In a message dated 4/9/2008 9:50:58 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, WJhonson@aol.com writes:
And what the subject claims about a statement of fact, sourced from a reliable source, is not material. Never was, never will be.>>
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That was a little strong, let me rephrase. A BLP subject does not have the right to expunge any material that other editors deem has come from a reliable source. If you show your boobs on video while you were drunk once, guess what? You did it, now face the consequences :)
Will Johnson
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On 09/04/2008, WJhonson@aol.com WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
That was a little strong, let me rephrase. A BLP subject does not have the right to expunge any material that other editors deem has come from a reliable source. If you show your boobs on video while you were drunk once, guess what? You did it, now face the consequences :)
I'm talking about the case where something simply incorrect makes it into a newspaper and never goes away, and the subject can't correct it because robotic idiots claiming to be editors read in WP:RS that a newspaper is always a Reliable Source. Never mind that anyone who's ever actually been in the press will laugh hollowly at the notion. Suability is not the same as accuracy.
- d.
On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 10:30 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 09/04/2008, WJhonson@aol.com WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
That was a little strong, let me rephrase. A BLP subject does not have the right to expunge any material that
other
editors deem has come from a reliable source. If you show your boobs
on video
while you were drunk once, guess what? You did it, now face the
consequences
:)
I'm talking about the case where something simply incorrect makes it into a newspaper and never goes away, and the subject can't correct it because robotic idiots claiming to be editors read in WP:RS that a newspaper is always a Reliable Source. Never mind that anyone who's ever actually been in the press will laugh hollowly at the notion. Suability is not the same as accuracy.
- d.
Its a good thing to remember that other, more organised institutions are also dealing with this problem. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/opinion/26pubed.html A bunch of proposed solutions: http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/01/letters-the-readers-speak/
Have fun considering their applicability to this discussion, though I think its been mentioned here before. Incidentally, this means that if the NYT hasn't withdrawn a story the subject thinks is inaccurate, they likely have considered it and disagreed.
RR
On 4/9/08, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 09/04/2008, WJhonson@aol.com WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
That was a little strong, let me rephrase. A BLP subject does not have the right to expunge any material that other editors deem has come from a reliable source. If you show your boobs on
video
while you were drunk once, guess what? You did it, now face the
consequences
:)
I'm talking about the case where something simply incorrect makes it into a newspaper and never goes away, and the subject can't correct it because robotic idiots claiming to be editors read in WP:RS that a newspaper is always a Reliable Source. Never mind that anyone who's ever actually been in the press will laugh hollowly at the notion. Suability is not the same as accuracy.
- d.
A sad case in point being the scientologist driven campaign to shut down The anon.penet.fi server. The Observer was spoofed by them into reporting that 90% of child porn on the internet is trafficed by the server. Even though The Observers own readers wrote in in huge volume that that was quite preposterous, espescially as Julf had put severe restrictions on the size of emails that could be sent through penet, and yet, The Observer never admitted it had erred, but merely pedaled down the story by noting that "Johan Helsingius had consistently denied the allegations." Which is a very poor form of apology for getting the story wrong.
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
On Apr 10, 2008, at 1:48 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
A sad case in point being the scientologist driven campaign to shut down The anon.penet.fi server. The Observer was spoofed by them into reporting that 90% of child porn on the internet is trafficed by the server. Even though The Observers own readers wrote in in huge volume that that was quite preposterous, espescially as Julf had put severe restrictions on the size of emails that could be sent through penet, and yet, The Observer never admitted it had erred, but merely pedaled down the story by noting that "Johan Helsingius had consistently denied the allegations." Which is a very poor form of apology for getting the story wrong.
To my mind, this settles the issue. There are clearly instances where accuracy and truth are pre-requisites for material. We simply do not report absurd slanders like this. Anybody who does not understand this should find a different project.
-Phil
On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 10:02 PM, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Apr 10, 2008, at 1:48 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
A sad case in point being the scientologist driven campaign to shut down The anon.penet.fi server. The Observer was spoofed by them into reporting that 90% of child porn on the internet is trafficed by the server. Even though The Observers own readers wrote in in huge volume that that was quite preposterous, espescially as Julf had put severe restrictions on the size of emails that could be sent through penet, and yet, The Observer never admitted it had erred, but merely pedaled down the story by noting that "Johan Helsingius had consistently denied the allegations." Which is a very poor form of apology for getting the story wrong.
To my mind, this settles the issue. There are clearly instances where accuracy and truth are pre-requisites for material. We simply do not report absurd slanders like this. Anybody who does not understand this should find a different project.
-Phil
This may be a case for WP:IAR.
OTOH, Phil, you need to realise that Wikipedia does not exist to fix things the rest of the world has got wrong.
RR
Philip Sandifer wrote:
On Apr 10, 2008, at 1:48 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
A sad case in point being the scientologist driven campaign to shut down The anon.penet.fi server. The Observer was spoofed by them into reporting that 90% of child porn on the internet is trafficed by the server. Even though The Observers own readers wrote in in huge volume that that was quite preposterous, espescially as Julf had put severe restrictions on the size of emails that could be sent through penet, and yet, The Observer never admitted it had erred, but merely pedaled down the story by noting that "Johan Helsingius had consistently denied the allegations." Which is a very poor form of apology for getting the story wrong.
To my mind, this settles the issue. There are clearly instances where accuracy and truth are pre-requisites for material. We simply do not report absurd slanders like this. Anybody who does not understand this should find a different project.
That still leads us to the initial question---how do we determine accuracy and truth? Generally, we determine it by consulting and citing sources, rather than doing original research ourselves. For example, if through consulting archival documents I determine that the standard attribution of some ancient Greek poet to the 4th century BC is actually incorrect, and the truth is that he lived in the 2nd century BC, it would still be appropriate for Wikipedia to report that he lived in the 4th century BC, unless I get my new estimate published in a classics journal first.
The problem with this seems to arise mainly with recent things where good sources don't actually exist. In that case, I'd argue it's not an issue of us doing insufficient original research, but of placing too much trust in marginally reliable sources. A single report in a newspaper is only a very marginally reliable source, so if a particularly surprising allegation has only the support of one newspaper article, maybe we shouldn't report it at all, unless it itself becomes a newsworthy allegation where other sources start reporting on the controversy, or is corroborated by other sources.
This is distinguished from sources like a full-length biography of a person written by a respected author---especially in the case where a person has multiple full-length biographies available, I would argue that the article *must* always be based exclusively on such sources, not on a Wikipedian's original research into "accuracy and truth". But where no such sources exist, some judgment in excluding probably-wrong allegations with marginal sourcing can work.
-Mark
On 10/04/2008, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
That still leads us to the initial question---how do we determine accuracy and truth? Generally, we determine it by consulting and citing sources, rather than doing original research ourselves. For example, if through consulting archival documents I determine that the standard attribution of some ancient Greek poet to the 4th century BC is actually incorrect, and the truth is that he lived in the 2nd century BC, it would still be appropriate for Wikipedia to report that he lived in the 4th century BC, unless I get my new estimate published in a classics journal first.
That's fine for eventualism, but breaks down with living bios - on which we are forced to be immediatist in order to avoid causing actual harm, because we're vastly popular and have a ridiculously high Google page rank.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 10/04/2008, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
That still leads us to the initial question---how do we determine accuracy and truth? Generally, we determine it by consulting and citing sources, rather than doing original research ourselves. For example, if through consulting archival documents I determine that the standard attribution of some ancient Greek poet to the 4th century BC is actually incorrect, and the truth is that he lived in the 2nd century BC, it would still be appropriate for Wikipedia to report that he lived in the 4th century BC, unless I get my new estimate published in a classics journal first.
That's fine for eventualism, but breaks down with living bios - on which we are forced to be immediatist in order to avoid causing actual harm, because we're vastly popular and have a ridiculously high Google page rank.
It isn't so much eventualism that causes us to reject these "improvements" based on original research, though, as actually a distrust that the original research is correct. While we phrase it as "that's a nice discovery, but please submit to a classics journal first", what we really mean at least 19 times out of 20 is, "your alleged 'discovery' is actually bunk, but don't take it from us; if you really think it's a discovery, go submit to a classics journal and let it get ripped to shreds in peer review".
Are we more confident in the ability of nonspecialist Wikipedians to carry out accurate original research based on analyzing primary sources when it comes to living people? A lot of the research I see in this area is highly questionable, including a lot of "I searched arrest database [x] and didn't find anything, therefore my research shows Joe Bob was never arrested".
-Mark
On Thu, 10 Apr 2008, Delirium wrote:
It isn't so much eventualism that causes us to reject these "improvements" based on original research, though, as actually a distrust that the original research is correct. While we phrase it as "that's a nice discovery, but please submit to a classics journal first", what we really mean at least 19 times out of 20 is, "your alleged 'discovery' is actually bunk, but don't take it from us; if you really think it's a discovery, go submit to a classics journal and let it get ripped to shreds in peer review".
This fails for BLPs, and it fails for the cases commonly quoted (including the example where the anon.penet.fi server had to deny the Scientology accusation of child porn).
The reason it fails is that if the newspaper or other source refuses to print a quotable correction, it's probably not because the correction fails peer review. Rather, it's because the source refuses to print corrections of any sort unless their legal or public relations department tells them to. They don't actually care about accuracy or about ruining someone's reputation.
It also doesn't work very well for the covered bridge example. Do you honestly think the difficulty of publishing a newspaper article claiming that a bridge has traffic really has anything to do with the claim not surviving peer review, as opposed to the difficulty of getting even true information about a random bit of trivia published?