.
Sorry, this is probably a stupid question. I've just joined the
mailing list, I read the welcome email and the about page, and can't
find the answer to this.
I configured myself to receive the message digests -- there's way too
much volume on this list for anything else. I want to respond to a
particular thread, though, and can't see how to do it easily. Is it
just a matter of copying the subject line? Actually, I'm pretty sure
it's not, because I see several cases of duplicate subjects which are
separate threads.
Thanks
>>I don't care about the number of votes. If an expert can assert it
>>meets notability criteria it should be kept. We should try to get such
>>criteria for as many types of articles as possible.
>Tell the people on AFD. (And I dare you to quote actual policy.) They
>seriously argue that a consensus of the admittedly ignorant on a
>subject beats a dissenting actual no-foolin' expert.
Simple self-assertion of expertise carries very little weight in AfD. This is
true whether arguing for exclusion OR inclusion.
If, however, one has actual knowledge of a topic it is quite possible to
influence an AfD _strongly,_ not by asserting knowledgeability but by _using_
one's knowledge to locate and cite convincing evidence weighing on the topic.
One of the characteristics of Wikipedia is that the only authority one has is
one's ability to convince other Wikipedians. This is sometimes a strength and
sometimes a weakness.
The problem with saying that "If an actual no-foolin' expert asserts that an
article meets notability criteria it should be kept" (or the reverse) is that
on Wikipedia, there are no accepted credentials for actual no-foolin'
expertise.
The current culture is that Wikipedians credit you with the exact amount of
expertise you actually demonstrate _right now_ on the spot, in their
presence.