On 10 May 2011 17:04, Scott MacDonald doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:
I've written a little essay which I think serves to illustrate the dangers of Wikipedia's tendency to create articles (and particularly BLPs) from a pastiche of newspaper articles. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Otto_Middleton_%28or_why_newspapers_a re_dubious_sources%29 It may amuse (or it may not)
Yep. Anyone who calls a newspaper a "reliable source" in terms other than comparison to even worse sources has clearly never been written about by one.
Suggestion: move the explanatory box to the top.
- d.
--- On Tue, 10/5/11, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
From: David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Otto Middleton (a morality tale) To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Tuesday, 10 May, 2011, 17:11 On 10 May 2011 17:04, Scott MacDonald doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:
I've written a little essay which I think serves to
illustrate the dangers
of Wikipedia's tendency to create articles (and
particularly BLPs) from a
pastiche of newspaper articles. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Otto_Middleton_%28or_why_newspapers_a re_dubious_sources%29 It may amuse (or it may not)
Yep. Anyone who calls a newspaper a "reliable source" in terms other than comparison to even worse sources has clearly never been written about by one.
Suggestion: move the explanatory box to the top.
A while ago there was a discussion at WP:V talk whether we should recast the policy's opening sentence:
"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth— whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true."
(As usual, the discussion came to nought.) That sentence -- whose provocative formulation has served Wikipedia well in keeping out original research -- is a big part of the problem.
A.
--- On Wed, 11/5/11, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@yahoo.com wrote:
A while ago there was a discussion at WP:V talk whether we should recast the policy's opening sentence:
"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth— whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true."
(As usual, the discussion came to nought.) That sentence -- whose provocative formulation has served Wikipedia well in keeping out original research -- is a big part of the problem.
A.
Here is how this can play out in practice. This case has been discussed for the past few days on Jimbo's talk page.
A tabloid accused a minor TV personality of cheating on his wife:
http://mail-on-sunday.vlex.co.uk/vid/romeo-strolling-aficionado-bewitching-6...
Two years later, the Telegraph states that the report was the result of poison penmanship, and that the originator, who first posted the false claim on Wikipedia, has since apologised.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/8498981/Mayfair-art-dealer-Mark-Weiss...
"For two years the subject fought to save his reputation, and his marriage, as false allegations of infidelity and financial problems were planted in newspapers and on the internet by an unidentified enemy. ... It began with alterations to his online Wikipedia entry ... After one Sunday newspaper ran the story, Mr Mould’s wife Catherine temporarily left him."
What happened in Wikipedia was that the editor trying to remove the spurious material was accused of conflict of interest, and of removing referenced material in contravention of WP:COI and WP:V policy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Philip_Mould&diff=prev&old...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Emmahenderson
What should have happened in Wikipedia is that the fact that the subject's alleged infidelity was only reported in the Daily Mail, well known for its tabloid journalism and frequent inaccuracies, should have set off an alarm bell. Rather than being defended on the basis of WP:V, the material should never have been admitted.
Our much-quoted "verifiability, not truth" mantra is partly to blame here.
As long as we instruct editors, in policy, that --
"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is *verifiability, not truth*— whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true."
we are teaching them a lazy and irresponsible mindset where they no longer have to think about the merits and real-life consequences of adding a particular bit of content. They can switch their minds off and simply respond mechanically:
"It's been published, therefore having the content is good. Anyone deleting it is a bad person. Even if it's untrue, it doesn't matter, because my job is simply to ensure that Wikipedia repeats whatever has been published."
Life requires a bit more intelligence.
Given that Wikipedia will come up as a person's first Google hit, and has a huge echo chamber effect, it's irresponsible to tell editors that truth does not matter.
The point about OR can be made without denigrating truth, and absolving ourselves of any editorial responsibility, especially when it comes to salacious stories about living people's private lives.
A.
On 5/11/11 2:40 AM, Andreas Kolbe wrote:
A while ago there was a discussion at WP:V talk whether we should recast the policy's opening sentence:
"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth— whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true."
(As usual, the discussion came to nought.) That sentence -- whose provocative formulation has served Wikipedia well in keeping out original research -- is a big part of the problem.
I think that sentence serves a good purpose in the *opposite* direction, though. An opposite common source of Wikipedia-angst is people who have good first-hand knowledge that something is both true and notable, but sadly, lack any good sources to back that up. So it's worth emphasizing up front that our criterion is verifiability as a descriptive matter, not truth and notability in some sense of absolute truth. So, some legitimately interesting and important stuff may be excluded, at least for now, because it hasn't been properly covered in any source we can cite. We just aren't the right place to do original research on a person, music group, or historical event that the existing literature has somehow missed, *even if* it's a grave oversight on the part of the existing literature. I wrote a bit more about this elsewhere: http://www.kmjn.org/notes/wikipedia_notability_verifiability.html
But it does get more problematic in the opposite direction, as you say. I see the motivation there too: there is a sense in which, if something is being discussed a lot, it becomes something we have to cover just by virtue of that fact. Meta-notability is also notability, so it would be absurd imo to claim that [[Natalee Holloway]] shouldn't be covered. Regardless of your opinion on the merits of her media coverage, she received such a large amount of it that her disappearance is an important event in early-21st-century popular culture. Heck, if we wanted *absolute* and philosophical rather than descriptive notability standards, I would delete almost every article on a 21st-century noble family as irrelevant nostalgic garbage (should anybody care who's the pretender to the French throne?).
As one of the replies to your post notes (sorry, I seem to have misplaced who it was by), one of the problems is more pragmatic. Perhaps we *should* cover some such figures, but only in a limited sense. But once we have an article, there's a slippery slope where everything tangentially related now can flood in. Perhaps that's what we should tackle, though. Is it possible to improve our methods of keeping marginal junk out of an article, while stopping short of entirely deleting and salting the article?
-Mark
Mark,
I agree that "verifiability, not truth" has done a good job in keeping out original research of the kind you describe. I just think that the situation with regard to OR is no longer what it was five years ago -- there has long been a critical mass of editors who know that Wikipedia is not the right place to add interesting bits of personal, but unpublished, knowledge.
When I started editing Wikipedia, I had to think long and hard about that sentence, "verifiability not truth", and I appreciated the insight. I just think its time has come and gone, and that it does more harm than good now.
A.
--- On Thu, 12/5/11, Mark delirium@hackish.org wrote:
From: Mark delirium@hackish.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Otto Middleton (a morality tale) To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thursday, 12 May, 2011, 22:15 On 5/11/11 2:40 AM, Andreas Kolbe wrote:
A while ago there was a discussion at WP:V talk
whether we should
recast the policy's opening sentence:
"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is
verifiability, not truth—
whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia
has already been
published by a reliable source, not whether editors
think it is true."
(As usual, the discussion came to nought.) That
sentence -- whose
provocative formulation has served Wikipedia well in
keeping out original
research -- is a big part of the problem.
I think that sentence serves a good purpose in the *opposite* direction, though. An opposite common source of Wikipedia-angst is people who have good first-hand knowledge that something is both true and notable, but sadly, lack any good sources to back that up. So it's worth emphasizing up front that our criterion is verifiability as a descriptive matter, not truth and notability in some sense of absolute truth. So, some legitimately interesting and important stuff may be excluded, at least for now, because it hasn't been properly covered in any source we can cite. We just aren't the right place to do original research on a person, music group, or historical event that the existing literature has somehow missed, *even if* it's a grave oversight on the part of the existing literature. I wrote a bit more about this elsewhere: http://www.kmjn.org/notes/wikipedia_notability_verifiability.html
But it does get more problematic in the opposite direction, as you say. I see the motivation there too: there is a sense in which, if something is being discussed a lot, it becomes something we have to cover just by virtue of that fact. Meta-notability is also notability, so it would be absurd imo to claim that [[Natalee Holloway]] shouldn't be covered. Regardless of your opinion on the merits of her media coverage, she received such a large amount of it that her disappearance is an important event in early-21st-century popular culture. Heck, if we wanted *absolute* and philosophical rather than descriptive notability standards, I would delete almost every article on a 21st-century noble family as irrelevant nostalgic garbage (should anybody care who's the pretender to the French throne?).
As one of the replies to your post notes (sorry, I seem to have misplaced who it was by), one of the problems is more pragmatic. Perhaps we *should* cover some such figures, but only in a limited sense. But once we have an article, there's a slippery slope where everything tangentially related now can flood in. Perhaps that's what we should tackle, though. Is it possible to improve our methods of keeping marginal junk out of an article, while stopping short of entirely deleting and salting the article?
-Mark
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On 12/05/2011, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@yahoo.com wrote:
Mark,
I agree that "verifiability, not truth" has done a good job in keeping out original research of the kind you describe. I just think that the situation with regard to OR is no longer what it was five years ago -- there has long been a critical mass of editors who know that Wikipedia is not the right place to add interesting bits of personal, but unpublished, knowledge.
When I started editing Wikipedia, I had to think long and hard about that sentence, "verifiability not truth", and I appreciated the insight. I just think its time has come and gone, and that it does more harm than good now.
You see I would argue precisely the opposite; I think we *should* have an Otto Middleton article where we explain that there was once a belief that this dog existed, but it has since been disproven, and link to the various sources.
That way if somebody believed in the dog, and searches for it later, the Wikipedia article would pop up and set the record straight; even if the various newspapers had deleted it from their sites out of embarassment or whatever.
And I think this is part and parcel of verifiability, not truth thing. It's a *good* idea to include things that are actually *wrong* like Otto Middleton as it gives us a place to point this out.
A.
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ian Woollard Sent: 12 May 2011 23:56 To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Otto Middleton (a morality tale)
You see I would argue precisely the opposite; I think we *should* have an Otto Middleton article where we explain that there was once a belief that this dog existed, but it has since been disproven, and link to the various sources.
That way if somebody believed in the dog, and searches for it later, the Wikipedia article would pop up and set the record straight; even if the various newspapers had deleted it from their sites out of embarassment or whatever.
And I think this is part and parcel of verifiability, not truth thing. It's a *good* idea to include things that are actually *wrong* like Otto Middleton as it gives us a place to point this out.-Ian Woollard
Ian, you've slightly missed the point of the essay. Of course an article could be written on "Otto Middleton (the hoax)". Because the story of the hoax is true and verifiable from multiple "reliable" sources. Indeed, I argued to keep it as such.
The point is that the story of "Otto the true earring-eating Dog of Kate Middleton" was also verifiable from multiple reliable sources, despite being a crock of shit. (Indeed you can find articles published as late as last week referring to "Kate's dog Otto" - despite the hoax being identified a year ago).
The points are: *stories verified from multiple newspaper sources are not always true *More importantly, the existence of "quality newspapers" reporting a story means little. Quality newspaper are often simply repeating tabloid claims under "it is reported" weasel. *The fact that an article has apparently many sources, does not preclude it being untrue in substance. *Many sources != independently reported in many sources
We tend to associate "reliable source" with the quality of the publication. So "the NYT has it, it must be reliable". We need also to look at the genre of the story within the publication itself:
*an interview with the subject, even in a tabloid, is likely to be reliable and even journalistic commentary associated with such is liable to be reliable, if story have the subject's cooperation. *statements by an expert commentator, with a reputation, in a newspaper are most likely to be reliable *gossip columns and celebrity stories on page 27 are not. Even if they are in "quality papers" - they are likely to be written by people filling column inches with little time for fact checking. Quality papers are so often going to be using material they've found elsewhere - tabloids, internet, or even Wikipedia. Watch out for "it is being said" "according to some reports" "I have been told" - or really anything written by a general journalist who is not citing a source.
Scott
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