On Apr 7, 2008, at 7:42 PM, SlimVirgin wrote:
On 4/7/08, Phil Sandifer <snowspinner(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On 4/7/08, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
And the reason it's a problem is editors who
are bright but are
unschooled in joined-up thinking, who (usually unconsciously, some
consciously) don't like the idea that judgement takes time and
effort
to learn, and jump at the promise of a mechanised substitute.
Because
it clearly works *up to a point*. (Which is what I mean when I say
it's at best training wheels for beginners, even if it's no way to
do
serious work.)
Yes - it's worth noting that many of the research practices espoused
by Wikipedia on WP:V and WP:NOR are the sorts of things that are
taught in high school, where the "every statement that has ever been
thought by anybody other than you has to be precisely sourced" thing
is taught.
WP:V has been written and maintained by a number of people with PhDs
and other higher degrees, both in the humanities and the sciences, so
it's wrong-headed to talk in terms of it being appropriate for high
school students, as though we're too stupid to know how to do good
research. :)
I remain agnostic about how WP:V and WP:NOR were formulated - I note
merely that they present a viewpoint of research that is, by current
prevailing standards, wrong. It seems to me that they got wrong not
because somebody stupid went and changed it but because careless
editing over years caused the pages to drift from sane to wrong, but
the point remains - they are simply wrong.
We want to be questioned, we want to be challenged.
That's a
fundamental part of the revolutionary nature of Wikipedia. The expert
is still respected, but he's no longer on a pedestal, where what he
says goes just because he went to Harvard or Oxford. We want to know
who his sources are, and who his sources' sources are, and on and on
down the line, so our readers can make up their own minds.
Wikipedia's quest is to present the ur-source from which all knowledge
depends through a process of recursive sourcing? That's new...
An article that provides that for people is a really
useful resource.
An article that offers a Wikpedian's original research isn't, even if
happens to be accurate.
Well, it's still useful. The problem with an article that offers
accurate original research is that it's not presenting a NPOV
perspective. Our articles shouldn't say what "is" about the world -
they should provide attributed accounts of the important accounts of
the world. Which, to say again (and hopefully this time it will stick
and people will stop responding to claims I'm not making), we strive
to provide accurate information, but the only information we strive to
provide is accounts of what other people think.
-Phil