-----Original Message----- From: Seraphim Blade [mailto:seraphimbladewikipedia@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, April 3, 2007 11:33 AM To: 'English Wikipedia' Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Original research or common sense inferral?
Fred Bauder wrote:
It would be common sense to adopt this position. I support it. Why
should be deny users the right to add what they know? Published or not?
Go look at your Armenia-Azerbaijan arbitration case for your answer. (Or for that matter, most arbitration cases.) All those editors, every one of them, are -adding what they know-. And I guarantee you, they KNOW it, you could never convince one of them that everything they're writing is not 100% true and factual. That's why we should stick to what we can verify, not what we know.
Seraphimblade
You're comparing apples and oranges. If I say that Saguache Creek is a tributary of San Luis Creek in the Closed Basin of the San Luis Valley, that is one thing, saying that the Azerbaijanis desecrated an ancient Armenian graveyard, is quite another. One is a mere fact, the other is a contested matter.
I guess I should say: It would be common sense to adopt this position. I support it. Why should we deny users the right to add uncontroversial facts that they know? Published or not?
Fred
I can see where you're coming from. Though I imagine that generally, truly uncontroversial information just goes right through without causing, well, any controversy. The minute someone says "Who says it's so?" the information has just become controversial, and "I do" doesn't seem like a tremendously good answer at that point. And for most genuinely uncontroversial/common-knowledge information, finding a source is trivial, and will take 2 minutes, while arguing over it takes as long as people want to argue. If people want confirmation that the sun is hot, or that the chemical formula for water is H2O, or that all atoms contain protons and electrons, it's not worth the time to argue-I'll go find 5 reliable sources in that many minutes, and that's that.
Seraphimblade
On 4/3/07, Fred Bauder fredbaud@waterwiki.info wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: Seraphim Blade [mailto:seraphimbladewikipedia@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, April 3, 2007 11:33 AM To: 'English Wikipedia' Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Original research or common sense inferral?
Fred Bauder wrote:
It would be common sense to adopt this position. I support it. Why
should be deny users the right to add what they know? Published or not?
Go look at your Armenia-Azerbaijan arbitration case for your answer. (Or for that matter, most arbitration cases.) All those editors, every one of them, are -adding what they know-. And I guarantee you, they KNOW it, you could never convince one of them that everything they're writing is not 100% true and factual. That's why we should stick to what we can verify, not what we know.
Seraphimblade
You're comparing apples and oranges. If I say that Saguache Creek is a tributary of San Luis Creek in the Closed Basin of the San Luis Valley, that is one thing, saying that the Azerbaijanis desecrated an ancient Armenian graveyard, is quite another. One is a mere fact, the other is a contested matter.
I guess I should say: It would be common sense to adopt this position. I support it. Why should we deny users the right to add uncontroversial facts that they know? Published or not?
Fred
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On Apr 3, 2007, at 3:01 PM, Seraphim Blade wrote:
I can see where you're coming from. Though I imagine that generally, truly uncontroversial information just goes right through without causing, well, any controversy. The minute someone says "Who says it's so?" the information has just become controversial, and "I do" doesn't seem like a tremendously good answer at that point.
The problem is that people are saying "who says it's so" for reasons that are, to be blunt, kinda stupid. People need to stop challenging information on subjects they're ignorant about or that they don't sincerely doubt the validity of. Absent that safety we have to be ready to say "Oh for God's sake, just stop worrying about it."
-Phil
I think the bigger problem there is "Did you look yourself first?" Usually, I've found when I'm unsure about something, a quick run through Google or Proquest is all it takes. In more than one instance though, that actually has revealed that what was there is wrong, or misleading, or incomplete. I don't think it's necessarily stupid to challenge something, even by a person who may not know much on it. After all, presumably, the -article- is written for those who may not know much on the subject. (If someone already knows the subject inside and out, what do they need our article for anyway?) In that case, it certainly never hurts to list sources, not only for validation, but also because they tend to go into much greater depth.
On 4/3/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Apr 3, 2007, at 3:01 PM, Seraphim Blade wrote:
I can see where you're coming from. Though I imagine that generally, truly uncontroversial information just goes right through without causing, well, any controversy. The minute someone says "Who says it's so?" the information has just become controversial, and "I do" doesn't seem like a tremendously good answer at that point.
The problem is that people are saying "who says it's so" for reasons that are, to be blunt, kinda stupid. People need to stop challenging information on subjects they're ignorant about or that they don't sincerely doubt the validity of. Absent that safety we have to be ready to say "Oh for God's sake, just stop worrying about it."
-Phil _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l