Wikipedia has way too many articles on websites, webcomics and other types of internet content -- likely thousands.
The problem is that around 95% of those articles are not sourced (or they are sourced from forum and blog posts) and at least 70% won't be able to be sourced because they were never mentioned in the mainstream press -- and probably very few were mentioned in books and journals.
I deleted about 50 of them, which looked totally non-notable, but if I had to apply the rules, at least 80% would have to be deleted for lacking notability claims.
Can anyone suggest any solution to this?
On 1/3/07, Bogdan Giusca liste@dapyx.com wrote:
Wikipedia has way too many articles on websites, webcomics and other types of internet content -- likely thousands.
The problem is that around 95% of those articles are not sourced (or they are sourced from forum and blog posts) and at least 70% won't be able to be sourced because they were never mentioned in the mainstream press -- and probably very few were mentioned in books and journals.
I deleted about 50 of them, which looked totally non-notable, but if I had to apply the rules, at least 80% would have to be deleted for lacking notability claims.
Can anyone suggest any solution to this?
Don't be such a deletion nazi.
On 1/3/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/3/07, Bogdan Giusca liste@dapyx.com wrote:
Wikipedia has way too many articles on websites, webcomics and other types of internet content -- likely thousands.
The problem is that around 95% of those articles are not sourced (or they are sourced from forum and blog posts) and at least 70% won't be able to be sourced because they were never mentioned in the mainstream press -- and probably very few were mentioned in books and journals.
I deleted about 50 of them, which looked totally non-notable, but if I had to apply the rules, at least 80% would have to be deleted for lacking notability claims.
Can anyone suggest any solution to this?
Don't be such a deletion nazi.
I agree 100% with this sentiment.
Parker
Can anyone suggest any solution to this?
If they don't assert notability (something like "X readers", "Y million hits a day", "recieved Z award" - it doesn't matter what the X, Y and Z are, even "has 3 readers every week" is an assertion of notability), then speedy them. If they do assert notability, but you think they aren't notable anyway, then PROD them.
All websites are easy to source - you have the website itself. You're not going to make a featured article from only a primary source, but it's enough to save an article from deletion.
Wednesday, January 3, 2007, 6:52:51 PM, Thomas wrote:
Can anyone suggest any solution to this?
If they don't assert notability (something like "X readers", "Y million hits a day", "recieved Z award" - it doesn't matter what the X, Y and Z are, even "has 3 readers every week" is an assertion of notability), then speedy them. If they do assert notability, but you think they aren't notable anyway, then PROD them.
All websites are easy to source - you have the website itself. You're not going to make a featured article from only a primary source, but it's enough to save an article from deletion.
Not always you can source them from the website.
For example, this webcomic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_in_Greytown
It is a dead comic which was never mentioned in any newspaper, but you have to pay to read it. :-)
It's a perfectly fine, non-biased article that is hurting NOONE by its existence and represents real effort by the contributors. Why does it need to be deleted? WHY?
On 1/3/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
It is a dead comic which was never mentioned in any newspaper, but you have to pay to read it. :-)
Sources don't have to be free, it's just prefered.
That article doesn't assert notability, though, so it should probably be speedied. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 03/01/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
It's a perfectly fine, non-biased article that is hurting NOONE by its existence and represents real effort by the contributors. Why does it need to be deleted? WHY?
I've always thought the underlying justification for unnecessary deletionism (the deleting of articles which are factually accurate and verifiable) is elitism. IMO, it detracts from Wikipedia.
Wednesday, January 3, 2007, 7:58:27 PM, The Cunctator wrote:
It's a perfectly fine, non-biased article that is hurting NOONE by its existence and represents real effort by the contributors. Why does it need to be deleted? WHY?
That's not a valid argument. If I write a fine, non-bias article on myself, it wouldn't hurt NO ONE, either and it would be a real effort from me, the contributor, right?
On 1/3/07, Bogdan Giusca liste@dapyx.com wrote:
Wednesday, January 3, 2007, 7:58:27 PM, The Cunctator wrote:
It's a perfectly fine, non-biased article that is hurting NOONE by its existence and represents real effort by the contributors. Why does it
need
to be deleted? WHY?
That's not a valid argument. If I write a fine, non-bias article on myself, it wouldn't hurt NO ONE, either and it would be a real effort from me, the contributor, right?
Right.
Even ignoring the fact that claims of non-biased are meaningless for non-verifyable articles ... It simply doesn't scale.
One shouldn't do something that would cause harm if everyone did it. (He says while top posting, alas)
More than anything else people learn how to write Wikipedia by reading Wikipedia... We now are seeing people write fair use criteria for clearly free images because that's the examples they see. We must lead by example. While we can't find every problem we can not survive if we adopt a policy of ignoring problems we've found simply because a single case won't kill us.
This is a distinct issue from inclusion vs deletion.
Frankly, all mentions of deletion vs inclusion these days just become an excuse for some of our contributors to express their hate for other contributors. All the particapants in these arguments are managing to accomplish is the distruction of their respect from Wikipedians who are not members of their clique. This factionalism serves no one.
On 1/3/07, Bogdan Giusca liste@dapyx.com wrote:
Wednesday, January 3, 2007, 7:58:27 PM, The Cunctator wrote:
It's a perfectly fine, non-biased article that is hurting NOONE by its existence and represents real effort by the contributors. Why does it need to be deleted? WHY?
That's not a valid argument. If I write a fine, non-bias article on myself, it wouldn't hurt NO ONE, either and it would be a real effort from me, the contributor, right?
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On 1/3/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Even ignoring the fact that claims of non-biased are meaningless for non-verifyable articles ... It simply doesn't scale.
Where did nonverifiability come into the discussion?
More than anything else people learn how to write Wikipedia by reading Wikipedia... We now are seeing people write fair use criteria for clearly free images because that's the examples they see. We must lead by example. While we can't find every problem we can not survive if we adopt a policy of ignoring problems we've found simply because a single case won't kill us.
"We cannot survive"? Is someone predicting the imminent death of Wikipedia? What problems are being ignored?
This is a distinct issue from inclusion vs deletion.
Frankly, all mentions of deletion vs inclusion these days just become an excuse for some of our contributors to express their hate for other contributors. All the particapants in these arguments are managing to accomplish is the distruction of their respect from Wikipedians who are not members of their clique. This factionalism serves no one.
Who is expressing hate for anyone?
On 1/3/07, Bogdan Giusca liste@dapyx.com wrote:
Wednesday, January 3, 2007, 7:58:27 PM, The Cunctator wrote:
It's a perfectly fine, non-biased article that is hurting NOONE by its existence and represents real effort by the contributors. Why does it
need
to be deleted? WHY?
That's not a valid argument. If I write a fine, non-bias article on
myself,
it wouldn't hurt NO ONE, either and it would be a real effort from me, the contributor, right?
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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On Wed, 3 Jan 2007 12:58:27 -0500, "The Cunctator" cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
It's a perfectly fine, non-biased article that is hurting NOONE by its existence and represents real effort by the contributors. Why does it need to be deleted? WHY?
So you say. How do I verify that it is non-biased?
Guy (JzG)
It's a perfectly fine, non-biased article that is hurting NOONE by its existence and represents real effort by the contributors. Why does it need to be deleted? WHY?
Because we have a policy that says we delete articles that don't assert notability. If you want to change the policy, then you know what you have to do.
On 1/3/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Because we have a policy that says we delete articles that don't assert notability.
No, we don't.
We have a policy that says that articles that do not assert notability in certain areas (people, groups of people, web content) may be speedy deleted. Anything else goes to AFD, where the criteria are not policy, but rough consensus is required to delete something.
-Matt
No, we don't.
We have a policy that says that articles that do not assert notability in certain areas (people, groups of people, web content) may be speedy deleted. Anything else goes to AFD, where the criteria are not policy, but rough consensus is required to delete something.
Ok, so I generalised, I'm sorry. My point stands, though, as we are talking about "web content". CSD is policy and it says that articles about websites that don't assert notability (or "importance and significance", but notability is close enough) can be deleted. True, it doesn't say "must be deleted", but that's just semantics when the deletion is allowed to be completely unilateral. It just takes one admin to want it gone, and it's gone. If people want to keep such articles, they need to get a concensus to change A7.
On Wed, 3 Jan 2007, Bogdan Giusca wrote:
Wikipedia has way too many articles on websites, webcomics and other types of internet content -- likely thousands.
The problem is that around 95% of those articles are not sourced (or they are sourced from forum and blog posts) and at least 70% won't be able to be sourced because they were never mentioned in the mainstream press -- and probably very few were mentioned in books and journals.
Perhaps that means you need a broader view of what sourcing is.
On 1/3/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Wed, 3 Jan 2007, Bogdan Giusca wrote:
The problem is that around 95% of those articles are not sourced (or they are sourced from forum and blog posts) and at least 70% won't be able to be sourced because they were never mentioned in the mainstream press -- and probably very few were mentioned in books and journals.
Perhaps that means you need a broader view of what sourcing is.
And why is that? Remember, people learn to write Wikipedia by reading Wikipedia. If we're going to relax our content standards substantially for one area, people are going to carry the lessons they learn from reading that area into the rest of Wikipedia. If something can't be sourced up to our standards, we can do without it.
Robth wrote:
Remember, people learn to write Wikipedia by reading Wikipedia. If we're going to relax our content standards substantially for one area, people are going to carry the lessons they learn from reading that area into the rest of Wikipedia.
Do you have any evidence for that theory? Those who are interested only in "serious" subjects are not likely to spend a lot of time with the flakier subjects in order to learn how to write for Wikipedia. We also have Study Groups (aka WikiProjects) which do a pretty good job setting standards for their area of interest.
Ec
On 1/3/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Robth wrote:
Remember, people learn to write Wikipedia by reading Wikipedia. If we're going to relax our content standards substantially for one area, people are going to carry the lessons they learn from reading that area into the rest of Wikipedia.
Do you have any evidence for that theory? Those who are interested only in "serious" subjects are not likely to spend a lot of time with the flakier subjects in order to learn how to write for Wikipedia. We also have Study Groups (aka WikiProjects) which do a pretty good job setting standards for their area of interest.
Ec
It's a hard theory to provide specific evidence for, seeing as it does involve trying to get inside people's heads, which is all but impossible on the internet. What I do think we can reasonably state, though, is as follows:
1. People learn more about how to write Wikipedia from reading articles than they do from reading style guides. I know this has been the case with me, and I haven't met anyone with whom it isn't. We have an ungodly amount of guideline material relating to what articles should look like, and anyone who attempted to read it all before sitting down to begin writing for Wikipedia would get bored and give up before they ever started typing. Style guidelines are all well and good, but we have to acknowledge that, at the end of the day, the drive-by contributors who account for most of our material are, in the best case scenario, going to write something that looks like other articles they have read on Wikipedia. The better the average article is, the better the average passer-by contribution is likely to be. Think how great it would be if just 1 out of every 10 college kids who make a drive-by contribution to Wikipedia went and got a book from the library, checked their facts, and cited their sources when they wrote. That isn't impossible, but it would require that our across-the-board quality be high enough that getting the book would seem like the natural way to contribute to Wikipedia. Quality begets quality.
2. You can't quarantine topics from each other. Now I'm not arguing that people are going to read poorly sourced webcomic articles and then immediately go write articles on medieval Scandinavian literature sourced from the same blogs. You refer to people who are "only interested in serious topics", but people do read and write about more than one topic apiece on Wikipedia. And there is a startling amount of really shitty content about serious academic topics on the web, waiting for people who have learned to look to google for their sources to come snap it up. I don't use web sources when I'm writing, but every now and then I google the topic I'm working on and am blown away by the sheer quantity of incorrect information there is out there. If people observe that "Some Internet Guy said it" is accepted as a reasonable source for large portions of our site, they're going to go look and see what Some Internet Guy has to say about medieval Scandinavian literature when they decide to help out Wikipedia by writing an article about this cool book they just heard about. And the article they write will be, as a result, bad and inaccurate. (Really, google an academic topic you're familiar with, and imagine just how atrocious an article based on the sites that come up would be. I suspect that history is the worst, as some basic storytelling impulse inspires people to write breathless semi-informed narratives about stuff they took a class on one time, but it isn't alone.)
3. We don't have the manpower to contain the spillover. This is my problem with the argument that we can allow Some Internet Guy to serve as our source for articles about stuff that only Some Internet Guy cares enough about to write about, but then, through rigourous enforcement of our standards in other topics, ensure that only reliable sources are accepted for most subjects. Now this might work for subjects like Israel-Palestine, where both the IDF and Hamas have full-time personnel vetting every single edit (or have we not reached that point quite yet?), but it won't work for the vast majority of topics, in which most articles are monitored loosely or not at all, and any edit that isn't vandalism tends to stick. Remember, source quality and style guidelines are invoked only in those rare cases where two people find themselves working on the same article at the same time; editing in a fairly popular academic subject area, I have seen such simultaneous editing on only two or three occasions (outside of the FA or GA processes) in my year here. We don't have the resources to maintain the kind of line that seems to be envisioned in many people's comments on this topic.
I suppose that what you take away from this depends on your perspective. I'm sure there are people who would argue, given these three points, that we should do our best to contain this spillover and accept what we can't contain as a necessary byproduct of having these articles. I don't reach that conclusion. By including these difficult-to-source subjects we make available information, to our present internet audience, on topics of short-term interest (let's not kid ourselves about that) that are already covered in spades by the rest of the internet. This is a good thing. If, however, by doing so we impede the development of content that will be of use to a much larger potential long term and offline audience, then forget it. Including information on websites, fads, webcomics and the like is a nice thing to do, if it can be done without spilling over and worsening our coverage of stuff that people are still going to care about 10, 20, and 50 years from now. But if covering those subjects involves lowering our standards in a way that adversely effects the average quality of incoming contributions, and the standard or writing on other subjects--and I believe that it does--then forget it.
This was long. Sorry about that.
On 1/4/07, Robth robth1@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/3/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Robth wrote:
Remember, people learn to write Wikipedia by reading Wikipedia. If we're going to relax our content standards substantially for one area, people are going to carry the lessons they learn from reading that area into the rest of Wikipedia.
Do you have any evidence for that theory? Those who are interested only in "serious" subjects are not likely to spend a lot of time with the flakier subjects in order to learn how to write for Wikipedia. We also have Study Groups (aka WikiProjects) which do a pretty good job setting standards for their area of interest.
Ec
It's a hard theory to provide specific evidence for, seeing as it does involve trying to get inside people's heads, which is all but impossible on the internet. What I do think we can reasonably state, though, is as follows:
- People learn more about how to write Wikipedia from reading
articles than they do from reading style guides. I know this has been the case with me, and I haven't met anyone with whom it isn't. We have an ungodly amount of guideline material relating to what articles should look like, and anyone who attempted to read it all before sitting down to begin writing for Wikipedia would get bored and give up before they ever started typing. Style guidelines are all well and good, but we have to acknowledge that, at the end of the day, the drive-by contributors who account for most of our material are, in the best case scenario, going to write something that looks like other articles they have read on Wikipedia. The better the average article is, the better the average passer-by contribution is likely to be. Think how great it would be if just 1 out of every 10 college kids who make a drive-by contribution to Wikipedia went and got a book from the library, checked their facts, and cited their sources when they wrote. That isn't impossible, but it would require that our across-the-board quality be high enough that getting the book would seem like the natural way to contribute to Wikipedia. Quality begets quality.
I fully agree with above.
2. You can't quarantine topics from each other. Now I'm not arguing
that people are going to read poorly sourced webcomic articles and then immediately go write articles on medieval Scandinavian literature sourced from the same blogs. You refer to people who are "only interested in serious topics", but people do read and write about more than one topic apiece on Wikipedia. And there is a startling amount of really shitty content about serious academic topics on the web, waiting for people who have learned to look to google for their sources to come snap it up. I don't use web sources when I'm writing, but every now and then I google the topic I'm working on and am blown away by the sheer quantity of incorrect information there is out there. If people observe that "Some Internet Guy said it" is accepted as a reasonable source for large portions of our site, they're going to go look and see what Some Internet Guy has to say about medieval Scandinavian literature when they decide to help out Wikipedia by writing an article about this cool book they just heard about.
This I find hard to believe.
Also, "Some Internet Guy" seems like a straw man.
And
the article they write will be, as a result, bad and inaccurate.
Why so?
Evidence?
(Really, google an academic topic you're familiar with, and imagine
just how atrocious an article based on the sites that come up would be. I suspect that history is the worst, as some basic storytelling impulse inspires people to write breathless semi-informed narratives about stuff they took a class on one time, but it isn't alone.)
- We don't have the manpower to contain the spillover. This is my
problem with the argument that we can allow Some Internet Guy to serve as our source for articles about stuff that only Some Internet Guy cares enough about to write about, but then, through rigourous enforcement of our standards in other topics, ensure that only reliable sources are accepted for most subjects. Now this might work for subjects like Israel-Palestine, where both the IDF and Hamas have full-time personnel vetting every single edit (or have we not reached that point quite yet?), but it won't work for the vast majority of topics, in which most articles are monitored loosely or not at all, and any edit that isn't vandalism tends to stick. Remember, source quality and style guidelines are invoked only in those rare cases where two people find themselves working on the same article at the same time; editing in a fairly popular academic subject area, I have seen such simultaneous editing on only two or three occasions (outside of the FA or GA processes) in my year here. We don't have the resources to maintain the kind of line that seems to be envisioned in many people's comments on this topic.
I really find the "spillover" argument profoundly unconvincing.
On 1/4/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/4/07, Robth robth1@gmail.com wrote: And
the article they write will be, as a result, bad and inaccurate.
Why so?
Evidence?
Bad, inaccurate sources=bad, inaccurate article. To pick an example I'm familiar with, here's are the first five non-Wikipedia google results for the first major article I ever did for Wikipedia, [[Epaminondas]] (filtering out totally off-topic or near-duplicate results).
http://www.fordham.edu/HALSALL/ANCIENT/nepos-epam.html -Ancient primary source of dubious validity. Usable only with input from reliable modern sources.
http://www.in2greece.com/english/historymyth/history/ancient/epaminondas.htm -Utterly atrocious page written by Some Internet Guy, containing numerous inaccuracies.
http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=haaren&book=greece&stor... -Dramatized story of the man's life. Glosses over critical aspects, quite inaccurate on some points.
http://www.nndb.com/people/812/000095527/ -Best of the lot, but contains numerous inaccuracies and omissions.
From the second page of google
http://www.lbdb.com/TMDisplayLeader.cfm?PID=5744 -Short
You could write an article from these sources. It would omit numerous important points, and would probably also include numerous untruths. Such an article would be, in my opinion, worse than nothing. And I have seen sites like these used as the basis history articles; here's one of my favorites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Methuselah&oldid=71757344 -Article bloated with dubious speculations drawn from the internet (not all of them directly cited, but google shall reveal for those that aren't) and of course, the requisite In Popular Culture section. And actually, looking back, my rather timid cleanup probably wasn't sufficient.
That's obviously a pretty susceptible article, but it isn't the only example, just the one that jumped to mind for me, and I can't convince myself that the belief (inherent in the edits that produced that page) that Wikipedia is a place to put information you found on the internet doesn't in some part stem from the fact that we have a number of articles that are, well, a place to put stuff you found on the internet.
On 1/4/07, Robth robth1@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/4/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/4/07, Robth robth1@gmail.com wrote: And
the article they write will be, as a result, bad and inaccurate.
Why so?
Evidence?
Bad, inaccurate sources=bad, inaccurate article. To pick an example I'm familiar with, here's are the first five non-Wikipedia google results for the first major article I ever did for Wikipedia, [[Epaminondas]] (filtering out totally off-topic or near-duplicate results).
<snip>
You could write an article from these sources. It would omit numerous important points, and would probably also include numerous untruths. Such an article would be, in my opinion, worse than nothing.
And I
have seen sites like these used as the basis history articles; here's one of my favorites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Methuselah&oldid=71757344 -Article bloated with dubious speculations drawn from the internet (not all of them directly cited, but google shall reveal for those that aren't) and of course, the requisite In Popular Culture section. And actually, looking back, my rather timid cleanup probably wasn't sufficient.
That's obviously a pretty susceptible article, but it isn't the only example, just the one that jumped to mind for me, and I can't convince myself that the belief (inherent in the edits that produced that page) that Wikipedia is a place to put information you found on the internet doesn't in some part stem from the fact that we have a number of articles that are, well, a place to put stuff you found on the internet.
Thanks for the serious response.
What I would say is that Wikipedia has worked remarkably well by letting people who are not experts (i.e. just some internet guys) write imperfect but well-intentioned articles at first.
Over time articles improve.
Sure, everyone's better off the better articles begin, but experience has demonstrated that the seeds generally flower well, no matter how ugly they look at first.
On 1/4/07, Robth robth1@gmail.com wrote:
That's obviously a pretty susceptible article, but it isn't the only example, just the one that jumped to mind for me, and I can't convince myself that the belief (inherent in the edits that produced that page) that Wikipedia is a place to put information you found on the internet doesn't in some part stem from the fact that we have a number of articles that are, well, a place to put stuff you found on the internet.
How inaccurate the online sources are depends on the subject matter, however. Generally internet sources are not much worse than the popular press when it comes to accuracy; such an article, pre-Internet, would likely pick up the same kind of errors from the popular press if they were used as the source.
For some subject areas, the academic works are published online and available. In others, there are no academic works to use, and sometimes the most authoritative works are online.
-Matt
The Cunctator wrote:
On 1/4/07, Robth robth1@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/3/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Robth wrote:
Remember, people learn to write Wikipedia by reading Wikipedia. If we're going to relax our content standards substantially for one area, people are going to carry the lessons they learn from reading that area into the rest of Wikipedia.
Do you have any evidence for that theory? Those who are interested only in "serious" subjects are not likely to spend a lot of time with the flakier subjects in order to learn how to write for Wikipedia. We also have Study Groups (aka WikiProjects) which do a pretty good job setting standards for their area of interest.
It's a hard theory to provide specific evidence for, seeing as it does involve trying to get inside people's heads, which is all but impossible on the internet. What I do think we can reasonably state, though, is as follows:
- People learn more about how to write Wikipedia from reading
articles than they do from reading style guides. I know this has been the case with me, and I haven't met anyone with whom it isn't. We have an ungodly amount of guideline material relating to what articles should look like, and anyone who attempted to read it all before sitting down to begin writing for Wikipedia would get bored and give up before they ever started typing. Style guidelines are all well and good, but we have to acknowledge that, at the end of the day, the drive-by contributors who account for most of our material are, in the best case scenario, going to write something that looks like other articles they have read on Wikipedia. The better the average article is, the better the average passer-by contribution is likely to be. Think how great it would be if just 1 out of every 10 college kids who make a drive-by contribution to Wikipedia went and got a book from the library, checked their facts, and cited their sources when they wrote. That isn't impossible, but it would require that our across-the-board quality be high enough that getting the book would seem like the natural way to contribute to Wikipedia. Quality begets quality.
I fully agree with above.
Sure. We also know how thoroughly people read software manuals. We do have all sorts of articles that are bloody awful, but we have to give our serious contributors a little credit for recognizing trash. Each new contributor will follow his own writing style. He may look at the bad articles to understand how wiki markup is used, but that doesn't mean that he will adopt someone else's writing style. If he makes atrocious gaffes in his writing I would hope that someone who notices this will become a mentor who understandingly encourages him to improve, rather than criticises him on his stupid style.
- You can't quarantine topics from each other. Now I'm not arguing
that people are going to read poorly sourced webcomic articles and then immediately go write articles on medieval Scandinavian literature sourced from the same blogs. You refer to people who are "only interested in serious topics", but people do read and write about more than one topic apiece on Wikipedia. And there is a startling amount of really shitty content about serious academic topics on the web, waiting for people who have learned to look to google for their sources to come snap it up. I don't use web sources when I'm writing, but every now and then I google the topic I'm working on and am blown away by the sheer quantity of incorrect information there is out there. If people observe that "Some Internet Guy said it" is accepted as a reasonable source for large portions of our site, they're going to go look and see what Some Internet Guy has to say about medieval Scandinavian literature when they decide to help out Wikipedia by writing an article about this cool book they just heard about.
This I find hard to believe.
Yes, at some point you need to accept that you do not have a monopoly on good sense. Sometimes other editors, including newbies, hav a little of it. Fixing an article should always remain a preferred option. Quick deletions as a solution is a bit like forbidding one's children to go out because you're afraid they might meet bad people.
- We don't have the manpower to contain the spillover. This is my
problem with the argument that we can allow Some Internet Guy to serve as our source for articles about stuff that only Some Internet Guy cares enough about to write about, but then, through rigourous enforcement of our standards in other topics, ensure that only reliable sources are accepted for most subjects. Now this might work for subjects like Israel-Palestine, where both the IDF and Hamas have full-time personnel vetting every single edit (or have we not reached that point quite yet?), but it won't work for the vast majority of topics, in which most articles are monitored loosely or not at all, and any edit that isn't vandalism tends to stick. Remember, source quality and style guidelines are invoked only in those rare cases where two people find themselves working on the same article at the same time; editing in a fairly popular academic subject area, I have seen such simultaneous editing on only two or three occasions (outside of the FA or GA processes) in my year here. We don't have the resources to maintain the kind of line that seems to be envisioned in many people's comments on this topic.
I really find the "spillover" argument profoundly unconvincing.
Failing to have the resources is not an argument for extreme action. What happens in trying to bring an article to feature status is only going to happen in a handful of articles. One should not expect such rigour in the vast majority of articles.
Both sides of the Israel/Palestine issue have enough English-speaking readers to maintain a dynamic tension about the subject. Nevertheless, I would suspect that the tone of the articles is very different on HE:WP or AR:WP.
We all have our own image of what is needed for an ideal article. For any article this develops over time, sometimes over a very long time. An early stage article may be deficient in many respects. Only blatantly illegal, offensive or vandalous activities require immediate attention. Otherwise, fix what you can or leave deficiency notices and move on. Eventually someone who is interested in the subject will do what needs to be done.
Ec
On 1/6/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Sure. We also know how thoroughly people read software manuals. We do have all sorts of articles that are bloody awful, but we have to give our serious contributors a little credit for recognizing trash. Each new contributor will follow his own writing style. He may look at the bad articles to understand how wiki markup is used, but that doesn't mean that he will adopt someone else's writing style. If he makes atrocious gaffes in his writing I would hope that someone who notices this will become a mentor who understandingly encourages him to improve, rather than criticises him on his stupid style.
I'm wasn't talking here about writing style, which is something that everyone has independently of Wikipedia, but referencing style. Very few people come to the project with established preferences for how to research and reference encyclopedia articles. And while it's true that you can offer suggestions for improvement for people who come to stay, the same is not true of the short-term contributors who account for most of our content. Our one chance to reach many of our contributors is through the articles they read before contributing, and if the majority of those articles are unreferenced or poorly referenced they are going to (as I did and I suspect many others here did at first) start by writing unreferenced or poorly referenced articles; if they only work on one article, that may well be all they write.
Failing to have the resources is not an argument for extreme action.
We all have our own image of what is needed for an ideal article. For any article this develops over time, sometimes over a very long time. An early stage article may be deficient in many respects. Only blatantly illegal, offensive or vandalous activities require immediate attention. Otherwise, fix what you can or leave deficiency notices and move on. Eventually someone who is interested in the subject will do what needs to be done.
This is an example of a view of the Wikipedia system that I find very unconvincing. First, the notion that articles organically develop and improve over time, with each stage of the article serving as the building block for the next, is not supported by examining articles that expand and improve substantially from their creation; generally, such expansion is a result of a single editor replacing (as opposed to slowly expanding upon) the existing content (an interesting essay on a subject related to this can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Britt/Don%27t_just_do_whatever). While there is certainly a value to having something, whatever it is, at a given location (breadth of coverage is a sort of quality in and of itself), we shouldn't overstate the role that existing weak articles play in developing strong articles to replace themselves.
Furthermore, I think the almost dialectical view, evident in your comment above, that Wikipedia is headed inexorably in the correct direction is an incorrect and dangerous one. While the project has already achieved a great deal, it is still quite possible that it could end up as something much less than it has the potential to be, that it could become largely a compilation of the collected wisdom of the internet instead of a true collection of human knowledge. So long as the volume of content from passer-by contributors continues to dwarf that from regulars (i.e. for the foreseeable future), the quality of referencing in contributions from new users is going to be the greatest factor in determining the direction we move in in this regard. Taking a lassez faire approach to article quality (and specifically, reference quality) will ensure that our average article remains rather poorly referenced, and strikes me as a sure way to at best delay the development of a higher quality encyclopedia, and at worst lastingly sidetrack the project.
I personally think it is overstated that most of our content comes from short-term contributors. What I do find is that short-term contributors begin a lot of our articles, yes, but they generally produce content that is not up to a high standard. My experience is that in most fields of interest, large numbers of articles are substantially written by the same small subset of users.
On the other hand, these people have to start somewhere. I think that people get into Wikipedia in one of two ways. The first is that they hear about Wikipedia as a project and go there because it sounds interesting. The second is when they find an article that's not very good, and improve or replace it.
In the first case, people are likely to read featured articles and other stuff pointed-to off the main page first. In the second case, they are less likely to - although they are likely to poke around similar content till they find a 'good example' to work from. In the first case, the FA process is very valuable - we're showing people examples of what to do to create a good Wikipedia article. In the second case, applicable WikiProjects are good, because they improve the chances of someone finding a similar article to a bad one that's done properly.
Articles don't develop linearly - I agree. However, what generally happens is that drive-by users add snippets over time until someone wanders by, thinks "What a mess!" and decides to yank it out by the roots and start over. However, that 'start over' will generally contain most of what's worthwhile about the previous version - people are averse to dropping content (even when it should be dropped). As the article gets longer, these rewrites tend to be of sections rather than the whole article.
-Matt
Wednesday, January 3, 2007, 7:05:16 PM, Ken wrote:
On Wed, 3 Jan 2007, Bogdan Giusca wrote:
The problem is that around 95% of those articles are not sourced (or they are sourced from forum and blog posts) and at least 70% won't be able to be sourced because they were never mentioned in the mainstream press -- and probably very few were mentioned in books and journals.
Perhaps that means you need a broader view of what sourcing is.
Maybe I spent too much time editing history articles, where the source credibility matters, but accepting blog/forum/usenet posts as valid sources would be a great mistake, IMO.
Bogdan Giusca wrote:
Wednesday, January 3, 2007, 7:05:16 PM, Ken wrote:
On Wed, 3 Jan 2007, Bogdan Giusca wrote:
The problem is that around 95% of those articles are not sourced (or they are sourced from forum and blog posts) and at least 70% won't be able to be sourced because they were never mentioned in the mainstream press -- and probably very few were mentioned in books and journals.
Perhaps that means you need a broader view of what sourcing is.
Maybe I spent too much time editing history articles, where the source credibility matters, but accepting blog/forum/usenet posts as valid sources would be a great mistake, IMO.
Absolutely for history. But history is far removed from webcomics, and we all know the tendency that some writers have to spin historical material in support of their own POV. It goes with the territory. Consider historical novels. They contain some germ of historical information, but how do you go about sorting out fact and fiction in a work like Tolstoy's "War and Peace". You can't seriously use it as a reference for Napoleon's campaign in Russia.
Ec
On 03/01/07, Bogdan Giusca liste@dapyx.com wrote:
Maybe I spent too much time editing history articles, where the source credibility matters, but accepting blog/forum/usenet posts as valid sources would be a great mistake, IMO.
A one-size-fits-all approach to what constitutes a reliable source is exceedingly foolish. The sourcing needs to match the subject matter.
(The news media is not "reliable". It's "easily verified", which is not the same thing at all. Many blogs are a hell of a lot more reliable for factual information than many newspapers.)
- d.
Bogdan Giusca wrote:
Maybe I spent too much time editing history articles, where the source credibility matters, but accepting blog/forum/usenet posts as valid sources would be a great mistake, IMO.
Go tell it to the Oxford English Dictionary then.
Steve Block wrote:
Bogdan Giusca wrote:
Maybe I spent too much time editing history articles, where the source credibility matters, but accepting blog/forum/usenet posts as valid sources would be a great mistake, IMO.
Go tell it to the Oxford English Dictionary then.
As far as I'm aware, the OED cites such sources as examples of words in use. In effect the OED is saying "this word was used in this document on this date", and citing the document itself to show this. This is not the same thing as providing a citation for a factual claim made in an article.
-Gurch
Gurch wrote:
Steve Block wrote:
Bogdan Giusca wrote:
Maybe I spent too much time editing history articles, where the source credibility matters, but accepting blog/forum/usenet posts as valid sources would be a great mistake, IMO.
Go tell it to the Oxford English Dictionary then.
As far as I'm aware, the OED cites such sources as examples of words in use. In effect the OED is saying "this word was used in this document on this date", and citing the document itself to show this. This is not the same thing as providing a citation for a factual claim made in an article.
Isn't that the very definition of a primary source. Something we seem loathe to allow. We can't state that "these words were used in this document on this date". We can't state that this thing existed at this web address on this date. Sorry, but this is the same thing as providing a citation for a factual claim made in an article. The OED make the claim of a specific usage or first usage, and use web sources to provide the citation.
Steve Block wrote:
Isn't that the very definition of a primary source. Something we seem loathe to allow. We can't state that "these words were used in this document on this date". We can't state that this thing existed at this web address on this date. Sorry, but this is the same thing as providing a citation for a factual claim made in an article. The OED make the claim of a specific usage or first usage, and use web sources to provide the citation.
The difference is that OED editors are experts exercising professional judgement and putting their reputations on the line when they make their assertions. For instance, if you look closely, you'll see that they're very careful about claiming to know when a first usage occurred. I don't know how OED does business in the modern age, but I would expect they're screenshotting web pages and keeping them on file permanently, just as they once did for the scraps of paper that contributors sent in.
WP *really* doesn't want much to do with primary sources; very few amateurs even know how to evaluate the trustworthiness of a primary, or how to reconcile multiple contradictory primaries, and we just embarass ourselves when we play at that. Unfortunately many WP editors are unaware of how much they don't know.
Stan
Stan Shebs wrote:
Steve Block wrote:
Isn't that the very definition of a primary source. Something we seem loathe to allow. We can't state that "these words were used in this document on this date". We can't state that this thing existed at this web address on this date. Sorry, but this is the same thing as providing a citation for a factual claim made in an article. The OED make the claim of a specific usage or first usage, and use web sources to provide the citation.
The difference is that OED editors are experts exercising professional judgement and putting their reputations on the line when they make their assertions.
I thought Wikipedia was an attempt to write an encyclopedia without worrying about professional judgement, that we could add anything and as long as it was written from a neutral point of view and was verifiable it didn't matter. I hadn't realised that we couldn't do some things because Dave said so.
WP *really* doesn't want much to do with primary sources;
No, that's your opinion of what Wikipedia does and doesn't want. We have the occasional featured article built on primary source, so the community may not agree.
very few
amateurs even know how to evaluate the trustworthiness of a primary, or how to reconcile multiple contradictory primaries, and we just embarass ourselves when we play at that. Unfortunately many WP editors are unaware of how much they don't know.
No, that applies to Wikipedia across the board. Not many people know on what topic to start an encyclopedic article, if we look at the speedy category. That doesn't stop us creating new articles. And that's ignoring the logical flaw in your argument; that the people telling us we can't use primary sources may actually be the wikipedians who are "unaware of how much they don't know". Swings and roundabouts. We used to judge info on a case by case basis. Now we have hoops we can all jump through and strange and varying criteria we have to meet. Welcome to Wikipedia, not a bureaucracy in name only.
Steve Block wrote:
Stan Shebs wrote:
Steve Block wrote:
Isn't that the very definition of a primary source. Something we seem loathe to allow. We can't state that "these words were used in this document on this date". We can't state that this thing existed at this web address on this date. Sorry, but this is the same thing as providing a citation for a factual claim made in an article. The OED make the claim of a specific usage or first usage, and use web sources to provide the citation.
The difference is that OED editors are experts exercising professional judgement and putting their reputations on the line when they make their assertions.
I thought Wikipedia was an attempt to write an encyclopedia without worrying about professional judgement, that we could add anything and as long as it was written from a neutral point of view and was verifiable it didn't matter.
Well then, how do you verify? How do you know a primary source isn't flat-out lying? Experts write whole monographs on the massive extent of falsification and error in the primary sources for Roman history, for instance; other experts then use that analysis in constructing a plausible narrative of what happened. Our role is as glorified stenographers for all these experts; we summarize their results and withhold judgement on which version is "correct".
WP *really* doesn't want much to do with primary sources;
No, that's your opinion of what Wikipedia does and doesn't want. We have the occasional featured article built on primary source, so the community may not agree.
That's why I didn't say "never use primaries"; I've used them myself. But they are tricky to use correctly, and if a large fraction of the community doesn't have a clue about scholarship, I'm not going to take that as a reason to give up and let WP turn into everything2 or fark or whatever. If a WP editor is opposed to the idea of doing scholarship, they should find a different website more amenable to their tastes; there are lots of popular wikis to choose from these days.
very few
amateurs even know how to evaluate the trustworthiness of a primary, or how to reconcile multiple contradictory primaries, and we just embarass ourselves when we play at that. Unfortunately many WP editors are unaware of how much they don't know.
No, that applies to Wikipedia across the board. Not many people know on what topic to start an encyclopedic article, if we look at the speedy category. That doesn't stop us creating new articles. And that's ignoring the logical flaw in your argument; that the people telling us we can't use primary sources may actually be the wikipedians who are "unaware of how much they don't know". Swings and roundabouts. We used to judge info on a case by case basis. Now we have hoops we can all jump through and strange and varying criteria we have to meet. Welcome to Wikipedia, not a bureaucracy in name only.
I've been working on WP steadily for almost four years now, and if you look at my oldest edits, you'll see many of them (though not all!) including reputable secondary sources, and I did that because I read it on a policy page. So this isn't some kind of new thing.
If all this really is "strange and varying criteria" to you, you really need to stop and consider whether WP is the project you want to be involved with.
Stan
Stan Shebs wrote:
Steve Block wrote:
Stan Shebs wrote:
Steve Block wrote:
Isn't that the very definition of a primary source. Something we seem loathe to allow. We can't state that "these words were used in this document on this date". We can't state that this thing existed at this web address on this date. Sorry, but this is the same thing as providing a citation for a factual claim made in an article. The OED make the claim of a specific usage or first usage, and use web sources to provide the citation.
The difference is that OED editors are experts exercising professional judgement and putting their reputations on the line when they make their assertions.
I thought Wikipedia was an attempt to write an encyclopedia without worrying about professional judgement, that we could add anything and as long as it was written from a neutral point of view and was verifiable it didn't matter.
Well then, how do you verify? How do you know a primary source isn't flat-out lying? Experts write whole monographs on the massive extent of falsification and error in the primary sources for Roman history, for instance; other experts then use that analysis in constructing a plausible narrative of what happened. Our role is as glorified stenographers for all these experts; we summarize their results and withhold judgement on which version is "correct".
How do we know reliable sources aren't lying. Every newspaper and source in town reports Colin Montgomerie holed the winning putt in the 2004 Ryder Cup, but it isn't true, Ian Poulter struck the putt that mathematically won the cup. Monty's story simply made better press. If we do, as you say, withhold judgement on whether a source is correct, why do you then say we can't use some sources because they may be lying. Obviously some judgement is at play.
No, that's your opinion of what Wikipedia does and doesn't want. We have the occasional featured article built on primary source, so the community may not agree.
That's why I didn't say "never use primaries";
Then I misunderstood you when you said "WP *really* doesn't want much to do with primary sources" and I apologise.
I've been working on WP steadily for almost four years now, and if you look at my oldest edits, you'll see many of them (though not all!) including reputable secondary sources, and I did that because I read it on a policy page. So this isn't some kind of new thing.
If all this really is "strange and varying criteria" to you, you really need to stop and consider whether WP is the project you want to be involved with.
Maybe you want to check my edit history before you start chucking such accusations about. If you want to make the apology now I'll accept it in good grace. Just because I happen to disagree with you it doesn't mean you get to impugn my edits, my contributions or my considerations of Wikipedia. Get off the soap box. My first edit was http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Helen_Hoyt&diff=prev&oldid... a new article written from scratch and referenced. I have a static ip before anyone pulls that one too.
Steve Block wrote:
How do we know reliable sources aren't lying. Every newspaper and source in town reports Colin Montgomerie holed the winning putt in the 2004 Ryder Cup, but it isn't true, Ian Poulter struck the putt that mathematically won the cup. Monty's story simply made better press. If we do, as you say, withhold judgement on whether a source is correct, why do you then say we can't use some sources because they may be lying. Obviously some judgement is at play.
Well, if the source is lying, then by definition it's not reliable. Your example is an object lesson in how newspapers are intermediate in reliability; they are usually better than Joe Random's blog, but not as good as a scholarly monograph that has had multiple layers of review spread over multiple years.
If all this really is "strange and varying criteria" to you, you really need to stop and consider whether WP is the project you want to be involved with.
Maybe you want to check my edit history before you start chucking such accusations about. If you want to make the apology now I'll accept it in good grace. Just because I happen to disagree with you it doesn't mean you get to impugn my edits, my contributions or my considerations of Wikipedia. Get off the soap box. My first edit was http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Helen_Hoyt&diff=prev&oldid... a new article written from scratch and referenced. I have a static ip before anyone pulls that one too.
Seeing the references to that article, I can see where you're coming from. I personally would be very reluctant to, for instance, use rootsweb to source a death date, because not only do we have the problem of identifying *which* person of a given name is meant, but genealogy sites include all the standard howlers, like descents traced to Julius Caesar, which is only plausible if you don't realize how utterly corrupt the primary sources are for the Dark Ages. The "California Death Records" link comes up blank, the oldpoetry.com link has a single unsourced line affecting to be written in the first person, post-mortem ("I lived from 1887-1972.") - kind of spooky actually. So some of your references illustrate well the reasons to be wary of primary sources.
I bring these up not to try to disparage you, but because to me it's what is interesting about scholarship and Wikipedia. Which sources of information are good, which not so good, and why? If they're inconsistent, which is true, or are they both true if you interpret in a different way? I imagine that some day, if it hasn't already happened, a heated talk-page argument over some factual detail will inspire an expert to do some original research and then publish the findings - which we can then incorporate into the article originally in dispute.
Stan
Stan Shebs wrote:
How do we know reliable sources aren't lying. Every newspaper and source in town reports Colin Montgomerie holed the winning putt in the 2004 Ryder Cup, but it isn't true, Ian Poulter struck the putt that mathematically won the cup. Monty's story simply made better press. If we do, as you say, withhold judgement on whether a source is correct, why do you then say we can't use some sources because they may be lying. Obviously some judgement is at play.
Well, if the source is lying, then by definition it's not reliable. Your example is an object lesson in how newspapers are intermediate in reliability; they are usually better than Joe Random's blog, but not as good as a scholarly monograph that has had multiple layers of review spread over multiple years.
No, you haven't as yet stated how we define which source is telling the "truth". My understanding is that we don't do that. If we don't do that, it stands to reason we don't determine which source "lies", since doing so indicates we have determined one source is telling the truth. My understanding is that we weigh each source in relation to the topic, and present it in a NPV. This means we must judge whether the information is relevant, not if it is true. It is relevant to note that Montgomerie is credited as hitting the winning putt.
Seeing the references to that article, I can see where you're coming from. I personally would be very reluctant to, for instance, use rootsweb to source a death date, because not only do we have the problem of identifying *which* person of a given name is meant, but genealogy sites include all the standard howlers, like descents traced to Julius Caesar, which is only plausible if you don't realize how utterly corrupt the primary sources are for the Dark Ages. The "California Death Records" link comes up blank, the oldpoetry.com link has a single unsourced line affecting to be written in the first person, post-mortem ("I lived from 1887-1972.") - kind of spooky actually. So some of your references illustrate well the reasons to be wary of primary sources.
No, they reflect your bias regarding those sources. What you cite as spooky is simply the presentation style of a website. What you write about the rootsweb site doesn't apply to the California Death Records, which are state records and not genealogical research which links me to Julius Caesar. The rootsweb link is to show where I accessed the record from, not the source. The source is the death record itself. I'm open to hearing someone argue that I haven't used the source properly, but I'm not open to people declaring it is out of order because it was found on the web.
But this reflects something that annoys me on Wikipedia. Far too often people seem to be insisting that all articles be perfect all of the time. Now that was my first edit. Compare that to some of the articles deleted as speedies from first time contributors, and I'd say it's of some value. Wikipedia didn't have an article on Helen Hoyt before that edit. After it, it did. Has Wikipedia improved because of my edit? I'd argue it has. Now people can come and look at the article, look at the sources and decide for themselves what they want to take away from it. And I thought that's what we did. And I too "did that because I read it on a policy page" although I think it was only semi policy back then.
But to be honest, I didn't bring that example up to discuss the sources, I brought it up to counter your attempt to assume some sort of moral high ground on sourcing based on your editing style. I have also typically added sources to any material I add, and so I don't see that you have any such high ground, nor do you have any right to characterise my contributions to Wikipedia as anything less than yours, or to question my commitment to the project. This is a collaborative project, and that means even the rules we work under beyond the foundation issues and board edicts, are created collaboratively, and it tires me to be told by people that maybe I should leave by people who disagree with me. I find that unhelpful and counter to the spirit of Wikipedia.
I am honest about my sourcing, and relate what I read in it, as anyone else does. I am happy to discuss that reading and those sources and I am happy to concede I may read too much at times, or not present the information as best as possible. Look at today's featured article, an article I slogged my guts out on, and tell me again I should reconsider my contributions to Wikipedia.
I bring these up not to try to disparage you, but because to me it's what is interesting about scholarship and Wikipedia. Which sources of information are good, which not so good, and why? If they're inconsistent, which is true, or are they both true if you interpret in a different way? I imagine that some day, if it hasn't already happened, a heated talk-page argument over some factual detail will inspire an expert to do some original research and then publish the findings - which we can then incorporate into the article originally in dispute.
I find this somewhat at odds with your thrust up until this point. It seems to me this debate started when I asserted that web sources have value since the OED uses them. If it is not your intention to declare web sources as inappropriate, then I fail to see how we have ended up where we are. And if you didn't intend to disparage me, then I fail to see what your edit history has to do with anything. I'm quite capable of judging an argument on its merits, thanks, and would hope my argument would be judged similarly too. Let's not forget, these are only opinions, not facts, and we shouldn't be basing strict rules on subjective opinions. I'm of the opinion sourcing is a "horses for courses" issue.
Steve Block wrote:
Stan Shebs wrote:
How do we know reliable sources aren't lying. Every newspaper and source in town reports Colin Montgomerie holed the winning putt in the 2004 Ryder Cup, but it isn't true, Ian Poulter struck the putt that mathematically won the cup. Monty's story simply made better press. If we do, as you say, withhold judgement on whether a source is correct, why do you then say we can't use some sources because they may be lying. Obviously some judgement is at play.
Well, if the source is lying, then by definition it's not reliable. Your example is an object lesson in how newspapers are intermediate in reliability; they are usually better than Joe Random's blog, but not as good as a scholarly monograph that has had multiple layers of review spread over multiple years.
No, you haven't as yet stated how we define which source is telling the "truth". My understanding is that we don't do that. If we don't do that, it stands to reason we don't determine which source "lies", since doing so indicates we have determined one source is telling the truth. My understanding is that we weigh each source in relation to the topic, and present it in a NPV. This means we must judge whether the information is relevant, not if it is true. It is relevant to note that Montgomerie is credited as hitting the winning putt.
Dangerously close to epistemology, but I'm not afraid. :-) I think we work with a fundamental underlying assumption that the facts are knowable, even if we don't know them at the moment. Otherwise, if somebody finds a hundred blogs stating that the sky is really green (perhaps as part of a prank), and runs to WP to add stuff about how the color of the sky is in dispute, we wouldn't have any basis for saying "dude, it was an April Fool's joke, we're not going add it". We've actually had a couple people in the past adding totally fictional events, sourced from websites that reported the fictional events as if they were real, and they got irate when we deleted their material, because they were convinced it was all real - or that was part of their prank, or possibly performance art, to this day I can't say for sure. So I exaggerated when I said we're just stenographers; we do have to do "research", if not "original research".
Seeing the references to that article, I can see where you're coming from. I personally would be very reluctant to, for instance, use rootsweb to source a death date, because not only do we have the problem of identifying *which* person of a given name is meant, but genealogy sites include all the standard howlers, like descents traced to Julius Caesar, which is only plausible if you don't realize how utterly corrupt the primary sources are for the Dark Ages. The "California Death Records" link comes up blank, the oldpoetry.com link has a single unsourced line affecting to be written in the first person, post-mortem ("I lived from 1887-1972.") - kind of spooky actually. So some of your references illustrate well the reasons to be wary of primary sources.
No, they reflect your bias regarding those sources. What you cite as spooky is simply the presentation style of a website. What you write about the rootsweb site doesn't apply to the California Death Records, which are state records and not genealogical research which links me to Julius Caesar. The rootsweb link is to show where I accessed the record from, not the source. The source is the death record itself. I'm open to hearing someone argue that I haven't used the source properly, but I'm not open to people declaring it is out of order because it was found on the web.
That's why I said "personally reluctant", not "against policy". After thirty years of doing scholarship, I thought I was pretty savvy, but even so have been caught out a bunch of times while working on WP. Just recently I used a web article that looked good, and it cited four print references, but then we got a note from the webmaster of the site that he was pulling the article because it was inaccurate, and making claims not separated by those references. Ironically, the corresponding de: article is sourced from newspapers of the time, so now I'm planning a little quality time in the microfilm department of the library to try to sort it all out.
Despite all our warnings, people do take WP at face value; I found it very sobering to see some of my early mistakes propagated onto websites all over the net. Maybe I'm the only one bothered by that.
I bring these up not to try to disparage you, but because to me it's what is interesting about scholarship and Wikipedia. Which sources of information are good, which not so good, and why? If they're inconsistent, which is true, or are they both true if you interpret in a different way? I imagine that some day, if it hasn't already happened, a heated talk-page argument over some factual detail will inspire an expert to do some original research and then publish the findings - which we can then incorporate into the article originally in dispute.
I find this somewhat at odds with your thrust up until this point. It seems to me this debate started when I asserted that web sources have value since the OED uses them. If it is not your intention to declare web sources as inappropriate, then I fail to see how we have ended up where we are. And if you didn't intend to disparage me, then I fail to see what your edit history has to do with anything. I'm quite capable of judging an argument on its merits, thanks, and would hope my argument would be judged similarly too. Let's not forget, these are only opinions, not facts, and we shouldn't be basing strict rules on subjective opinions. I'm of the opinion sourcing is a "horses for courses" issue.
My argument is that web sources *may* have value, but people need to keep their hands on their wallets - we have a lot of editors getting their pockets picked and they don't even know it. Have you ever looked at the fine print in an unabridged OED? It's great stuff - those guys know about not only the English language proper, but every other human language, and all the historical context too. To them, a web usage is a raw data point, just like somebody's diary, or graffiti seen on a subway wall. You will never find an OED entry that cites a web page as an authority, it will always be in quoted form, as an example of observed usage. That is the crucial difference.
Stan
Stan Shebs wrote: I don't really see that we're far apart in our positions. It seems we both agree that sources should be evaluated case by case.
Stan Shebs wrote:
Steve Block wrote:
Stan Shebs wrote:
How do we know reliable sources aren't lying. Every newspaper and source in town reports Colin Montgomerie holed the winning putt in the 2004 Ryder Cup, but it isn't true, Ian Poulter struck the putt that mathematically won the cup. Monty's story simply made better press. If we do, as you say, withhold judgement on whether a source is correct, why do you then say we can't use some sources because they may be lying. Obviously some judgement is at play.
Well, if the source is lying, then by definition it's not reliable. Your example is an object lesson in how newspapers are intermediate in reliability; they are usually better than Joe Random's blog, but not as good as a scholarly monograph that has had multiple layers of review spread over multiple years.
No, you haven't as yet stated how we define which source is telling the "truth". My understanding is that we don't do that. If we don't do that, it stands to reason we don't determine which source "lies", since doing so indicates we have determined one source is telling the truth. My understanding is that we weigh each source in relation to the topic, and present it in a NPV. This means we must judge whether the information is relevant, not if it is true. It is relevant to note that Montgomerie is credited as hitting the winning putt.
Dangerously close to epistemology, but I'm not afraid. :-) I think we work with a fundamental underlying assumption that the facts are knowable, even if we don't know them at the moment. Otherwise, if somebody finds a hundred blogs stating that the sky is really green (perhaps as part of a prank), and runs to WP to add stuff about how the color of the sky is in dispute, we wouldn't have any basis for saying "dude, it was an April Fool's joke, we're not going add it". We've actually had a couple people in the past adding totally fictional events, sourced from websites that reported the fictional events as if they were real, and they got irate when we deleted their material, because they were convinced it was all real - or that was part of their prank, or possibly performance art, to this day I can't say for sure. So I exaggerated when I said we're just stenographers; we do have to do "research", if not "original research".
The assumption that the facts are knowable is necessary; without it we would be paralyzed. When we say they are known we often give our statements an absolutism that may not be warranted; we need to accept that some facts may never be known. There are degrees of knowability and balances of probabilities. The savvy reader needs to be able to weigh that information himself.
The sky colour argument is not helpful. It is based on personal empiricism, and the more abstract process of how we define colours. In the context of the philosophy of science definitions are not falsifiable statements.
In the example about adding fictional events as if they were real we need to assume good faith, but that gives us more worrisome results than using Ockham's razor to justify bad faith. Assuming bad faith makes the problem a lot simpler than it actually is; it allows us to say we _know_ what happened and to feel smug in that knowledge. Urban legends are often based on good faith interpretations of bad faith comments. The dangers of falling victim to such illusions and delusions are more obvious on the internet where the physical act of publishing anything is inexpensive, and the quantity of such publication is massive. We should not be lulled into a sense of false security about everything in print. "The Da Vinci Code" is a published book.
I regret that we have many editors for whom "original research" is interpreted as "any research". Both require hard work, but that similarity does not make them synonymous. We have yet to face the full impact of a race of idiots solely dependent on the internet for all their information.
Seeing the references to that article, I can see where you're coming from. I personally would be very reluctant to, for instance, use rootsweb to source a death date, because not only do we have the problem of identifying *which* person of a given name is meant, but genealogy sites include all the standard howlers, like descents traced to Julius Caesar, which is only plausible if you don't realize how utterly corrupt the primary sources are for the Dark Ages. The "California Death Records" link comes up blank, the oldpoetry.com link has a single unsourced line affecting to be written in the first person, post-mortem ("I lived from 1887-1972.") - kind of spooky actually. So some of your references illustrate well the reasons to be wary of primary sources.
No, they reflect your bias regarding those sources. What you cite as spooky is simply the presentation style of a website. What you write about the rootsweb site doesn't apply to the California Death Records, which are state records and not genealogical research which links me to Julius Caesar. The rootsweb link is to show where I accessed the record from, not the source. The source is the death record itself. I'm open to hearing someone argue that I haven't used the source properly, but I'm not open to people declaring it is out of order because it was found on the web.
That's why I said "personally reluctant", not "against policy". After thirty years of doing scholarship, I thought I was pretty savvy, but even so have been caught out a bunch of times while working on WP. Just recently I used a web article that looked good, and it cited four print references, but then we got a note from the webmaster of the site that he was pulling the article because it was inaccurate, and making claims not separated by those references. Ironically, the corresponding de: article is sourced from newspapers of the time, so now I'm planning a little quality time in the microfilm department of the library to try to sort it all out.
It's all a matter of how effectively we and the end user can apply critical judgement. No matter how hard we try to avoit it we all sometimes get caught up using sources that later prove to be unreliable. No blame should attach to this, and the best we can hope for is a graceful exit. Genealogical sites are a hotbed of good-faith incompetence where some "researchers" are pleased with a big collection of names. If someone wants to use Rootsweb as a source that's fine. One still has to be mindful that there is a difference between a reference in Rootsweb to the California Death Records and actually reviewing the relevant record yourself. Even official records can be wrong. When an older person dies the people reporting the death may not have accurate information about the decedent's origins. I'm sure that many birth records include questionable paternity.
I've had occasion to review the efforts of a recognized "professional" genealogist that got the generations mixed up. The report had been prepared to support a claim by an individual to status as a Native American. The information was used by a federal museum in Laramie, WY to misidentify a person in a photograph.
Despite all our warnings, people do take WP at face value; I found it very sobering to see some of my early mistakes propagated onto websites all over the net. Maybe I'm the only one bothered by that.
This is much deeper than just a Wikipedia problem. Erroneous reportings of information can endure for centuries. When The Borg assimilates a whole civilization it also assimilates its errors. Can you personally afford to be bothered by this?
I bring these up not to try to disparage you, but because to me it's what is interesting about scholarship and Wikipedia. Which sources of information are good, which not so good, and why? If they're inconsistent, which is true, or are they both true if you interpret in a different way? I imagine that some day, if it hasn't already happened, a heated talk-page argument over some factual detail will inspire an expert to do some original research and then publish the findings - which we can then incorporate into the article originally in dispute.
I find this somewhat at odds with your thrust up until this point. It seems to me this debate started when I asserted that web sources have value since the OED uses them. If it is not your intention to declare web sources as inappropriate, then I fail to see how we have ended up where we are. And if you didn't intend to disparage me, then I fail to see what your edit history has to do with anything. I'm quite capable of judging an argument on its merits, thanks, and would hope my argument would be judged similarly too. Let's not forget, these are only opinions, not facts, and we shouldn't be basing strict rules on subjective opinions. I'm of the opinion sourcing is a "horses for courses" issue.
My argument is that web sources *may* have value, but people need to keep their hands on their wallets - we have a lot of editors getting their pockets picked and they don't even know it. Have you ever looked at the fine print in an unabridged OED? It's great stuff - those guys know about not only the English language proper, but every other human language, and all the historical context too. To them, a web usage is a raw data point, just like somebody's diary, or graffiti seen on a subway wall. You will never find an OED entry that cites a web page as an authority, it will always be in quoted form, as an example of observed usage. That is the crucial difference.
I'm sure that the OED will find ways of dealing with words which have joined the vocabulary I certainly had the impression from chatting with Erin McKean at Wikimania that she is fully aware of the issues. Her "More Weird and Wonderful Words" (published by OUP) includes a "Webliography" as well as a more usual bibliography. The practice of adding quotes as evidence did not begin with the OED. My 1847 Webster and my 1817 Johnson have them.
I don't think that any strict general rule about either using or not using web sources would be meaningful. This will be very disappointing to those who can't live without clear answers, and who will latch on to specific answers as a reason for excluding the opposing POV.
Ec
Stan Shebs wrote:
Steve Block wrote:
How do we know reliable sources aren't lying. Every newspaper and source in town reports Colin Montgomerie holed the winning putt in the 2004 Ryder Cup, but it isn't true, Ian Poulter struck the putt that mathematically won the cup. Monty's story simply made better press. If we do, as you say, withhold judgement on whether a source is correct, why do you then say we can't use some sources because they may be lying. Obviously some judgement is at play.
Well, if the source is lying, then by definition it's not reliable. Your example is an object lesson in how newspapers are intermediate in reliability; they are usually better than Joe Random's blog, but not as good as a scholarly monograph that has had multiple layers of review spread over multiple years.
We have no easy objective way of knowing that a source is lying. A newspaper may print a retraction within a few days of the original article on the subject, but we would be hard-pressed to know if this happened. Some newspapers like "National Enquirer" have a reputation for their unique interpretation of "truth". An archeologist who discovers a cache of these lining clay pots generations after the paper has ceased publication may believe that he has a trove of insights into the way that people lived in the twentieth century. As Walter Miller expressed it, a fallout shelter is a place where fallouts could seek refuge from the war. So yes, a lying source is objectively not reliable, but we don't know if it's lying.
Ec
On 1/4/07, Steve Block steve.block@myrealbox.com wrote:
Bogdan Giusca wrote:
Maybe I spent too much time editing history articles, where the source credibility matters, but accepting blog/forum/usenet posts as valid sources would be a great mistake, IMO.
Go tell it to the Oxford English Dictionary then.
Professionally published dictionaries use those kind of sites as primary sources (examples of contemporary usages) in academic research about the usage of the English language. In other words, exactly the sort of thing we [[WP:OR|don't do]].
Robth wrote:
On 1/4/07, Steve Block steve.block@myrealbox.com wrote:
Bogdan Giusca wrote:
Maybe I spent too much time editing history articles, where the source credibility matters, but accepting blog/forum/usenet posts as valid sources would be a great mistake, IMO.
Go tell it to the Oxford English Dictionary then.
Professionally published dictionaries use those kind of sites as primary sources (examples of contemporary usages) in academic research about the usage of the English language. In other words, exactly the sort of thing we [[WP:OR|don't do]].
Indeed, the OED folks consider original research to be part of their mission.
Ironically, they've long had a bit of wiki-ness about them, in that most of their examples are selected from contributors sending in snippets.
Stan
Stan Shebs wrote:
Robth wrote:
On 1/4/07, Steve Block steve.block@myrealbox.com wrote:
Bogdan Giusca wrote:
Maybe I spent too much time editing history articles, where the source credibility matters, but accepting blog/forum/usenet posts as valid sources would be a great mistake, IMO.
Go tell it to the Oxford English Dictionary then.
Professionally published dictionaries use those kind of sites as primary sources (examples of contemporary usages) in academic research about the usage of the English language. In other words, exactly the sort of thing we [[WP:OR|don't do]].
Funny, I thought they used it to document the English language. Maybe documenting the language is academic research though.
On 1/3/07, Bogdan Giusca liste@dapyx.com wrote:
Wikipedia has way too many articles on websites, webcomics and other types of internet content -- likely thousands.
The problem is that around 95% of those articles are not sourced (or they are sourced from forum and blog posts) and at least 70% won't be able to be sourced because they were never mentioned in the mainstream press -- and probably very few were mentioned in books and journals.
I deleted about 50 of them, which looked totally non-notable
This seems a waste. Just because something hasn't been written about by the mainstream press doesn't make it worthless to people reading Wikipedia.
http://internet.wikia.com/index.php?title=User:Angela&oldid=1943 shows 17 examples of pages you deleted today which I've rescued for the Internet Wiki, but it's a shame so many hundreds like those are being deleted every day rather than moved to a more suitable wiki or rewritten to make them suitable for Wikipedia.
Angela
On 03/01/07, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
This seems a waste. Just because something hasn't been written about by the mainstream press doesn't make it worthless to people reading Wikipedia.
http://internet.wikia.com/index.php?title=User:Angela&oldid=1943 shows 17 examples of pages you deleted today which I've rescued for the Internet Wiki, but it's a shame so many hundreds like those are being deleted every day rather than moved to a more suitable wiki or rewritten to make them suitable for Wikipedia.
I quite agree. Once an article is deleted it is no longer available to anyone who doesn't have admin status. There doesn't seem to be a co-ordinated effort among admins to sift through deleted articles to find useful information and so this information is effectively lost.
Wikipedia's primary goal is to create free encyclopaedic content. IMO, it is always more useful for us to rewrite an article than to delete it wherever possible. If it is the case that the content is not suitable for Wikipedia (which, as long as it has a certain level of verifiability, is rare) then we should aim to put the content somewhere else so that it remains usable and the free content movement as-a-whole is benefited.
Wednesday, January 3, 2007, 8:53:30 PM, Angela wrote:
http://internet.wikia.com/index.php?title=User:Angela&oldid=1943 shows 17 examples of pages you deleted today which I've rescued for the Internet Wiki, but it's a shame so many hundreds like those are being deleted every day rather than moved to a more suitable wiki or rewritten to make them suitable for Wikipedia.
Maybe there should be some way to mark the articles which are not notable for wikipedia, but are worthy to be included in internet.wikia.com
For example, one would include "I7W" (non-notable website) as reason for deletion and a bot would monitor the deletion log and take the deleted articles marked that way and automatically post them on internet Wikia.
On 03/01/07, Bogdan Giusca liste@dapyx.com wrote:
Wednesday, January 3, 2007, 8:53:30 PM, Angela wrote:
http://internet.wikia.com/index.php?title=User:Angela&oldid=1943 shows 17 examples of pages you deleted today which I've rescued for the Internet Wiki, but it's a shame so many hundreds like those are being deleted every day rather than moved to a more suitable wiki or rewritten to make them suitable for Wikipedia.
Maybe there should be some way to mark the articles which are not notable for wikipedia, but are worthy to be included in internet.wikia.com
For example, one would include "I7W" (non-notable website) as reason for deletion and a bot would monitor the deletion log and take the deleted articles marked that way and automatically post them on internet Wikia.
I don't really understand why an article would be useful for Internet Wikia but not useful for us... Their aims seem to be encompassed by our aims entirely.
I go to Internet Wikia to find some information out about a website (eg. http://www.internet.com/). I want factually accurate, verifiable information. Why shouldn't I use Wikipedia in this case? I know that information from Wikipedia will be factually accurate and verifiable. I know that Wikipedia does not operate within the constraints of a traditional encyclopaedia so I hope to find at least a little information about that website on Wikipedia.
The very purpose of Internet Wikia (providing "encyclopaedic" articles about presumably major websites) could, and should, be served by Wikipedia. Information is always enriched by being part of Wikipedia because it links to information and articles on unrelated fields. Conversely, Wikipedia is always enriched by having more information (within certain constraints).
On Wed, 3 Jan 2007 18:53:30 +0000, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
This seems a waste. Just because something hasn't been written about by the mainstream press doesn't make it worthless to people reading Wikipedia.
But it goes to the heart of what distinguishes an encyclopaedia from a directory. Transwiki is always an option, many of us will happily undelete history for that purpose.
Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Wed, 3 Jan 2007 18:53:30 +0000, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
This seems a waste. Just because something hasn't been written about by the mainstream press doesn't make it worthless to people reading Wikipedia.
But it goes to the heart of what distinguishes an encyclopaedia from a directory. Transwiki is always an option, many of us will happily undelete history for that purpose.
While we can cut and paste a transwikied history to another project, that doesn't help if access to the diffs no longer works. It may satisfy the technical requirements of GFDL, but much information that might be useful in a new article is lost.
Ec
Bogdan Giusca wrote:
Wikipedia has way too many articles on websites, webcomics and other types of internet content -- likely thousands.
Too many on these subjects, or too few on "good" subjects?
The problem is that around 95% of those articles are not sourced (or they are sourced from forum and blog posts) and at least 70% won't be able to be sourced because they were never mentioned in the mainstream press -- and probably very few were mentioned in books and journals.
If the subject is of trivial importance the sources should matter less. Since when did the mainstream press become obligatory?
I deleted about 50 of them, which looked totally non-notable, but if I had to apply the rules, at least 80% would have to be deleted for lacking notability claims.
Makes you sound like a regular crusader.
Can anyone suggest any solution to this?
Yes. Spend more time _adding_ good content, and stop wasting your own time trying to get rid trivial material. If the article starts with, "This article is about a webcomic," the readers are forwarned about the value of the article.
Ec
Ec
Wednesday, January 3, 2007, 8:56:12 PM, Ray wrote:
Too many on these subjects, or too few on "good" subjects?
Too few on "good" subjects. And those that are on good subjects, are not properly written. Also, probably up to a quarter are created by their owners.
If the subject is of trivial importance the sources should matter less. Since when did the mainstream press become obligatory?
Wikipedia still requires verifiability and reliable sources, right?
Wednesday, January 3, 2007, 10:38:55 PM, Jeff wrote:
Bogdan Giusca wrote:
Can anyone suggest any solution to this?
The sooner we start allowing blogs and other self-published publications be reliable sources for these sorts of things, the better.
Imagine the spam we'd get then as "references". You know that a link from Wikipedia is pretty valuable for one's Google PageRank.
Bogdan Giusca wrote:
Imagine the spam we'd get then as "references". You know that a link from Wikipedia is pretty valuable for one's Google PageRank.
I struggle to be *that* concerned, quite frankly. If something is a useful reference, it's a useful reference, regardless of what it may do for its pagerank.
-Jeff
This is my opinion about references: Each one to its own.
What that means is that depending on the topic, we should use sources that are appropriate. Something like science and history should typically always use peer reviewed publications, however webcomics do not have peer reviewed publications about them. That would be an appropriate time to invoke sources that would be more unorthodox for traditional scholarly subjects like science: blogs. I, for one, would trust a web comic blog about web comics because that's the best there is.
Likewise, just because something is appropriate for one subject, doesn't mean it's appropriate for the next. If a web comic blog says that George Washington crossed the Delaware and defeated the Hessians, we shouldn't cite that web comic in our article about George Washington.
This brings up another point of debate: using primary sources. There are times when primary sources are appropriate, and there are times when it's not. When quoting what someone famous said, the primary source is *the best* source for that information. That's what primary sources are for: pure facts (like what someone said). And then there are the times when secondary sources are more appropriate. Use those, then.
There really isn't a source, or type of source, that is perfect for every kind of knowledge imaginable. Each one to its own.
On 1/3/07, Bogdan Giusca liste@dapyx.com wrote:
Wednesday, January 3, 2007, 10:38:55 PM, Jeff wrote:
Bogdan Giusca wrote:
Can anyone suggest any solution to this?
The sooner we start allowing blogs and other self-published publications be reliable sources for these sorts of things, the better.
Imagine the spam we'd get then as "references". You know that a link from Wikipedia is pretty valuable for one's Google PageRank.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
James Hare wrote:
This is my opinion about references: Each one to its own.
What that means is that depending on the topic, we should use sources that are appropriate. Something like science and history should typically always use peer reviewed publications, however webcomics do not have peer reviewed publications about them. That would be an appropriate time to invoke sources that would be more unorthodox for traditional scholarly subjects like science: blogs. I, for one, would trust a web comic blog about web comics because that's the best there is.
Likewise, just because something is appropriate for one subject, doesn't mean it's appropriate for the next. If a web comic blog says that George Washington crossed the Delaware and defeated the Hessians, we shouldn't cite that web comic in our article about George Washington.
This brings up another point of debate: using primary sources. There are times when primary sources are appropriate, and there are times when it's not. When quoting what someone famous said, the primary source is *the best* source for that information. That's what primary sources are for: pure facts (like what someone said). And then there are the times when secondary sources are more appropriate. Use those, then.
There really isn't a source, or type of source, that is perfect for every kind of knowledge imaginable. Each one to its own.
We used to have a policy which actually expressed what you said. It was called Wikipedia:Verifiability. Unfortunately, over time people became concerned that allowing an article on the Webcomic Foo meant that we might also have an article on Joe Blogg's Grand Theorum of Everything. So they rewrote a perfectly good common sensical policy so that it became a legal document which would be used to remove all possible use of case by case logic, and Wikipedia in part became an arena for lawyers to battle it out. Somewhere, if you listen really quietly, and block out all the white noise, you can hear the sound of someone tapping away at writing an actual article. I'm sorry, but I have a bad cold and I've just had the worst back handed compliment possible directed at The Adventures of Tintin. This is one hell of a way to create a free encyclopedic resource. And before anyone asks, no I can't think of a better one.
On Wed, 3 Jan 2007 14:38:55 -0600 (CST), "Jeff Raymond" jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
The sooner we start allowing blogs and other self-published publications be reliable sources for these sorts of things, the better.
Yes, you'll get rid of all those tiresome people who think Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia and aspire to some kind of credibility, and you can get on with the job of documenting crap off teh internets, a genre for which there is a real paucity of verbiage based on other crap off teh internets.
Wait, I think you just invented Fark.
Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Wed, 3 Jan 2007 14:38:55 -0600 (CST), "Jeff Raymond" jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
The sooner we start allowing blogs and other self-published publications be reliable sources for these sorts of things, the better.
Yes, you'll get rid of all those tiresome people who think Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia and aspire to some kind of credibility, and you can get on with the job of documenting crap off teh internets, a genre for which there is a real paucity of verbiage based on other crap off teh internets.
Wait, I think you just invented Fark.
Or that-site-which-must-not-be-named-on-threat-of-arbcom.
On 1/3/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Wed, 3 Jan 2007 14:38:55 -0600 (CST), "Jeff Raymond" jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
The sooner we start allowing blogs and other self-published publications be reliable sources for these sorts of things, the better.
Yes, you'll get rid of all those tiresome people who think Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia and aspire to some kind of credibility, and you can get on with the job of documenting crap off teh internets, a genre for which there is a real paucity of verbiage based on other crap off teh internets.
Wait, I think you just invented Fark.
On good days, this keeps nutsy cruft away.
On bad days, people wave the knife around to the extent that even The New York Times and books published by reputable publishers aren't sufficiently reliable, and the unpopular topic of the day gets nuked anyways.
Consistency apparently isn't our strong suit so far this year...