From: Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com
On 6/6/05, JAY JG jayjg@hotmail.com wrote:
it was never intended. When it is pointed out that obvious arguments
will be
cited *somewhere*, the response is that some things are so obvious (e.g. "like the fact that the sun rises in the east") that it would actually
be
hard to find someone specifically stating them!
Hm. I'm the only person in recent memory who has made such a claim, so should I be offended that you appear to be binning me in with crackpot theorists?
Nothing personal; you're just the latest in a long line. And the people who insist their original research isn't original aren't always crackpot theorists; more often they're fairly normal people who have some strongly held beliefs.
For the record, I've never been a party to a content dispute on wikipedia.
For the record, I can't make the same claim; not by a long shot. :-)
I've discussed NOR because I believe it's a fundamentally weak idea at its core but it functions as a bandaid to solve many problems *now*... but long term we need process in place to accept and reject new research in a way which keeps out most of the crackpots (or at least mitigates their harm) and doesn't break NPOV.
I think the exact opposite; that it's a brilliant policy, especially when combined with other policies, particularly NPOV. While it was intended to deal with crackpots, what it is also good at (when used properly) is from stopping highly charged articles from descending into warring opinionfests.
Already wikipedia has become a better (more complete, more neutral, more verified and reviewed) corpus than some of the sources we cite, simply because our process are our contributors pretty good for some things... or alternatively, because other places are so bad. :) In any case we're weaving an odd world where wikipedia will become a default source of reliable general material... but to insert something new you must first publish it someplace less reliable.
I haven't seen evidence that Wikipedia is more reliable than the sources it cite; the contributer process is highly variable, and I've seen some rather absurd claims successfully defended in articles by large groups of people.
... The point is that in the process of reinventing the encyclopedia we are also reinventing peer review. The logical conclusion is that while the encyclopedia should not be a repository for original research (because it's an encyclopedia), we will ultimately end up building such a repository because our process is superior and because we will eventually need it as a reference once we've put everyone else out of business. ;) Which is why I proposed wikiviews as a first cautious step in that direction.
There already is a huge repository for original research that is easily and readily available. It's called the Internet, and 90% of the original research you find on there is utter crap. I'm not sure why you'd want to transfer that crap into a Wiki that has to be paid for in some way.
Jay.