In a message dated 4/7/2008 12:00:31 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, slimvirgin@gmail.com writes:
That's the difference between us and, say, the Encyclopaedia Britannica. We empower readers. We don't ask for their blind trust.>> --------------------------------- Sarah! This needs to go on Main Page ;) It's a great slogan.
Will Johnson
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On 07/04/2008, WJhonson@aol.com WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 4/7/2008 12:00:31 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, slimvirgin@gmail.com writes:
That's the difference between us and, say, the Encyclopaedia Britannica. We empower readers. We don't ask for their blind trust.>>
Sarah! This needs to go on Main Page ;) It's a great slogan.
When the issue of Wikipedia's "unreliability" comes up, I like to point out that we can't, don't and have never promised "reliability" - what we are, in fact, is *useful*. (I make such a bold claim based on our horrendous mainstream popularity. Hands up all the old hand encyclopedia nerds here who thought it would get this far this quickly ...)
- d.
On 4/7/08, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
When the issue of Wikipedia's "unreliability" comes up, I like to point out that we can't, don't and have never promised "reliability" - what we are, in fact, is *useful*. (I make such a bold claim based on our horrendous mainstream popularity. Hands up all the old hand encyclopedia nerds here who thought it would get this far this quickly ...)
Indeed. We are useful. And I am hard pressed to believe that if you asked a random, non-wonk user if our usefulness to them was based on the fact that we are generally accurate, the answer would be "yes" almost all of the time.
To dismiss accuracy as some philosophical technicality is to deny the reality of why people look things up in encyclopedias.
-Phil
Phil Sandifer wrote:
On 4/7/08, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
When the issue of Wikipedia's "unreliability" comes up, I like to point out that we can't, don't and have never promised "reliability" - what we are, in fact, is *useful*. (I make such a bold claim based on our horrendous mainstream popularity. Hands up all the old hand encyclopedia nerds here who thought it would get this far this quickly ...)
Indeed. We are useful. And I am hard pressed to believe that if you asked a random, non-wonk user if our usefulness to them was based on the fact that we are generally accurate, the answer would be "yes" almost all of the time.
To dismiss accuracy as some philosophical technicality is to deny the reality of why people look things up in encyclopedias.
Naturally we strive to be accurate, but the judgements of accuracy and usefulness are for outsiders to make. The obsessive-compulsives need to abandon the notion that they are the guardians of accuracy.
Ec
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 1:43 AM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
On 4/7/08, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
When the issue of Wikipedia's "unreliability" comes up, I like to point out that we can't, don't and have never promised "reliability" - what we are, in fact, is *useful*. (I make such a bold claim based on our horrendous mainstream popularity. Hands up all the old hand encyclopedia nerds here who thought it would get this far this quickly ...)
Indeed. We are useful. And I am hard pressed to believe that if you asked a random, non-wonk user if our usefulness to them was based on the fact that we are generally accurate, the answer would be "yes" almost all of the time.
To dismiss accuracy as some philosophical technicality is to deny the reality of why people look things up in encyclopedias.
Naturally we strive to be accurate, but the judgements of accuracy and usefulness are for outsiders to make. The obsessive-compulsives need to abandon the notion that they are the guardians of accuracy.
Ec
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I think you have an excellent point here, and this brings us back to the previous point: Which one of us decides what is accurate? Why should any of us be doing that? In the absence of a different source offering a counterargument, what you are left with is "This is wrong because I say so," and allowing that is simply not sustainable, especially for contentious areas. Rather, we simply say "Source X says Statement Y", cite Source X, and leave it to the reader to research and decide what to believe about Statement Y. Citation and attribution are the keys. -Regardless of the truth of Statement Y itself-, so long as Source X really did say Statement Y, that line is both accurate and verifiable. We are not and should not be making judgments as to the validity of the claim, simply reporting that it was made.
Or to put it more simply, if the New York Times reports that the moon is a large pink beach ball, it is both accurate and verifiable to say "According to the New York Times, the moon is a large pink beach ball." The Times' hypothetical claim is ludicrous, but our statement that they said so is simple fact. And it is left to the reader to believe or not believe the claim, we are simply and accurately reporting that it was said and who said so.
On Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 02:57:01AM -0600, Todd Allen wrote:
I think you have an excellent point here, and this brings us back to the previous point: Which one of us decides what is accurate? Why should any of us be doing that?
Ans: we jointly determine article content by discussion on the talk page. Evaluating sources and deciding what to include is a crucial part of the writing process, which is why we all do it whenever we write something.
In the absence of a different source offering a counterargument, what you are left with is "This is wrong because I say so," and allowing that is simply not sustainable, especially for contentious areas.
I'm sure everyone in this discussion is already familiar with that argument. It is true that, for contentious articles, we may fall back to that position as a practical means of compromise. It also aids with neutral point of view for article topics which have several differing viewpoints.
But we shouldn't forget that this is only a practical means of compromise for particularly contentious articles, not a goal in itself. For most articles, editors are able to come to agreement on the talk page about whether a particular claim is accurate and about whether it should be included. In some sense, articles where the editors won't or can't come to such agreement represent a breakdown or failure of the wiki process. We shouldn't write our policies in a way that encourages this dysfunctional situation.
- Carl
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 5:37 PM, Carl Beckhorn cbeckhorn@fastmail.fm wrote:
For most articles, editors are able to come to agreement on the talk page about whether a particular claim is accurate and about whether it should be included. In some sense, articles where the editors won't or can't come to such agreement represent a breakdown or failure of the wiki process. We shouldn't write our policies in a way that encourages this dysfunctional situation.
- Carl
No, we should write our policies to deal with this dysfunctional situation when it arises. Which it tends to do independent of what policy says.
RR
Todd Allen wrote:
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 1:43 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
On 4/7/08, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
When the issue of Wikipedia's "unreliability" comes up, I like to point out that we can't, don't and have never promised "reliability" - what we are, in fact, is *useful*. (I make such a bold claim based on our horrendous mainstream popularity. Hands up all the old hand encyclopedia nerds here who thought it would get this far this quickly ...)
Indeed. We are useful. And I am hard pressed to believe that if you asked a random, non-wonk user if our usefulness to them was based on the fact that we are generally accurate, the answer would be "yes" almost all of the time.
To dismiss accuracy as some philosophical technicality is to deny the reality of why people look things up in encyclopedias.
Naturally we strive to be accurate, but the judgements of accuracy and usefulness are for outsiders to make. The obsessive-compulsives need to abandon the notion that they are the guardians of accuracy.
Ec
I think you have an excellent point here, and this brings us back to the previous point: Which one of us decides what is accurate? Why should any of us be doing that? In the absence of a different source offering a counterargument, what you are left with is "This is wrong because I say so," and allowing that is simply not sustainable, especially for contentious areas. Rather, we simply say "Source X says Statement Y", cite Source X, and leave it to the reader to research and decide what to believe about Statement Y. Citation and attribution are the keys. -Regardless of the truth of Statement Y itself-, so long as Source X really did say Statement Y, that line is both accurate and verifiable. We are not and should not be making judgments as to the validity of the claim, simply reporting that it was made.
More problematic are the situations where Source X making Statement Y justifies Claim Z by our editor. I'll grant that editor the good faith that he actually believes this, but that is not enough to support his peculiar logic. A similar kind of argument comes up when an editor treats any criticism as a personal attack.
Or to put it more simply, if the New York Times reports that the moon is a large pink beach ball, it is both accurate and verifiable to say "According to the New York Times, the moon is a large pink beach ball." The Times' hypothetical claim is ludicrous, but our statement that they said so is simple fact. And it is left to the reader to believe or not believe the claim, we are simply and accurately reporting that it was said and who said so.
I agree there too. The determination that a source is "reliable" just adds another level of uncertainty. Where is the meta-reliable source that establishes the chosen source as reliable. I'm well aware, for example, that we have many editors who believe that parapsychology is pseudoscience. But when somebody cites "The Journal of Parapsychology" it should be enough for the claim to speak for itself without going through the whole argument again about why parapsychology is pseudoscience. We still preserve the fault line, but make it clear that the fault line is not a product of our judgement.
Ec
There are two classes of such meta-sources.
within the world of primary scientific journals, there is citation. worthless articles are not cited. Of course the notable wrong ones are, but thats a very small percentage of the nonsense. the test of acadeic acceptance is not publication, but citation.
and there is the other one that applies for all subjects: the judgment of reputable secondary and tertiary sources. that usually makes it unnecessary to go to citations of primary articles as a way of establishing reliability.
This is really the basic presupposition for RS, and it remains valid.
The determination that a source is "reliable" just
adds another level of uncertainty. Where is the meta-reliable source that establishes the chosen source as reliable. I'm well aware, for example, that we have many editors who believe that parapsychology is pseudoscience. But when somebody cites "The Journal of Parapsychology" it should be enough for the claim to speak for itself without going through the whole argument again about why parapsychology is pseudoscience. We still preserve the fault line, but make it clear that the fault line is not a product of our judgement.
Ec
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David Goodman wrote:
There are two classes of such meta-sources.
within the world of primary scientific journals, there is citation. worthless articles are not cited. Of course the notable wrong ones are, but thats a very small percentage of the nonsense. the test of acadeic acceptance is not publication, but citation.
and there is the other one that applies for all subjects: the judgment of reputable secondary and tertiary sources. that usually makes it unnecessary to go to citations of primary articles as a way of establishing reliability.
This is really the basic presupposition for RS, and it remains valid.
While I agree with that, there tends to be an infinite regress that requires someone familiar with a field to make some judgment calls at some point. Which are the "reputable" secondary and tertiary sources, for example? Sure, some junk is easy to discard, but in contentious areas, reputable academic presses will often publish books that are very much *not* representative of consensus opinion in the area, if they're from someone prominent in the field, partly because such "dissenter" monographs tend to sell particularly well.
-Mark
On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 9:29 AM, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
David Goodman wrote:
There are two classes of such meta-sources.
within the world of primary scientific journals, there is citation. worthless articles are not cited. Of course the notable wrong ones are, but thats a very small percentage of the nonsense. the test of acadeic acceptance is not publication, but citation.
and there is the other one that applies for all subjects: the judgment of reputable secondary and tertiary sources. that usually makes it unnecessary to go to citations of primary articles as a way of establishing reliability.
This is really the basic presupposition for RS, and it remains valid.
While I agree with that, there tends to be an infinite regress that requires someone familiar with a field to make some judgment calls at some point. Which are the "reputable" secondary and tertiary sources, for example? Sure, some junk is easy to discard, but in contentious areas, reputable academic presses will often publish books that are very much *not* representative of consensus opinion in the area, if they're from someone prominent in the field, partly because such "dissenter" monographs tend to sell particularly well.
-Mark
Then those books will be reviewed saying as much, and indicating how far they are representative of scholarly consensus, which is information that we can incorporate if necessary.
RR
On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 02:57:01 -0600, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 1:43 AM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
On 4/7/08, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
When the issue of Wikipedia's "unreliability" comes up, I like to point out that we can't, don't and have never promised "reliability" - what we are, in fact, is *useful*. (I make such a bold claim based on our horrendous mainstream popularity. Hands up all the old hand encyclopedia nerds here who thought it would get this far this quickly ...)
Indeed. We are useful. And I am hard pressed to believe that if you asked a random, non-wonk user if our usefulness to them was based on the fact that we are generally accurate, the answer would be "yes" almost all of the time.
To dismiss accuracy as some philosophical technicality is to deny the reality of why people look things up in encyclopedias.
Naturally we strive to be accurate, but the judgements of accuracy and usefulness are for outsiders to make. The obsessive-compulsives need to abandon the notion that they are the guardians of accuracy.
Ec
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I think you have an excellent point here, and this brings us back to the previous point: Which one of us decides what is accurate? Why should any of us be doing that? In the absence of a different source offering a counterargument, what you are left with is "This is wrong because I say so," and allowing that is simply not sustainable, especially for contentious areas. Rather, we simply say "Source X says Statement Y", cite Source X, and leave it to the reader to research and decide what to believe about Statement Y. Citation and attribution are the keys. -Regardless of the truth of Statement Y itself-, so long as Source X really did say Statement Y, that line is both accurate and verifiable. We are not and should not be making judgments as to the validity of the claim, simply reporting that it was made.
Or to put it more simply, if the New York Times reports that the moon is a large pink beach ball, it is both accurate and verifiable to say "According to the New York Times, the moon is a large pink beach ball." The Times' hypothetical claim is ludicrous, but our statement that they said so is simple fact. And it is left to the reader to believe or not believe the claim, we are simply and accurately reporting that it was said and who said so.
You are "right", but that would not stop that inclusion being removed as complete bollocks and rightly so. We only need your rigorous robot like approach if stuff is challenged. As someone else has replied, we can generally sort it out between editors on the talk page.
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 4:40 PM, Brian Salter-Duke b_duke@bigpond.net.au wrote:
On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 02:57:01 -0600, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 1:43 AM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
On 4/7/08, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
When the issue of Wikipedia's "unreliability" comes up, I like to point out that we can't, don't and have never promised "reliability" - what we are, in fact, is *useful*. (I make such a bold claim based on our horrendous mainstream popularity. Hands up all the old hand encyclopedia nerds here who thought it would get this far this quickly ...)
Indeed. We are useful. And I am hard pressed to believe that if you asked a random, non-wonk user if our usefulness to them was based on the fact that we are generally accurate, the answer would be "yes" almost all of the time.
To dismiss accuracy as some philosophical technicality is to deny the reality of why people look things up in encyclopedias.
Naturally we strive to be accurate, but the judgements of accuracy and usefulness are for outsiders to make. The obsessive-compulsives need to abandon the notion that they are the guardians of accuracy.
Ec
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I think you have an excellent point here, and this brings us back to the previous point: Which one of us decides what is accurate? Why should any of us be doing that? In the absence of a different source offering a counterargument, what you are left with is "This is wrong because I say so," and allowing that is simply not sustainable, especially for contentious areas. Rather, we simply say "Source X says Statement Y", cite Source X, and leave it to the reader to research and decide what to believe about Statement Y. Citation and attribution are the keys. -Regardless of the truth of Statement Y itself-, so long as Source X really did say Statement Y, that line is both accurate and verifiable. We are not and should not be making judgments as to the validity of the claim, simply reporting that it was made.
Or to put it more simply, if the New York Times reports that the moon is a large pink beach ball, it is both accurate and verifiable to say "According to the New York Times, the moon is a large pink beach ball." The Times' hypothetical claim is ludicrous, but our statement that they said so is simple fact. And it is left to the reader to believe or not believe the claim, we are simply and accurately reporting that it was said and who said so.
You are "right", but that would not stop that inclusion being removed as complete bollocks and rightly so. We only need your rigorous robot like approach if stuff is challenged. As someone else has replied, we can generally sort it out between editors on the talk page.
-- Brian Salter-Duke b_duke@bigpond.net.au [[User:Bduke]] mainly on en:Wikipedia. Also on fr: Wikipedia, Meta-Wiki and Wikiversity
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You are, of course, quite correct, and my extreme hypothetical example rightly should be treated exactly that way if it ever were to happen. (Though it would make a fine source for [[New York Times pink beach ball report]].) It certainly should be removed as an extreme fringe viewpoint in [[Moon]]. But in this case, there are no problems showing that other credible sources overwhelmingly do not agree.
In real-life cases, examples are often murkier, where credible sources may legitimately disagree. In this case, we present verifiable opinion by stating who says what, without attempting to "take a side" in any way. If one view is minority or less reliable, we certainly should reflect this (and NPOV requires this). But V does not affect that requirement.
We still mirror sources, we don't second-guess them. If the overwhelming majority of sources say something, NPOV indicates we must present that as the majority view. That's nothing new, that's always been there. But if the sources say something, nothing reliable disagrees, and you say "Well, but I -know- that's not correct...", then you are not a reliable source. Write your own source or ask them to correct.
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 8:32 PM, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
But if the sources say something, nothing reliable disagrees, and you say "Well, but I -know- that's not correct...", then you are not a reliable source. Write your own source or ask them to correct.
However, I will use my editorial judgment to remove something from an article if I can confirm it is a gross error of fact, prior to getting any correction printed or anything like that. I suspect in the vast majority of cases it is either not that definitive an error or not that important, though; examples of where it is include BLP concerns - we'll rarely keep something in the article if the subject claims it is not true unless our sources are very good.
-Matt
On 09/04/2008, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
However, I will use my editorial judgment to remove something from an article if I can confirm it is a gross error of fact, prior to getting any correction printed or anything like that. I suspect in the vast majority of cases it is either not that definitive an error or not that important, though; examples of where it is include BLP concerns - we'll rarely keep something in the article if the subject claims it is not true unless our sources are very good.
Note that this has been a problem - BLPs with information from one bad source that got copied around the world, and the subject unable to get it removed from Wikipedia because of bloody-minded editors who think sourcing must be done robotically.
- d.
On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 12:23 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Note that this has been a problem - BLPs with information from one bad source that got copied around the world, and the subject unable to get it removed from Wikipedia because of bloody-minded editors who think sourcing must be done robotically.
It has indeed been a problem. What I've also found is that in many cases the person in question is not willing to publish a denial entirely because that would only make the incorrect story more newsworthy.
Most times the original source is bad, even if it has been reprinted in superficially better quality publications without sufficient fact checking.
-Matt
Matthew Brown wrote:
On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 12:23 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Note that this has been a problem - BLPs with information from one bad source that got copied around the world, and the subject unable to get it removed from Wikipedia because of bloody-minded editors who think sourcing must be done robotically.
It has indeed been a problem. What I've also found is that in many cases the person in question is not willing to publish a denial entirely because that would only make the incorrect story more newsworthy.
I wonder if they'd be willing to "publish" a denial with us if we had some mechanism for doing so? We could have some sort of way for them to register a denial or disagreement or clarification, which we'd cite in the article. I don't see this as much of an increase in original research---We consider notable people's blogs reliable sources on their personal views, and it seems like saying "just register your disagreement here and we'll cite it" isn't any worse than the more roundabout "okay, start a blog, then post your disagreement there, and then we'll cite that".
Of course, that still leaves the other problem of editorially judging of noteworthiness---do we report the allegation along with a denial, or not report it at all once we determine it to be false? This depends on the noteworthiness of the allegation of course (something that was a big furor for months /has/ to be reported; something alleged once in a semi-rag paper shouldn't be), but people disagree on the threshhold.
-Mark
On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 2:51 PM, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Matthew Brown wrote:
On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 12:23 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Note that this has been a problem - BLPs with information from one bad source that got copied around the world, and the subject unable to get it removed from Wikipedia because of bloody-minded editors who think sourcing must be done robotically.
It has indeed been a problem. What I've also found is that in many cases the person in question is not willing to publish a denial entirely because that would only make the incorrect story more newsworthy.
I wonder if they'd be willing to "publish" a denial with us if we had some mechanism for doing so? We could have some sort of way for them to register a denial or disagreement or clarification, which we'd cite in the article. [snip]
Send 'em over to Wikinews, and cite the resultant story?