Sarah wrote
Any public library can order material that's in a regular academic library.
Sorry - any public library in Kerala, Kampala or even Lima can order up anything from any academic library? Do remember that this is a global project. The 'populist' idea that anybody should be able to fact-check anything rather founders on the reality that it at most refers to about 5% of the world population, selected just about entirely on wealth.
We are really doing the opposite: making the cream of reliable-source material actually globally available whereever there is a decent internet connection.
Charles
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Indeed. We should be using good sources to write articles for the publically-available Wikipedia. Ain't our fault all the good stuff can't be afforded by everyone.
On 12/19/06, charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com < charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:
Sarah wrote
Any public library can order material that's in a regular academic library.
Sorry - any public library in Kerala, Kampala or even Lima can order up anything from any academic library? Do remember that this is a global project. The 'populist' idea that anybody should be able to fact-check anything rather founders on the reality that it at most refers to about 5% of the world population, selected just about entirely on wealth.
We are really doing the opposite: making the cream of reliable-source material actually globally available whereever there is a decent internet connection.
Charles
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On 12/19/06, charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Sarah wrote
Any public library can order material that's in a regular academic library.
Sorry - any public library in Kerala, Kampala or even Lima can order up anything from any academic library? Do remember that this is a global project. The 'populist' idea that anybody should be able to fact-check anything rather founders on the reality that it at most refers to about 5% of the world population, selected just about entirely on wealth.
We are really doing the opposite: making the cream of reliable-source material actually globally available whereever there is a decent internet connection.
Charles, anyone in the English-speaking world should be able easily to fact-check our material, and this is the English-language Wikipedia, so that has to be our priority. Your argument seems to be that because everyone in the world can't fact-check it, no one should be able to, and that we should instead leave the writing and research to self-selected Wikipiedia "experts," many of whom are anonymous and may have no expertise at all, or if they do, may not be highly regarded by other experts in the field.
I agree wholeheartedly that we should make the cream of reliable-source material globally available, but I strongly disagree with allowing Wikipedians to insert their own opinions and interpretations between those sources and our readers.
Sarah
Sarah wrote:
On 12/19/06, charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Sarah wrote
Any public library can order material that's in a regular academic library.
Sorry - any public library in Kerala, Kampala or even Lima can order up anything from any academic library? Do remember that this is a global project. The 'populist' idea that anybody should be able to fact-check anything rather founders on the reality that it at most refers to about 5% of the world population, selected just about entirely on wealth.
We are really doing the opposite: making the cream of reliable-source material actually globally available whereever there is a decent internet connection.
Charles, anyone in the English-speaking world should be able easily to fact-check our material, and this is the English-language Wikipedia, so that has to be our priority. Your argument seems to be that because everyone in the world can't fact-check it, no one should be able to, and that we should instead leave the writing and research to self-selected Wikipiedia "experts," many of whom are anonymous and may have no expertise at all, or if they do, may not be highly regarded by other experts in the field.
I agree wholeheartedly that we should make the cream of reliable-source material globally available, but I strongly disagree with allowing Wikipedians to insert their own opinions and interpretations between those sources and our readers.
Sarah
Sarah,
It seems to me that there are two related but separate issues that are getting intertwined here. I'm not sure if I'm just reading you wrong, or something else.
At times it seems that you are suggesting that reference material that is not "generally available" is off limits for Wikipedia references. While we might be able to discuss what level of unavailability makes a reference unsatisfactory, but those responding here seem to think that, for instance, a legal database, or a subscription-only database are acceptable.
The other issue is that of Original Research, and where "collation and organization" becomes OR.
My thought is that it's better to keep the two issues separate. If you see them as directly related, please do make it clear how.
-Rich
On 12/19/06, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
Sarah,
It seems to me that there are two related but separate issues that are getting intertwined here. I'm not sure if I'm just reading you wrong, or something else.
At times it seems that you are suggesting that reference material that is not "generally available" is off limits for Wikipedia references. While we might be able to discuss what level of unavailability makes a reference unsatisfactory, but those responding here seem to think that, for instance, a legal database, or a subscription-only database are acceptable.
Richard, I agree they're separate issues.
I don't mean that we should only use sources that are *easily* available, because that would be very limiting, but they must be reasonably available in the English-speaking world. I can't be precise about what I mean by "reasonable," but broadly speaking the man in the street should not have to move mountains, or pay a great deal of money, to obtain the material if he's determined to find it, and the source must be a published, citable one, not something circulated within a limited group of people.
The other issue is that of Original Research, and where "collation and organization" becomes OR.
The issues of availability of sources and OR merge when a Wikipedian explores a database that isn't widely available, as Zero was suggesting, adds his own interpretation of his research on that database to an article, and then calls the database his "source," even though there isn't a single document in that database that actually supports what he's saying. In other words, he has no citable, published source. That's a violation of NOR and V; it's a misuse of the primary source (the database); and it's arguably not reasonable to expect the man in the street to find a way to duplicate the research.
But otherwise, yes, I agree it's best to keep the two issues -- OR and availability of source material -- separate.
Sarah
On 12/19/06, Sarah slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
I don't mean that we should only use sources that are *easily* available, because that would be very limiting, but they must be reasonably available in the English-speaking world. I can't be precise about what I mean by "reasonable," but broadly speaking the man in the street should not have to move mountains, or pay a great deal of money, to obtain the material if he's determined to find it, and the source must be a published, citable one, not something circulated within a limited group of people.
Is the December 18, 1857 morning edition of [[The New York Times]] an acceptable source? It's rather hard to find a copy of it these days. How about the [[ISO 9000]] standard? The International Standards Organization charges thousands of dollars for access to it.
Is the December 18, 1857 morning edition of [[The New York Times]] an acceptable source? It's rather hard to find a copy of it these days.
Probably. I would imagine a big library will have a copy on microfiche.
How about the [[ISO 9000]] standard? The International Standards Organization charges thousands of dollars for access to it.
Having to pay large amounts of money probably makes it unacceptable. Expensive scientific journals are ok, as those can be found for free in a library. If memory serves, the ISO doesn't allow libraries, etc., to make things like ISO 9000 publicly available.
On 12/21/06, Mark Wagner carnildo@gmail.com wrote:
Is the December 18, 1857 morning edition of [[The New York Times]] an acceptable source? It's rather hard to find a copy of it these days. How about the [[ISO 9000]] standard? The International Standards Organization charges thousands of dollars for access to it.
The sooner this, and related discussions shift from trying to define some "acceptable/unacceptable" line, to establishing a series of "preferable/less preferable" relationships, the better. Of course that's an acceptable source in certain contexts. Of course you wouldn't want to use it if you had better ones.
There are very few things that are truly unacceptable at Wikipedia: slander, copyright violations, deliberate falsehoods to name a few. Everything else is just a series of improvements that takes the crappiest stub to the best featured article.
Steve
Sarah wrote:
I don't mean that we should only use sources that are *easily* available, because that would be very limiting, but they must be reasonably available in the English-speaking world. I can't be precise about what I mean by "reasonable," but broadly speaking the man in the street should not have to move mountains, or pay a great deal of money, to obtain the material if he's determined to find it, and the source must be a published, citable one, not something circulated within a limited group of people.
Even there one must be flexible. If one of our objectives is to free this kind of information we are being pro-active in using it as references. If it is not reasonably available to the man on the street we should be looking for ways to make it available rather than suppressing references to it.
Even when we refer to "something circulated within a limited group of people" we can't be too rigid. I have, for example, a large bound typescript record of the papers presented at an international conference held in Utrecht in 1950. I suspect that its circulation was limited to conference attendees. I don't know if any of the papers were published elsewhere, or how many other copies survive. It's still recent enough for most of the papers to be protected by copyright, but old enough for some of them to be orphans. Does it advance human knowledge to suppress the material? Isn't it better to find ways to make it available?
The other issue is that of Original Research, and where "collation and organization" becomes OR.
The issues of availability of sources and OR merge when a Wikipedian explores a database that isn't widely available, as Zero was suggesting, adds his own interpretation of his research on that database to an article, and then calls the database his "source," even though there isn't a single document in that database that actually supports what he's saying. In other words, he has no citable, published source. That's a violation of NOR and V; it's a misuse of the primary source (the database); and it's arguably not reasonable to expect the man in the street to find a way to duplicate the research.
But otherwise, yes, I agree it's best to keep the two issues -- OR and availability of source material -- separate.
If you really believe they are separate issues then don't try to run them beck together. I like to look at databases as some kind of metastructure of sources. There is nothing "primary" to such databases at all. Whether Zero is correct to call them his source depends on how strictly you want to define that word.
Ec
Sarah wrote:
On 12/19/06, charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Sarah wrote
Any public library can order material that's in a regular academic library.
Sorry - any public library in Kerala, Kampala or even Lima can order up anything from any academic library? Do remember that this is a global project. The 'populist' idea that anybody should be able to fact-check anything rather founders on the reality that it at most refers to about 5% of the world population, selected just about entirely on wealth.
We are really doing the opposite: making the cream of reliable-source material actually globally available whereever there is a decent internet connection.
Charles, anyone in the English-speaking world should be able easily to fact-check our material, and this is the English-language Wikipedia, so that has to be our priority.
Two of the three places that he mentioned are in the English-speaking world. I have no problem with the priority cited, nor with other wikipedias having parallel policies.
Your argument seems to be that because everyone in the world can't fact-check it, no one should be able to, and that we should instead leave the writing and research to self-selected Wikipiedia "experts," many of whom are anonymous and may have no expertise at all, or if they do, may not be highly regarded by other experts in the field.
I don't read that interpretation into the above at all; there is certainly no mention of experts.
I agree wholeheartedly that we should make the cream of reliable-source material globally available, but I strongly disagree with allowing Wikipedians to insert their own opinions and interpretations between those sources and our readers.
We all disagree with generally allowing personal opinions. The disagreement is in what constitutes personal opinion. I do not consider it personal opinion to say that we have not found the information in a specified range of sources. Such a comment is a partial step toward sourcing, and may be as much as can be done at the moment. Full sourcing may require the combined efforts of several editors with access to a different range of sources. If we disallow partial sourcing it could be more difficult to ever have a collaborative result that is the sum of these partial sourcings.
Ec
charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Sarah wrote
Any public library can order material that's in a regular academic library.
Sorry - any public library in Kerala, Kampala or even Lima can order up anything from any academic library? Do remember that this is a global project. The 'populist' idea that anybody should be able to fact-check anything rather founders on the reality that it at most refers to about 5% of the world population, selected just about entirely on wealth.
We are really doing the opposite: making the cream of reliable-source material actually globally available whereever there is a decent internet connection.
It's what we are doing, not what we have done. The observation that it is now only available to the richest 5% is, IMHO, intuitively true. Our work will not be done until the resources are freed and available to all, and that's a big task.
Ec