G'day Will,
Sure, but if James Joyce really is "one of the
most significant
writers of
the 20th century" then we should have no problem finding a source
which states
that.
We have a camel's nose problem there. I say: "James Joyce is one of the most
significant writers of the 20th Century." Will says, quite correctly: how do we
know? That statement is unsourced! So I change it to, "According to Phil Sandifer,
author of /Significant Writers of the 20th Century/, James Joyce is quite an important
chap." Then Will Johnson, being the respectable, responsible person he is, will say
--- "But who is Phil Sandifer? Why should we take *his* word on James Joyce?"
So now we need a source to explain why Phil's views are relevant to the article about
Joyce. But how do we verify the significance of *that* source?
Sooner or later, we have to use our own damn judgment. We can use it to determine that
Source Omega is sufficiently reliable to verify Source Alpha, which verifies Source Z,
which verifies Source A, which verifies ... or, and here's a wacky idea, we can use it
to decide which statements need to be sourced and which --- drumroll, please ---
*don't*.
Remembering that we don't give credence to expert
editors because
they
*know* details they can ramble off, but rather, because they know
where *to look*
to find the sources.
Er, no. *No*. My favourite encyclopaedia defines "expert" as, "someone
widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill whose faculty for judging or
deciding rightly, justly, or wisely is accorded authority and status by their peers or the
public. An expert, more generally, is a person with extensive knowledge or ability in a
particular area of study." An expert can tell you where to find sources. More
importantly, an expert can also tell you *when* to find sources.
Wikipedia is remarkably democratic (without, of course, being a *democracy*) --- you
don't *have* to be an expert to write there. I often write (well, wrote) on subjects
on which I had no expertise, and I find it liberating to be able to do so without anybody
swooping in and saying, "Here, what makes you think *you* can talk on this
subject?" That doesn't mean we don't need experts, or that experts need to
pretend they're ordinary editors. However, it does appear to be the ultimate outcome
if we take our poorly-written policies literally.
I'm proud of what I've contributed to Wikipedia. I'm proud of Wikipedia for
allowing such contributions. I'm proud of what we've all accomplished, despite a
lack of expertise. In short, I'm proud of the way we treat non-experts. But I'm
not proud of the way we treat experts. When we adopt the Bloody-Minded Approach to
Sourcing, we're being democratic in the Harrison Bergeron sense --- we're not
providing The People the opportunity to contribute to the Sum of Human Knowledge.
Instead, we're taking away from experts the ability to do the same. We're
handicapping the very people who could provide the most value. We're belittling their
abilities and their accomplishments, mocking their intentions, driving them away.
An anti-intellectual encyclopaedia is an interesting concept, and I bet Conservapedia
would kill to find out how we managed to come so close. Our intention, our passion, our
vision, is noble. Our policy contradicts that. One of the features, I think, of my
wiki-career was my knowledge of How Things Work --- and my disdain for policy and process.
Phil Sandifer is much the same. He has come to recognise, and with his posts has
convinced me, that written policy has become so out of touch with How Things Work, and has
become so important in the minds of newer editors, that it cannot further be ignored as a
minor annoyance. It needs to be rewritten. NOR and V are incompatible with what
Wikipedians have achieved, and what we hope to achieve in the future. In short: it sucks,
and if we don't want Wikipedia to suck, we need to address that.
Has anyone filed a request to be allowed to consider maybe thinking about allowing the
concept to tentatively cross someone's mind to maybe if the process-campers agree
opening up a discussion to begin a poll to attempt to start a dialogue on altering some
minor working of these policies?
We, are not sources. I wouldn't support any
position that claims
that we,
as editors, are also sources.
Wikipedia editors, if I may use the vernacular, write shit. That's what we're
for. We write shit. We try to make it relevant and interesting to an encyclopaedia's
readership. If I go down and take a picture of the new Glenloch Interchange and then
describe what I see ("the traffic cones have been removed, there is a new loop road
connecting Parkes Way with the GDE, formerly Caswell Drive"), there's nothing
wrong with that. There's all sorts of things I could do to dress it up --- but
I'm not violating core principles of Wikipedia. If you try to stop me by slapping
silly rules on me, then *you are*.
We started with this idea of people writing shit. We've added layers of process and
policy to that to help manage a project that is bigger than any volunteer effort that has
ever existed (with the possible exception of the Crusades ...). That's fair and
reasonable and to be expected. However, much like the Crusades (let's face it, that
"you'll be absolved of all sins you commit while away" thing was a BIG
mistake), we need to periodically review what we're doing and decide whether or not
it's really such a good idea.
NOR exists for two purposes. Most obviously, to stop kooks from filling Wikipedia with
psychoceramic nonsense. It's hung around on top of that because, well,
"NOR" works quite well for an encyclopaedia. We don't want people advancing
novel theories about *anything*, kookery or not. We're not here for advancing
original research; we're not even here for synthesis of primary sources in exciting
and novel ways. However, we don't want people interpreting poorly-worded *policies*
in exciting and novel ways either, and that's what's happened in the past couple
of years. Every time we ignore the purpose of policy in favour of bloody-mindedly
enforcing the wording, we create suckage.
And suckage of any level of suckitude is something we should be trying to avoid. After
all, we're Wikipedia. We make the Internet not suck.
--
Mark Gallagher