In a message dated 4/7/2008 11:57:14 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
snowspinner(a)gmail.com writes:
Actually, and this is my complaint, we currently demand that a person
*unskilled* in the art be able to do it.>>
--------------------------------------------------------------
That might be a change. I do recall debating the exact language of that
section several months ago. I drifted away from some policy pages for a bit.
I'm sure the argument would be something like "If you cannot convince the
reader that your ...deduction... follows, then you're not very good at writing"
;) Sort of an antagonistic approach, but perhaps reasonable in some regard.
If you are having a particular issue, with a particular article, I'd like to
see it, to get a feel of the underlying philosophical issues more
concretely. It's sometimes hard to argue hypothetically, the cognitive dissonance
compels me to spend days writing up position papers for WP.
Will Johnson
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In a message dated 4/9/2008 10:01:35 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, dger
ard(a)gmail.com writes:
I'm talking about the case where something simply incorrect makes it
into a newspaper and never goes away, and the subject can't correct it
because robotic idiots claiming to be editors read in WP:RS that a
newspaper is always a Reliable Source>>
----------------------------
Depends David.
When The Guardian reports that Scary Spice was arrested for cocaine
possession yesterday, and she says "Oh No I wasn't".... What are we supposed to write?
I think you'll find the majority of people would think that you write "...
According to the Guardian Scary Spice was arrested for cocaine possession
although she has subsequently denied the report..."
Right?
Will Johnson
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Hi Folks,
We are bunch of grad students at UC Berkeley's School of Information working
on 'detecting hotspots' on Wikipedia pages. We want to be able to identify
sections of wikipedia articles that are being most talked about in the talk
pages.
We need your help to determine how relevant our detected results are to the
original talk page. We have a selection of '08 Presidential candidate pages
and Computer law articles for your expert evaluation. Please spend a few
minutes and help us find what else is being talked about in these pages:
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~ethan/wiki3/<http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/%7Eethan/wiki4/>
Thanks
Kesava / User:Kaysov
And what the subject claims about a statement of fact, sourced from a
reliable source, is not material. Never was, never will be.
If you think a subject has a veto power over their BLP then take it up on
BLP.
Will Johnson
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In a message dated 4/7/2008 5:27:04 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
ritzman(a)gmail.com writes:
Would the phrase "all research is original" be a simple way of stating
the above?>>
-------------------
No. When I go to the library and read the newspaper I am not doing original
research. I am doing source-based research. They are not the same thing.
Original research means I am *creating* the statements of fact, not that I'm
looking them up in another source.
So "all research" is not "original" since people use the word "research" to
cover looking things up in other sources.
Will Johnson
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G'day Will,
> Sure, but if James Joyce really is "one of the most significant
> writers of
> the 20th century" then we should have no problem finding a source
> which states
> that.
We have a camel's nose problem there. I say: "James Joyce is one of the most significant writers of the 20th Century." Will says, quite correctly: how do we know? That statement is unsourced! So I change it to, "According to Phil Sandifer, author of /Significant Writers of the 20th Century/, James Joyce is quite an important chap." Then Will Johnson, being the respectable, responsible person he is, will say --- "But who is Phil Sandifer? Why should we take *his* word on James Joyce?" So now we need a source to explain why Phil's views are relevant to the article about Joyce. But how do we verify the significance of *that* source?
Sooner or later, we have to use our own damn judgment. We can use it to determine that Source Omega is sufficiently reliable to verify Source Alpha, which verifies Source Z, which verifies Source A, which verifies ... or, and here's a wacky idea, we can use it to decide which statements need to be sourced and which --- drumroll, please --- *don't*.
> Remembering that we don't give credence to expert editors because
> they
> *know* details they can ramble off, but rather, because they know
> where *to look*
> to find the sources.
Er, no. *No*. My favourite encyclopaedia defines "expert" as, "someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely is accorded authority and status by their peers or the public. An expert, more generally, is a person with extensive knowledge or ability in a particular area of study." An expert can tell you where to find sources. More importantly, an expert can also tell you *when* to find sources.
Wikipedia is remarkably democratic (without, of course, being a *democracy*) --- you don't *have* to be an expert to write there. I often write (well, wrote) on subjects on which I had no expertise, and I find it liberating to be able to do so without anybody swooping in and saying, "Here, what makes you think *you* can talk on this subject?" That doesn't mean we don't need experts, or that experts need to pretend they're ordinary editors. However, it does appear to be the ultimate outcome if we take our poorly-written policies literally.
I'm proud of what I've contributed to Wikipedia. I'm proud of Wikipedia for allowing such contributions. I'm proud of what we've all accomplished, despite a lack of expertise. In short, I'm proud of the way we treat non-experts. But I'm not proud of the way we treat experts. When we adopt the Bloody-Minded Approach to Sourcing, we're being democratic in the Harrison Bergeron sense --- we're not providing The People the opportunity to contribute to the Sum of Human Knowledge. Instead, we're taking away from experts the ability to do the same. We're handicapping the very people who could provide the most value. We're belittling their abilities and their accomplishments, mocking their intentions, driving them away.
An anti-intellectual encyclopaedia is an interesting concept, and I bet Conservapedia would kill to find out how we managed to come so close. Our intention, our passion, our vision, is noble. Our policy contradicts that. One of the features, I think, of my wiki-career was my knowledge of How Things Work --- and my disdain for policy and process. Phil Sandifer is much the same. He has come to recognise, and with his posts has convinced me, that written policy has become so out of touch with How Things Work, and has become so important in the minds of newer editors, that it cannot further be ignored as a minor annoyance. It needs to be rewritten. NOR and V are incompatible with what Wikipedians have achieved, and what we hope to achieve in the future. In short: it sucks, and if we don't want Wikipedia to suck, we need to address that.
Has anyone filed a request to be allowed to consider maybe thinking about allowing the concept to tentatively cross someone's mind to maybe if the process-campers agree opening up a discussion to begin a poll to attempt to start a dialogue on altering some minor working of these policies?
> We, are not sources. I wouldn't support any position that claims
> that we,
> as editors, are also sources.
Wikipedia editors, if I may use the vernacular, write shit. That's what we're for. We write shit. We try to make it relevant and interesting to an encyclopaedia's readership. If I go down and take a picture of the new Glenloch Interchange and then describe what I see ("the traffic cones have been removed, there is a new loop road connecting Parkes Way with the GDE, formerly Caswell Drive"), there's nothing wrong with that. There's all sorts of things I could do to dress it up --- but I'm not violating core principles of Wikipedia. If you try to stop me by slapping silly rules on me, then *you are*.
We started with this idea of people writing shit. We've added layers of process and policy to that to help manage a project that is bigger than any volunteer effort that has ever existed (with the possible exception of the Crusades ...). That's fair and reasonable and to be expected. However, much like the Crusades (let's face it, that "you'll be absolved of all sins you commit while away" thing was a BIG mistake), we need to periodically review what we're doing and decide whether or not it's really such a good idea.
NOR exists for two purposes. Most obviously, to stop kooks from filling Wikipedia with psychoceramic nonsense. It's hung around on top of that because, well, "NOR" works quite well for an encyclopaedia. We don't want people advancing novel theories about *anything*, kookery or not. We're not here for advancing original research; we're not even here for synthesis of primary sources in exciting and novel ways. However, we don't want people interpreting poorly-worded *policies* in exciting and novel ways either, and that's what's happened in the past couple of years. Every time we ignore the purpose of policy in favour of bloody-mindedly enforcing the wording, we create suckage.
And suckage of any level of suckitude is something we should be trying to avoid. After all, we're Wikipedia. We make the Internet not suck.
--
Mark Gallagher
>What it's trying to do is clear - and the plagiarism
>example a bit further down is (mostly) spot-on. (It's not unreasonable
>to mention the Chicago Manual for context there - it's the explicit
>conclusion-drawing that is a problem)
I don't agree.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Attribution/FAQ#Plagiarism_exam…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Attribution/Archive_9#Synthesis…
Very brief summary: I think this is a reliable sources issue (the Chicago
Manual of Style isn't a reliable source on whether any particular person has
committed plagiarism), not an original research issue (it's not original
research because the conclusion "by the Chicago Manual's definition,
Smith is a plagiarist" is a straightforward logical deduction.)
It's as if the Chicago Manual of Style had defined a plagiarist as an apple,
and then someone wrote "according to the Chicago Manual of Style, a Yellow
Delicious is a plagiarist". Unreliable source (it obviously contains bad
definitions)--certainly. Original research (determining that something
satisfies the definition)--not at all.
Also, the example is based on a real case and seems to misrepresent what
went on in that real case.
"David Gerard" wrote
> I submit that we actually mean something much more like - to use
> actual English rather than internal jargon - "Be accurate in
> describing the points of view, but verifiably so."
I think we've actually done quite well, here. No doubt there are still the "philosophical" issues. (Not to speak of the "sandiferous" ones.) But if we render that into the notion of a "house style", it all starts to make somewhat more sense. I like the comparison with the "journal of record", dealing with politics with an arm's-length feel. There really is a Wikipedia kind of writing; and like everything else in policy, if you attempt to stay on the fairway and out of the bunkers, life is so much easier.
Charles
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