From: "Steve Bennett" stevagewp@gmail.com
On 12/21/06, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
A while back I wrote about a self-publicising vanity author. One of the details I'd liked to have note was the complete (or near- complete) absence of his books in public library catalogues, but it's almost impossible to actually find a way to cite a "negative search" much less a positive result...
Indeed, that would end up being OR - quite simple OR, but OR all the same. It's annoying when you know something that apparently no-one has published, but there isn't much we can do about it. (Unless you happen to be an expert on the subject and can publish it yourself)
If that is OR then WP:NOR is a broken rule.
A citation is essentially a very simple piece of research that can easily be reproduced by anyone without specialist knowledge.
I don't see what that can't be broadened just a bit. For example, let's suppose a library has an online catalog... let's say an online catalog that's accessible to anyone. (Two that come to mind are the Cornell University Library, and the 16,000-volume public library of Bergen-op-Zoom in the Netherlands... well actually it seems to be offline but it was available a few years ago).
You can't prove a negative, but you can certainly say "his book is not in the Cornell University Library" or whatever, and cite a link to the search or a description of how to do the search. This doesn't seem very different to me from a citation.
On 12/21/06, Daniel P. B. Smith wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
From: "Steve Bennett" stevagewp@gmail.com
On 12/21/06, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
A while back I wrote about a self-publicising vanity author. One of the details I'd liked to have note was the complete (or near- complete) absence of his books in public library catalogues, but it's almost impossible to actually find a way to cite a "negative search" much less a positive result...
Indeed, that would end up being OR - quite simple OR, but OR all the same. It's annoying when you know something that apparently no-one has published, but there isn't much we can do about it. (Unless you happen to be an expert on the subject and can publish it yourself)
If that is OR then WP:NOR is a broken rule.
A citation is essentially a very simple piece of research that can easily be reproduced by anyone without specialist knowledge.
I don't see what that can't be broadened just a bit. For example, let's suppose a library has an online catalog... let's say an online catalog that's accessible to anyone. (Two that come to mind are the Cornell University Library, and the 16,000-volume public library of Bergen-op-Zoom in the Netherlands... well actually it seems to be offline but it was available a few years ago).
You can't prove a negative, but you can certainly say "his book is not in the Cornell University Library" or whatever, and cite a link to the search or a description of how to do the search. This doesn't seem very different to me from a citation.
No, you absolutely cannot do that, for reasons eloquently stated elsewhere. The claim that it is not in the Cornell University Library is a novel conclusion based on your own original research; this seems so trivially obvious to me that it astonishes me that others would claim otherwise. You might as well promote a novel claim in physics, and point people to the calculations you have made to prove your theory. If a reliable source says "the book is not found in the Cornell University Library", then quote them. Otherwise, move on.
Jay.
No, you absolutely cannot do that, for reasons eloquently stated elsewhere. The claim that it is not in the Cornell University Library is a novel conclusion based on your own original research; this seems so trivially obvious to me that it astonishes me that others would claim otherwise. You might as well promote a novel claim in physics, and point people to the calculations you have made to prove your theory. If a reliable source says "the book is not found in the Cornell University Library", then quote them. Otherwise, move on.
What's novel about "It doesn't appear on the such results, therefore it isn't in the library"? Seems like an obvious conclusion to me... (might not be 100% reliable, depending on search terms, accuracy of the library's index, etc, but that doesn't make it novel).
On 12/21/06, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
No, you absolutely cannot do that, for reasons eloquently stated elsewhere. The claim that it is not in the Cornell University Library is a novel conclusion based on your own original research; this seems so trivially obvious to me that it astonishes me that others would claim otherwise. You might as well promote a novel claim in physics, and point people to the calculations you have made to prove your theory. If a reliable source says "the book is not found in the Cornell University Library", then quote them. Otherwise, move on.
What's novel about "It doesn't appear on the such results, therefore it isn't in the library"? Seems like an obvious conclusion to me... (might not be 100% reliable, depending on search terms, accuracy of the library's index, etc, but that doesn't make it novel).
Read your own words; "Seems like an obvious conclusion to me..." You are drawing your own conclusions, rather than quoting others who have drawn those conclusions. In addition, by definition it is a *novel* conclusion; if it weren't novel, then you'd be able to quote someone who had come to the same conclusion.
Jay.
On Thu, 21 Dec 2006, jayjg wrote:
Read your own words; "Seems like an obvious conclusion to me..." You are drawing your own conclusions, rather than quoting others who have drawn those conclusions. In addition, by definition it is a *novel* conclusion; if it weren't novel, then you'd be able to quote someone who had come to the same conclusion.
That only applies if *any conclusion whatsoever* is original research. But that's not true. Otherwise it would be original research to say that someone is more than 5 feet tall if the source just said they are 6 feet tall.
So you can't just say "that's a conclusion, so it's original research". You need to figure out exactly what types of conclusions are and aren't allowed, and then show that this particular conclusion falls into the prohibited category.
I would argue that an *obvious* conclusion falls into the permitted category. The whole reason we accept conclusions like "he is 6 feet tall, therefore he is more than 5 feet tall" is that they don't require specialist training to make, and that nobody could seriously deny they are true--in other words, we accept such conclusions because they are obvious.
On 12/22/06, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Thu, 21 Dec 2006, jayjg wrote:
Read your own words; "Seems like an obvious conclusion to me..." You are drawing your own conclusions, rather than quoting others who have drawn those conclusions. In addition, by definition it is a *novel* conclusion; if it weren't novel, then you'd be able to quote someone who had come to the same conclusion.
That only applies if *any conclusion whatsoever* is original research. But that's not true. Otherwise it would be original research to say that someone is more than 5 feet tall if the source just said they are 6 feet tall.
So you can't just say "that's a conclusion, so it's original research". You need to figure out exactly what types of conclusions are and aren't allowed, and then show that this particular conclusion falls into the prohibited category.
I would argue that an *obvious* conclusion falls into the permitted category. The whole reason we accept conclusions like "he is 6 feet tall, therefore he is more than 5 feet tall" is that they don't require specialist training to make, and that nobody could seriously deny they are true--in other words, we accept such conclusions because they are obvious.
But we're not talking about trivially obvious conclusions; rather, we're talking about conclusions based on complex actions that require expert knowledge to conduct correctly, and even then don't always produce accurate results. The only *obvious* conclusion we can draw in this case is "Daniel Smith ran this specific search on the catalog, and it didn't return any results", which is hardly encyclopedic information.
Jay.
Ken Arromdee wrote:
On Thu, 21 Dec 2006, jayjg wrote:
Read your own words; "Seems like an obvious conclusion to me..." You are drawing your own conclusions, rather than quoting others who have drawn those conclusions. In addition, by definition it is a *novel* conclusion; if it weren't novel, then you'd be able to quote someone who had come to the same conclusion.
That only applies if *any conclusion whatsoever* is original research. But that's not true. Otherwise it would be original research to say that someone is more than 5 feet tall if the source just said they are 6 feet tall.
So you can't just say "that's a conclusion, so it's original research". You need to figure out exactly what types of conclusions are and aren't allowed, and then show that this particular conclusion falls into the prohibited category.
I would argue that an *obvious* conclusion falls into the permitted category. The whole reason we accept conclusions like "he is 6 feet tall, therefore he is more than 5 feet tall" is that they don't require specialist training to make, and that nobody could seriously deny they are true--in other words, we accept such conclusions because they are obvious.
Of course what requires specialist training is debatable. I have just encountered an interesting (if perhaps trivial) example. I have to-day finished reading the light murder mystery "Ambrose Bierce and the Trey of Pearls". This author likes to build his stories around historical persons in the San Francisco of the 1890s. This particular novel is written in the style of a journalist's notebook with a series of dated entries. Two successive entries are dated Sunday, February 28, 1892 and Monday March 1, 1892. The problem is that he ignored the fact that 1892 was a leap year.. Would anybody consider knowledge of the calendar specialized knowledge?
Ec
On 12/21/06, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
No, you absolutely cannot do that, for reasons eloquently stated elsewhere. The claim that it is not in the Cornell University Library is a novel conclusion based on your own original research; this seems so trivially obvious to me that it astonishes me that others would claim otherwise. You might as well promote a novel claim in physics, and point people to the calculations you have made to prove your theory. If a reliable source says "the book is not found in the Cornell University Library", then quote them. Otherwise, move on.
What's novel about "It doesn't appear on the such results, therefore it isn't in the library"? Seems like an obvious conclusion to me... (might not be 100% reliable, depending on search terms, accuracy of the library's index, etc, but that doesn't make it novel).
You may have made a mistake. Or it may be in the library but not in the catalogue, or vice versa. That you conducted the search yourself makes publication of your results OR. We publish the mistakes of reliable sources, not of Wikipedians. :-)
jayjg wrote:
On 12/21/06, Daniel P. B. Smith wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
You can't prove a negative, but you can certainly say "his book is not in the Cornell University Library" or whatever, and cite a link to the search or a description of how to do the search. This doesn't seem very different to me from a citation.
No, you absolutely cannot do that, for reasons eloquently stated elsewhere. The claim that it is not in the Cornell University Library is a novel conclusion based on your own original research; this seems so trivially obvious to me that it astonishes me that others would claim otherwise. You might as well promote a novel claim in physics, and point people to the calculations you have made to prove your theory. If a reliable source says "the book is not found in the Cornell University Library", then quote them. Otherwise, move on.
What you appear to be opposing here is any research rather than just original research. Your use of the term "trivially obvious" and your astonishment are pure rhetoric. The reference to a "novel claim in physics" attempts to generalize from a very specific set of circumstances. The claim that the references were not found at Cornell may be novel in performance for the specific circumstances, but it is not novel in the nature of its general application. This argument has been used frequently in many circumstances. Equating "novel" to "original" in the present context is thoroughly misleading.
We cannot be so naïve as to believe that absolutely every claim in Wikipedia can be indisputably sourced.from unimpeachable references. Doing so can only propel our readers into a fools' paradise of certainty about the world.
Ec
jayjg wrote:
On 12/21/06, Daniel P. B. Smith wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
You can't prove a negative, but you can certainly say "his book is not in the Cornell University Library" or whatever, and cite a link to the search or a description of how to do the search. This doesn't seem very different to me from a citation.
No, you absolutely cannot do that, for reasons eloquently stated elsewhere. The claim that it is not in the Cornell University Library is a novel conclusion based on your own original research;
I would disagree, and say that it is a claim made by the library catalogue, and thus properly sourced to them. The claim may be one made by omission, but, insofar as the catalogue claims to be comprehensive, it is nonetheless an unambiguous claim.
If the catalogue does not claim to be comprehensive, or if there is doubt about its accuracy, it may be better to phrase the statement explicitly as "his book is not listed in the Cornell University Library catalogue."
None of the problems previously mentioned with legal databases apply to library catalogues, which I would rather compare to other common catalogue works such as phone books and dictionaries. In fact, ten or twenty years ago, one could even have pointed to the filing cabinets full of index cards and said "here's your printed source". :-)
Or would you also consider the statement "IttyBittySoft was not listed in the Fortune 500 list for 2006" to be OR?
On 12/22/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
jayjg wrote:
On 12/21/06, Daniel P. B. Smith wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
You can't prove a negative, but you can certainly say "his book is not in the Cornell University Library" or whatever, and cite a link to the search or a description of how to do the search. This doesn't seem very different to me from a citation.
No, you absolutely cannot do that, for reasons eloquently stated elsewhere. The claim that it is not in the Cornell University Library is a novel conclusion based on your own original research;
I would disagree, and say that it is a claim made by the library catalogue, and thus properly sourced to them. The claim may be one made by omission, but, insofar as the catalogue claims to be comprehensive, it is nonetheless an unambiguous claim.
But that catalog has made *no* claims; it can't, it simply exists. Rather, some Wikipedia editor has made a claim *on behalf of the catalog*.
If the catalogue does not claim to be comprehensive, or if there is doubt about its accuracy, it may be better to phrase the statement explicitly as "his book is not listed in the Cornell University Library catalogue."
And who do we source that claim to? Zero0000? Daniel Smith? What does the footnote say: "Wikipedia editor Daniel Smith ran this specific search on the catalog on December 11, 2006, and it did not return any results"? Ridiculous.
None of the problems previously mentioned with legal databases apply to library catalogues, which I would rather compare to other common catalogue works such as phone books and dictionaries. In fact, ten or twenty years ago, one could even have pointed to the filing cabinets full of index cards and said "here's your printed source". :-)
Assuming you'd searched through the cards properly, one card hadn't stuck to the back of another, or been temporarily removed for some reason, or...
Or would you also consider the statement "IttyBittySoft was not listed in the Fortune 500 list for 2006" to be OR?
Why on earth would one ever want to put such a statement into an article? It's clear that the only reason would be to make some sort of argument, push some sort of POV regarding IttyBittySoft. Why not just stated the obvious facts, and leave it at that? "IttyBittySoft reported annual revenues of $36 million in 2006". That's all we need to say; let's not beat our readers over the head with our agenda.
Jay.
jayjg wrote:
On 12/22/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
jayjg wrote:
On 12/21/06, Daniel P. B. Smith wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
You can't prove a negative, but you can certainly say "his book is not in the Cornell University Library" or whatever, and cite a link to the search or a description of how to do the search. This doesn't seem very different to me from a citation.
No, you absolutely cannot do that, for reasons eloquently stated elsewhere. The claim that it is not in the Cornell University Library is a novel conclusion based on your own original research;
I would disagree, and say that it is a claim made by the library catalogue, and thus properly sourced to them. The claim may be one made by omission, but, insofar as the catalogue claims to be comprehensive, it is nonetheless an unambiguous claim.
But that catalog has made *no* claims; it can't, it simply exists. Rather, some Wikipedia editor has made a claim *on behalf of the catalog*.
By that logic, books don't make claims either, they simply exist.
A official library catalog constitues a very clear unambiguous claim by the library that "our library contains these books." If the catalog is described as a comprehensive one, it includes the further claim "...and no others."
If the catalogue does not claim to be comprehensive, or if there is doubt about its accuracy, it may be better to phrase the statement explicitly as "his book is not listed in the Cornell University Library catalogue."
And who do we source that claim to? Zero0000? Daniel Smith?
We source it to the catalog, as published by the library, as it existed on the date it was checked. Just as we would source claims about the inclusion of a company on the Fortune 500 list to the list itself, as published by _Fortune_.
What does the footnote say: "Wikipedia editor Daniel Smith ran this specific search on the catalog on December 11, 2006, and it did not return any results"? Ridiculous.
<ref>[[Cornell University Library]] [http://catalog.library.cornell.edu/ catalog]. URL accessed on December 11, 2006.</ref>
For bonus points, include the direct link to the search results. This would be comparable to mentioning a specific page when citing a book: recommended, but not required. For extra bonus points, include a link to an archived copy of the results on webcitation.org.
Assuming you'd searched through the cards properly, one card hadn't stuck to the back of another, or been temporarily removed for some reason, or...
Books can have errors too, and it's possible to misunderstand them. Does not mean we have to stop citing them.
Or would you also consider the statement "IttyBittySoft was not listed in the Fortune 500 list for 2006" to be OR?
Why on earth would one ever want to put such a statement into an article? It's clear that the only reason would be to make some sort of argument, push some sort of POV regarding IttyBittySoft. Why not just stated the obvious facts, and leave it at that? "IttyBittySoft reported annual revenues of $36 million in 2006". That's all we need to say; let's not beat our readers over the head with our agenda.
Presumably because some other source (most likely IttyBittySoft themselves) did in fact claim they were "one of America's 100 largest corporations" or something to that effect. That would be absurd, of course, but you'd be surprised what claims people might make. (See f.ex. [[Office of International Treasury Control]].)
Or maybe an otherwise credible source confused them with Microsoft (and never bothered to publish a correction).
On 12/22/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
<snip>
None of the problems previously mentioned with legal databases apply to
library catalogues, which I would rather compare to other common catalogue works such as phone books and dictionaries. In fact, ten or twenty years ago, one could even have pointed to the filing cabinets full of index cards and said "here's your printed source". :-)
The problems are exactly the same; they're the same sort of beast. A legal or other bibliographic database indexes articles, proceedings and books that are published in some pre-determined subset of all the journals in the world; a library catalog indexes books that are held in a particular institution (a subset of all the books in the world). A catalog is simply a database of books; see worldcat.org.
Sorry to get all semantic, phoebe
phoebe ayers wrote:
On 12/22/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
None of the problems previously mentioned with legal databases apply to library catalogues, which I would rather compare to other common catalogue works such as phone books and dictionaries. In fact, ten or twenty years ago, one could even have pointed to the filing cabinets full of index cards and said "here's your printed source". :-)
The problems are exactly the same; they're the same sort of beast. A legal or other bibliographic database indexes articles, proceedings and books that are published in some pre-determined subset of all the journals in the world; a library catalog indexes books that are held in a particular institution (a subset of all the books in the world). A catalog is simply a database of books; see worldcat.org.
Yes, but I don't believe anyone was suggesting to cite a library catalog in support of a claim about all the books in the world -- that would be as absurd as basing a claim about all the people in the world on a single biography.
The difference is that, at least for some library catalogs, the subset of books they cover is well defined (all the books in library X) and of potentially legitimate interest in an encylopedia article.
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
I don't see what that can't be broadened just a bit. For example, let's suppose a library has an online catalog... let's say an online catalog that's accessible to anyone. (Two that come to mind are the Cornell University Library, and the 16,000-volume public library of Bergen-op-Zoom in the Netherlands... well actually it seems to be offline but it was available a few years ago).
You can't prove a negative, but you can certainly say "his book is not in the Cornell University Library" or whatever, and cite a link to the search or a description of how to do the search. This doesn't seem very different to me from a citation.
More precisely you can say that you could not find the book listed in the Cornell University Library Catalog. It's not the same even though the correlation between the two statements will be strong.
Ec