<<In a message dated 1/6/2009 7:26:34 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, cbeckhorn@fastmail.fm writes:
That's exactly my point. There is no lack of academic analysis of politicians, of artists, etc. But we do not seem to use any of it.
For example, I can find numerous articles on George W. Bush on JStor. And once he is out of office there will be no lack of biogaphies written to analyze his presidency. >>
First to attack your second point, why does W have to be out of office to have a biography ? There are several books about Bush out, which analyze his presidency.
Secondly, are you actually willing to admit that you are complaining about something you're not willing to fix yourself? YOU my friend, if you can cite all these articles from Jstor, then do so!
I personally have no access to Jstor, and I assume that the vast majority of our editors probably don't either. But regardless of that, I'm sure people cite what they can access and think is relevant.
I do not (in any way) feel that "academics" have any toe-hold on "biography". In fact, professional writers, tend not to be in academia at all, and they write prose that is much more interesting (apparently from their book sales) then academics.
We are not an academic encyclopedia anymore than we are a science one, a religion one or a fancruft one. In trying to represent the world as it is, we must use what resources are present. In general, for biographies, newspapers and hard-cover biographies, are much more *present* and readable than anything in a humanities journal. We're not trying to be technical as we can be, we're also trying to attract more readership.
So again it's a balance. But by *ALL* means, if you have peer-reviewed biographical material, add it. However "peer review" is not necessarily the standard for all articles. TV Guide is not "peer reviewed" and yet we assume it's a reliable source for what's on TV
Will Johnson
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On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 4:35 AM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
<<In a message dated 1/6/2009 7:26:34 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, cbeckhorn@fastmail.fm writes:
That's exactly my point. There is no lack of academic analysis of politicians, of artists, etc. But we do not seem to use any of it.
For example, I can find numerous articles on George W. Bush on JStor. And once he is out of office there will be no lack of biogaphies written to analyze his presidency. >>
First to attack your second point, why does W have to be out of office to have a biography ? There are several books about Bush out, which analyze his presidency.
Mhm. His presidency hasn't even ended yet. So the only thing we could possibly find would be books on, say, the first term of his presidency or "the first term of his presidency + 2 years of his second presidency" and still, I would be rather reluctant to cite these... If you want to seriously review a thing such as a presidency, you will always want to have at least some distance to it, for various reasons (hint: most archive material from the Bush administration is not accessible at all yet).
I do not (in any way) feel that "academics" have any toe-hold on "biography". In fact, professional writers, tend not to be in academia at all, and they write prose that is much more interesting (apparently from their book sales) then academics.
Oh sure. Moreover, what the Sun writes is much more interesting (apparently from their newspaper sales) than what the Guardian or the Times write. So let's rely on the Sun for our future encyclopedic coverage.
We are not an academic encyclopedia anymore than we are a science one, a religion one or a fancruft one. In trying to represent the world as it is, we must use what resources are present. In general, for biographies, newspapers and hard-cover biographies, are much more *present* and readable than anything in a humanities journal. We're not trying to be technical as we can be, we're also trying to attract more readership.
We're trying to be as serious, neutral and fact-based as we can. We're not a tabloid, we don't want to attract more readership by having the most juiciest stories, irrespective of their accuracy respectively verifiability.
So again it's a balance. But by *ALL* means, if you have peer-reviewed biographical material, add it. However "peer review" is not necessarily the standard for all articles. TV Guide is not "peer reviewed" and yet we assume it's a reliable source for what's on TV
Yes. But we don't assume TV Guide's description of the movie "W" )or any documentary on the topic) to be a reliable source of analysis of Bush's presidency.
Michael
I don't spend a lot of time on on Wikipedia itself these days, but when did the project start censoring talk pages, or is [[User:Faithlessthewonderboy]] just going ahead and making up his own rules. This came up at [[Talk:Larissa Kelly]] about the /Jeopardy/ contestant. Her Wikipedia article was a topic of discussion during the chat portion of a recent program in a way that could be taken as criticism of deletionists. I disagree (but can understand) why some people don't want this mentioned in Mainspace, but suppressing this harmless discussion on the talk page beggars belief. This censor seems to have the idea that anything which "does not pertain to improving the article" should be removed from the article, and that merely being trivial is hurtful.
Talk pages are not article space, and these pages have traditionally served as a more relaxed place where there is wide latitude for discussion, and where otherwise nasty conflicts can be defused. While there are certain overtly nasty things can and should be removed from a talk page, these situations are really the rare exception. Most issues that can be considered trivial or off-topic in the widest sense of those terms tend to be talked out quickly, and to be subsequently ignored without harm. When we start suppressing valid criticism from the talk pages, we've dug ourselves a deeper hole than I had previously imagined.
Ec
On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 12:02 PM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I don't spend a lot of time on on Wikipedia itself these days,
Clearly not. Removing general discussion from talk pages is standard practice.
but when did the project start censoring talk pages, or is [[User:Faithlessthewonderboy]] just going ahead and making up his own rules. This came up at [[Talk:Larissa Kelly]] about the /Jeopardy/ contestant. Her Wikipedia article was a topic of discussion during the chat portion of a recent program in a way that could be taken as criticism of deletionists. I disagree (but can understand) why some people don't want this mentioned in Mainspace, but suppressing this harmless discussion on the talk page beggars belief. This censor seems to have the idea that anything which "does not pertain to improving the article" should be removed from the article, and that merely being trivial is hurtful.
Talk pages are not article space, and these pages have traditionally served as a more relaxed place where there is wide latitude for discussion, and where otherwise nasty conflicts can be defused. While there are certain overtly nasty things can and should be removed from a talk page, these situations are really the rare exception. Most issues that can be considered trivial or off-topic in the widest sense of those terms tend to be talked out quickly, and to be subsequently ignored without harm. When we start suppressing valid criticism from the talk pages, we've dug ourselves a deeper hole than I had previously imagined.
Ec
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Also, it seems to be rather bad form to not only name a specific user to accuse of bad practices, but to also title the thread with his name. Gives a much different idea of what the intended message is.
- GlassCobra
Alex Sawczynec wrote:
Also, it seems to be rather bad form to not only name a specific user to accuse of bad practices, but to also title the thread with his name. Gives a much different idea of what the intended message is.
Why shouldn't a person making such outrageous deletions be named? Are you denying that he made them?
Ec
On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 1:55 AM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Why shouldn't a person making such outrageous deletions be named? Are you denying that he made them?
Well there were others too. You could just as easily complain about RayAYang or Cocktotheface.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Larissa_Kelly&action=hist...
I think a greater concern is how the article was sent to AFD two minutes after being written.
—C.W.
Charlotte Webb wrote:
On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 1:55 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Why shouldn't a person making such outrageous deletions be named? Are you denying that he made them?
Well there were others too. You could just as easily complain about RayAYang or Cocktotheface.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Larissa_Kelly&action=hist...
That's a fair criticism.
I think a greater concern is how the article was sent to AFD two minutes after being written.
That too, but that classical kind of bad behaviour is old news. When they start deleting comments from talk pages on the basis of being trivial or irrelevant it takes things to a new level. This does not deny that some /ad nauseam /irrelevance needs to be curbed, but there needs to be some significant level of tolerance if the site is ever going to maintain any semblance of friendliness.
Ec