In a recent posting, Jimbo stated that anything that draws from primary sources is OR. The section is question was drawn in part from primary sources (San Diego courts case detail, a Superior court judgement). In reference to this, Jimbo said:
"I removed the section about the lawsuit as being (quite blatantly) original research of the sort that Wikipedia must avoid. This is actually an excellent example of what is wrong with original research in Wikipedia -- by drawing selectively on sources, the section gave an impression that is significantly at odds with the views of relevant parties to the dispute, so that WP:NPOV was badly violated."
The assertion that NPOV is violated because the "other side" was not given (the other side saying "this is false" on the article talkpage) may have some merit (I'm not convinced, but that isn't the issue here)
This is very different from what WP:ATT says about original research:
* introduces a theory, method of solution, or any other original idea; * defines or introduces new terms (neologisms), or provides new definitions of existing terms * introduces an argument without citing a reliable source who has made that argument in relation to the topic of the article; or * introduces an analysis, synthesis, explanation or interpretation of published facts, opinions, or arguments that advances a point that cannot be attributed to a reliable source who has published the material in relation to the topic of the article.
Jimbo is making the assertion that using primary source documents, like legal rulings, is ALSO original research, despite the fact that common practice is Wikipedia goes the opposite way. By extension, everything that cites original sources is OR, right?
Guettarda wrote:
In a recent posting, Jimbo stated that anything that draws from primary sources is OR. The section is question was drawn in part from primary sources (San Diego courts case detail, a Superior court judgement). In reference to this, Jimbo said:
...
Jimbo is making the assertion that using primary source documents, like legal rulings, is ALSO original research, despite the fact that common practice is Wikipedia goes the opposite way. By extension, everything that cites original sources is OR, right?
If we're hearing "draws" as "cites," then this is an epic change and not for the better. If "draws" is "I cite X, and claim it says Y," then it doesn't appear to be a change in anything. I can't cite a primary source and then make any determination on it (draw anything from it) - I can merely say what it says.
Some clarity might help.
-Jeff
On 3/20/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
Guettarda wrote:
In a recent posting, Jimbo stated that anything that draws from primary sources is OR. The section is question was drawn in part from primary sources (San Diego courts case detail, a Superior court judgement). In reference to this, Jimbo said:
...
Jimbo is making the assertion that using primary source documents, like legal rulings, is ALSO original research, despite the fact that common practice is Wikipedia goes the opposite way. By extension, everything that cites original sources is OR, right?
If we're hearing "draws" as "cites," then this is an epic change and not for the better. If "draws" is "I cite X, and claim it says Y," then it doesn't appear to be a change in anything. I can't cite a primary source and then make any determination on it (draw anything from it) - I can merely say what it says.
Some clarity might help.
-Jeff
Oops, sorry, forgot the links (too busy being pissed off for being called a POV-pusher that is holding Wikipedia hostage; second link)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Christopher_Michael_Langan&dif... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AChristopher_Michael_Langan&...
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Christopher_Michael_Langan&dif...
What the hell is going on here? Some of the sentences Jimbo removed: "In 2002 the owners of the Mega Society, a high IQ society, filed suit against Langan and his wife, Gina LoSasso, for unauthorized use of the society's trademarks and trade names.[29][30][31]"
This is original research?
"The Mega Foundation was established as a non-profit corporation established to "create and implement programs that aid in the development of severely gifted individuals and their ideas,"[32] declaring itself to be the official Mega Society. [33]"
The sources certainly back these statements up. For accuracy, I would probably add "According to their website in 1999" or something.
Why remove this stuff? I find this drive-by management style of Jimbo's so frustrating - how can this level of chaos, disruption and confusion be worth whatever is being gained? He arrives on an article, removes text in this "I am so right and you are so wrong" manner, then disappears again.
I'm all for benevolent dictatorship[1], but not like this. This just makes everyone unhappy and confused.
Steve [1] Which apparently is no longer the case.
Steve Bennett wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Christopher_Michael_Langan&dif...
What the hell is going on here? Some of the sentences Jimbo removed: "In 2002 the owners of the Mega Society, a high IQ society, filed suit against Langan and his wife, Gina LoSasso, for unauthorized use of the society's trademarks and trade names.[29][30][31]"
This is original research?
Yes. To my knowledge, this has never been written up in any newspaper, magazine, or book. It was discovered by reading websites that I think we would all agree are not themselves reliable sources and by referencing official court documents. The case, what happened in it, the outcome, are all matters of interpretation involving original research, and indeed the question of whether or not this is important enough to include (raising questions of undue weight) is in this case original research.
Why remove this stuff? I find this drive-by management style of Jimbo's so frustrating - how can this level of chaos, disruption and confusion be worth whatever is being gained? He arrives on an article, removes text in this "I am so right and you are so wrong" manner, then disappears again.
Disappears? I am right here, all day every day.
I made no policy declarations. I responded to an ACTIVE WP:BLP complaint by taking an action perfectly within policy and which required no special authority or dictatorship powers by anyone. Anyone could have made the same removal, for the same reason, and caution and a desire for upholding our traditional policies should lead everyone to be very cautious in this area.
--Jimbo
On Wed, 21 Mar 2007, Jimmy Wales wrote:
"In 2002 the owners of the Mega Society, a high IQ society, filed suit against Langan and his wife, Gina LoSasso, for unauthorized use of the society's trademarks and trade names.[29][30][31]"
This is original research?
Yes. To my knowledge, this has never been written up in any newspaper, magazine, or book. It was discovered by reading websites that I think we would all agree are not themselves reliable sources and by referencing official court documents. The case, what happened in it, the outcome, are all matters of interpretation involving original research
I do not agree that stating that A sued B, when you have a court document stating that A sued B, is a "matter of interpretation involving original research." In fact, I find this to be quite strange.
You can argue that it's a notability problem if the only source is the court document, but poor notability is not original research.
On 3/21/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Wed, 21 Mar 2007, Jimmy Wales wrote:
"In 2002 the owners of the Mega Society, a high IQ society, filed suit against Langan and his wife, Gina LoSasso, for unauthorized use of the society's trademarks and trade names.[29][30][31]"
This is original research?
Yes. To my knowledge, this has never been written up in any newspaper, magazine, or book. It was discovered by reading websites that I think we would all agree are not themselves reliable sources and by referencing official court documents. The case, what happened in it, the outcome, are all matters of interpretation involving original research
I do not agree that stating that A sued B, when you have a court document stating that A sued B, is a "matter of interpretation involving original research." In fact, I find this to be quite strange.
You can argue that it's a notability problem if the only source is the court document, but poor notability is not original research.
Poor notability is a form of original research. The core of the OR concept is a Wikipedian writing up his own ideas; or putting two and two together based on primary sources he's gathered together himself; or seeking to highlight incidents that no secondary source has thought to highlight. The point is: when in doubt, find a good secondary source.
Sarah
On 21/03/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Wed, 21 Mar 2007, Jimmy Wales wrote:
"In 2002 the owners of the Mega Society, a high IQ society, filed suit against Langan and his wife, Gina LoSasso, for unauthorized use of the society's trademarks and trade names.[29][30][31]"
This is original research?
Yes. To my knowledge, this has never been written up in any newspaper, magazine, or book. It was discovered by reading websites that I think we would all agree are not themselves reliable sources and by referencing official court documents. The case, what happened in it, the outcome, are all matters of interpretation involving original research
I do not agree that stating that A sued B, when you have a court document stating that A sued B, is a "matter of interpretation involving original research." In fact, I find this to be quite strange.
You can argue that it's a notability problem if the only source is the court document, but poor notability is not original research.
It is, in a way; it implies the conclusion that the obscure material we discuss and cite is significant, and when no secondary source touches on this point, there may well be good reasons for that.
It's the problem with so many of our articles - someone comes along and adds a "controversy" section on the one thing they care about, and cites it and tidies it, and in the end you have a stub saying "MegaCorp is a global multinational financial services industry with a twelve billion dollar turnover. [Three pages on How Their Director Had A Sexual Harrassment Lawsuit Filed]" All accurate and all, but giving a very wrong impression when viewed holistically.
On Wed, 21 Mar 2007 09:05:16 -0700 (PDT), Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
I do not agree that stating that A sued B, when you have a court document stating that A sued B, is a "matter of interpretation involving original research." In fact, I find this to be quite strange.
Probably because you are thinking about it the "wrong" way. Wrong in the context of a project which is explicitly conceived as a tertiary source verifiable from reliable secondary sources, that is. How hard will it be to find a newspaper report and cite that? If you can't, then it probably *is* trivial.
Further down we have a discussion of a subject for which *no* secondary sources yet exist, and which is compiled explicitly and with due acknowledgement from primary sources alone. I find that a problem as well. How do we know what the reaction of the relevant academic community is if they have not yet published a single review paper?
Guy (JzG)
On Wed, 21 Mar 2007, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
I do not agree that stating that A sued B, when you have a court document stating that A sued B, is a "matter of interpretation involving original research." In fact, I find this to be quite strange.
Probably because you are thinking about it the "wrong" way. Wrong in the context of a project which is explicitly conceived as a tertiary source verifiable from reliable secondary sources, that is. How hard will it be to find a newspaper report and cite that? If you can't, then it probably *is* trivial.
Fine, it's trivial. Trivial isn't the same thing as original research.
If the source makes a statement, repeating the same claim made in the statement is *not* a matter of interpretation. Stretching the definition of original research and "interpretation" to claim that repeating something verbatim or near verbatim is "interpretation" makes about as much sense as saying that growing wheat for your own use is interstate commerce. You end up with a policy that has no relation to what the words actually mean, and which can be used to cover anything and everything without limit.
On 3/22/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Wed, 21 Mar 2007, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
I do not agree that stating that A sued B, when you have a court
document
stating that A sued B, is a "matter of interpretation involving
original
research." In fact, I find this to be quite strange.
Probably because you are thinking about it the "wrong" way. Wrong in the context of a project which is explicitly conceived as a tertiary source verifiable from reliable secondary sources, that is. How hard will it be to find a newspaper report and cite that? If you can't, then it probably *is* trivial.
Fine, it's trivial. Trivial isn't the same thing as original research.
If the source makes a statement, repeating the same claim made in the statement is *not* a matter of interpretation. Stretching the definition of original research and "interpretation" to claim that repeating something verbatim or near verbatim is "interpretation" makes about as much sense as saying that growing wheat for your own use is interstate commerce. You end up with a policy that has no relation to what the words actually mean, and which can be used to cover anything and everything without limit.
Basically, as I understand it, the reason we ought not to have included the lawsuit is not because it's a novel interpretation of the facts, but because the facts have not been published by a secondary source. In theory, we could have articles about every lawsuit ever filed, but I think many people, even inclusionists, would balk at that - and for good reason. Like it or not, "notability" still plays a role (albeit a rather undefined one) in how we think about the encyclopaedia. And although we may not say it outright, it seems the present established status quo is that we establish sufficient notability by the existence of secondary sources. If it hasn't been covered by a secondary source, it probably isn't worth writing about. Encyclopaedias are tertiary sources.
Johnleemk
On Thu, 22 Mar 2007, John Lee wrote:
Stretching the definition of original research and "interpretation" to claim that repeating something verbatim or near verbatim is "interpretation" makes about as much sense as saying that growing wheat for your own use is interstate commerce. You end up with a policy that has no relation to what the words actually mean, and which can be used to cover anything and everything without limit.
Basically, as I understand it, the reason we ought not to have included the lawsuit is not because it's a novel interpretation of the facts, but because the facts have not been published by a secondary source. In theory, we could have articles about every lawsuit ever filed, but I think many people, even inclusionists, would balk at that - and for good reason. Like it or not, "notability" still plays a role (albeit a rather undefined one) in how we think about the encyclopaedia. And although we may not say it outright, it seems the present established status quo is that we establish sufficient notability by the existence of secondary sources.
Basically, as I understand it, 1) you're correct. Information from a court document that hasn't been published in a secondary source isn't notable. 2) Jimbo didn't say it wasn't notable, instead, he stretched original research to claim that even mentioning that A sued B is an "interpretation".
On 3/22/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/22/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Wed, 21 Mar 2007, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
I do not agree that stating that A sued B, when you have a court
document
stating that A sued B, is a "matter of interpretation involving
original
research." In fact, I find this to be quite strange.
Probably because you are thinking about it the "wrong" way. Wrong in the context of a project which is explicitly conceived as a tertiary source verifiable from reliable secondary sources, that is. How hard will it be to find a newspaper report and cite that? If you can't, then it probably *is* trivial.
Fine, it's trivial. Trivial isn't the same thing as original research.
If the source makes a statement, repeating the same claim made in the statement is *not* a matter of interpretation. Stretching the
definition
of original research and "interpretation" to claim that repeating something verbatim or near verbatim is "interpretation" makes about as much sense
as
saying that growing wheat for your own use is interstate commerce. You end up with a policy that has no relation to what the words actually mean,
and
which can be used to cover anything and everything without limit.
Basically, as I understand it, the reason we ought not to have included the lawsuit is not because it's a novel interpretation of the facts, but because the facts have not been published by a secondary source. In theory, we could have articles about every lawsuit ever filed, but I think many people, even inclusionists, would balk at that - and for good reason. Like it or not, "notability" still plays a role (albeit a rather undefined one) in how we think about the encyclopaedia. And although we may not say it outright, it seems the present established status quo is that we establish sufficient notability by the existence of secondary sources. If it hasn't been covered by a secondary source, it probably isn't worth writing about. Encyclopaedias are tertiary sources.
The point isn't writing an article about a lawsuit, it's a matter of including an explanation for the distinction between the Mega Society, the Mega Society East and the Mega Foundation, especially since the article has ample links to the Mega Foundation website. Since the subject of the article was once actively involved with the Mega Society, and after splitting with them founded the Mega Society East, it all gets very misleading. Since the subject of the article was successfully sued over the Mega Society East name, but it continues to show up in various bios (e.g., http://www.iscid.org/christopherlangan.php ), it's in Wikipedia's interest to make the distinction clear. We don't include disclaimers, and shouldn't - but we should make sure that we are not misleading people. Until the section about the law suit was introduced, I couldn't figure out the difference between the groups (both the [[Mega Society]] and the [[Mega Foundation]] had Wikipedia articles at some point in the not too distant past).
John Lee wrote:
Basically, as I understand it, the reason we ought not to have included the lawsuit is not because it's a novel interpretation of the facts, but because the facts have not been published by a secondary source. In theory, we could have articles about every lawsuit ever filed, but I think many people, even inclusionists, would balk at that - and for good reason.
Really? We could put the text of all these lawsuits in Wikisource. At least in North America they are all in the public domain.
Like it or not, "notability" still plays a role (albeit a rather undefined one) in how we think about the encyclopaedia. And although we may not say it outright, it seems the present established status quo is that we establish sufficient notability by the existence of secondary sources. If it hasn't been covered by a secondary source, it probably isn't worth writing about. Encyclopaedias are tertiary sources.
We would do better to separate issues of notability from tose of sourcing. Inclusion in a secondary source can imply notability, but it does not mean that absence from secondary sources implies lack of notability.
Ec
On 3/21/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
What the hell is going on here? Some of the sentences Jimbo removed: "In 2002 the owners of the Mega Society, a high IQ society, filed suit against Langan and his wife, Gina LoSasso, for unauthorized use of the society's trademarks and trade names.[29][30][31]"
This is original research?
Yes. To my knowledge, this has never been written up in any newspaper, magazine, or book. It was discovered by reading websites that I think we would all agree are not themselves reliable sources and by referencing official court documents. The case, what happened in it, the outcome, are all matters of interpretation involving original research, and indeed the question of whether or not this is important enough to include (raising questions of undue weight) is in this case original research.
I objected to the removal of two pieces of information: 1) About the history of the organisation, as claimed by the organisation itself. You don't offer any explanation for removing this. 2) The fact of the lawsuit taking place. I can see how the outcome could be subject to interpretation, but what's to interpret about "Party A sued Party B?"
Now, obviously this whole matter arose out of some kind of complaint, so we're working backwards. Had we not known that there would be a complaint, would we really have removed these statements? It's easy to come along afterwards and say "that's OR! we must remove it!" But if we went through Wikipedia removing every statement of that kind, there wouldn't be all that much.
This is my objection to what I called Jimbo's "drive by" style: someone calls his attention to a problem, and he says "this should never have been allowed". But the rest of us don't have this power of hindsight: we have to make decisions in advance of any complaint directed against the Foundation. And the policies, including WP:OR, just aren't that helpful. So the vast majority of the time we err on the side of informativeness: it's informative to say "X was a splinter group that broke off from Y, then Y's founder sued X's founder."[1]
[1] I've probably got this all wrong. Pity it's not written up somewhere in a freely available encyclopaedia.
I made no policy declarations. I responded to an ACTIVE WP:BLP
complaint by taking an action perfectly within policy
Policy that only serves to hit us over the head rather than guide us is not good policy. WP:OR is great for explaining what we did wrong. But it doesn't help us write a good encyclopaedia.
Steve
On 3/20/07, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
In a recent posting, Jimbo stated that anything that draws from primary sources is OR. The section is question was drawn in part from primary sources (San Diego courts case detail, a Superior court judgement).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons suggests that whether or not primary sources can be used depends on how public the figure is. For non-public figures, it says "material from primary sources should generally not be used," whereas for public figures it says "material from primary sources should be used with care" though that is under the heading "Presumption in favor of privacy".
Angela
On 3/20/07, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/20/07, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
In a recent posting, Jimbo stated that anything that draws from primary sources is OR. The section is question was drawn in part from primary sources (San Diego courts case detail, a Superior court judgement).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons suggests that whether or not primary sources can be used depends on how public the figure is. For non-public figures, it says "material from primary sources should generally not be used," whereas for public figures it says "material from primary sources should be used with care" though that is under the heading "Presumption in favor of privacy".
Angela
True. But if the issue is BLP, say that it's BLP. If the issue is NPOV, say that it's NPOV. But if you do so, then don't say "this is OR, and can only be reintroduced if seconday sources are found".
Without clarifying the distinction between Mega Foundation, Mega Society and Mega Society East, the article can be misleading (has been in the past), especially given things like this http://www.iscid.org/christopherlangan.php
On 3/20/07, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/20/07, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/20/07, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
In a recent posting, Jimbo stated that anything that draws from primary sources is OR. The section is question was drawn in part from primary sources (San Diego courts case detail, a Superior court judgement).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons suggests that whether or not primary sources can be used depends on how public the figure is.
True. But if the issue is BLP, say that it's BLP. If the issue is NPOV, say that it's NPOV. But if you do so, then don't say "this is OR, and can only be reintroduced if seconday sources are found".
I don't know the particulars of this case, but in case it helps -- in general the issue is that we need a secondary source so we know that the issue is important enough to write about in the first place. If the only people writing about something, apart from the primary sources, are Wikipedians, there's a danger that undue weight will be given to the issue, which is where the NPOV policy kicks in.
WP:ATT says that primary sources should only be used to make entirely descriptive claims. Any contentious issue, or anything that requires interpretation, shouldn't be based entirely on primary sources.
Sarah
Angela wrote:
On 3/20/07, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
In a recent posting, Jimbo stated that anything that draws from primary sources is OR. The section is question was drawn in part from primary sources (San Diego courts case detail, a Superior court judgement).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons suggests that whether or not primary sources can be used depends on how public the figure is. For non-public figures, it says "material from primary sources should generally not be used," whereas for public figures it says "material from primary sources should be used with care" though that is under the heading "Presumption in favor of privacy".
Court judgements (and, for that matter, court filings by the disputants, and even trial transcripts) are a matter of public record. This is an important component to maintaining the transparency of the judicial system. Privacy should not be a factor with this kind of material.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Court judgements (and, for that matter, court filings by the disputants, and even trial transcripts) are a matter of public record. This is an important component to maintaining the transparency of the judicial system. Privacy should not be a factor with this kind of material.
I think the point about privacy is that (as far as I know) there is a general consensus that someone sysematically going through court records to write articles about people who were convicted of drunk driving, or who were involved in a lawsuit, is a bad idea. We need to have some kind of independent verification (i.e. WP:NOR) that the incident or lawsuit is notable and worthy of inclusion in an article, and that in the case of people of very minor notability, there is no very good reason to include it.
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Court judgements (and, for that matter, court filings by the disputants, and even trial transcripts) are a matter of public record. This is an important component to maintaining the transparency of the judicial system. Privacy should not be a factor with this kind of material.
I think the point about privacy is that (as far as I know) there is a general consensus that someone sysematically going through court records to write articles about people who were convicted of drunk driving, or who were involved in a lawsuit, is a bad idea.
The lawsuit here is not a matter of having been so unfortunate as to be caught driving drunk pure and simple. The issues relate to how Langan presents himself to the world in relation to those issues and organizations which make him encyclopedic and/or notable. The references to the judgements may very well havew come from his opponents in the case, but that is not the same as systematically sifting through court records to find dirt on the guy
We need to have some kind of independent verification (i.e. WP:NOR) that the incident or lawsuit is notable and worthy of inclusion in an article, and that in the case of people of very minor notability, there is no very good reason to include it.
I've taken time to think about this before answering, and I keep arriving at the conclusion that it is not correct to suppress this information. I had never heard of Langan before this came up. Going through the long talk page attached to his article I get the impression that this guy is a streetfighter who is ready to do whatever it takes to win his point.
Thus far the discussion of this matter seems to have dragged in every major policy imaginable. I've already referred to privacy Court decisions are public documents. Even if they are not published they are at least available in court registries for those who may be interested or who want to make copies.
Whwther the decision is important enough to mention is a different issue. I would not want to mix that in with notability policy. Notability policy has a very high degree of subjectivity, and traditionally relates to whether we should have an article at all. Expanding such a policy to the point where it is an argument for including varous bits of data within an article gives that already overworked policy too much work.
It has also been mentioned that we should consider the policies on Biographies of Living Persons. This policy is rightly there so that we can better avoid untruths about living person. Incidentally to that we also avoid lawsuits for libel. Langan needs to know that citing a judge's decison is not libellous unless the citation grossly distorts the decision. The point here is that the fact of a legal decision, and what it says is verifiable.
NPOV has not apparently been violated. If there are errors of interpretation they can be fixed in the spirit of NPOV. A judge's decision is by it's very nature NPOV; it's a judges's job to distill the arguments of the parties to come up with a fair judgement. We can examine a judge's decision in the hopes of derving an even more neutral result, but in the absence of provable bias the onus is on those raising questions to point out errors. Langan appears to object to the fact that the default judgement was granted ex parte. The natural presumption in a default judgement is that the defendant does not really care to defend himself, and that he has no case. He generally has ample opportunity to respond, and in this regard it differs significantly from other ex parte actions.
Finally, is the information about the court case original research? I think that this concept has migrated significantly from its original intent of keeping crackpot theories manageable. When we run around in circles trying to determiine whether a source is primary or secondary I really don't think we accomplish anything. Saying that we cannot accept information contained in a priimary source until it has been properly distorted by a secondary source does not strike me as a fair path to an accurate article. A secondary source must still properly reflect its own sources, and a dilligent researcher will make certain of that.
I think that some mention of the legal actions is properly included in the article, though I hesitate to say how much.
Ec
On Fri, 23 Mar 2007 20:48:24 -0800, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
The lawsuit here is not a matter of having been so unfortunate as to be caught driving drunk pure and simple. The issues relate to how Langan presents himself to the world in relation to those issues and organizations which make him encyclopedic and/or notable. The references to the judgements may very well havew come from his opponents in the case, but that is not the same as systematically sifting through court records to find dirt on the guy
Here is the problem: Langan and his wife have edited Wikipedia disruptively and have been sanctioned for it by ArbCom, they are also experienced in forum shopping. The Mega Society people have also edited Wikipedia disruptively, and have expended considerable energy in trying to promote their society. They have also used Wikipedia to pursue their vendetta against Langan - and probably vice-versa, though I have not seen that myself.
That means that every addition and every removal brings at least the suspicion of outside influence by POV-pushers. I am very much with the "plague on both their houses" camp on this one.
The lawsuit appears important only to the two parties, nobody else. And the presentation here has all the hallmarks of being the work of the Mega Society guys, so it's very easy to see why it would be removed.
However... it was not added by them, it was added by FeloniousMonk. Felonious is one of the good guys and I generally agree with him. I think he may have a slight tendency to resist removal of sourced controversy (and this *was* sourced, as we all know) because he does not like Wikipedia being used as a publisher of hagiography. There was an arbitration case relating to WebEx and Min Zhu where we crossed swords over this, but in the end his behaviour was so reasonable that I can't bring myself to criticise him for it :-)
Ultimately, I think we should wait until we have some external sources *for the importance of the case*. As it stands, it looks to me as if only Langan, the Mega Society pushers and a few Wikipedia editors actually give a damn about it. And that says "undue weight" to me.
Guy (JzG)
On Sat, 24 Mar 2007, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
Ultimately, I think we should wait until we have some external sources *for the importance of the case*. As it stands, it looks to me as if only Langan, the Mega Society pushers and a few Wikipedia editors actually give a damn about it. And that says "undue weight" to me.
Sure, it's undue weight.
Undue weight isn't original research, just like poor notability isn't original research. Call it what it is.
This actually matters. Once we start stretching the definition of original research to include things that aren't, that stretched definition is going to stay around, be used in precedents, etc. It's a very bad idea to misclassify the reason for deleting something, even if it really does deserve deletion.
Ken Arromdee wrote:
On Sat, 24 Mar 2007, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
Ultimately, I think we should wait until we have some external sources *for the importance of the case*. As it stands, it looks to me as if only Langan, the Mega Society pushers and a few Wikipedia editors actually give a damn about it. And that says "undue weight" to me.
Sure, it's undue weight.
Undue weight isn't original research, just like poor notability isn't original research. Call it what it is.
This actually matters. Once we start stretching the definition of original research to include things that aren't, that stretched definition is going to stay around, be used in precedents, etc. It's a very bad idea to misclassify the reason for deleting something, even if it really does deserve deletion.
That's a very important point. Too often other criteria are dragged in to strenghthen somebody's case, or because the original complaint wasn't working. If the famous autofellatio picture was a copyvio that should have been the first argument without getting into arguments about the morality of the picture. Deletion criteria should be priorized, and the ones further down the list should not even be considered when a higher ranking one will succeed. Highly subjective criteria should be well down on the list.
Ec
On Sat, 24 Mar 2007 10:48:58 -0700 (PDT), Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
Ultimately, I think we should wait until we have some external sources *for the importance of the case*. As it stands, it looks to me as if only Langan, the Mega Society pushers and a few Wikipedia editors actually give a damn about it. And that says "undue weight" to me.
Sure, it's undue weight. Undue weight isn't original research, just like poor notability isn't original research. Call it what it is.
Except that it *is* original research, because it's documented only in primary sources.
Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Sat, 24 Mar 2007 10:48:58 -0700 (PDT), Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
Ultimately, I think we should wait until we have some external sources *for the importance of the case*. As it stands, it looks to me as if only Langan, the Mega Society pushers and a few Wikipedia editors actually give a damn about it. And that says "undue weight" to me.
Sure, it's undue weight. Undue weight isn't original research, just like poor notability isn't original research. Call it what it is.
Except that it *is* original research, because it's documented only in primary sources.
So when did the concept of original research migrate from being about work done by Wikipedians to using published original research done by others?
Ec
On Sat, 24 Mar 2007 17:47:33 -0800, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
So when did the concept of original research migrate from being about work done by Wikipedians to using published original research done by others?
About the time they wrote "Wikipedia is not a publisher of first instance" and the bits about it being a tertiary source, compiled from reliable secondary sources. Before my time, anyway.
Guy (JzG)
On Sat, 24 Mar 2007, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
Ultimately, I think we should wait until we have some external sources *for the importance of the case*. As it stands, it looks to me as if only Langan, the Mega Society pushers and a few Wikipedia editors actually give a damn about it. And that says "undue weight" to me.
Sure, it's undue weight. Undue weight isn't original research, just like poor notability isn't original research. Call it what it is.
Except that it *is* original research, because it's documented only in primary sources.
Being documented only in a primary source is not original research. The NOR policy says that they can be used when anyone without specialist knowledge who reads the primary source can verify that the Wikipedia article matches the source. Clearly, anyone who reads the court document can tell that a case has been filed; a statement that the case has been filed isn't OR.
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
The lawsuit here is not a matter of having been so unfortunate as to be caught driving drunk pure and simple. The issues relate to how Langan presents himself to the world in relation to those issues and organizations which make him encyclopedic and/or notable. The references to the judgements may very well havew come from his opponents in the case, but that is not the same as systematically sifting through court records to find dirt on the guy
Here is the problem: Langan and his wife have edited Wikipedia disruptively and have been sanctioned for it by ArbCom, they are also experienced in forum shopping. The Mega Society people have also edited Wikipedia disruptively, and have expended considerable energy in trying to promote their society. They have also used Wikipedia to pursue their vendetta against Langan - and probably vice-versa, though I have not seen that myself.
That means that every addition and every removal brings at least the suspicion of outside influence by POV-pushers. I am very much with the "plague on both their houses" camp on this one.
The lawsuit appears important only to the two parties, nobody else. And the presentation here has all the hallmarks of being the work of the Mega Society guys, so it's very easy to see why it would be removed.
However... it was not added by them, it was added by FeloniousMonk. Felonious is one of the good guys and I generally agree with him. I think he may have a slight tendency to resist removal of sourced controversy (and this *was* sourced, as we all know) because he does not like Wikipedia being used as a publisher of hagiography. There was an arbitration case relating to WebEx and Min Zhu where we crossed swords over this, but in the end his behaviour was so reasonable that I can't bring myself to criticise him for it :-)
Ultimately, I think we should wait until we have some external sources *for the importance of the case*. As it stands, it looks to me as if only Langan, the Mega Society pushers and a few Wikipedia editors actually give a damn about it. And that says "undue weight" to me.
Thank you for the perspective on this. It would seem then that when Jimbo gets an earful from one side of such a dispute, he is easily pushed into an unintentional POV position. His drive-by editing ends up tipping the argument in favour of one side rather then letting the discussion take its natural course. In situations like this one he would do better to privately seek out the advice of key trusted users before taking unilateral action.
The other problem here is that there is no article on Mega Society while there do appear to be articles on a significant number of other high-IQ societies as well as the article on Langan. Viewed together this tends to weigh the curent POV heavily in favour of Langan. It would also seem that the lawsuits would be more notable in a Mega Society article since it is about the use of their own name.
I probably would never have known about this dispute if it had not come to this mailing list because of Jimbo's action. At this stage Langan's disruption is more evident to me than Mega Society's, but I believe you when you say they have both done their share.
It is reasonable to call down a plague on both houses. These disputes and bickering on the far right tail of the IQ bell curve lend credence to the premise that the two tails of that curve eventually converge. :-)
Ec
On Sat, 24 Mar 2007 14:26:31 -0800, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
The other problem here is that there is no article on Mega Society while there do appear to be articles on a significant number of other high-IQ societies as well as the article on Langan. Viewed together this tends to weigh the curent POV heavily in favour of Langan. It would also seem that the lawsuits would be more notable in a Mega Society article since it is about the use of their own name.
Mega society is tiny, of no objectively provable importance and has (or at least had last time it was reviewed) no reliable independent non-trivial sources, which is why it was deleted and has stayed that way despite several attempts by its press officer to re-create it.
Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
The other problem here is that there is no article on Mega Society while there do appear to be articles on a significant number of other high-IQ societies as well as the article on Langan. Viewed together this tends to weigh the curent POV heavily in favour of Langan. It would also seem that the lawsuits would be more notable in a Mega Society article since it is about the use of their own name.
Mega society is tiny, of no objectively provable importance and has (or at least had last time it was reviewed) no reliable independent non-trivial sources, which is why it was deleted and has stayed that way despite several attempts by its press officer to re-create it.
But then how many of the other High-IQ societies for which we keep articles are any more notable?
Ec
On Sat, 24 Mar 2007 17:43:40 -0800, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Mega society is tiny, of no objectively provable importance and has (or at least had last time it was reviewed) no reliable independent non-trivial sources, which is why it was deleted and has stayed that way despite several attempts by its press officer to re-create it.
But then how many of the other High-IQ societies for which we keep articles are any more notable?
That would be [[WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS]].
Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
That means that every addition and every removal brings at least the suspicion of outside influence by POV-pushers. I am very much with the "plague on both their houses" camp on this one.
Indeed.
The lawsuit appears important only to the two parties, nobody else.
Indeed.
--Jimbo
Ray Saintonge wrote:
The lawsuit here is not a matter of having been so unfortunate as to be caught driving drunk pure and simple. The issues relate to how Langan presents himself to the world in relation to those issues and organizations which make him encyclopedic and/or notable. The references to the judgements may very well havew come from his opponents in the case, but that is not the same as systematically sifting through court records to find dirt on the guy
This is exactly what makes it original research. You have looked at his life story, and looked at this lawsuit, and drawn the original conclusion (perhaps plausible, perhaps even correct!) that the case reflects negatively on him, showing perhaps something bad about how he presents himself to the world, etc.
That might mean that the lawsuit would make a fine basis for original research, to be published as investigative journalism in a newspaper, magazine, or book.
But it certainly means that it is original research: a novel conclusion being drawn from primary sources.
I've taken time to think about this before answering, and I keep arriving at the conclusion that it is not correct to suppress this information.
Wikipedia is in no position to "suppress" information. It is in the public record. Should someone who is working at an institution which is properly tasked with doing original research want to do so, they are welcome to do so at any time, and we do not stand in their way.
But the fact still remains that this sort of thing is unquestionably original research of _precisely_ the kind that we need to avoid for the obvious reasons having to do with what makes an encyclopedia an encyclopedia, what kind of resources we have to vet such things, and what kind of door we open to crackpots, cranks, and POV pushers, if we came to the conclusion that original research is allowed in Wikipedia, in case we don't like the person involved. (!)
I had never heard of Langan before this came up. Going through the long talk page attached to his article I get the impression that this guy is a streetfighter who is ready to do whatever it takes to win his point.
Your not liking him is not a good reason for us to throw out one of our fundamental policies so that people with an axe to grind can dig up negative information about him.
--Jimbo
On Sun, 25 Mar 2007, Jimmy Wales wrote:
This is exactly what makes it original research. You have looked at his life story, and looked at this lawsuit, and drawn the original conclusion (perhaps plausible, perhaps even correct!) that the case reflects negatively on him, showing perhaps something bad about how he presents himself to the world, etc.
But he's not trying to insert that original conclusion in the article. He's using it to make decisions *about* the article.
Decisions *about what to include in an article* can't *possibly* be original research. Otherwise, you could never say "I did a Google search and found a million hits; maybe it's notable" or "there are hundreds of journal articles on it published, maybe it's notable". We couldn't even say "we can't use that, it's an unreliable source" because the claim that something is an unreliable source is itself a conclusion drawn by a Wikipedia editor.
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
The lawsuit here is not a matter of having been so unfortunate as to be caught driving drunk pure and simple. The issues relate to how Langan presents himself to the world in relation to those issues and organizations which make him encyclopedic and/or notable. The references to the judgements may very well havew come from his opponents in the case, but that is not the same as systematically sifting through court records to find dirt on the guy
This is exactly what makes it original research. You have looked at his life story, and looked at this lawsuit, and drawn the original conclusion (perhaps plausible, perhaps even correct!) that the case reflects negatively on him, showing perhaps something bad about how he presents himself to the world, etc.
I can draw the conclusion that the case reflects negatively on the person on the mailing list, but that does not imply that this would need to be said in the article. There, to avoid original research, we can say that he lost the case, and beyond that we are limited to what is on the face of the decision. The matter of how he presents himself to the world was there to distinguish this from a drunk driving charge. One relates to his public persona, the other strictly to his private life.
That might mean that the lawsuit would make a fine basis for original research, to be published as investigative journalism in a newspaper, magazine, or book.
But it certainly means that it is original research: a novel conclusion being drawn from primary sources.
If one is using the case to draw novel conclusions then yes, it should not be used that way.
I've taken time to think about this before answering, and I keep arriving at the conclusion that it is not correct to suppress this information.
Wikipedia is in no position to "suppress" information. It is in the public record.
It is that, nothing more, nothing less.
Should someone who is working at an institution which is properly tasked with doing original research want to do so, they are welcome to do so at any time, and we do not stand in their way.
No problem there.
But the fact still remains that this sort of thing is unquestionably original research of _precisely_ the kind that we need to avoid for the obvious reasons having to do with what makes an encyclopedia an encyclopedia, what kind of resources we have to vet such things, and what kind of door we open to crackpots, cranks, and POV pushers, if we came to the conclusion that original research is allowed in Wikipedia, in case we don't like the person involved. (!)
It seems that the one common difference to this exchange is one of whether we can separate the document itself from the conclusions that some may draw from it
I had never heard of Langan before this came up. Going through the long talk page attached to his article I get the impression that this guy is a streetfighter who is ready to do whatever it takes to win his point.
Your not liking him is not a good reason for us to throw out one of our fundamental policies so that people with an axe to grind can dig up negative information about him.
I've never said whether I liked him or not. I've drawn a preliminary conclusion from reading the material in the least few days, but I could probably draw the same conclusion about his opponents. Disagreeing on what a fundamental policy means or should mean says nothing about throuwing out that policy. It is also inappropriate to impute any motives that I may have to dig up negative information about Lnagan. I very much prefer to be radically neutral in these kinds of situations.
Ec
Jimbo, could you please comment on the following attempt to understand your point?
We often need to know the relative importance of information in the context of an article. An important use is to e.g. establish attribution (who hold this POV; are they the majority, a minority, a tiny minority), or relevance (is it relevant to many people; is this between the subject and a limited number of others; how widely has it been reported/interpreted/analyzed?) To discover this, we will virtually always need reliable, secondary sources: the mere *existence* of a primary source whose actual number of visitors is unknown (such as court records) does not tell us anything about its importance, while both the existence of e.g. books or mainstream media reports on the information and the interpretations/analysis/etc they provide, may tell us what we need to know.
Information without sources that provide a context, constitutes original research - not to the degree that it is untrue, but to the degree that we do not *know* how (un)important it is and are relying on our personal insights instead. We should err on the side of caution by not including it in the encyclopedia.
Thanks,
AvB
This all sounds about right to me. Context matters, of course, and so I think there is a huge red herring here if we too simplistically compare potentially libelous or simply hurtful information in a biography of a living person with arcane information from academic journals, etc.
Arie van Buuren wrote:
Jimbo, could you please comment on the following attempt to understand your point?
We often need to know the relative importance of information in the context of an article. An important use is to e.g. establish attribution (who hold this POV; are they the majority, a minority, a tiny minority), or relevance (is it relevant to many people; is this between the subject and a limited number of others; how widely has it been reported/interpreted/analyzed?) To discover this, we will virtually always need reliable, secondary sources: the mere *existence* of a primary source whose actual number of visitors is unknown (such as court records) does not tell us anything about its importance, while both the existence of e.g. books or mainstream media reports on the information and the interpretations/analysis/etc they provide, may tell us what we need to know.
Information without sources that provide a context, constitutes original research - not to the degree that it is untrue, but to the degree that we do not *know* how (un)important it is and are relying on our personal insights instead. We should err on the side of caution by not including it in the encyclopedia.
Thanks,
AvB
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Wow, very fast response. Thanks.
Also a note that where I wrote "Information without sources that provide a context" I intended to write "Information without sources that provide such context" which is somewhat more specific.
AvB
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jimmy Wales" jwales@wikia.com To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, March 26, 2007 4:22 AM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR
This all sounds about right to me. Context matters, of course, and so I think there is a huge red herring here if we too simplistically compare potentially libelous or simply hurtful information in a biography of a living person with arcane information from academic journals, etc.
Arie van Buuren wrote:
Jimbo, could you please comment on the following attempt to understand your point?
We often need to know the relative importance of information in the context of an article. An important use is to e.g. establish attribution (who hold this POV; are they the majority, a minority, a tiny minority), or relevance (is it relevant to many people; is this between the subject and a limited number of others; how widely has it been reported/interpreted/analyzed?) To discover this, we will virtually always need reliable, secondary sources: the mere *existence* of a primary source whose actual number of visitors is unknown (such as court records) does not tell us anything about its importance, while both the existence of e.g. books or mainstream media reports on the information and the interpretations/analysis/etc they provide, may tell us what we need to know.
Information without sources that provide a context, constitutes original research - not to the degree that it is untrue, but to the degree that we do not *know* how (un)important it is and are relying on our personal insights instead. We should err on the side of caution by not including it in the encyclopedia.
Thanks,
AvB
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On Mon, 26 Mar 2007, Jimmy Wales wrote:
Information without sources that provide a context, constitutes original research - not to the degree that it is untrue, but to the degree that we do not *know* how (un)important it is and are relying on our personal insights instead.
This all sounds about right to me.
If this is your position, then I find it unbelievable.
Any meta decision about how to edit an article and what to include in it involves the Wikipedia editor drawing a conclusion. If inserting a factual statement from a primary source is "original research" because the editor had to draw a conclusion that it was important, then Googling something to determine notability, or even saying "Sheesh, he's George Bush, obviously he's notable" or "he's published 20 New York Times bestsellers, obviously he's notable" is original research.
I do agree that information taken from a primary source like this shouldn't be included in the article, but we need to be correct about why. It shouldn't be included because it isn't notable (or perhaps because of undue weight), not because it's original research. If you call it original research, you are stretching original research to the point where it applies to everything.
* Jimmy Wales wrote:
I think the point about privacy is that (as far as I know) there is a general consensus that someone sysematically going through court records to write articles about people who were convicted of drunk driving, or who were involved in a lawsuit, is a bad idea. We need to have some kind of independent verification (i.e. WP:NOR) that the incident or lawsuit is notable and worthy of inclusion in an article, and that in the case of people of very minor notability, there is no very good reason to include it.
I cringe when I see people equating 'primary sources' with 'original research'. What they are really talking about is a concept of 'notability of facts'... if a scientific theory is notable/relevant then it logically will have been judged so by neutral third-parties. If (to address THIS instance) a court case is notable/relevant then it would presumably be reported on by the media.
It is (I hope obviously) a bad idea for Wikipedia to promote information more widely/prominently than any other source has done. We are not disseminators (and thereby perforce arbiters) of 'truth' or 'relevance', but rather recorders of things which OTHERS have judged to be worthy of note. When we place ourselves in the position of saying, 'this information is important to make known... even though no one else has done so' we are inherently tossing 'neutral point of view' out the window.
However, the long growing trend of seeking to exclude this kind of thing as 'original research' is itself extremely damaging. I've seen people argue that we have to use ONLY imprecise media accounts of scientific discoveries because citing the actual published findings would be 'original research'. Likewise, people have actually argued that citing a book as reference for the CONTENTS of that book is 'original research'... you need to get a third party source to say what was in the book. In short, it has gotten to the point where many people think 'primary sources' are to be avoided at all costs... and that is a travesty.
Wikipedia USED to have a concept that,
"However, research that consists of collecting and organizing information from existing primary and/or secondary sources is, of course, strongly encouraged. All articles on Wikipedia should be based on information collected from published primary and secondary sources. This is not "original research"; it is "source-based research", and it is fundamental to writing an encyclopedia."
Indeed, that text still appears in our 'No original research' policy. However, efforts to stamp out use of 'primary sources' to spread information that no other national (or international) 'news' / 'reporting' entity has deemed worthy of commenting on have led to a wide-spread view that 'primary sources' in general are bad. They aren't. Once something has been verified as notable we should often take primary sources OVER secondary ones.
Conrad Dunkerson wrote:
- Jimmy Wales wrote:
I think the point about privacy is that (as far as I know) there is a general consensus that someone sysematically going through court records to write articles about people who were convicted of drunk driving, or who were involved in a lawsuit, is a bad idea. We need to have some kind of independent verification (i.e. WP:NOR) that the incident or lawsuit is notable and worthy of inclusion in an article, and that in the case of people of very minor notability, there is no very good reason to include it.
I cringe when I see people equating 'primary sources' with 'original research'. What they are really talking about is a concept of 'notability of facts'... if a scientific theory is notable/relevant then it logically will have been judged so by neutral third-parties. If (to address THIS instance) a court case is notable/relevant then it would presumably be reported on by the media.
It is (I hope obviously) a bad idea for Wikipedia to promote information more widely/prominently than any other source has done. We are not disseminators (and thereby perforce arbiters) of 'truth' or 'relevance', but rather recorders of things which OTHERS have judged to be worthy of note. When we place ourselves in the position of saying, 'this information is important to make known... even though no one else has done so' we are inherently tossing 'neutral point of view' out the window.
The difficulty with this comes when we run into the maxim that the wiki is not paper. If scientific theories depended on being published in the mainstream media that part of Wikipedia would be very skimpy indeed. NOR in science was intended to counteract the influence of crackpot theories.
I really don't know whether Mega Society v. Langan was ever reported in neutral media though I suspect it probably was not. It may still be there in a service to lawyers. I certainly have no inclination to spend a lot of time looking for a needle in a haystack when the needle may not even be there. A default judgement is not very exciting, and often goes by unnoticed. When the matter comes up for hearing there are no fireworks. Even if a journalist is in the courtroom at the time of the decision he would be disinclined to say anything because he would need to put a lot of work into figuring out what led to that point. Most cases that go through the courts are not reported by the media, and among those that are there is an overwhelming predominance of criminal matters or giant damage awards. Cases in many aspects of law go right off the radar, so the absence of coverage says nothing about notability.
I think that we need more sophisticated criteria for notability if we are ever going to consider that as a valid criterion. They should be positive ones rather than negative ones that depend on something not being found implying its non-existence. As I said before, I don't think it helps to make this an NPOV issue, because by their nature court judgements tend to represent the neutral view between two warring parties. NPOV allows both parties to have their views expressed in a dispute. If one party refuses to express his side of the story that's as much as we can say about that side; it is not an excuse for suppressing the other side's views.
Notability of facts in an article needs a context. We need to ask whether the point at issue is important to the general picture that we are painting about the person or other subject.
However, the long growing trend of seeking to exclude this kind of thing as 'original research' is itself extremely damaging. I've seen people argue that we have to use ONLY imprecise media accounts of scientific discoveries because citing the actual published findings would be 'original research'. Likewise, people have actually argued that citing a book as reference for the CONTENTS of that book is 'original research'... you need to get a third party source to say what was in the book. In short, it has gotten to the point where many people think 'primary sources' are to be avoided at all costs... and that is a travesty.
Wikipedia USED to have a concept that,
"However, research that consists of collecting and organizing information from existing primary and/or secondary sources is, of course, strongly encouraged. All articles on Wikipedia should be based on information collected from published primary and secondary sources. This is not "original research"; it is "source-based research", and it is fundamental to writing an encyclopedia."
Indeed, that text still appears in our 'No original research' policy. However, efforts to stamp out use of 'primary sources' to spread information that no other national (or international) 'news' / 'reporting' entity has deemed worthy of commenting on have led to a wide-spread view that 'primary sources' in general are bad. They aren't. Once something has been verified as notable we should often take primary sources OVER secondary ones.
I very much agree with your second discussion. At this point I best express myself on it by saying nothing.
Ec
Conrad Dunkerson wrote:
Indeed, that text still appears in our 'No original research' policy. However, efforts to stamp out use of 'primary sources' to spread information that no other national (or international) 'news' / 'reporting' entity has deemed worthy of commenting on have led to a wide-spread view that 'primary sources' in general are bad. They aren't. Once something has been verified as notable we should often take primary sources OVER secondary ones.
I strongly disagree with that, and think this comes out of an unfortunately widespread view that non-scientific research isn't "really" research. Gathering, interpreting, cross-referencing, and checking the validity of the primary sources on an individual like, say, Thomas Jefferson, in order to write a biography about him, is original historical research, and best left to reputable historians. At Wikipedia, we should prefer secondary sources on his life---published biographies of Thomas Jefferson written by reputable historians. If you discover some new primary sources relating to his life that have not been mentioned in the existing secondary sources, that constitutes original historical research, and you should publish it in a history journal or book, or at the very least convince someone to write a newspaper article about it, before it should go into Wikipedia.
The same actually goes for too-close-to-primary secondary sources. We should not write our article on World War II by referring to contemporary newspaper reports, which were often wrong and require expertise to properly use, but instead should write it by referring to existing, published histories of World War II written by reputable historians.
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
Conrad Dunkerson wrote:
Indeed, that text still appears in our 'No original research' policy. However, efforts to stamp out use of 'primary sources' to spread information that no other national (or international) 'news' / 'reporting' entity has deemed worthy of commenting on have led to a wide-spread view that 'primary sources' in general are bad. They aren't. Once something has been verified as notable we should often take primary sources OVER secondary ones.
I strongly disagree with that, and think this comes out of an unfortunately widespread view that non-scientific research isn't "really" research. Gathering, interpreting, cross-referencing, and checking the validity of the primary sources on an individual like, say, Thomas Jefferson, in order to write a biography about him, is original historical research, and best left to reputable historians. At Wikipedia, we should prefer secondary sources on his life---published biographies of Thomas Jefferson written by reputable historians. If you discover some new primary sources relating to his life that have not been mentioned in the existing secondary sources, that constitutes original historical research, and you should publish it in a history journal or book, or at the very least convince someone to write a newspaper article about it, before it should go into Wikipedia.
The same actually goes for too-close-to-primary secondary sources. We should not write our article on World War II by referring to contemporary newspaper reports, which were often wrong and require expertise to properly use, but instead should write it by referring to existing, published histories of World War II written by reputable historians.
I don't have the same faith in "reputable historians". Being reputable is often nothing more than a mastery of the party line. Historians certainly differ on whether dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was a necessity or a war crime. Of course all agree that it was in fact dropped. For me NPOV is a far more important principle than NOR. Omitting something just because it has never been considered by "reputable" historians strikes me as unconscionable, and intellectually dishonest. If a new primary source contradicts the "reputable" historians it should be mentioned in the interests of NPOV; otherwise NOR is nothing more than an excuse for suppressing distasteful information.. In the case of Jefferson, are we to avoid quoting the Federalist Papers just because they are a primary source?
We want readers to think for themselves. We want them to consider alternative views. We don't want them to just cut and paste into their school essays. We want them to question the political correctness of "reputable" historians. We want them to be aware of how distortions can so easily arise en route from the primary to the secondary source.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Delirium wrote:
Conrad Dunkerson wrote:
Indeed, that text still appears in our 'No original research' policy. However, efforts to stamp out use of 'primary sources' to spread information that no other national (or international) 'news' / 'reporting' entity has deemed worthy of commenting on have led to a wide-spread view that 'primary sources' in general are bad. They aren't. Once something has been verified as notable we should often take primary sources OVER secondary ones.
I strongly disagree with that, and think this comes out of an unfortunately widespread view that non-scientific research isn't "really" research. Gathering, interpreting, cross-referencing, and checking the validity of the primary sources on an individual like, say, Thomas Jefferson, in order to write a biography about him, is original historical research, and best left to reputable historians. At Wikipedia, we should prefer secondary sources on his life---published biographies of Thomas Jefferson written by reputable historians. If you discover some new primary sources relating to his life that have not been mentioned in the existing secondary sources, that constitutes original historical research, and you should publish it in a history journal or book, or at the very least convince someone to write a newspaper article about it, before it should go into Wikipedia.
The same actually goes for too-close-to-primary secondary sources. We should not write our article on World War II by referring to contemporary newspaper reports, which were often wrong and require expertise to properly use, but instead should write it by referring to existing, published histories of World War II written by reputable historians.
I don't have the same faith in "reputable historians". Being reputable is often nothing more than a mastery of the party line. Historians certainly differ on whether dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was a necessity or a war crime. Of course all agree that it was in fact dropped. For me NPOV is a far more important principle than NOR. Omitting something just because it has never been considered by "reputable" historians strikes me as unconscionable, and intellectually dishonest. If a new primary source contradicts the "reputable" historians it should be mentioned in the interests of NPOV; otherwise NOR is nothing more than an excuse for suppressing distasteful information.. In the case of Jefferson, are we to avoid quoting the Federalist Papers just because they are a primary source?
We want readers to think for themselves. We want them to consider alternative views. We don't want them to just cut and paste into their school essays. We want them to question the political correctness of "reputable" historians. We want them to be aware of how distortions can so easily arise en route from the primary to the secondary source.
I don't have much to say in reply to this except that I disagree with basically every single sentence in your email. You're describing an original-research activist encyclopedia, not Wikipedia.
-Mark
Ray Saintonge wrote:
I don't have the same faith in "reputable historians". Being reputable is often nothing more than a mastery of the party line. Historians certainly differ on whether dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was a necessity or a war crime. Of course all agree that it was in fact dropped. For me NPOV is a far more important principle than NOR. Omitting something just because it has never been considered by "reputable" historians strikes me as unconscionable, and intellectually dishonest. If a new primary source contradicts the "reputable" historians it should be mentioned in the interests of NPOV; otherwise NOR is nothing more than an excuse for suppressing distasteful information.
To be a little more detailed:
No, NOR is not "an excuse for suppressing distasteful information", but fundamental to the very purpose of Wikipedia. When I go to the article [[World War II]], I expect to find any of these: --- a summary of mainstream historical consensus on the subject;- --- discussions of points where there is significant disagreements among historians; --- discussions, less prominently placed, of significant minority views; --- especially on important topics like World War II, discussions of small minority views that have nonetheless been published and attracted some at least minor attention
But what I most emphatically *do not* expect to see a novel historical narrative that some random guy on the internet has pieced together by going through archives himself, and never published before anywhere else except Wikipedia. That is no more useful or desirable than going to [[Neutrino]] and seeing original physical research that some physics crank has decided to publish on Wikipedia. If you've made novel historical discoveries by digging through primary sources, then great, but Wikipedia is not the place to publish them any more than it's the place to publish your novel physics discoveries.
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
I don't have the same faith in "reputable historians". Being reputable is often nothing more than a mastery of the party line. Historians certainly differ on whether dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was a necessity or a war crime. Of course all agree that it was in fact dropped. For me NPOV is a far more important principle than NOR. Omitting something just because it has never been considered by "reputable" historians strikes me as unconscionable, and intellectually dishonest. If a new primary source contradicts the "reputable" historians it should be mentioned in the interests of NPOV; otherwise NOR is nothing more than an excuse for suppressing distasteful information.
To be a little more detailed:
No, NOR is not "an excuse for suppressing distasteful information", but fundamental to the very purpose of Wikipedia. When I go to the article [[World War II]], I expect to find any of these: --- a summary of mainstream historical consensus on the subject;- --- discussions of points where there is significant disagreements among historians; --- discussions, less prominently placed, of significant minority views; --- especially on important topics like World War II, discussions of small minority views that have nonetheless been published and attracted some at least minor attention
I have no problem with that.
But what I most emphatically *do not* expect to see a novel historical narrative that some random guy on the internet has pieced together by going through archives himself, and never published before anywhere else except Wikipedia.
I have said nothing in support of novel historical narratives. If the document is completely unpublished then put it into Wikisource. (There may still be copyright issues for the WWII period, but that's a separate matter that would need to be addressed.) We can then link to these documents on a buyer beware basis.
There are some people who would use these documents as a basis for pushing a point of view; there's no denying that. One clear fact is that the volume of archived documents is enormous, and historians at best can only deal with a small fraction of the mass. There aren't even enough historians to do it. You mentioned Jefferson before. He died in 1826, but much of his work still remains unpublished. Last summer Danny raised the issue of discussions that he had in Washington over publishing the Jefferson and other archives. If that were to happen should we ignore that material simply because no historian has considered it. Other primary documents have been published in hard-to-find 19th-century books; are we to ignore them just because they have not been referenced and interpreted by "reputable" historians?
None of this advocates original research on Wikipedia; that would imply taking sides or putting our own spin on the material. What it does say is that there are these other documents out there. It says, "Look at them, and draw your own conclusions."
If our efforts promote amateur historians that's a great accomplishment. The problem with making an obsession of reliability is that it promotes complacency among the users. I want teachers to keep rejecting Wikipedia as the sole authority for the principal facts in an essay.
That is no more useful or desirable than going to [[Neutrino]] and seeing original physical research that some physics crank has decided to publish on Wikipedia. If you've made novel historical discoveries by digging through primary sources, then great, but Wikipedia is not the place to publish them any more than it's the place to publish your novel physics discoveries.
The difference is the one betwen invention and discovery, and the physics example is one of invention, not discovery. In discovery we find what was already there, and invention only becomes a factor in historical research when the authenticity of the documents is disputed.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Delirium wrote:
That is no more useful or desirable than going to [[Neutrino]] and seeing original physical research that some physics crank has decided to publish on Wikipedia. If you've made novel historical discoveries by digging through primary sources, then great, but Wikipedia is not the place to publish them any more than it's the place to publish your novel physics discoveries.
The difference is the one betwen invention and discovery, and the physics example is one of invention, not discovery. In discovery we find what was already there, and invention only becomes a factor in historical research when the authenticity of the documents is disputed.
This seems like a strange distinction to me. I have never heard of physics discoveries being referred to as "inventions"; one might invent a machine that helps in making those discoveries, but the discoveries are simply finding what is already there. What makes it original research is that you're the first to have claimed to find it. In such cases (whether in physics or history), the proper place to put forth your claimed discoveries is in a journal or some other such place where they can be evaluated (and possibly refuted) by others.
As for whether the authenticity of documents is disputed, that's exactly the sort of thing we should be relying on secondary sources to determine. If I find some random archival document that *appears* to say something about World War II, it would be inappropriate for me to start relying on it in the article by citing it; I should instead see what historians have said about it, how it's been interpreted before, if there is consensus or disagreement on its authenticity or implications, etc. If it's never been mentioned before, I would have to conclude that its authenticity and implications are unknown. There are many journals devoted to hashing out that sort of thing, and we shouldn't be replicating their work on talk pages, imo.
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Delirium wrote:
That is no more useful or desirable than going to [[Neutrino]] and seeing original physical research that some physics crank has decided to publish on Wikipedia. If you've made novel historical discoveries by digging through primary sources, then great, but Wikipedia is not the place to publish them any more than it's the place to publish your novel physics discoveries.
The difference is the one betwen invention and discovery, and the physics example is one of invention, not discovery. In discovery we find what was already there, and invention only becomes a factor in historical research when the authenticity of the documents is disputed.
This seems like a strange distinction to me. I have never heard of physics discoveries being referred to as "inventions"; one might invent a machine that helps in making those discoveries, but the discoveries are simply finding what is already there.
I wouldn't consider the crackpot ideas in physices to be discovering what was already there
What makes it original research is that you're the first to have claimed to find it. In such cases (whether in physics or history), the proper place to put forth your claimed discoveries is in a journal or some other such place where they can be evaluated (and possibly refuted) by others.
If I read that strictly not even Hansard or The Congressional Record are acceptable sources. In fact there are many old collections of documents that have been published without being vetted by the history establishment.
As for whether the authenticity of documents is disputed, that's exactly the sort of thing we should be relying on secondary sources to determine. If I find some random archival document that *appears* to say something about World War II, it would be inappropriate for me to start relying on it in the article by citing it; I should instead see what historians have said about it, how it's been interpreted before, if there is consensus or disagreement on its authenticity or implications, etc. If it's never been mentioned before, I would have to conclude that its authenticity and implications are unknown. There are many journals devoted to hashing out that sort of thing, and we shouldn't be replicating their work on talk pages, imo.
My reference to invented or forged documents was as an exception. Otherwise respectable professionals are frequently bambozled as was the case with Die Stern a few years ago over certain WWII era diaries. For the sake of clarity let's confine the discussion to documents about which authenticity is not a factor.
There are more documents (good documents) languishing in archives than can ever be processed by an army of historians. Part of our mission is to make knowledge freely available to all. This may or may not be in anencyclopedic format; if not then it belongs in some other wikiproject. There is also much more to history than the broad brush strokes of global events The histories of all those Rambot included towns are also worth including, and the corpus of that material is growing faster than the number of historians available for writing it up.
Ec
* Delirium wrote:
I strongly disagree with that, and think this comes out of an unfortunately widespread view that non-scientific research isn't "really" research.
You apparently weren't understanding me... because I don't think that at all. Research is research... in any field.
If you discover some new primary sources relating to his life that have not been mentioned in the existing secondary sources, that constitutes original historical research, and you should publish it in a history journal or book, or at the very least convince someone to write a newspaper article about it, before it should go into Wikipedia.
I made precisely the same argument in the post which you "strongly disagree" with. Wikipedia should not be promoting information that has not already been widely distributed in professional commentary.
The distinction I was drawing is that if a primary source is NOT 'newly discovered' and HAS been 'mentioned in the existing secondary sources' then we should not be banning citation of it. To take your Jefferson example... if we are quoting the contents of the Declaration of Independence we should CITE the Declaration of Independence... even though it is a 'primary source'. It isn't 'new' information and it has definitely been established as 'notable' by secondary sources. Any interpretation of meaning or intent should be left to secondary sources, but if we are simply quoting content then it should go directly to the original.
Citing primary sources is not, by itself, 'original research'... it only becomes such when the primary sources haven't previously been deemed noteworthy and Wikipedia would thus be putting itself in the position of 'arbiter of truth and relevance' rather than 'recorder of things deemed notable by neutral observers in the field'.
The text that Jimbo removed was OR. Using lots of different primary sources to support what you are saying is generally OR. Primary sources should only be used to state simple facts. While each individual sentence of that text may have been a simple fact, when you put them together like that it becomes more than just a collection of uncontroversial facts (as Jimbo says: "by drawing selectively on sources, the section gave an impression that is significantly at odds with the views of relevant parties to the dispute").
Using primary sources makes it difficult to ensure that you haven't missed something. When using secondary sources you simply have to determine what bias exists in the source, and if there is no significant bias (for example, it's an independent newspaper article about the case), you can trust that nothing significant has been missed out. In this particular example there was something very serious missed out - it made no mention of what the other side in the dispute had said in their defence. That clearly violated NPOV.
On 3/20/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
The text that Jimbo removed was OR. Using lots of different primary sources to support what you are saying is generally OR.
That is going to come as a bit of a shock to the authors of [[Biaxial nematic]].
On 3/20/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/20/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
The text that Jimbo removed was OR. Using lots of different primary sources to support what you are saying is generally OR.
That is going to come as a bit of a shock to the authors of [[Biaxial nematic]].
That article isn't based on primary sources that I can see.
On 3/20/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
That article isn't based on primary sources that I can see.
Scientific papers are primary sources.
I'm still trying to track down all of what Jimbo said, but my input on this would be that extending guidelines about OR from one field to another completely unrelated one is always a bad idea, and that appears to be what you're doing here.
I'm still trying to track down all of what Jimbo said, but my input on this would be that extending guidelines about OR from one field to another completely unrelated one is always a bad idea, and that appears to be what you're doing here.
It wasn't my example. However, it's not practical to have different guidelines for each field, so there has to be at least some generalisation.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
That article isn't based on primary sources that I can see.
Scientific papers are primary sources.
According to [[primary source]], the term is specific to historical scholarship, which doesn't include science. I don't know of any Wikipedian who seriously challenges the validity of published peer-reviewed scientific papers as sources for articles.
Stan
According to [[primary source]], the term is specific to historical scholarship, which doesn't include science. I don't know of any Wikipedian who seriously challenges the validity of published peer-reviewed scientific papers as sources for articles.
In which case, [[primary source]] is wrong. A source is primary if it isn't based on any other source - that definition holds for any field.
There aren't many Wikipedians that challenge the validity of any primary source as a source for an article - you simply have to be very careful with how you use them.
On 3/20/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
That article isn't based on primary sources that I can see.
Scientific papers are primary sources.
According to [[primary source]], the term is specific to historical scholarship, which doesn't include science. I don't know of any Wikipedian who seriously challenges the validity of published peer-reviewed scientific papers as sources for articles.
Stan
Stan, we go through this all the time in botany, that review articles are preferable to original research in journals, and we can't include the MOBOT APG classifications because he updates them through original research, that we can't use APG II directly, or rather alone in an article, that we must note it when we use it, that if it's seconded by Reveal or someone it's fine, the whole brya fiasco and removing her APG II direct classifications, blah blah blah, and that we can't wholesale use Cavalier-Smith, without including other interpretations, and making clear his attributions. I think you're one of the ones agreeing with these viewpoints.
Yes, we use published peer-reviewed journal articles, that are original research, but what we're often getting from them is their non-original research, the introductory sections and any broad background used to support the conclusions, but not the conclusions themselves.
This is a major problem in botany, which is one of the most dynamic fields in the sciences right now, especially basal taxonomies--it's the equivalent of the early 20th century genetics revolution. It's literally killing our ability to update the botany articles, to some good end, but sometimes it leaves us crippled, because it's so difficult to tread over the careful way we have to write the botany articles to comply with NOR, and it's hard for retention of new editors. We get these gung-ho algae guys in and I have to thump the Cavalier-Smith (my hero, by the way, along with Woese), completely out of them.
We do honor NOR, no primary sources in the botanical sciences, and we do it rather well most of the time, Stan as well as the rest of us.
KP
Stan, we go through this all the time in botany, that review articles are preferable to original research in journals, and we can't include the MOBOT APG classifications because he updates them through original research, that we can't use APG II directly, or rather alone in an article, that we must note it when we use it, that if it's seconded by Reveal or someone it's fine, the whole brya fiasco and removing her APG II direct classifications, blah blah blah, and that we can't wholesale use Cavalier-Smith, without including other interpretations, and making clear his attributions. I think you're one of the ones agreeing with these viewpoints.
Yes, we use published peer-reviewed journal articles, that are original research, but what we're often getting from them is their non-original research, the introductory sections and any broad background used to support the conclusions, but not the conclusions themselves.
This is a major problem in botany, which is one of the most dynamic fields in the sciences right now, especially basal taxonomies--it's the equivalent of the early 20th century genetics revolution. It's literally killing our ability to update the botany articles, to some good end, but sometimes it leaves us crippled, because it's so difficult to tread over the careful way we have to write the botany articles to comply with NOR, and it's hard for retention of new editors. We get these gung-ho algae guys in and I have to thump the Cavalier-Smith (my hero, by the way, along with Woese), completely out of them.
We do honor NOR, no primary sources in the botanical sciences, and we do it rather well most of the time, Stan as well as the rest of us.
You're using "original research" in a different way to WP:OR. WP:OR refers to research done originally in Wikipedia, not research done originally in a journal. All research is original the first time it is done, that's not an issue. The issue is with us doing original research, not with us using original research done (and published) by someone else.
Your examples have nothing to do with WP:OR, they are simply issues with primary sources.
On 3/24/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Stan, we go through this all the time in botany, that review articles
are
preferable to original research in journals, and we can't include the
MOBOT
APG classifications because he updates them through original research,
that
we can't use APG II directly, or rather alone in an article, that we
must
note it when we use it, that if it's seconded by Reveal or someone it's fine, the whole brya fiasco and removing her APG II direct
classifications,
blah blah blah, and that we can't wholesale use Cavalier-Smith, without including other interpretations, and making clear his attributions. I
think
you're one of the ones agreeing with these viewpoints.
Yes, we use published peer-reviewed journal articles, that are original research, but what we're often getting from them is their non-original research, the introductory sections and any broad background used to
support
the conclusions, but not the conclusions themselves.
This is a major problem in botany, which is one of the most dynamic
fields
in the sciences right now, especially basal taxonomies--it's the
equivalent
of the early 20th century genetics revolution. It's literally killing
our
ability to update the botany articles, to some good end, but sometimes
it
leaves us crippled, because it's so difficult to tread over the careful
way
we have to write the botany articles to comply with NOR, and it's hard
for
retention of new editors. We get these gung-ho algae guys in and I have
to
thump the Cavalier-Smith (my hero, by the way, along with Woese),
completely
out of them.
We do honor NOR, no primary sources in the botanical sciences, and we do
it
rather well most of the time, Stan as well as the rest of us.
You're using "original research" in a different way to WP:OR. WP:OR refers to research done originally in Wikipedia, not research done originally in a journal. All research is original the first time it is done, that's not an issue. The issue is with us doing original research, not with us using original research done (and published) by someone else.
Your examples have nothing to do with WP:OR, they are simply issues with primary sources.
Yup, total newbie and get policies confused all of the time. Primary sources, not OR, so I take it all back--not really. Just one more reason not for blasting newbies over the head with all of WP:ATT, rather than the specific policy, discretely directed to the one issue at hand.
Point remains, we don't use primary sources in the plant articles, such as the original research of a scientist published in a primary resource otherwise known as a peer-reviewed journal article, but rather we use the secondary information from the primary source, the primary source's introductory material or background material used in its conclusions, and use review articles (which, although this may be changing, not that I've seen) rather than conclusions originally and solely drawn in primary sources.
Stan said primary sources, I confused the issue with OR.
KP
Point remains, we don't use primary sources in the plant articles, such as the original research of a scientist published in a primary resource otherwise known as a peer-reviewed journal article, but rather we use the secondary information from the primary source, the primary source's introductory material or background material used in its conclusions, and use review articles (which, although this may be changing, not that I've seen) rather than conclusions originally and solely drawn in primary sources.
You could use primary sources, though. There is no rule against that. (You have to be careful to keep things neutral, but that shouldn't be too hard with papers about plants - just be careful if there is disagreement in the scientific community about something.) There is a rule against OR, which is why it's important to distinguish between the two.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Point remains, we don't use primary sources in the plant articles, such as the original research of a scientist published in a primary resource otherwise known as a peer-reviewed journal article, but rather we use the secondary information from the primary source, the primary source's introductory material or background material used in its conclusions, and use review articles (which, although this may be changing, not that I've seen) rather than conclusions originally and solely drawn in primary sources.
You could use primary sources, though. There is no rule against that. (You have to be careful to keep things neutral, but that shouldn't be too hard with papers about plants - just be careful if there is disagreement in the scientific community about something.) There is a rule against OR, which is why it's important to distinguish between the two.
The official description of a species is a primary source. If the description has been accepted by the governing international society there is no question of disagreement from the scientific community. The merger principle suggests that these definitions many not even be copyrightable. If they are to be meningful at all these descriptions will not change.
Ec
On 3/25/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Point remains, we don't use primary sources in the plant articles, such
as
the original research of a scientist published in a primary resource otherwise known as a peer-reviewed journal article, but rather we use
the
secondary information from the primary source, the primary source's introductory material or background material used in its conclusions,
and
use review articles (which, although this may be changing, not that I've seen) rather than conclusions originally and solely drawn in primary sources.
You could use primary sources, though. There is no rule against that. (You have to be careful to keep things neutral, but that shouldn't be too hard with papers about plants - just be careful if there is disagreement in the scientific community about something.) There is a rule against OR, which is why it's important to distinguish between the two.
The official description of a species is a primary source. If the description has been accepted by the governing international society there is no question of disagreement from the scientific community. The merger principle suggests that these definitions many not even be copyrightable. If they are to be meningful at all these descriptions will not change.
Ec
This is not correct, at least in botany, that if a species description is accepting by the ICBN, there is no question of disagreement, because the plant is not only about its description. That's what the journal Taxonomy publishes, in fact, the disagreements precisely of this nature. The morphological descriptions of the plants themselves don't change that much. There are a few exceptions. However, in zoology, this is not the case, due to the greater diversity of cellular structures and cell types found in animals compared to plants.
But I don't know that the point to all of this is. The descriptions of plants from their primary sources are not generally used as sources for Wikipedia articles. For one thing, they're written in botanical Latin. KP
On 3/21/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
That article isn't based on primary sources that I can see.
Scientific papers are primary sources.
Scientific papers are secondary sources. The experimental or observational data that the papers draw on are the primary sources.
On 3/21/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Scientific papers are primary sources.
Scientific papers are secondary sources. The experimental or observational data that the papers draw on are the primary sources.
The data is usually published in the paper, so the paper is the primary source.
If you want to split hairs like that, then yes, insofar as the paper merely reproduces the data, then it's a primary source. The analysis of the data and the conclusions drawn from the data in the paper are secondary material.
On 3/20/07, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/21/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Scientific papers are primary sources.
Scientific papers are secondary sources. The experimental or observational data that the papers draw on are the primary sources.
The data is usually published in the paper, so the paper is the primary
source.
If you want to split hairs like that, then yes, insofar as the paper merely reproduces the data, then it's a primary source. The analysis of the data and the conclusions drawn from the data in the paper are secondary material.
Columbus's logs are primary historical sources - they are a record of his observations and his interpretation of his observations. Scientific research papers present and analyse data, and draw some conclusions from the data. Primary sources are not the raw data, nor are they Columbus's readings of the angles of the stars or the depth of the water. Court rulings are primary sources, not the policeman's log books.
No. Research publications are primary sources. Review papers are secondary sources. Textbooks tend to be secondary or tertiary sources.
On 21/03/07, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
Columbus's logs are primary historical sources - they are a record of his observations and his interpretation of his observations. Scientific research papers present and analyse data, and draw some conclusions from the data. Primary sources are not the raw data, nor are they Columbus's readings of the angles of the stars or the depth of the water. Court rulings are primary sources, not the policeman's log books.
No. Research publications are primary sources. Review papers are secondary sources. Textbooks tend to be secondary or tertiary sources.
Research publications should hope not to be entirely primary sources. If a scientist makes a claim based on their data then the data is the primary source, and their claims are secondary to it. What difference does it make as to whether the publishing scientist makes a conclusion or a review paper makes a conclusion?
Peter Ansell
On 3/20/07, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/21/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Scientific papers are primary sources.
Scientific papers are secondary sources. The experimental or observational data that the papers draw on are the primary sources.
The data is usually published in the paper, so the paper is the primary
source.
If you want to split hairs like that, then yes, insofar as the paper merely reproduces the data, then it's a primary source. The analysis of the data and the conclusions drawn from the data in the paper are secondary material.
-- Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com
No, don't split hairs here. The original research is not the data table, but the conclusions and analysis drawn from the data. The experimental results are just results, they're not research without the paper, without the conclusions, without the analysis.
Data is an ex-situ fossil--iIf I have a fossil and I don't know where it was found, it's worthless. Research is not an ex-situ fossil, it's an in-situ fossil. It's worth something.
Research is scientific inquiry, it's not random pieces of data out of context. Data tables and uninterpreted experimental results are not research.
KP
On Wed, Mar 21, 2007 at 01:44:21AM +0000, Thomas Dalton wrote:
Scientific papers are primary sources.
Scientific papers are secondary sources. The experimental or observational data that the papers draw on are the primary sources.
The data is usually published in the paper, so the paper is the primary source.
This lack of agreement has come up on WP talk:Notability recently and is clear evidence that the distinction that some policies and guidelines make between primary and secondary sources is meaningless. As someone else said, this distinction is not used by scientists. I make a distinction between journal articles and review articles, but even the latter increasingly contain new research from the authors group. We should be very carefull about building anything on the distinction between primary and secondary sources. At best some of us will not understand the difference. At worst it is meaningless.
Brian.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Scientific papers are primary sources.
Scientific papers are secondary sources. The experimental or observational data that the papers draw on are the primary sources.
The data is usually published in the paper, so the paper is the primary source.
Another non-sequitur.
Ec
The text that Jimbo removed was OR. Using lots of different primary sources to support what you are saying is generally OR.
That is going to come as a bit of a shock to the authors of [[Biaxial nematic]].
It's generally OR, it's not always OR. Using a collection of scientific papers isn't too bad - it's not great though, the translation from the technical terminology the papers use to layman's terms suitable for an encyclopedia is bordering on OR (I haven't read the papers in this case - it's possible the introduction is written in close enough to layman's terms and contains everything used in the article, they aren't always, though). It would be better to find a secondary source aimed at a more appropriate audience and use that.
On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 17:51:40 +0000, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The text that Jimbo removed was OR. Using lots of different primary sources to support what you are saying is generally OR.
That is going to come as a bit of a shock to the authors of [[Biaxial nematic]].
In what way is writing an article directly from primary sources not original research, then?
Guy (JzG)
On 3/20/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 17:51:40 +0000, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The text that Jimbo removed was OR. Using lots of different primary sources to support what you are saying is generally OR.
That is going to come as a bit of a shock to the authors of [[Biaxial nematic]].
In what way is writing an article directly from primary sources not original research, then?
Well consider "The biaxial nematic phase for this particular compound only occurs at temperatures around 200 °C and is preceded by as yet unidentified smectic phases."
That is a statement dirrectly supported by the paper and involves no original research (may be a little outdated but I don't know).
Given the way the popular media tends to mangel science the original papers are aften the best sources around.
On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 21:23:43 +0000, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Well consider "The biaxial nematic phase for this particular compound only occurs at temperatures around 200 °C and is preceded by as yet unidentified smectic phases."
OK, so we are writing the first-ever secondary source on this subject, are we?
Guy (JzG)
On 3/20/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 21:23:43 +0000, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Well consider "The biaxial nematic phase for this particular compound only occurs at temperatures around 200 °C and is preceded by as yet unidentified smectic phases."
OK, so we are writing the first-ever secondary source on this subject, are we?
technicaly no however I don't think unpublished student essys are a citeable source.
It is not imposible that someone has writen a review article by now but I don't think they had back when that sentance was writen.
On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 22:25:40 +0000, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Well consider "The biaxial nematic phase for this particular compound only occurs at temperatures around 200 °C and is preceded by as yet unidentified smectic phases."
OK, so we are writing the first-ever secondary source on this subject, are we?
technicaly no however I don't think unpublished student essys are a citeable source.
It is not imposible that someone has writen a review article by now but I don't think they had back when that sentance was writen.
I'd be interested to hear what Jimbo has to say about writing on Wikipedia the first ever review article for this subject.
Guy (JzG)
On 3/20/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 21:23:43 +0000, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Well consider "The biaxial nematic phase for this particular compound only occurs at temperatures around 200 °C and is preceded by as yet unidentified smectic phases."
OK, so we are writing the first-ever secondary source on this subject, are we?
Don't laugh, in some cases that is true.
Not in most, but there are some...
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Using primary sources makes it difficult to ensure that you haven't missed something. When using secondary sources you simply have to determine what bias exists in the source, and if there is no significant bias (for example, it's an independent newspaper article about the case), you can trust that nothing significant has been missed out.
!!! The suggestion that newspaper articles are unbiased is a novel one.
Ec
Using primary sources makes it difficult to ensure that you haven't missed something. When using secondary sources you simply have to determine what bias exists in the source, and if there is no significant bias (for example, it's an independent newspaper article about the case), you can trust that nothing significant has been missed out.
!!! The suggestion that newspaper articles are unbiased is a novel one.
The word "significant" is significant. Newspapers usually have quite general biases towards certain political POVs, they don't usually have a bias towards a particular side in a civil law suit.
Is this an accurate simplification as to what's going on and Jimbo's position?
There's an WP article about "Joe Foo".
Somebody sues Joe Foo.
A WP editor just happens to find a copy of the original suit and writes about it in Joe Foo's article. Nobody anywhere else is writing about Joe Foo getting sued.
Since nobody else has written about Joe Foo getting sued, the suit itself is non notable and therefore the information in Joe Foo's article about the suit is removed by Jimbo.
If this is accurate then I assume that this is what has to happen for the suit to be proper for Joe Foo's article...
There's an WP article about "Joe Foo".
Somebody sues Joe Foo.
A reporter for the New York Times just happens to find a copy of the original suit and reports about it in an article. A reporter for the Boston Globe does likewise.
The suit then becomes "news" and therefore "notable". It can now be added to Joe Foo's WP article.
A WP editor just happens to find a copy of the original suit and writes about it in Joe Foo's article. Nobody anywhere else is writing about Joe Foo getting sued.
Since nobody else has written about Joe Foo getting sued, the suit itself is non notable and therefore the information in Joe Foo's article about the suit is removed by Jimbo.
No. Jimbo never mentioned notability. He removed it on OR and NPOV grounds. (Mainly NPOV, I think, the comments about OR were just to explain where the writer had gone wrong.)
On 3/20/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Since nobody else has written about Joe Foo getting sued, the suit itself is non notable and therefore the information in Joe Foo's article about the suit is removed by Jimbo.
No. Jimbo never mentioned notability. He removed it on OR and NPOV grounds. (Mainly NPOV, I think, the comments about OR were just to explain where the writer had gone wrong.)
No he didn't, but I found this comment on the Langen talk page before Jimbo jumped in..
"This is critical. The lawsuit in question is exactly like the situation of a messy divorce. In fact, it is a messy divorce between two parties. The divorce in question is not notable, and no grounds for its notability have been provided. It is not important to the article. No attempt whatsoever has been made to demonstrate it is notable to the article. No claim has been made about why this case is supposed to be interesting or relevant. It is purely a way of trying to get at the subject of the entry. The official policy could not be more clear about what to do with such a non-notable, unimportant event: leave it out."
This may or may not be what Jimbo was thinking of but this makes sense. "Joe Foo" may be notable but a lawsuit against him isn't necessarily notable. If, for example, an editor just happens to find the docs on the web or goes to find them after hearing about the suit in a non notable "Joe Foo sucks" blog, then it's OR and to add it to Joe Foo's article would be using Wikipedia to establish the suit's notability which is a big no no. Once a notable news source reports about it, then we can write about it.
Then again I might be completely wrong.
Jimbo wrote:
notable to the article. No claim has been made about why this case is supposed to be interesting or relevant. It is purely a way of trying to get at the subject of the entry.
I dunno. If I was researching a subject on the web and came across a lawsuit involving them, I would probably put it in. Nothing to do with "trying to get at" anyone.
If this is wrong, then WP:NOR goes further than I thought it did. Our coverage will be substantially reduced if we have to have notability for every fact. Is the fact that a company is based in town X notable? What if there's no newspaper article that mentions the fact?
Steve
On 3/20/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
I dunno. If I was researching a subject on the web and came across a lawsuit involving them, I would probably put it in. Nothing to do with "trying to get at" anyone.
If this is wrong, then WP:NOR goes further than I thought it did. Our coverage will be substantially reduced if we have to have notability for every fact. Is the fact that a company is based in town X notable? What if there's no newspaper article that mentions the fact?
Might depend on the fact. Something neutral such as "Joe Foo" lives in "Crankytown California" might me ok but there might be a problem with something potentially inflammatory such as "Joe Foo" is getting sued by his next door neighbor because he plays his music too loud. What interest is the second fact except to someone trying to dig up some dirt on Joe so he can insert some POV into Joe's article ie "Joe Foo likes to piss off his neighbors." A potentially inflammatory fact is not "news" until an independent source makes it "news" by reporting it. Then it could be mentioned in Wikipedia in an NPOV manner.
On 3/20/07, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
Might depend on the fact. Something neutral such as "Joe Foo" lives in "Crankytown California" might me ok
Come to think about it even a normally "neutral" fact might have some POV and OR issues. Let's take "date of birth" for example...
There is an article about a notable model named "Carmen Roe".
Carmen Roe claims to be 19 years old.
Somebody digs up a copy of her birth certificate that shows that she is 26 and updates her Wikipedia entry.
If such was done, it would be using "original research" to show that she "lied about her age". The article now violates both OR and NPOV. It would be the same as if somebody found a copy of her medical records that says she is HIV+ and added that. In both cases the article should be reverted until it's reported by a "real" news organization.
So perhaps what this whole issue boils down to is "Wikipedia doesn't do investigative journalism".
On 3/21/07, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/20/07, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
Might depend on the fact. Something neutral such as "Joe Foo" lives in "Crankytown California" might me ok
Come to think about it even a normally "neutral" fact might have some POV and OR issues. Let's take "date of birth" for example...
There is an article about a notable model named "Carmen Roe".
Carmen Roe claims to be 19 years old.
Somebody digs up a copy of her birth certificate that shows that she is 26 and updates her Wikipedia entry.
If such was done, it would be using "original research" to show that she "lied about her age". The article now violates both OR and NPOV. It would be the same as if somebody found a copy of her medical records that says she is HIV+ and added that. In both cases the article should be reverted until it's reported by a "real" news organization.
So perhaps what this whole issue boils down to is "Wikipedia doesn't do investigative journalism".
There's a big difference here. Court proceedings are published, unlike birth certificates, and are certainly not confidential, like medical records. These are both published documents. How can the use of published documents, to verify that they said what they are reported to have said, be said to be "original research" or, for that matter, "investigative journalism"?
There's a big difference here. Court proceedings are published, unlike birth certificates, and are certainly not confidential, like medical records. These are both published documents. How can the use of published documents, to verify that they said what they are reported to have said, be said to be "original research" or, for that matter, "investigative journalism"?
Stating a simple fact from a simple primary source is not a problem. Putting together an entire history of a case from multiple primary sources is OR. A history is more than just the sum of the events - which events you choose to include and which you don't, how much emphasis you put on each one, etc, all change the way the reader will interpret the facts, that's what makes it OR and an NPOV violation.
On 3/21/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
There's a big difference here. Court proceedings are published, unlike birth certificates, and are certainly not confidential, like medical records. These are both published documents. How can the use of
published
documents, to verify that they said what they are reported to have said,
be
said to be "original research" or, for that matter, "investigative journalism"?
Stating a simple fact from a simple primary source is not a problem. Putting together an entire history of a case from multiple primary sources is OR. A history is more than just the sum of the events - which events you choose to include and which you don't, how much emphasis you put on each one, etc, all change the way the reader will interpret the facts, that's what makes it OR and an NPOV violation.
Yes, and there were three parts to the section. One said "the case happened", and was supported by a primary source document. Not, in my opinion, OR. The second part supplied some details, and was sourced to the party that filed (and won) the case. AFAIK, the losing party has not commented on the details of the case, but I may be wrong. There's the possibility of POV/RS issues here, but not OR. The third part was the outcome of the case, supported by the court ruling - based on a primary source, but not, in my opinion, OR.
Ron Ritzman wrote:
Come to think about it even a normally "neutral" fact might have some
POV and OR issues. Let's take "date of birth" for example...
There is an article about a notable model named "Carmen Roe".
Carmen Roe claims to be 19 years old.
Somebody digs up a copy of her birth certificate that shows that she is 26 and updates her Wikipedia entry.
If such was done, it would be using "original research" to show that she "lied about her age". The article now violates both OR and NPOV. It would be the same as if somebody found a copy of her medical records that says she is HIV+ and added that. In both cases the article should be reverted until it's reported by a "real" news organization.
There are two types of situation identified here.
In your HIV example we are dealing with a fact that was not previously included in the article. It is also a fact that could easily be viewed as derogatory. You would be right to seek stronger support before including it.
With regards to Carmen's age I'm assuming that the question of her editing her own article is not a factor, and that here _claim_ to be 19 is properly documented to be a claim. I'm also assuming that there is no direct statement that she lied about her age, and all that is really said is that her birth certificate establishes her age as 26.
It strikes me as unethical to retain information which we know to be wrong simply because the document which establishes the correct information is not in an acceptable format. If we are to remove the information about her correct age we must also remove the information about the age which we know to be false.
Ec
On 3/21/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
With regards to Carmen's age I'm assuming that the question of her editing her own article is not a factor, and that here _claim_ to be 19 is properly documented to be a claim. I'm also assuming that there is no direct statement that she lied about her age, and all that is really said is that her birth certificate establishes her age as 26.
It strikes me as unethical to retain information which we know to be wrong simply because the document which establishes the correct information is not in an acceptable format. If we are to remove the information about her correct age we must also remove the information about the age which we know to be false.
Would the information really be wrong though? We're stating that she claims she's 19. Our having direct knowledge of the fact that she's 26 does not alter the fact that she claims that she is 19, so I don't see how the inclusion of the statement is any more unethical than it was before it was verified false, so long as it is phrased "Carmen is 19 according to <insert link to interview or some other source>" and not "Carmen is 19". People lie all the time; if we quote anyone what we're quoting is only as reliable as the you would consider the person to be.
darthvader1219@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/21/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
With regards to Carmen's age I'm assuming that the question of her editing her own article is not a factor, and that here _claim_ to be 19 is properly documented to be a claim. I'm also assuming that there is no direct statement that she lied about her age, and all that is really said is that her birth certificate establishes her age as 26.
It strikes me as unethical to retain information which we know to be wrong simply because the document which establishes the correct information is not in an acceptable format. If we are to remove the information about her correct age we must also remove the information about the age which we know to be false.
Would the information really be wrong though? We're stating that she claims she's 19. Our having direct knowledge of the fact that she's 26 does not alter the fact that she claims that she is 19, so I don't see how the inclusion of the statement is any more unethical than it was before it was verified false, so long as it is phrased "Carmen is 19 according to <insert link to interview or some other source>" and not "Carmen is 19". People lie all the time; if we quote anyone what we're quoting is only as reliable as the you would consider the person to be.
Hmmm....
If the article read "Carmen claims to be 19 years old.", that would seem to be more or less stating that there is at least some question as to her age.
If her (false) birth date were listed (as is typical), with a reference to some statement she herself made, quoted from a "reliable source", but we know it to be false, how reliable is that source?
If her (false) birth date were listed without a source, and we have a source (primary) that shows it to be false, then it seems we must at least remove the incorrect and unsourced birth date.
Am, I missing a significant scenario?
-Rich
darthvader1219@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/21/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
With regards to Carmen's age I'm assuming that the question of her editing her own article is not a factor, and that here _claim_ to be 19 is properly documented to be a claim. I'm also assuming that there is no direct statement that she lied about her age, and all that is really said is that her birth certificate establishes her age as 26.
It strikes me as unethical to retain information which we know to be wrong simply because the document which establishes the correct information is not in an acceptable format. If we are to remove the information about her correct age we must also remove the information about the age which we know to be false.
Would the information really be wrong though? We're stating that she claims she's 19. Our having direct knowledge of the fact that she's 26 does not alter the fact that she claims that she is 19, so I don't see how the inclusion of the statement is any more unethical than it was before it was verified false, so long as it is phrased "Carmen is 19 according to <insert link to interview or some other source>" and not "Carmen is 19". People lie all the time; if we quote anyone what we're quoting is only as reliable as the you would consider the person to be.
As long as we need to engawge in circumlocutions to express doubt about some fundamental fact we can't consider ourselves reliable. As much as I agree in the principle of verifiable facts, there still comes a point where a strict literal interpretation of rules leaves us hoisted on our own absurdity.
Ec
On Wed, 21 Mar 2007, Ray Saintonge wrote:
It strikes me as unethical to retain information which we know to be wrong simply because the document which establishes the correct information is not in an acceptable format. If we are to remove the information about her correct age we must also remove the information about the age which we know to be false.
This, oddly, combines two threads, because this very point was one of my disagreements with WP:ATT. There was a discussion about whether attributable but false information must remain. The result... it was impossible to gain consensus for it being permissible to delete such information.
On 3/20/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Jimbo wrote:
notable to the article. No claim has been made about why this case is supposed to be interesting or relevant. It is purely a way of trying to get at the subject of the entry.
Actually, the quoted comment was posted by user:FNMF
Thomas Dalton wrote:
A WP editor just happens to find a copy of the original suit and writes about it in Joe Foo's article. Nobody anywhere else is writing about Joe Foo getting sued.
Since nobody else has written about Joe Foo getting sued, the suit itself is non notable and therefore the information in Joe Foo's article about the suit is removed by Jimbo.
No. Jimbo never mentioned notability. He removed it on OR and NPOV grounds. (Mainly NPOV, I think, the comments about OR were just to explain where the writer had gone wrong.)
To clarify then: we should avoid OR, and one of the reasons is that it leads to cases like this: where a one-sided interpretation of events, hotly disputed by the subject of the biography, events that are probably not notable, is included in the article with a plethora of statements which are documented by footnotes.
It is probably GOOD original research. But it is still original research. And it is still problematic.
--Jimbo
Guettarda wrote:
In a recent posting, Jimbo stated that anything that draws from primary sources is OR.
I said no such thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Christopher_Michael_Langan&am... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AChristopher_Michael_Langan&...