On 9/16/06, Kim van der Linde <kim(a)kimvdlinde.com> wrote: Exactly, though I also participate in some problem areas. What I don't understand, and am still looking for, is a root cause for why some areas with equally popular and controversial topics have contentious article editing, and some don't. The best I can figure is that some sets of people just play better together in online text-based interaction than other sets, and who shows up interested in a particular WP article is random luck of the draw. That's a terribly unsatisfying answer, though, because it offers no evident solution other than trying to convince people to behave better. Well, to some degree, there are legitimate reasons for using consensus: even within experts in the field, there often is not yet full agreement on the validity of newly developing science or technology. Science textbooks seem to either end up with a one-sided opinion, or have a consensus group rank and represent alternative theories which haven't yet proven themselves in a particular area. Wikipedia suffers some from the consensus group including non-experts who really don't understand the topic (ranging from don't understand it at all but think they do, to don't understand aspects of the emerging research though they otherwise have a clue, with many shades between). But I don't feel laying blame on the concept of consensus is fair - even a paid, expert written and reviewed encyclopedia suffers from having to make this choice between consensus (sometimes wishy-washy) and sometimes one-sided viewpoint articles. A really good writer can take a dynamic disagreement about the various contending ideas and both give all sides a fair treatment and bring the debate and issues to life in an accessable manner. The problem here is that the set of really good popular science/tech/etc writers is not the same as the set of topic experts, and that a lot of really good writers seem to despair at some of Wikipedia's process results. I've got slightly over a thousand en.WP pages on my watchlist, about 500 articles worth. Even accounting for overlap, there are plenty enough active wikipedians on en to watch the important pages. -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

On 9/17/06, Kim van der Linde <kim(a)kimvdlinde.com> wrote: The history of science suggests otherwise (from what I've seen I can't help wondering if Feyerabend had a point). -- geni

On 9/17/06, Kim van der Linde <kim(a)kimvdlinde.com> wrote: A popular vote of of scientists would not be the worst description of what goes on. Although of course the actual process is ar more complex. I never really liked the paradigm shifts model becuase it lacked falsifiability (and yes I'm aware of the irony of that statement). -- geni

On 9/17/06, George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com> wrote: This rather describes wikipedia although hopefully people will spend less time worrying about the philosophy of the wikipedia method (hmm "what is this thing called wikipedia editing" doesn't quite have the same ring). -- geni

Friday, September 22, 2006, 6:02:25 PM, Jossi wrote: JF> I just see a massive amount of wishful thinking and naivete in the JF> proposals @ citizendium.org and mailing list... As if expert editors JF> do not have POVs to push, or that politics will not enter such a JF> system, or that expert editors with Phd's will be any better at text- JF> based social interactions and collaborative editing than mere mortals. Indeed, experts push POVs just like non-experts. Like the saying goes: "For each expert, there is an equal and opposite expert". Also, experts are human too, and they may be wrong sometimes. The experts which always have the "last word" are going to annoy many contributors.

Larry may have good intentions and a vision for a better pedia... but I am following the discussions at Citizendium-I and all I can see is an extraordinary amount of wishful thinking from participants, a similar amount of naivete, and a basic misunderstanding of how on- line collaboration works and what skills are needed to make it work. I also observe a huge disparity on the expectations. The attempt to "fix Wikipedia" by forking a new wiki with a new process that "encourages experts" may be a good idea or a bad one, but we will know if it works or not when it happens. Let's see in three months time... -- Jossi

On Fri, Sep 22, 2006 at 01:54:22PM -0400, Death Phoenix wrote: I have missed this earlier as (1) I am in England, not my home in Australia, and (2) I have been doing the expert bit at a Conference in Oxford. I ought to be one of the people Larry wants, as I have been an academic for over 40 years and my D. Phil was awarded in 1964. I should be a grumpy old man saying "These young chaps do not respect my expertise", but I am not. In many areas particularly in science, Wikipedia is developing a fruitfull collaboration between experts and non-experts that is making a better encyclopedia. In some areas the non-experts have too much say. In some areas the experts have too much say. An example of the latter seems to me to me some physics articles which are way to technical for an encyclopedia or at least miss the less technical introductions. Examples of the former are mostly not in science. I am not going to move to Citizendium as I do not think it is the way to go. Getting a good balance on WP between experts and non-experts is the way to go, but it does involve social skills and some experts (and some young non-experts!) do not always have them. Experts can push their POV. I am appalled about the number of reviews on science that merely review the work of the authors's research group and do not give a balanced view of the field. This tendency has been increasing in the last 20 years. WP can do better. I doubt Citizendium will but I'll keep an eye on some of the articles I have contributed to. Brian [Bduke] -- Brian Salter-Duke (Brian Duke) b_duke(a)bigbond.net.au - NB New! Old still works Post: 626 Melbourne Rd, Spotswood, VIC, 3015, Australia Phone 03-93992847. http://www.salter-duke.bigpondhosting.com/brian/index.htm Honorary Researcher Fellow, Dept. of Medicinal Chemistry, Monash Univ.

Delirium wrote: Maybe that your field of expertise works by consensus, mine does not (and honestly, students who think that science works by consensus need to retake philosophy-of-science 101). Consensus is not the same as agreement, and if a topic is really well explored, there might be general agreement among scientists on that topic. Kim -- http://www.kimvdlinde.com

On 9/17/06, Kim van der Linde <kim(a)kimvdlinde.com> wrote: All fields work by consensus. Grant committees, journal editors and reviewers, PhD committees, all of these act via consensus. The individual findings of research are at one level not subject to consensus (the experiment either shows X or does not show X), and at another are (others in the field agree that the experiment was good, valid, properly designed, and does show X). It's not just a matter of doing an experiment and gathering data. It's also a matter of convincing others that your results are correct. Individual facts are not "known" to a field until multiple researchers believe that the result is credible. There have been plenty of fringe results which were ultimately unrepeatable, and have not been adopted as consensus truth by a scientific field. Certain subjects are less prone to this, in that the discovery process is pretty self-documenting for those practicing in them, math in particular. But even some proofs are disputed over time... While not formally part of the "scientific method", these are important parts of the scientific process. The process assumes fallability of individual researchers and results, and demands a higher standard. -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

Kim van der Linde wrote: The peer review article points out that this varies by journal and field. In computer science, for example, the process typically *is* consensus driven: Reviewers write reviews; authors can write short rebuttals; and the reviewers then discuss among themselves to reach a decision. In other fields the final decision is made solely by the editor, so it's more of a degenerate case of consensus-of-one. -Mark

On 17 Sep 2006, at 04:01, George Herbert wrote: The experts I've seen being "driven away" leave because they are used to and expect respect but instead get treated as if they were arrogant know-it-alls. I find this is less of an issue on the Mathematical articles because it is hard to bluff and so easy for a layman editor to tell when someone is an expert.

gwern branwen wrote: Maybe it does not work, maybe it does, I will see. If it does, it has the potential to become a much better source for reliable information than Wikipedia. Well, that is your interpretation of sound, not mine. Sound content is dynamic. If I want static content, I go for a paper encyclopaedia. And dynamic high quality content on Wikipedia deteriorates all the time unless experts babysit the complex articles. Nice dynamic, sure...... Initially, yes. But that will change as soon as there is a sound community of editors at Citizendium. The pool of editors might be smaller, but the vandal fighting also, which results in a lesser need for editors to babysit the many articles. It probably will also contain less pseudo-notable stuff, like all pokemon characters and such for which Wikipedia is and will remain a perfect place. And by the sound of colleagues around me, they might be way more willing to help out with less open-to-all-editing initiatives. Besides that, the contributors have more time to spend on actual content due to less vandal fighting. Finally, at current, the stream of information is from Britannica to Wikipedia, not the other way round. Kim -- http://www.kimvdlinde.com

gwern branwen wrote: Well, maybe, but based on my own experiences, content is also deteriorating, and I have several cases in which I am pretty sure that if I had left Wikipedia and not corrected it , it would have been still wrong. Actually, I tried it out with three errors, after waiting a month, I gave up and corrected it. Kim -- http://www.kimvdlinde.com