On 3/28/07, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Or, put another way, what is it about Movable Type that somehow corrupts her words when her speaking the exact same text aloud at a transcribed lecture or in an interview would be OK?
-Phil
Why don't we just change BLP and RS immediately to not say blogs? It has been demonstrated here to be a red herring to actively--I'll say this... *discriminate* against what is becoming the most common publishing format on the entire internet.
Mass-replace "BLOG" with "unreliable source" or "unreliable website" if you want to be internet specific, and done.
The current policy inappropriately actively discriminates and is biased in its wording...
--- Denny Colt wikidenny@gmail.com wrote:
Why don't we just change BLP and RS immediately to not say blogs? It has been demonstrated here to be a red herring to actively--I'll say this... *discriminate* against what is becoming the most common publishing format on the entire internet.
Mass-replace "BLOG" with "unreliable source" or "unreliable website" if you want to be internet specific, and done.
The current policy inappropriately actively discriminates and is biased in its wording...
The thing is, what percentage of blogs are reliable sources? .1%? .01%? There are millions of blogs, and maybe 1 in 1000 or 10,000 are by notable people, the rest are by random college students and teenagers and various others who are writing for their friends and family members to read.
A general "Don't use blogs" with a footnote of "except the very rare occasion where you can" seems quite reasonable to me. We should be actively discriminating against blogs, at least against the 99.99 percent of them which are no different than a teenaged girl's diary.
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On 3/28/07, bobolozo bobolozo@yahoo.com wrote:
The thing is, what percentage of blogs are reliable sources? .1%? .01%? There are millions of blogs, and maybe 1 in 1000 or 10,000 are by notable people, the rest are by random college students and teenagers and various others who are writing for their friends and family members to read.
The real thing is, what percentage of *websites* are reliable sources? .1%? .01%? There are tens of millions of websites, and maybe 1 in 1,000 or 10,000 are by notable people, the rest are by random college students and teenagers and various others who are writing for their friends and family members to read.
On 3/28/07, Denny Colt wikidenny@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/28/07, bobolozo bobolozo@yahoo.com wrote:
The thing is, what percentage of blogs are reliable sources? .1%? .01%? There are millions of blogs, and maybe 1 in 1000 or 10,000 are by notable people, the rest are by random college students and teenagers and various others who are writing for their friends and family members to read.
The real thing is, what percentage of *websites* are reliable sources? .1%? .01%? There are tens of millions of websites, and maybe 1 in 1,000 or 10,000 are by notable people, the rest are by random college students and teenagers and various others who are writing for their friends and family members to read.
--
- Denny
Blogs are *by definition* public diaries, almost always maintained by individuals as expressions of their personal views. In contrast, websites in general are often maintained by news organizations, other publications, corporations, universities, non-profit organizations, etc. The number of general websites having some sort of editorial oversight is vastly higher than the number of blogs having some sort of editorial oversight.
Jay.
jayjg wrote:
Blogs are *by definition* public diaries, almost always maintained by individuals as expressions of their personal views. In contrast, websites in general are often maintained by news organizations, other publications, corporations, universities, non-profit organizations, etc. The number of general websites having some sort of editorial oversight is vastly higher than the number of blogs having some sort of editorial oversight.
Could you cite that?
The problem here IMO is that we're trying to prohibit sources that are unreliable self-published vanity twaddle and we're using the word "blog" as a shorthand to describe that sort of source. The result is a significant number of editors who take this literally and conclude that all blogs must therefore fit the bill, skipping the part where they critically evaluate the individual sources. It may well be a very tiny baby in a vast sea of bathwater but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be looking for ways to avoid throwing it out.
jayjg wrote:
In contrast, websites in general are often maintained by news organizations, other publications, corporations, universities, non-profit organizations, etc. The number of general websites having some sort of editorial oversight is vastly higher than the number of blogs having some sort of editorial oversight.
Editorial oversight strikes me as a red herring for 99% of the web. News organizations may be reliable sources for facts. Ditto for academics publishing in their spheres of expertise. And I say "may" because there are plenty of shaky news organizations and academics out there. But there, editorial oversight does usually improve things from our perspective.
But for everybody else, editorial oversight does not guarantee you factual accuracy. The purpose of editorial oversight there is more often to ensure textual quality and conformance with institutional POV. For many organizations, text isn't so much a means of honest communication as a means to an end. I'm sure whitehouse.gov has excellent editorial oversight, for example.
An expert's blog on the other hand, is unlikely to be greatly improved by editorial oversight. They already know their own opinions, and they're already able to say them. That doesn't mean that their opinions are fact, but that does mean we have no particular reason to doubt that their opinions are their opinions.
William
On 3/28/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
jayjg wrote:
In contrast, websites in general are often maintained by news organizations, other publications, corporations, universities, non-profit organizations, etc. The number of general websites having some sort of editorial oversight is vastly higher than the number of blogs having some sort of editorial oversight.
Editorial oversight strikes me as a red herring for 99% of the web. News organizations may be reliable sources for facts. Ditto for academics publishing in their spheres of expertise. And I say "may" because there are plenty of shaky news organizations and academics out there. But there, editorial oversight does usually improve things from our perspective.
But for everybody else, editorial oversight does not guarantee you factual accuracy. The purpose of editorial oversight there is more often to ensure textual quality and conformance with institutional POV. For many organizations, text isn't so much a means of honest communication as a means to an end. I'm sure whitehouse.gov has excellent editorial oversight, for example.
The point of editorial oversight is not just to ensure factual accuracy, but also to ensure that you are not sued for false or defamatory claims. The deeper the pockets of someone printing something potentially defamatory, the greater the likelihood they will be sued. That's why newspapers, corporations, etc., are careful about what they put on their websites. A blog owner is much less likely to be sued for defamation, particularly if they remove the contentious claims the second a lawyer's letter arrives in their mailbox. Keep in mind we're not dealing with the general case of an individual stating their opinion about the purported health benefits of echinacea in a blog, but the case of a blog being used to insert information about living persons into Wikipedia. If a blog owner says something damaging or defamatory, and we compound that by repeating it, the odds of everyone being sued over it go up significantly. Organizations with legal advisors (e.g. newspapers, corporations) do their best to avoid that in the first place.
Jay.
Jay.
On 3/28/07, jayjg jayjg99@gmail.com wrote:
The point of editorial oversight is not just to ensure factual accuracy, but also to ensure that you are not sued for false or defamatory claims. The deeper the pockets of someone printing something potentially defamatory, the greater the likelihood they will be sued. That's why newspapers, corporations, etc., are careful about what they put on their websites. A blog owner is much less likely to be sued for defamation, particularly if they remove the contentious claims the second a lawyer's letter arrives in their mailbox. Keep in mind we're not dealing with the general case of an individual stating their opinion about the purported health benefits of echinacea in a blog, but the case of a blog being used to insert information about living persons into Wikipedia.
This would still be pretty much covered by [[Barrett v. Rosenthal]] much as I dislike that ruling.
On 3/28/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/28/07, jayjg jayjg99@gmail.com wrote:
The point of editorial oversight is not just to ensure factual accuracy, but also to ensure that you are not sued for false or defamatory claims. The deeper the pockets of someone printing something potentially defamatory, the greater the likelihood they will be sued. That's why newspapers, corporations, etc., are careful about what they put on their websites. A blog owner is much less likely to be sued for defamation, particularly if they remove the contentious claims the second a lawyer's letter arrives in their mailbox. Keep in mind we're not dealing with the general case of an individual stating their opinion about the purported health benefits of echinacea in a blog, but the case of a blog being used to insert information about living persons into Wikipedia.
This would still be pretty much covered by [[Barrett v. Rosenthal]] much as I dislike that ruling.
Is that your considered legal opinion? Do you think decisions made by the California Supreme Court regarding a specific individual re-publishing a specific claim apply to Wikipedia, the Wikimedia foundation, and any Wikipedia editor who might insert defamatory material found in a blog into a Wikipedia biography? Did you read Justice Moreno's concurring opinion?
Jay.
On 3/28/07, jayjg jayjg99@gmail.com wrote:
Is that your considered legal opinion?
No I don't do considered legal opinions. Was your email based on your considered legal opinion?
Do you think decisions made by the California Supreme Court regarding a specific individual re-publishing a specific claim apply to Wikipedia, the Wikimedia foundation,
There are closer matching precedents for those cases. Wikipedia doesn't really have a legal existance seperate from the foundation so it is hard to say.
and any Wikipedia editor who might insert defamatory material found in a blog into a Wikipedia biography?
No to start with we have all those users who live outside the US.
Did you read Justice Moreno's concurring opinion?
Yes. Anyone getting themselves into the situation where that could have an effect really has only themselves to blame.
jayjg wrote:
If a blog owner says something damaging or defamatory, and we compound that by repeating it, the odds of everyone being sued over it go up significantly. Organizations with legal advisors (e.g. newspapers, corporations) do their best to avoid that in the first place.
Again, I'm not talking about some random Livejournal user. I'm talking about an expert whose opinion is relevant to the topic, even if it is negative. Newspapers certainly do not do their best to avoid publishing things like that just because of the risk of suit. Corporations might, but as I said, they aren't publishing to advance public understanding; their job is to increase shareholder value.
If you have evidence of publishers being successfully sued for good-faith quoting of expert opinion in ways that make it obvious that it is not fact but opinion, please let us know.
Thanks,
William
On Mar 28, 2007, at 11:57 AM, jayjg wrote:
Blogs are *by definition* public diaries, almost always maintained by individuals as expressions of their personal views. In contrast, websites in general are often maintained by news organizations, other publications, corporations, universities, non-profit organizations, etc. The number of general websites having some sort of editorial oversight is vastly higher than the number of blogs having some sort of editorial oversight.
Editorial oversight is not the holy grail or magic bullet, though.
An example. I work on a peer reviewed online journal, ImageTexT. We publish good stuff.
Let us now imagine two circumstances.
1) ImageTexT publishes an article by a graduate student repudiating a major book of comics scholarship. 2) The author of that major book posts on his blog repudiating his own book.
Which source is the better one for us to use?
#2. No question. No doubt. Because #2 is an unquestionable significant event.
The remote possibility of a change to the blog is, well, remote. And if the author of the blog decides to retract their words WE CHANGE THE ARTICLE. It's easy for us to do that. It's easy for us to have articles that are based on the most up-to-date information available.
Really, this is ridiculous. Yes, given the choice between a blog and a print newspaper source that give the exact same information, we should pick the latter. But the use of blogs as sources where authorship is verified and the author is an important figure in the field is straightforward. Anyone trying to raise controversy about this is serving only to drag us into a morass of nitpicking and white line distinctions that is fundamentally alien to the process of writing a good encyclopedia.
-Phil