Charles Matthews wrote:
Further, there could hardly be a better example of how 'original research', launched by Jimbo as a way to deal with crank theories, has been spandexed as an argument.
The ever onwards and upwards stretching of what constitutes "original research" by the policy wonks is slowly starting to create problems for content creators.
Over at the Tree of Life wikiproject we like to have people upload photos of any species they don't recognise and we try to identify them before dispatching them to a suitable article. That hasn't come under threat yet as "original research" but I fear it is only a matter of time.
Pete
On 5/1/06, Pete Bartlett pcb21@yahoo.com wrote:
Over at the Tree of Life wikiproject we like to have people upload photos of any species they don't recognise and we try to identify them before dispatching them to a suitable article. That hasn't come under threat yet as "original research" but I fear it is only a matter of time.
Pete
No the issue of pictures has been raised before. It is generaly accepted that since they pretty much have to be original reseach we are not going to worry about them. I know that policy wonks appear to have replaced deletionists as the people to blame for everything but it is worth remebering that they do want to see wikipedia suceed they just see a slightly different root.
-- geni
geni wrote:
On 5/1/06, Pete Bartlett pcb21@yahoo.com wrote:
Over at the Tree of Life wikiproject we like to have people upload photos of any species they don't recognise and we try to identify them before dispatching them to a suitable article. That hasn't come under threat yet as "original research" but I fear it is only a matter of time.
No the issue of pictures has been raised before. It is generaly accepted that since they pretty much have to be original reseach we are not going to worry about them.
That's not quite what he said. He said that the identification of a species depicted in an image could be regarded as original research -- not taking the image itself. Taking an image in a zoo and noting the species that is written on the cage is different from just taking an image and having other people guess what species it might be.
Taking an image in a zoo and noting the species that is written on the cage is different from just taking an image and having other people guess what species it might be.
Good example actually. From the "by the book" perspective, the zoo picture is better because it has a label beside the cage that can be cited.
From the "ignore all rules and just create a great encyclopedia"
perspective, the in-the-wild picture is better because it shows the species in their natural habitat.
----- Original Message ---- From: geni geniice@gmail.com
I know that policy wonks appear to have replaced deletionists as the people to blame for everything but it is worth remebering that they do want to see wikipedia suceed they just see a slightly different root.
Well the deletionists have won the war so we have to move on ;).
Just because everyone wants to see Wikipedia succeed doesn't mean everyone is equally helpful to the project. After a while contributing policy becomes a lot easier than contributing content and because we are all here as hobbyists there is a natural inclination to do the easier thing whilst still "helping" Wikipedia. Thus there is a natural tendency to go down the wrong "root".
Pete
p.s. Yes I do appreciate the irony of chatting on a policy mailing list whilst moaning about policy, but it has to be done :).
On 01/05/06, Pete Bartlett pcb21@yahoo.com wrote:
Over at the Tree of Life wikiproject we like to have people upload photos of any species they don't recognise and we try to identify them before dispatching them to a suitable article. That hasn't come under threat yet as "original research" but I fear it is only a matter of time.
I don't see what's original research about this. The worst that could happen is that the label (that is, the article it's assigned to)could be inaccurate - but that could happen to any information contributed to Wikipedia. If someone later on finds a better image that they're *sure* is a Four-horned purple-bellied lizard, then they should replace the doubtful one.
Steve
On 5/2/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
I don't see what's original research about this.
It's all a matter of definition. Under some definitions, Wikipedia thrives on original research and could not exist without it. We are all researchers the moment we decide to pick a topic, study the sources, evaluate them carefully, weigh expert against expert and make decisions about what to include and what to omit, how to arrange the text, which "NPOV" terms to use, and so on.
Our original research policy does not exist without a reason, of course. It exists so we can prevent material from being added which is either obviously spurious, or which we have no means to verify. Essentially, I have always seen it as a useful supplement to [[Wikipedia:Verifiability]].
When the policy is used to remove legitimate information that is clearly correct, or to impede the daily work of contributors against all common sense, it is used against its original purpose and should be interpreted in that light. Policy is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
Erik
On 02/05/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/2/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
I don't see what's original research about this.
It's all a matter of definition. Under some definitions, Wikipedia thrives on original research and could not exist without it. We are all researchers the moment we decide to pick a topic, study the sources, evaluate them carefully, weigh expert against expert and make decisions about what to include and what to omit, how to arrange the text, which "NPOV" terms to use, and so on.
Can someone summarise the case for considering photos of Wikipedian-identified animals as OR, though? I sort of feel that, for a start, images are just decoration in any case. If an editor wanted to say "According to official sources, Green-horned Bats are only found in Transylvania, whereas this example was photographed in Gippsland" that might be one thing. But since we can't use copyrighted images, it seems absolutely necessary that we allow images taken by amateur photographers. We, or the reader, can then compare the photo to photos in published sources to confirm that they are close enough to be considered an accurate representation of the subject.
Which leads me to think: It actually doesn't matter if our photo is genuinely of a Green-horned Bat, or whether it's actually a Yellow-horned Bat with a bit of photoshop work. It is simply a representation after all.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 02/05/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/2/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
I don't see what's original research about this.
It's all a matter of definition. Under some definitions, Wikipedia thrives on original research and could not exist without it. We are all researchers the moment we decide to pick a topic, study the sources, evaluate them carefully, weigh expert against expert and make decisions about what to include and what to omit, how to arrange the text, which "NPOV" terms to use, and so on.
Can someone summarise the case for considering photos of Wikipedian-identified animals as OR, though?
I don't know any serious editor that is suggesting that photos are somehow original research - I took the original message as a sarcastic comment on the many tortured misintepretations of NOR.
It is true that identifying plants and animals from photos is a bit of a minefield - very often the key characteristic(s) distinguishing a species from all others is not visible in the photo, so one might say that that makes it "unverifiable" without other info, such as a label on a cage. On the other hand, people who've worked with ToL images on WP/commons have run into a number of cases where professional photos collected from the net are misidentified too, so it's not a problem unique to us, and I think we just need to encourage people to be conservative about id'ing (if you're not certain, back off to genus or family id), and to regularly review images for accuracy, just we would for article text.
Stan
On 02/05/06, Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
It is true that identifying plants and animals from photos is a bit of a minefield - very often the key characteristic(s) distinguishing a species from all others is not visible in the photo, so one might say that that makes it "unverifiable" without other info, such as a label on a cage. On the other hand, people who've worked with ToL
Well, I'd sort of say it doesn't matter. Take the simple case of an animal whose sex can't be distinguished without close inspection. There's no point captioning an image "Male ..." if you can't tell in the photo. Perhaps we should just use captions like "A member of the Red-horned Bat family, possible the Lesser" or something.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 02/05/06, Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
It is true that identifying plants and animals from photos is a bit of a minefield - very often the key characteristic(s) distinguishing a species from all others is not visible in the photo, so one might say that that makes it "unverifiable" without other info, such as a label on a cage. On the other hand, people who've worked with ToL
Well, I'd sort of say it doesn't matter. Take the simple case of an animal whose sex can't be distinguished without close inspection. There's no point captioning an image "Male ..." if you can't tell in the photo. Perhaps we should just use captions like "A member of the Red-horned Bat family, possible the Lesser" or something.
But if you know that, in fact, you have taken a closeup picture of the hands of your local zoo's "Gertie the Gorilla", it's unduly pedantic to limit oneself to describing the image only as "Gorilla hands". You could even be misleading, because maybe some expert knows that Gertie's hands are deformed or otherwise atypical, and so the Gertie connection is crucial to interpreting the image correctly, and to allowing that expert to fix up the article months or years after the picture was taken. (Not entirely hypothetical either, consider "Free Willy's" floppy dorsal fin that always had to be explained.)
We have plenty of disk space for uploaders to supply all the relevant facts they know, and to qualify everything they're uncertain about.
Stan
On 02/05/06, Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
We have plenty of disk space for uploaders to supply all the relevant facts they know, and to qualify everything they're uncertain about.
I agree, but are you actually proposing that all those "relevant facts" appear in the body of the article? I think every possible known factoid about the image should be kept on its image page, and only the most relevant should be brought into the article body.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 02/05/06, Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
We have plenty of disk space for uploaders to supply all the relevant facts they know, and to qualify everything they're uncertain about.
I agree, but are you actually proposing that all those "relevant facts" appear in the body of the article? I think every possible known factoid about the image should be kept on its image page, and only the most relevant should be brought into the article body.
I meant the image description page.
Stan
Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote: Essentially, I have always seen it as a useful supplement to [[Wikipedia:Verifiability]].
When the policy is used to remove legitimate information that is clearly correct, or to impede the daily work of contributors against all common sense, it is used against its original purpose and should be interpreted in that light. Policy is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
I agree about the OR-verifiability relationship. What confuses me in your statement is what you mean by "clearly correct" and "common sense". Both of these are subject to POV (and OR) if left to judgement calls. Are you restating what meets the verifiability policy with different words to help clarify or do you mean something else?~~~~Pro-Lick
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On 5/2/06, Cheney Shill halliburton_shill@yahoo.com wrote:
When the policy is used to remove legitimate information that is clearly correct, or to impede the daily work of contributors against all common sense, it is used against its original purpose and should be interpreted in that light. Policy is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
I agree about the OR-verifiability relationship. What confuses me in your statement is what you mean by "clearly correct" and "common sense". Both of these are subject to POV (and OR) if left to judgement calls. Are you restating what meets the verifiability policy with different words to help clarify or do you mean something else?~~~~Pro-Lick
No, verifiability is what it all boils down to. However, we need to remain flexible in what exactly that means. Sources which are unreliable for some statements are perfectly fine for others, e.g., a blog might be fine as a source about itself and its own history, but not necessarily about the issues it covers.
Erik
Perhaps it is better to think of OR less as a "thing" out there to be defined but as an "ideal" which will inevitably and forever present tough distinctions about what is or is not OR but in the end will hopefully develop a productive tension.
The goal of the OR policy is not to necessarily shoot everything which could potentially be OR on the spot. As has been noted many times OR can be applied to all sorts of instances -- ever act of synthesis has a little bit of OR in it. However it is only in contentious cases that the OR rule needs to be pulled out -- places where there actually are people arguing against it.
If the identification of a picture of an animal is controversial, then surely the question of OR could surface on some level. I think that would be quite healthy on the whole. OR should not, and is not (as far as I know), used to pre-emptively shoot things down which are uncontroversial.
I don't think it is necessarily useful or necessary to worry about every eventuality of what is or is not OR. There is no such thing as "Original Research" which sits out there in the world in some sort of Aristotlean ideal form, and there is no simple criteria for telling what is or is not going to be OR. This should not dismay us, nor does it invalidate it as a useful heuristic or as a regulation. 150 years of philosophers arguing on the subject have produced no definition of "science" that covers all things that people generally consider to be "science" and excludes things which people generally consider to be "non-science" (see [[problem of demarcation]] if curious), but that has not stopped it from being a productive and useful category, if an essentially contested one.
FF
On 5/2/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/2/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
I don't see what's original research about this.
It's all a matter of definition. Under some definitions, Wikipedia thrives on original research and could not exist without it. We are all researchers the moment we decide to pick a topic, study the sources, evaluate them carefully, weigh expert against expert and make decisions about what to include and what to omit, how to arrange the text, which "NPOV" terms to use, and so on.
Our original research policy does not exist without a reason, of course. It exists so we can prevent material from being added which is either obviously spurious, or which we have no means to verify. Essentially, I have always seen it as a useful supplement to [[Wikipedia:Verifiability]].
When the policy is used to remove legitimate information that is clearly correct, or to impede the daily work of contributors against all common sense, it is used against its original purpose and should be interpreted in that light. Policy is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
Erik _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l