The matter of pet scientific theories and personal biographies have something in common: we can't verify them because the only material we can find on them is written by the author.
So I suggest that we focus on this angle. We already have a policy that "Wikipedia is not a primary source". This provides sufficient justification for not having these types of articles in WP. We should perhaps try to come up with loose guidelines as to how many primary sources we require.
I think the question of quality of sources cannot be avoided. Where I live we had a young man who made a living off of stories of flying saucers, cattle mutilations and similar stuff, none of which was fact based (as I have lived here for many years, surely I would have observed at least one of the numberless phenomena he reported). He is notorious enough that should someone wish to write a Wikipedia article it would not be questioned. Simply a lot of independent sources doesn't raise crap to fact. The modest article Ray Gardner wrote about himself falls in an entirely different category, nothing in his article is subject to serious factual dispute, despite lack of any way of definitively validating whether, for example, he worked for Electronic Arts.
Fred
From: tarquin tarquin@planetunreal.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 13:22:02 +0000 To: Wikipedia-En wikiEN-l@wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Insufficient primary sources
The matter of pet scientific theories and personal biographies have something in common: we can't verify them because the only material we can find on them is written by the author.
So I suggest that we focus on this angle. We already have a policy that "Wikipedia is not a primary source". This provides sufficient justification for not having these types of articles in WP. We should perhaps try to come up with loose guidelines as to how many primary sources we require.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Fred Bauder wrote:
Tarquin wrote:
The matter of pet scientific theories and personal biographies have something in common: we can't verify them because the only material we can find on them is written by the author.
Right! And by "verify them", you ''don't'' mean «verify that they are correct» but instead «verify that this is indeed what people believe about them». (This may have confused Fred below???)
So I suggest that we focus on this angle. We already have a policy that "Wikipedia is not a primary source". This provides sufficient justification for not having these types of articles in WP. We should perhaps try to come up with loose guidelines as to how many primary sources we require.
I doubt that it would work well to specify a ''specific'' number of sources; the question is whether other Wikipedians can independently verify things.
A possible way to manage it: * Person A is enamoured with subject B (a theory of physics, a person, etc). * So A writes the article [[B]] to get the word out to the world. * Other Wikipedians think B is insignificant and want to delete [[B]]. * A gives (or is asked for) an independent reference C about B. * Either: ** Other Wikipedians use C to verify the facts in [[B]]; and ** [[B]] is allowed to remain (perhaps improved in various ways). * Or: ** Other Wikipedians follow C and find no verification of [[B]]; and ** [[B]] is deleted.
This outline assumes that verifiability is (in the end) the only reason to delete [[B]] (which isn't really true, as with vandalism for example), and it assumes that reference C settles the matter; A may need to come back with reference D or whatever. And if A is new, then A may not understand things, so that (the first) reference C is written ''by'' A (hence not independent) or some other problem; people will have to try to work things out in good faith. But the bottom line is that, if A is fighting for the life of [[B]], then A needs to provide a way for other Wikipedians to independently verify it.
It would help to cultivate a culture of mentioning sources on talk pages. Most of the time, we don't do this for uncontroversial matters (and I'm as guilty of this omission as anybody else is). But mentioning sources in the absence of controversy will help smooth things over when controversy appears. Sources are the obvious (not the only) ways to get independent verification; since each Wikipedian can check the source independently.
I think the question of quality of sources cannot be avoided. Where I live we had a young man who made a living off of stories of flying saucers, cattle mutilations and similar stuff, none of which was fact based (as I have lived here for many years, surely I would have observed at least one of the numberless phenomena he reported). He is notorious enough that should someone wish to write a Wikipedia article it would not be questioned. Simply a lot of independent sources doesn't raise crap to fact.
This situation seems entirely correct to me. Wikipedia is not interested in establishing fact. (There is the technical meaning of the term "fact" in LMS' exposition of NPOV, and that ''is'' what Wikipedia covers; but that's not as broad as the common meaning of the term.) That is, Wikipedia doesn't care if your neighbour's ideas are true. But if he is notorious, then there should be independent evidence of ''what his ideas are'', and Wikipedia can write about '''that'''. And if he is notorious, then Wikipedia ''should'' write about him too!
-- Toby
tarquin wrote:
The matter of pet scientific theories and personal biographies have something in common: we can't verify them because the only material we can find on them is written by the author.
So I suggest that we focus on this angle. We already have a policy that "Wikipedia is not a primary source". This provides sufficient justification for not having these types of articles in WP. We should perhaps try to come up with loose guidelines as to how many primary sources we require.
Autobiographies can still be moved to user pages.
What you call "primary sources" can be furnished with an appropriate disclaimer. I just don't like being in the position where we are judging whether someone else's ideas are worth publishing. If there are no Google hits on the subject other than the author's web page we can say that; if no books have been published on it we can say that; if there has been no peer review (an overated criterion) we can say that. If the proposed theory threatens to become unduly long, or spills over into more than one article page we can probably take steps to edit it down to size. The long-windedness of some of these people is often more reflective of their inability to write clearly, than of their theory. Many may even thank us for editing things down when they see that it makes their ideas "clearer".
Discussing "how many primary sources we require" is playing a numbers game. It doesn't matter. It is also not our responsibility to try to disprove these theories. That is not a requirement of NPOV; they can be met by a brief statement as part of the disclaimer. It often seems that the compulsion which "science advocates" in our community show for disproving the unprovable is just another variation of throwing tasty morsels to the trolls. Letting our theorsts sit quietly in their playpens will generate a lot less crying than spanking them.
I take a decidedly history-of-science perspective on these issues where even the scientifically invalid may neverthess be valid history. There are better ways to deal with these issues than simply deleting them. I would be glad to work on a respectful boilerplate disclaimerfor these pages that would also allay the concerns of those who fear that we are going to be overrun by an endless series of nutball theories.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Discussing "how many primary sources we require" is playing a numbers game. It doesn't matter. It is also not our responsibility to try to disprove these theories. That is not a requirement of NPOV; they can be met by a brief statement as part of the disclaimer. It often seems that the compulsion which "science advocates" in our community show for disproving the unprovable is just another variation of throwing tasty morsels to the trolls. Letting our theorsts sit quietly in their playpens will generate a lot less crying than spanking them.
A numbers game is a bad idea. For each case we must use or judgement on how much source material there is and what its quality is
I take a decidedly history-of-science perspective on these issues where even the scientifically invalid may neverthess be valid history. There are better ways to deal with these issues than simply deleting them. I would be glad to work on a respectful boilerplate disclaimerfor these pages that would also allay the concerns of those who fear that we are going to be overrun by an endless series of nutball theories.
There are nutball theories and nutball theories. The "aquatic ape" theory is an example of a nutball theory we should cover, because it's been discussed and reviewed. Now if I wrote a webpage saying I think the universe is made of plasticine and Lego bricks, then spammed the URL around Usenet for a few months -- surely you don't suggest that be included in WP?