Should there be a lower threshold for notability in cases of disambiguation? A while ago I ran into an issue on the article for Susan Blanchard. Here's the version I found:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Susan_Blanchard_%28actress%29&...
As I worked on disambiguating, I found there were three American actresses who could potentially be confused, so I split the two mentioned above and made a disambig page:
-Susan Blanchard (actress): Notable for work on All My Children -Susan Blanchard (socialite): Described as an actress in the press (no credits listed) but better known for having married several famous actors -Susan Blanchard Ryan: Notable for the film Open Water
Susan Blanchard (socialite) was immediately nominated for speedy deletion, under the argument that name confusion does not seem to be a valid reason to create an article on someone who otherwise would not merit one.
I understand the argument about Susan Blanchard (socialite) being non-notable. However, more than half of the original article was about her. That information didn't seem to belong on a disambiguation page, but I didn't want to have it appear only on related pages (such as articles on her notable husbands). Without a linked Susan Blanchard article on the related pages, it seems the name confusion might persist. I have run into the same problem where both people were clearly notable, but this case seemed less clear.
I tend to be broadly inclusionist, so I would argue for separate articles, even if one subject is far less notable, to help reduce confusion. I can see where some would make a case for just a mention on the disambiguation page, though. Thoughts?
Jokestress
Just throwing this out there for discussion, integrate with existing threads if needed:
Statement 1:
Ideally, Wikipedia should be developed to the point where
1) it is the canonical reference resource on the web. 2) a) such that articles reference other articles as sources for the current discussion, or b) articles should only reference outside sources and never other articles.
Accordingly there is some disparity between those who think Wikipedia
a) should be well cited by its researchers. b) should be well written by its editors. ...where neither is mutually exclusive and neither has "official" status.
There are a number of modalities for how people behave and operate on Wikipedia with respect to what they do on Wikipedia. I think disparities between these modalities have led people to think along extreme lines about the value and values of Wikipedia, some of which appear to violate core policy. A canonical example of this was IAR, which was basically a loophole which basically claimed itself to be above even NPOV and CIVIL.
Re-examining that policy led to its deprecation, and I believe other policies, in order to be taken seriously need to be put in a formal place within the policy heirarchy. In this respect, I view Wikipedia bi-polar way where on the one hand we have content disputes which are are ultimately guided by NPOV/objectivity, and behavioural disputes which are ultimately deferential to CIVIL/civility. Where there is a choice between these two appears to end up becoming a contest between free willed independents who aspire to excellence, and the culture of beauraucrats who aspire to process and formality.
Conclusion: Even if these groups represent a somewhat fundamental divisions in real society, they should not operate on Wikipedia in a mutually exclusive way.
-Stevertigo
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On 8/24/06, stevertigo vertigosteve@yahoo.com wrote:
Ideally, Wikipedia should be developed to the point where
- it is the canonical reference resource on the web.
- a) such that articles reference other articles as sources for the current discussion, or
b) articles should only reference outside sources and never other articles.
If you're saying "Wikipedia articles should have a reference for every statement of fact, and none of those references should be Wikipedia", then yes, that goes without saying.
Accordingly there is some disparity between those who think Wikipedia
a) should be well cited by its researchers. b) should be well written by its editors. ...where neither is mutually exclusive and neither has "official" status.
What do you mean by a)? Do you mean that people who perform research using Wikipedia as a base should cite it? For any serious research, that's not true - we would not want to be cited in an academic journal. Or do you mean by "well cited" the articles should have lots of references? I just don't quite get you.
policy. A canonical example of this was IAR, which was basically a loophole which basically claimed itself to be above even NPOV and CIVIL.
My interpretation of IAR is basically a restatement of Be Bold: "Feel free to perform any good-faith action once, with disregard for all existing policy and process, if you think it will help Wikipedia achieve its mission". Anyone who thinks IAR means "you have a license to do whatever the fuck you want, and anyone who tries to stop you is a policy nazi" is just dreaming.
Steve
--- Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
If you're saying "Wikipedia articles should have a reference for every statement of fact, and none of those references should be Wikipedia", then yes, that goes without saying.
"Yes"?? Thats citenazism! Its usefulness is dubious outside of scratching libel out of biographies. When did this happen? How would using this policy have affected Wikipedia's growth from its humble beginnings when Nupedia sucked down a quarter mil? How are "good writers" supposed to rephrase in an explanatory way what technocrats plop down as fact?
What do you mean by a)? Do you mean that people who perform research using Wikipedia as a base should cite it?
No. I meant simply that people follow different modes of editing, one of which can be generally called "research."
we would not want to be cited in an academic journal.
We dont?
My interpretation of IAR is basically a restatement of ...
And therefore a redundancy, and therefore a confusing fork of... a policy which is sharply in contrast with... current topics of discussion.
-SV
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On 8/24/06, stevertigo vertigosteve@yahoo.com wrote:
--- Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
If you're saying "Wikipedia articles should have a reference for every statement of fact, and none of those references should be Wikipedia", then yes, that goes without saying.
"Yes"?? Thats citenazism! Its usefulness is dubious outside of scratching libel out of biographies. When did this happen? How would using this policy have affected Wikipedia's growth from its humble beginnings when Nupedia sucked down a quarter mil? How are "good writers" supposed to rephrase in an explanatory way what technocrats plop down as fact?
What do you mean by a)? Do you mean that people who perform research using Wikipedia as a base should cite it?
No. I meant simply that people follow different modes of editing, one of which can be generally called "research."
we would not want to be cited in an academic journal.
We dont?
My interpretation of IAR is basically a restatement of ...
And therefore a redundancy, and therefore a confusing fork of... a policy which is sharply in contrast with... current topics of discussion.
-SV
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Steve writes: -- "Yes"?? Thats citenazism! Its usefulness is dubious outside of scratching libel out of biographies. When did this happen? How would using this policy have affected Wikipedia's growth from its humble beginnings when Nupedia sucked down a quarter mil? How are "good writers" supposed to rephrase in an explanatory way what technocrats plop down as fact? --
I think you're misinterpreting that.
It would be good if every fact in WP was referenced.
I have toyed with the idea of an underlying data structure for listing facts (factual claims, referenced facts). Over time, it would be good if there were a slow evolution towards nearly everything being referenced, well referenced and multiply referenced if possible.
That is not a requirement that we all rush out and reference everything immediately.
Just because something hasn't had references added to date, doesn't mean we should inherently mistrust it or throw the articles out or anything. This is in a sense the ultimate "leave something for others" project aspect...
Fuzzy end goal, not immediate requirement.
--- George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
I think you're misinterpreting that. It would be good if every fact in WP was referenced.
But are all references the same? How do we distinguish between references?
"References" seems to include to other web pages which people can quickly verify but may not be quite authoritative. Voluminous books which may be considered authoritative but might only found in the dusty libraries of elite collections.
Face it: even where a source is extremely old, and therefore considered "canonical" such often show the limitations and biases of the time and culture wherin they were written. Note the difference between a reference and a quotation, either by a respected philosopher whose codification has come to be a canonical one, or by a claimed authority on the subject. There is a huge subjective variance here.
For example, Augustine, who had no physics credentials whatsoever, was perhaps the first to explain the nature of time as having 'begun with the creation of the universe, before which there was no time.' His assertion was based in religious terms of course, but nevertheless came some years before physical theories. Is he not an "authority"? Or is he not a canonical authority?
I have toyed with the idea of an underlying data structure for listing facts (factual claims, referenced facts). Over time, it would be good if there were a slow evolution towards nearly everything being referenced, well referenced and multiply referenced if possible.
Good. There was that Wikidata idea out there a couple years back...
Just because something hasn't had references added to date, doesn't mean we should inherently mistrust it or throw the articles out or anything. This is in a sense the ultimate "leave something for others" project aspect...
Well said.
SV
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On 8/24/06, stevertigo vertigosteve@yahoo.com wrote:
--- George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
I think you're misinterpreting that. It would be good if every fact in WP was referenced.
But are all references the same? How do we distinguish between references?
"References" seems to include to other web pages which people can quickly verify but may not be quite authoritative. Voluminous books which may be considered authoritative but might only found in the dusty libraries of elite collections.
References clearly aren't all the same. And won't in a real world all agree.
We already deal with this in presenting multiple points of view including significant minority opinions. Well referenced academic works routinely cite multiple sources, including leading opposing opinions.
I'd like to see both easily followable web links *and* paper-library references for stuff. Web links, so that people can follow the chain and see another online source, and paper-library references because a lot of classical knowledge still isn't online properly. Over time, maybe with book-scanning projects etc, that will change.
Face it: even where a source is extremely old, and therefore considered
"canonical" such often show the limitations and biases of the time and culture wherin they were written. Note the difference between a reference and a quotation, either by a respected philosopher whose codification has come to be a canonical one, or by a claimed authority on the subject. There is a huge subjective variance here.
Absolutely. Some of this eventually regresses into determining what our definition of knowledge is... which ceases to be information science and moves into philosophy.
Well written WP reference articles will be able to put topics and references into the subjective context, as well as a notional commonly agreed upon objective framework.
stevertigo wrote:
--- George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
I think you're misinterpreting that. It would be good if every fact in WP was referenced.
But are all references the same? How do we distinguish between references?
"References" seems to include to other web pages which people can quickly verify but may not be quite authoritative. Voluminous books which may be considered authoritative but might only found in the dusty libraries of elite collections.
ALL references need to be viewed critically. When for one reason or another we claim this reference good and that one bad that too should be a claim that is subject to verifiability.
Face it: even where a source is extremely old, and therefore considered "canonical" such often show the limitations and biases of the time and culture wherin they were written.
e.g. 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Note the difference between a reference and a quotation, either by a respected philosopher whose codification has come to be a canonical one, or by a claimed authority on the subject. There is a huge subjective variance here.
In some cases the "authority" represented the herd instinct of his time. Establishing a canonical Bible was a major political undertaking for the church of the time. No work of the evangelists are known to exist in their original hand.
For example, Augustine, who had no physics credentials whatsoever, was perhaps the first to explain the nature of time as having 'begun with the creation of the universe, before which there was no time.' His assertion was based in religious terms of course, but nevertheless came some years before physical theories. Is he not an "authority"? Or is he not a canonical authority?
Homeopathy as Hahneman saw it at the end of the 18th century is now largely discredited. His principle was that conditions could be treated by ultra-dilute preparations. Compare this with the concept of vaccines, which were not discovered until long after his death, and you find a common philosophical thread whose exploration was well beyond what was available in the science of Hahneman's time.
Scientific discovery has many layers, and I find it amazing to go through my old volumes of "Scientific American" and visualize the thinking of the time. On February 16, 1901 it reported on experiments being undertaken by the Italian Army on the possible military applications of automobiles. On March 2 of the same year we see it reported that the French were very interested in the military applications of aviation. We too easily forget the importance of these early efforts in our attempt to have the newest and "best" of everything.
Ec
On 8/24/06, stevertigo vertigosteve@yahoo.com wrote:
"Yes"?? Thats citenazism! Its usefulness is dubious outside of scratching libel out of biographies. When did this happen? How would using this policy have affected Wikipedia's growth from its humble beginnings when Nupedia sucked down a quarter mil? How are "good writers" supposed to rephrase in an explanatory way what technocrats plop down as fact?
Can I remind you the thread topic is "idealism"? :) Put it this way: if there was an article where every statement of fact *was* cited, would that be a good thing or a bad thing? A good thing, right? That doesn't mean that every other article is a failure - we haven't discussed minimum standards yet.
No. I meant simply that people follow different modes of editing, one of which can be generally called "research."
Ok, this is a new way of thinking to me - you're distinguishing between those who do the research and add it, and the wordsmithers who just shuffle around material that's already there?
we would not want to be cited in an academic journal.
We dont?
We don't have any original ideas, and we don't claim that anything is truer than the citation linked to it. Why would you cite us?
Steve
On 8/24/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/24/06, stevertigo vertigosteve@yahoo.com wrote:
Ideally, Wikipedia should be developed to the point where
- it is the canonical reference resource on the web.
- a) such that articles reference other articles as sources for the current discussion, or
b) articles should only reference outside sources and never other articles.
If you're saying "Wikipedia articles should have a reference for every statement of fact, and none of those references should be Wikipedia", then yes, that goes without saying.
Concerning option 2b. I don't think articles should reference (as a source) other articles, I recently sourced a people with some disease list and noticed how far the list and the articles included in the list were different. Some had indead the disease sourced, some didn't mention the disease, some had sources removed etc etc.
Garion96
--- Garion96 garion96@gmail.com wrote:
Concerning option 2b. I don't think articles should reference (as a source) other articles...
I used to agree, but there is a problem with this idea though.
The reason "why wiki works" is due to its ease of creating [[link]]s and making [[new pages]]. <-- See? And because its centralised, its free (as in freedom), and guided by NPOV, (insert Jimbo deification here... PBUH...) (did I mention easy to edit?), Wikipedia has essentially converted all that energy that would have gone intomaking cheezy homepage subpages into a central resource.
Hence if we can expect some degree of quality from it, why cant we expect to link to it? Particularly when making elemental points on talk pages, but Im thinking in particular of article intros/ledes and recent squabbles Ive had with SlimJay about what general formula to take. We agreed (and then she changed their mind again), that all articles basically fall into the two categories of objects and concepts: Concepts are harder to write because they are abstract, rely on other concepts to define them in a relative way, and often need to be disabiguated from other concepts. Plus they are often controversial.
I like articles which have good ledes, and Ive developed a basic methodology for how good ledes look - which has been re-removed from WP:LEDE for some inane reason. In such articles the distinct feature, besides structure, is heavy linking to related concepts - and not external linking mind you. Why else do something if we dont believe in it? This isnt to say there arent imperfections of course, but lede links are more likely to get clicked and viewed and edited.
SV
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On 8/25/06, stevertigo vertigosteve@yahoo.com wrote:
--- Garion96 garion96@gmail.com wrote:
Concerning option 2b. I don't think articles should reference (as a
source)
other articles...
I used to agree, but there is a problem with this idea though.
The reason "why wiki works" is due to its ease of creating [[link]]s and making [[new pages]]. <-- See? And because its centralised, its free (as in freedom), and guided by NPOV, (insert Jimbo deification here... PBUH...) (did I mention easy to edit?), Wikipedia has essentially converted all that energy that would have gone intomaking cheezy homepage subpages into a central resource.
Hence if we can expect some degree of quality from it, why cant we expect to link to it?
Because not all of the 1.3 million pages are of the same quality. (yet).
Garion96
On 8/25/06, Garion96 garion96@gmail.com wrote:
Because not all of the 1.3 million pages are of the same quality. (yet).
Wikipedia: Some of our pages may be crap, but others are golden!
On 24/08/06, stevertigo vertigosteve@yahoo.com wrote:
policy. A canonical example of this was IAR, which was basically a loophole which basically claimed itself to be above even NPOV and CIVIL. Re-examining that policy led to its deprecation, and I believe other policies, in order to be taken seriously need to be put in a formal place within the policy heirarchy.
This is carefully, comprehensively wrong. IAR has been ratified as policy directly by Jimbo, as a shortcut when process is tying people up in red tape. It doesn't supersede NPOV or CIVIL. Its "deprecation" was an attempt at shouting it down by process fetishists.
To be taken seriously, a policy needs to (a) obviously help the actual task (b) not be a pain in the arse in practice.
- d.
--- David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
This is carefully, comprehensively wrong. IAR has been ratified as policy directly by Jimbo, as a shortcut when process is tying people up in red tape. It doesn't supersede NPOV or CIVIL. Its "deprecation" was an attempt at shouting it down by process fetishists.
* "Shortcut (policy)" #redirect [[Loophole]]
* "Fetishists (process), according to U:DG" #redirect [[Integrationalists]]
To be taken seriously, a policy needs to (a) obviously help the actual task
...Where the "task" is somewhat relativistic, given the context of Wiki inflationary expansion...
(b) not be a pain in the arse in practice.
Like an inCIVIL or POV application of CITE?
-SV
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