David Gerard wrote:
On 10/04/2008, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
That still leads us to the initial question---how do we determine accuracy and truth? Generally, we determine it by consulting and citing sources, rather than doing original research ourselves. For example, if through consulting archival documents I determine that the standard attribution of some ancient Greek poet to the 4th century BC is actually incorrect, and the truth is that he lived in the 2nd century BC, it would still be appropriate for Wikipedia to report that he lived in the 4th century BC, unless I get my new estimate published in a classics journal first.
That's fine for eventualism, but breaks down with living bios - on which we are forced to be immediatist in order to avoid causing actual harm, because we're vastly popular and have a ridiculously high Google page rank.
It isn't so much eventualism that causes us to reject these "improvements" based on original research, though, as actually a distrust that the original research is correct. While we phrase it as "that's a nice discovery, but please submit to a classics journal first", what we really mean at least 19 times out of 20 is, "your alleged 'discovery' is actually bunk, but don't take it from us; if you really think it's a discovery, go submit to a classics journal and let it get ripped to shreds in peer review".
Are we more confident in the ability of nonspecialist Wikipedians to carry out accurate original research based on analyzing primary sources when it comes to living people? A lot of the research I see in this area is highly questionable, including a lot of "I searched arrest database [x] and didn't find anything, therefore my research shows Joe Bob was never arrested".
-Mark