<<In a message dated 1/6/2009 5:19:38 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
cbeckhorn(a)fastmail.fm writes:
A reader who knows nothing about the material is in no position to worry
about whether the sources have been cherry-picked, and has to trust
whoever wrote the article.>>
-------------------------
We editors exist as a community to also watch each other. We don't exist in
a one-to-many relationship with our readers. We are a many-to-many
relationship. We patrol each other as well.
If the community has decided that it doesn't trust an article built using
solely primary sources, than that is what it has decided.
This is not to say that you cannot write in that fashion. Only that the
community has decided that articles written that way are more suspect than
others written with a mixture of primary and secondary sources.
Will Johnson
**************New year...new news. Be the first to know what is making
headlines. (http://www.aol.com/?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000026)
<<In a message dated 1/6/2009 4:31:29 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
cbeckhorn(a)fastmail.fm writes:
Doesn't the NPOV policy, specifically the "due weight" part, demand
that our articles include exactly those things that people educated in
the field all know about, and avoid including things that people
educated in the field feel are not important?>>
These two clauses have an excluded middle or rather two such.
I know and it's important.
I know and it's not important.
I didn't know about it, but I see now that it's important.
I didn't know about it, but I see that it's not important.
Due weight does not *demand* anything at all, but what it states is that we
should give the appropriate weight to sub-sections of articles *based* on how
the community who knows about them would themselves weight them.
In an articles on "Number Theory" the expansion of Pi wouldn't even be cited
much less discussed. However in an article on Pi it might merit at least a
citation, maybe one sentence in a ten paragraph article.
In an article on "Normal Numbers" it might merit several sentences.
We have no requirement to base our perspective on the most edge-cutting
research, and I would suggest that encyclopedias of the print variety don't
either. There is a time to weight to see if the *community* who cares... decides
to care.
In the case of the missing neutrino problem it decided it cared. In the
case of whether sun spot cycles effect the price of rice it decided it didn't.
It's not our place to decide *for* the community, what sholuld come to the
top of the pond. It's our place to just skim the top of the pond and write up
what we find.
Will Johnson
**************New year...new news. Be the first to know what is making
headlines. (http://www.aol.com/?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000026)
<<In a message dated 1/6/2009 4:59:20 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
cbeckhorn(a)fastmail.fm writes:
A book which only mentions a theorem but doesn't go into depth is useless as
a source. I would always cite the original paper in preference.>>
And, for your example, there are secondary source books which do go into
detail.
You may be unaware of them, but they exist.
You, as an expert (if you are) may be able to get away with creating
articles solely based on primary source citations. For the rest of us, we may need
secondary source citations just to tell us whether or not the underlying
papers are encyclopedic or not. And the mere fact that an article is built from
primary sources, doesn't protect it from AfD consideration. We have many
biographies, built completely from primary sources, which get deleted, because
the subject is not notable. This works in sciences as well. Notability is
established, in part, by being cited.
Will Johnson
**************New year...new news. Be the first to know what is making
headlines. (http://www.aol.com/?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000026)
<<In a message dated 1/6/2009 4:17:21 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
cbeckhorn(a)fastmail.fm writes:
The result described at [[Green-Tao_theorem]] was groundbreaking and of
extraordinary scientific interest. It will no doubt eventually be
covered in a text some day. The present article is just a stub, but if
we were to expand the article to something longer, the main sources at
the moment would have to be journal articles. There is a 0% chance this
article would be deleted at AFD.>>
-----
I think "extraordinary scientific interest" is pushing it ;)
It is *already* covered in a text. In fact, I note, just on Google Books,
at least six print secondary sources which *mention* it, and a few go into
details.
You mistake my point, if you think I was suggesting that an article, with
secondary mentions, even if trivial, is an AfD candidate.
What I was suggesting is that an article with no secondary mentions (of any
kind, whatsoever) is probably a good AfD candidate.
However the main point here is on the appropriate mix of primary and
secondary sources. We're not really discussing AfD quite.
Will Johnson
**************New year...new news. Be the first to know what is making
headlines. (http://www.aol.com/?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000026)
<<n a message dated 1/6/2009 2:37:30 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
cbeckhorn(a)fastmail.fm writes:
* For results that are sufficiently new that they are not yet covered by
secondary literature. I can think of several research programs with
numerous papers by numerous independent authors, with significant
scientific interest, but no coverage outside of journals. These areas
have no sources that on their face are accessible to a reader without
specialized knowledge; the wikipedia article may be the most accesible
writing on the subject. >>
-----------------------------------
I'm not comfortable with the idea that Wikipedia is going to be the *source*
for a new summary and synthesize of primary source material.
That is the very position that we strove to exclude in the policy language.
Rather, we should be the source for a new summary and synthesize of
secondary material, with balancing primary interjections where needed.
Once we begin to collect primary material as a new presentation, than we are
becoming the very textbooks that we are supposed to be citing as our sources.
Encyclopedias are not textbooks, they summarize textbooks. Authors of
encyclopedia articles sometimes interject some primary material, but only in
brief, sporadic, isolated cases, and perhaps in some cases where they themselves
are editors of new material outside the work.
I think that the policy patrollers would agree with the essential
understanding that primary source material should supplement articles. Articles should
not be essentially based upon it. It's use should be auxiliary. *If* there
is a specific situation where an article has no secondary source citations,
than a realistic question could be raised as to why we have an article on it
whatsoever.
Specifics would be helpful.
Will Johnson
**************New year...new news. Be the first to know what is making
headlines. (http://www.aol.com/?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000026)
<<In a message dated 1/2/2009 3:09:03 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
snowspinner(a)gmail.com writes:
The issue is that we want to be very, very careful in how we summarize
and use primary sources. But their use, generally speaking, is more or
less a fact of life.>>
---------------------------
Our policy was fashioned in a deliberate way to prevent the use of primary
sources where there is no secondary source mention.
That was deliberate.
Will Johnson
**************New year...new news. Be the first to know what is making
headlines. (http://www.aol.com/?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000026)
<<n a message dated 1/5/2009 6:57:37 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
cbeckhorn(a)fastmail.fm writes:
We have always permitted the use of academic research articles published
in peer-reviewed journals. These are crucial both for the results they
contain and for their link to the historical record. The difficulty is
that these sources have to be considered "secondary sources" in order to
mesh our best practices with the literal wording of NOR. But many people
like to consider them "primary sources". >>
Our purpose in writing an encyclopedia, as opposed to a "Today's New For
You" sheet, is that we synthesize the "current state of belief" in system A.
In our articles on the Neutrino, we present the current state of belief in the
Neutrino community on the properties of the Neutrino.
We do not present each new paper published. We can however, once a
secondary source has stated that "the neutrino has no mass..." present a summary of a
new paper which states "however a new experiment by Smith & Wesson has
recently shown...."
When a secondary source brings forth a statement, it can be balanced by a
primary source.
What would be wrong would be to present a brand-new claim directly from a
primary source, which no secondary source mention whatsoever.
"The Neutrino has no mass. In other news, it's been recently found that the
neutrino is made of Spam."
That would be an incorrect use of sources, as we deliberately categorized
them.
Peer-review or not.
Will Johnson
**************New year...new news. Be the first to know what is making
headlines. (http://www.aol.com/?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000026)
<<In a message dated 1/5/2009 3:48:55 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
geniice(a)gmail.com writes:
Mostly because from time to time they have actually moved
content from one article from another (the rest of the time you can
nail them for persistently lying in edit summaries). Given the format
of the mediawiki software and the GFDL it is pretty much impossible to
do such merges without violating copyright>>
Could you explain a bit more why you think that merges violate copyright?
Thanks
Will Johnson
**************New year...new news. Be the first to know what is making
headlines. (http://www.aol.com/?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000026)
NPOV is not just a rule. It's what allows us to have a project at all. It is not "right" to violate NPOV because reality hurts someone's feelings. Reality frequently is painful. It's neither possible nor our job to change that.
It's our job to make a neutral, factual, verifiable reference work. Not to impose our notions of right and wrong.
Polarizing the issue into "those who agree with me are right and all others are wrongdoers" is unhelpful.
-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Arromdee <arromdee(a)rahul.net>
Subj: Re: [WikiEN-l] Biography of Living persons
Date: Wed Dec 31, 2008 4:13 pm
Size: 509 bytes
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 toddmallen(a)gmail.com wrote:
> I've even been told, by someone who should know better, that BLP is
> more important than NPOV, and saw not a bit of outrage.
NPOV is a rule. BLP is about doing what's right.
Some people elevate rules over doing what's right. I'm not one of them.
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