In a message dated 4/7/2008 12:03:29 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, snowspinner@gmail.com writes:
There are topics that we unquestionably should have articles about that one cannot write a general overview of without relying on that oral tradition. >>
--------------- Actually, imho, we should not. If by oral tradition you mean "the Sun is hot" doesn't need a source I would agree. If by oral tradition you mean "James Joyce was the best writer ever" doesn't need a source, I have to disagree.
Will Johnson
**************Planning your summer road trip? Check out AOL Travel Guides. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-guide/united-states?ncid=aoltrv00030000000016)
The effective temperature of the Sun's surface is 5770 K (Ostlie & Carroll page 77).
There's no reason the usual principle of "if somebody objects, provide a source" can't apply. Source obvious statements that are obvious to everyone should be easy. If it's not, maybe they're not so obvious and need to be sourced.
Cheers, WilyD
On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 12:33 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 4/7/2008 12:03:29 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
snowspinner@gmail.com writes:
There are topics that we unquestionably should have articles about that one cannot write a general overview of without relying on that oral tradition. >>
Actually, imho, we should not. If by oral tradition you mean "the Sun is hot" doesn't need a source I would agree. If by oral tradition you mean "James Joyce was the best writer ever" doesn't need a source, I have to disagree.
Will Johnson
**************Planning your summer road trip? Check out AOL Travel Guides. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-guide/united-states?ncid=aoltrv00030000000016)
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Does anyone think what has been done at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_mail_relay is a bit exsessive?
There are citation tags on almost every fact, it seems to be a case of [[WP:POINT]]yness. Any ideas?
~~~~ [[en:User:Firefoxman]] (FFM)
ffm schreef:
Does anyone think what has been done at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_mail_relay is a bit exsessive?
There are citation tags on almost every fact, it seems to be a case of [[WP:POINT]]yness. Any ideas?
Put "sup.Template-Fact {display:none}" in your Monobook.css, like I just did. It's faster than arguing with {{fact}} abusers.
Eugene
Eugene van der Pijll wrote:
ffm schreef:
Does anyone think what has been done at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_mail_relay is a bit exsessive?
There are citation tags on almost every fact, it seems to be a case of [[WP:POINT]]yness. Any ideas?
Put "sup.Template-Fact {display:none}" in your Monobook.css, like I just did. It's faster than arguing with {{fact}} abusers.
I've been going through and fixing some of the {{fact}}s. It's not particuallarly difficult, seeing as most of it can be found with a quick google search.
~~~~ Firefoxman
ffm schreef:
I've been going through and fixing some of the {{fact}}s. It's not particuallarly difficult, seeing as most of it can be found with a quick google search.
Did you find (and fix) any incorrect information?
The {{fact}} template is useless if it's only put on information that is correct and easily found with google.
Eugene
Eugene van der Pijll wrote:
ffm schreef:
I've been going through and fixing some of the {{fact}}s. It's not particuallarly difficult, seeing as most of it can be found with a quick google search.
Did you find (and fix) any incorrect information?
The {{fact}} template is useless if it's only put on information that is correct and easily found with google.
So far everything has been correct. Is it appropriate to remove fact templates that were placed by a person with an obvious pov?
-FFM
-FFM
On 4/7/08, ffm ffm@intserverror.com wrote:
Eugene van der Pijll wrote:
ffm schreef:
I've been going through and fixing some of the {{fact}}s. It's not particuallarly difficult, seeing as most of it can be found with a quick google search.
Did you find (and fix) any incorrect information?
The {{fact}} template is useless if it's only put on information that is correct and easily found with google.
So far everything has been correct. Is it appropriate to remove fact templates that were placed by a person with an obvious pov?
These tags and templates are horribly overused. I remove them whenever I can, but you might be reverted, and it's not worth getting into an edit war over. It's usually faster just to track down some sources.
Spamming an article is an effective way to edit war without getting in trouble.
Of course, spamming an article with references is an effective way to win an edit war, and make the article better in the process.
But sometimes I suspect it's just newbies who don't really getting the sourcing reasons/methods - or I'm an old-timer who's fallen behind the culture.
Cheers WilyD
On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 1:03 PM, ffm ffm@intserverror.com wrote:
Does anyone think what has been done at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_mail_relay is a bit exsessive?
There are citation tags on almost every fact, it seems to be a case of [[WP:POINT]]yness. Any ideas?
[[en:User:Firefoxman]] (FFM) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 07/04/2008, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
But sometimes I suspect it's just newbies who don't really getting the sourcing reasons/methods - or I'm an old-timer who's fallen behind the culture.
A lot of the problem is that people haven't been taught proper sourcing - Phil's ire is largely that beating this into the heads of college students is a large part of what he does at work every day. And it takes three or four years to get them sourcing fully but not ridiculously.
So our problem is how to give casual editors training wheels for sourcing, referencing and verifiability, without said training wheels being taken to reductio ad absurdum by the querulous. And you know that Wikipedia has only the finest querulousness known to mankind.
(This is a summary of what's happening right now on WT:V and WT:NOR.)
The training wheels approach - primitive referencing of every fact down to the (stereotypical) colour of the sky or shape of the earth - is a good *start*. But it can get a bit silly pretty quickly.
- d.
On Mon, 7 Apr 2008, Wily D wrote:
There's no reason the usual principle of "if somebody objects, provide a source" can't apply. Source obvious statements that are obvious to everyone should be easy. If it's not, maybe they're not so obvious and need to be sourced.
If you do that, people can intentionally "object" to things they don't really doubt just in order to make other people jump through hoops.
On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 5:59 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Mon, 7 Apr 2008, Wily D wrote:
There's no reason the usual principle of "if somebody objects, provide a source" can't apply. Source obvious statements that are obvious to everyone should be easy. If it's not, maybe they're not so obvious and need to be sourced.
If you do that, people can intentionally "object" to things they don't really doubt just in order to make other people jump through hoops.
The converse is, when we say "use your good judgement and own knowledge" we enter unsolvable conflicts. Excessive sourcing is the only way to resolve this - in an article like Evolution or Armenian Genocide, you simply source the fuck out of everything and tell those acting in bad faith to take a hike - as it stands, on Wikipedia, there's no other way to deal with this.
Attacking V/NOR et al. without replacing the absolutely critical functions it does perform would be suicidal.
Cheers WilyD
On 07/04/2008, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
The converse is, when we say "use your good judgement and own knowledge" we enter unsolvable conflicts. Excessive sourcing is the only way to resolve this - in an article like Evolution or Armenian Genocide, you simply source the fuck out of everything and tell those acting in bad faith to take a hike - as it stands, on Wikipedia, there's no other way to deal with this. Attacking V/NOR et al. without replacing the absolutely critical functions it does perform would be suicidal.
The trouble is that building a structure rigid enough to deal with bad faith or even just blithering stupidity is utterly unsuitable for use by clueful editors of good faith, and is actually actively damaging right now.
You are not going to solve malice or cluelessness with a set of rules. I think the failure of the current incarnations to do so demonstrates this, and I really doubt the solution is more of the same.
- d.
On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 6:37 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 07/04/2008, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
The converse is, when we say "use your good judgement and own knowledge" we enter unsolvable conflicts. Excessive sourcing is the only way to resolve this - in an article like Evolution or Armenian Genocide, you simply source the fuck out of everything and tell those acting in bad faith to take a hike - as it stands, on Wikipedia, there's no other way to deal with this. Attacking V/NOR et al. without replacing the absolutely critical functions it does perform would be suicidal.
The trouble is that building a structure rigid enough to deal with bad faith or even just blithering stupidity is utterly unsuitable for use by clueful editors of good faith, and is actually actively damaging right now.
You are not going to solve malice or cluelessness with a set of rules. I think the failure of the current incarnations to do so demonstrates this, and I really doubt the solution is more of the same.
- d.
No matter how much that's damaging right now, merely letting the malicious and clueless run about unchecked would not improve the situation. They're already problematically powerful, and this is about the only leverage that exists against them. Without a radical overhaul of the whole method of writing, no new leverages will be created. Everything is contraversial, and every article has cranks & the passionate trying to push junk into it. While it might've been possible to go without in 2004, and article writing culture today demands it or some huge substitute.
Until some other method exists to deal with POVpushers, bad-faith editors and cranks, these really are the pillars that support the whole structure.
WilyD
On 08/04/2008, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
Everything is contraversial, and every article has cranks & the passionate trying to push junk into it.
See, this is actually entirely false. Almost no articles on Wikipedia are actually that controversial. (Greg Maxwell and Kim Bruning ran the numbers on this in January 2006.)
As I said, this appears to be a damage limitation exercise on the extreme cases - and is problematic in that it's messing up things for the vast majority.
- d.
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 9:34 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 08/04/2008, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
Everything is contraversial, and every article has cranks & the passionate trying to push junk into it.
See, this is actually entirely false. Almost no articles on Wikipedia are actually that controversial. (Greg Maxwell and Kim Bruning ran the numbers on this in January 2006.)
As I said, this appears to be a damage limitation exercise on the extreme cases - and is problematic in that it's messing up things for the vast majority.
- d.
Not perpetually contraversial, but yeah, it crops up almost anywhere (I'd review such a study if you know where it's at).
But WP:V and WP:NOR put contraversies to rest. They take away any leverage, and make contraversial articles uncontraversial. There's exactly no other method in the encyclopaedia for dealing with bad faith editors who obey WP:CIVIL unless you have such overwhelming number advantage you can simply 3RR them. But if you're working on "Coriolis Force" with two-ish regular editors who hang around there, you're hosed without those two policies. Absolutely hosed.
WilyD
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 7:46 AM, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 9:34 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 08/04/2008, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
Everything is contraversial, and every article has cranks & the passionate trying to push junk into it.
See, this is actually entirely false. Almost no articles on Wikipedia are actually that controversial. (Greg Maxwell and Kim Bruning ran the numbers on this in January 2006.)
As I said, this appears to be a damage limitation exercise on the extreme cases - and is problematic in that it's messing up things for the vast majority.
- d.
Not perpetually contraversial, but yeah, it crops up almost anywhere (I'd review such a study if you know where it's at).
But WP:V and WP:NOR put contraversies to rest. They take away any leverage, and make contraversial articles uncontraversial. There's exactly no other method in the encyclopaedia for dealing with bad faith editors who obey WP:CIVIL unless you have such overwhelming number advantage you can simply 3RR them. But if you're working on "Coriolis Force" with two-ish regular editors who hang around there, you're hosed without those two policies. Absolutely hosed.
WilyD
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I would also add, that when there are "oral traditions", Wikipedia is not a first written publisher and is not intended to be. (See WP:NOT.) NOR indicates that we will -not- be the first place those "oral traditions" appear in print, and that's good, it's not our function to publish original thought. Once those thoughts have been previously published in other reliable sources, then (and only then) can we publish them here. We write from material that has been previously -published-, not just material that has been previously -stated-. That distinction is critical. "Oral traditions" are not verifiable until someone writes them down.
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 7:04 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 08/04/2008, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
Everything is contraversial, and every article has cranks & the passionate trying to push junk into it.
See, this is actually entirely false. Almost no articles on Wikipedia are actually that controversial. (Greg Maxwell and Kim Bruning ran the numbers on this in January 2006.)
As I said, this appears to be a damage limitation exercise on the extreme cases - and is problematic in that it's messing up things for the vast majority.
- d.
I'd like to see those numbers. Notwithstanding that possible result, I encourage you to imagine whether you're looking at the right indicator. "Almost no articles" might be that controversial, but is it also true that the "almost no" reader/editors are exposed to controversial articles? I doubt that. What's actually true is more trafficked articles are also likely to be more controversial. Hence the junk problem is biased downwards by looking at our entire set of articles, rather than our entire set of edits.
Second, I still haven't seen a decent example of it messing up things. On the contrary, the examples I tend to be shown sound a great deal more extreme than anything else.
RR
David Gerard wrote:
On 08/04/2008, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
Everything is contraversial, and every article has cranks & the passionate trying to push junk into it.
See, this is actually entirely false. Almost no articles on Wikipedia are actually that controversial. (Greg Maxwell and Kim Bruning ran the numbers on this in January 2006.)
As I said, this appears to be a damage limitation exercise on the extreme cases - and is problematic in that it's messing up things for the vast majority.
I don't see how it messes things up for the vast majority, though. In uncontroversial cases, meticulous sourcing is still quite useful, as it lets the reader trace back claims to their source. This is nice if you want to do follow-up research, or to cite the fact in some context where citing Wikipedia isn't sufficient.
Plus, many claims turn out to be more controversial than the original author might have thought---I can't count how many hundreds of articles on ancient people I've come across that present particular dates as fact, when the chronology for many is controversial. At least when a date presented as fact is footnoted with a source you can figure out who to attribute the estimate to.
-Mark
On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 12:33 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 4/7/2008 12:03:29 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, snowspinner@gmail.com writes:
There are topics that we unquestionably should have articles about that one cannot write a general overview of without relying on that oral tradition. >>
Actually, imho, we should not. If by oral tradition you mean "the Sun is hot" doesn't need a source I would agree. If by oral tradition you mean "James Joyce was the best writer ever" doesn't need a source, I have to disagree.
Will Johnson
I mean neither, in practice - or, more accurately, I think the oral tradition in question contains statements more obvious than "the Sun is hot," but does not include matters of opinion. It would, I think, include statements like "Joyce is one of the most significant authors of the 20th century," a statement that is, I think factually true and that is true on a level that goes beyond any given guy who says "Joyce is one of the most significant authors of the 20th century." It's a statement that has to do not with Joyce's aesthetic merits but with his importance and notability. There's probably, for this, plenty of people who have incidentally commented on Joyce's importance in an introduction, but this is a profoundly sloppy way to do it - yes, we can find people who incidentally note Joyce's importance, but for the most part the importance of Joyce to literary studies is not something that is thoroughly documented in written literature.
(I am, notably, not a Joyce scholar, and this may not be true of Joyce as such - perhaps there is an article on "How Joyce became significant" that traces this fact thoroughly. But you can replace Joyce with a hundred other authors, and I am sure not all of them have thorough overviews of their sociological importance to literary studies from good sources.)
And the amount of stuff that exists largely in the oral tradition of what is assumed within the humanities extends well beyond things like that. We are still an oral culture in many ways.
-Phil