"David Mestel" wrote
I think that our problem may be that, because we place such a great demand on our sources, people don't bother to source articles at all. Perhaps we need to demand less in order to achieve more...
The policy on sources is satisfactory: we are against mistakes and nonsense, and requiring a source is one of those 80 for 20 moves that zaps much of the nonsense and errors. It is entirely possible to lie through your teeth, from the point of view of NPOV, while selectively using adequate sources, but that's not an issue.
What I have not found satisfactory about the sources policy is the discussions it brings. As if one has wandered into a meeting of unreconstructed 1930s logical positivists, in fact. As if there was a known 'protocol' for verifying an article, by requiring sources and checking that nothing has squeezed into the article that was not so sourced.
I think this can have an impact, particularly, on history. It reminds me of the discussion on 'Namierism', in fact also from the 1930s really. A question: would reading through the very many biographies of US politicians we have (and there are many thousands) really allow one to discuss US politics? The point being that biographical facts are verifiable, deals in smoke-filled rooms not, and the underlying being dynamic far from something naively to be sourced (the point made against Lewis Namier).
I see I'm on #499 of my technical articles on mathematics. A high proportion of those were actually written straight out of my head, as I saw the need. I do have books to hand, Google at need, and so on. Of course it all used to be more free-wheeling.
Charles
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On Sep 17, 2006, at 9:51 AM, charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
I see I'm on #499 of my technical articles on mathematics. A high proportion of those were actually written straight out of my head, as I saw the need. I do have books to hand, Google at need, and so on. Of course it all used to be more free-wheeling.
And, let's note, it used to be better. Jimbo has previously noted that the things we've done to open Wikipedia more (Semi-protection) have worked better than the things we've done to close it off (Prohibiting anonymous page creation). Our source fixation has served to close us off substantially, and it hasn't worked.
People should not be made afraid to add information because they remember being told it in class last semester, or because they know it's somewhere in that book, but they don't really want to find the page number, or because they read it in Rolling Stone a few months ago. Our attitude should be "add information first, and if the information looks dodgy we'll challenge it."
Which is surprisingly consonant with [[WP:BOLD]]. Remember that policy? Those were the days...
-Phil
Phil Sandifer wrote:
Our attitude should be "add information first, and if the information looks dodgy we'll challenge it."
And I think this is exactly why Wikipedia is so unreliable. Because it does not get challenged.
Kim
On Sep 17, 2006, at 1:49 PM, Kim van der Linde wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
Our attitude should be "add information first, and if the information looks dodgy we'll challenge it."
And I think this is exactly why Wikipedia is so unreliable. Because it does not get challenged.
Except... it's not unreliable.
-Phil
Phil Sandifer wrote:
On Sep 17, 2006, at 1:49 PM, Kim van der Linde wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
Our attitude should be "add information first, and if the information looks dodgy we'll challenge it."
And I think this is exactly why Wikipedia is so unreliable. Because it does not get challenged.
Except... it's not unreliable.
Well, I disagree on this to the point that I would not allow students to use Wikipedia as a source. Period.
Kim
On Sep 17, 2006, at 2:02 PM, Kim van der Linde wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
On Sep 17, 2006, at 1:49 PM, Kim van der Linde wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
Our attitude should be "add information first, and if the information looks dodgy we'll challenge it."
And I think this is exactly why Wikipedia is so unreliable. Because it does not get challenged.
Except... it's not unreliable.
Well, I disagree on this to the point that I would not allow students to use Wikipedia as a source. Period.
I don't allow my students to cite Wikipedia, but I don't let them cite Britannica either. The reason isn't reliability, though - it's that encyclopedias aren't academic sources.
You've seen Alan Liu's guide to citing WIkipedia, right? (Liu is a big name humanities figure - highly respected writer on digital media) http://kairosnews.org/developing-a-wikipedia-research-policy
It's a good example of a commonsense citation policy, and should probably be taken as a model for us.
-Phil
Phil Sandifer wrote:
I don't allow my students to cite Wikipedia, but I don't let them cite Britannica either. The reason isn't reliability, though - it's that encyclopedias aren't academic sources.
You've seen Alan Liu's guide to citing WIkipedia, right? (Liu is a big name humanities figure - highly respected writer on digital media) http://kairosnews.org/developing-a-wikipedia-research-policy
It's a good example of a commonsense citation policy, and should probably be taken as a model for us.
Well, it is a convenient way around the issue of determining whether Wikipedia is reliable or not. But it is besides the point. People DO use Wikipedia as their reliable source. And thanks for the link. If we need that kind of instructions for students before they can use Wikipedia as a potential source, it is quite clear how unreliable Wikipedia is.
Kim
On Sep 17, 2006, at 2:22 PM, Kim van der Linde wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
I don't allow my students to cite Wikipedia, but I don't let them cite Britannica either. The reason isn't reliability, though - it's that encyclopedias aren't academic sources.
You've seen Alan Liu's guide to citing WIkipedia, right? (Liu is a big name humanities figure - highly respected writer on digital media) http://kairosnews.org/developing-a-wikipedia-research-policy
It's a good example of a commonsense citation policy, and should probably be taken as a model for us.
Well, it is a convenient way around the issue of determining whether Wikipedia is reliable or not. But it is besides the point. People DO use Wikipedia as their reliable source. And thanks for the link. If we need that kind of instructions for students before they can use Wikipedia as a potential source, it is quite clear how unreliable Wikipedia is.
Nonsense. I could write that many words about using the New York Times as a source. You seem to be laboring under the misconception that there is some well of magically reliable sources that can be cited without critical thought.
-Phil
Phil Sandifer wrote:
Nonsense. I could write that many words about using the New York Times as a source. You seem to be laboring under the misconception that there is some well of magically reliable sources that can be cited without critical thought.
The New York times is a primary source, an encyclopaedia is a tertiary source. Tertiary sources should be much more reliable than primary. The way you approach Wikipedia is more as if it was a primary source.
You went from claiming that Wikipedia was reliable to saying that everything is unreliable. So, the issue we talk about is the degree of unreliability, and my contention is that Wikipedia for a tertiary source is to unreliable to be used as a source for research. Wikipedia unfortunately is often a primary source, with articles that are not more than a first year essay on a topic.
Kim
On Sep 17, 2006, at 9:55 PM, Kim van der Linde wrote:
The New York times is a primary source, an encyclopaedia is a tertiary source.
Erm, no, the NYT would be a secondary source.
Tertiary sources should be much more reliable than primary.
This is true only insofar as you decide to equate the purposes of the two, which seems silly.
The way you approach Wikipedia is more as if it was a primary source.
No... (And certainly Liu's policy doesn't do this.)
You went from claiming that Wikipedia was reliable to saying that everything is unreliable.
Again, no, I didn't. I argued against the notion of some magic reliability that can be taken uncritically. If you are trying to direct your students to sources that require no thought and critical evaluation, you're fighting a doomed battle. If you're trying to teach your students how to use sources, Wikipedia is both good enough to use and good enough to be worth teaching.
So, the issue we talk about is the degree of unreliability, and my contention is that Wikipedia for a tertiary source is to unreliable to be used as a source for research.
I'm not sure what sort of research you're talking about here. At least in my world, no research-based project on an undergraduate level or above should be relying on tertiary sources at all.
Wikipedia unfortunately is often a primary source, with articles that are not more than a first year essay on a topic.
Examples?
-Phil
Kim van der Linde wrote:
You went from claiming that Wikipedia was reliable to saying that everything is unreliable. So, the issue we talk about is the degree of unreliability, and my contention is that Wikipedia for a tertiary source is to unreliable to be used as a source for research. Wikipedia unfortunately is often a primary source, with articles that are not more than a first year essay on a topic.
First year essays are not ipso facto unreliable. Many of them indeed are, but that's not *because* of their being first year.
Ec
On 17/09/06, Kim van der Linde kim@kimvdlinde.com wrote:
Well, it is a convenient way around the issue of determining whether Wikipedia is reliable or not. But it is besides the point. People DO use Wikipedia as their reliable source.
I think the problem may be that your students are stupid.
And thanks for the link. If we need that kind of instructions for students before they can use Wikipedia as a potential source, it is quite clear how unreliable Wikipedia is.
It's a good thing you're here to tell us why Wikipedia can't possibly work and save us a lot of time.
- d.
Kim van der Linde wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
I don't allow my students to cite Wikipedia, but I don't let them cite Britannica either. The reason isn't reliability, though - it's that encyclopedias aren't academic sources.
You've seen Alan Liu's guide to citing WIkipedia, right? (Liu is a big name humanities figure - highly respected writer on digital media) http://kairosnews.org/developing-a-wikipedia-research-policy
It's a good example of a commonsense citation policy, and should probably be taken as a model for us.
Well, it is a convenient way around the issue of determining whether Wikipedia is reliable or not. But it is besides the point. People DO use Wikipedia as their reliable source. And thanks for the link. If we need that kind of instructions for students before they can use Wikipedia as a potential source, it is quite clear how unreliable Wikipedia is.
That last bit is a non-sequitur. Reliability on Wikipedia is uneven, but that is also the case for many other sites, which can be much worse. What students need is to be able to evaluate _all_ sources critically without beginning with a prejudiced view about the validity of any one of them. They also need to be able to evaluate the relative importance of information. If a course requires an analytical study of someone's theories the Wikipedia article is not valid as the only source for that person's ideas, but the article may be sufficient to give that person's broad biographical background.
Claims about whether Wikipedia is reliable or unreliable are most often speculative. Perhaps those claims too should be subject to some kind of peer review. But then has anybody ever developed any broadly applicable metric for evaluating the reliability of any information source?
Ec