Calls to CITE are too often just smokescreen for a weak or incivil or POV argument,
And objections to CITE are sometimes just smokescreens for disagreement with the verifiability policy itself.
--- "Daniel P. B. Smith" wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
Calls to CITE are too often just smokescreen for a weak or incivil or POV argument,
And objections to CITE are sometimes just smokescreens for disagreement with the verifiability policy itself.
Indeed. And calls for verifiability are themselves sometimes just a smokescreen for pushing a POV.
-Stevertigo
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On Thu, 17 Aug 2006 19:04:17 -0700 (PDT) stevertigo vertigosteve@yahoo.com wrote:
Calls to CITE are too often just smokescreen for a weak or incivil or POV argument,
And objections to CITE are sometimes just smokescreens for disagreement with the verifiability policy itself.
Indeed. And calls for verifiability are themselves sometimes just a smokescreen for pushing a POV.
-Stevertigo
Again: The problem isn't WP:CITE. Reliability of sources and necessity of citation are purely subjective. Someone with the POV that the sky is yellow will call the NYT unreliable on the matter of sky-color, and if the NYT offers a picture of the blue sky, he'll call it fabricated and promptly find tons of evidence that the NYT used doctored pictures in the past. If scientists proclaim the sky is blue, they'll be called fringe, countered by someone saying the sky isn't blue, formulated in a confusing manner, and eventually removed in an article cleanup.
This isn't a problem you can ever hope to resolve by changing wp:cite. Its a problem intrinsic to human nature that people tend to adapt their perception of reality to their ideas of the world, rather than adapting their idea. This is because it is, psychologically, easier and cheaper to manage one's perception than to manage one's ideas of the world.
--- Dabljuh dabljuh@gmx.net wrote:
Again: The problem isn't WP:CITE...
...
If scientists proclaim the sky is blue, they'll be called fringe, countered by someone saying the sky isn't blue, formulated in a confusing manner, and eventually removed in an article cleanup.
This isn't a problem you can ever hope to resolve by changing wp:cite. Its a problem intrinsic to human nature that people tend to adapt their perception of reality to their ideas of the world, rather than adapting their idea. This is because it is, psychologically, easier and cheaper to manage one's perception than to manage one's ideas of the world.
Your perceptions are both insightful and funny, but there are a couple problems though with making such exagerrations.
For one, where does collective truthiness fit into your perception of things?
-Stevertigo
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On Fri, 18 Aug 2006 09:36:28 -0700 (PDT) stevertigo vertigosteve@yahoo.com wrote:
Your perceptions are both insightful and funny, but there are a couple problems though with making such exagerrations.
For one, where does collective truthiness fit into your perception of things?
-Stevertigo
Exaggeration? Hell no. That was NOTHING man, NOTHING!
But to your question: Apart from going seriously offtopic there, how exactly to you believe 'collective truthiness' does not fit into that scheme? The psychological cost of adapting the views rather than the perception is even higher when groupthink and peer pressure come into play.
On 18/08/06, Daniel P. B. Smith wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
Calls to CITE are too often just smokescreen for a weak or incivil or POV argument,
And objections to CITE are sometimes just smokescreens for disagreement with the verifiability policy itself.
It's worse than that. Currently the citation policy is that anything not cited can be removed at any time, without giving a reason. Given the low level of citing currently, this is a *massive* problem.
I often go back to an article, and half of it is just *gone*, and sometimes the information quoted names, dates etc. etc.. The information can be usually checked with 10 seconds flat using google. But there's *no* requirement to do even a half-assed check.
And they're completely within their rights to do that, in fact it's POLICY THAT YOU CAN DO IT AT ANY TIME.
The remaining article typically ends up biased of course. They just deleted stuff they didn't agree with, or 'sounded wrong'.
I'm considering going postal and go on a rampage through the wikipedia arbitrarily deleting stuff; you know, entire articles, paragraphs, sentences. It's not vandalism if it's a POLICY, right? ;-)
On 31/08/06, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
I often go back to an article, and half of it is just *gone*, and sometimes the information quoted names, dates etc. etc.. The information can be usually checked with 10 seconds flat using google. But there's *no* requirement to do even a half-assed check. And they're completely within their rights to do that, in fact it's POLICY THAT YOU CAN DO IT AT ANY TIME. The remaining article typically ends up biased of course. They just deleted stuff they didn't agree with, or 'sounded wrong'.
They really should be putting it on the talk page.
Leave a gentle note to that effect on the talk page of the user (you catch more flies with honey than vinegar), restoring the deletia to the talk page of the article.
I'm considering going postal and go on a rampage through the wikipedia arbitrarily deleting stuff; you know, entire articles, paragraphs, sentences. It's not vandalism if it's a POLICY, right? ;-)
Sorry, that's covered by [[WP:POINT]] ;-)
- d.
On Aug 31, 2006, at 12:08 PM, David Gerard wrote:
On 31/08/06, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
I often go back to an article, and half of it is just *gone*, and sometimes the information quoted names, dates etc. etc.. The information can be usually checked with 10 seconds flat using google. But there's *no* requirement to do even a half-assed check. And they're completely within their rights to do that, in fact it's POLICY THAT YOU CAN DO IT AT ANY TIME. The remaining article typically ends up biased of course. They just deleted stuff they didn't agree with, or 'sounded wrong'.
They really should be putting it on the talk page.
Leave a gentle note to that effect on the talk page of the user (you catch more flies with honey than vinegar), restoring the deletia to the talk page of the article.
Note also that unless it got changed again, you are specifically told not to {{cite}} tag or remove information you don't actually think might be erroneous.
Best, Phil Sandifer sandifer@english.ufl.edu
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
On 31/08/06, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Note also that unless it got changed again, you are specifically told not to {{cite}} tag or remove information you don't actually think might be erroneous.
That's inward facing though, to the person. There's way more information on the internet than in any one persons head and some of the true things will sound wrong, and they're often the very things we want to keep in the encyclopedia the most; we *want* people to learn things.
My point is that the policy should encourage at least a half-assed check. Right now it amounts to 'if it sounds wrong to me, it's ok to delete'.
(I exagerate, but not a lot.)
It's just *begging* for POV bias, conscious or unconscious.
I think we need to encourage people to check more, and add references more. It's the only way to build a better encyclopedia.
Best, Phil Sandifer sandifer@english.ufl.edu
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
On 31/08/06, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
My point is that the policy should encourage at least a half-assed check. Right now it amounts to 'if it sounds wrong to me, it's ok to delete'.
I think the problem is that if someone's inclined to act that way, what the actual words say isn't going to affect their actions a whole lot. Read [[m:Instruction creep]] to understand the fallacy of telling things to people who aren't in the mood to listen. Then ask nicely on their talk page and see if that works better to sway their opinion.
Remember: process is important, but good sense is more important.
- d.
On 31/08/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Remember: process is important, but good sense is more important.
True, but policy also needs to be good sense.
- d.
On 31/08/06, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
On 31/08/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Remember: process is important, but good sense is more important.
True, but policy also needs to be good sense.
Or, to summarise the summary of the summary, people are a problem.
- d.
On Aug 31, 2006, at 1:04 PM, David Gerard wrote:
On 31/08/06, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
On 31/08/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Remember: process is important, but good sense is more important.
True, but policy also needs to be good sense.
Or, to summarise the summary of the summary, people are a problem.
Can't we just ban their entire IP range?
Best, Phil Sandifer sandifer@english.ufl.edu
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
On 31/08/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 31/08/06, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
True, but policy also needs to be good sense.
Or, to summarise the summary of the summary, people are a problem.
Always, but at least I should have a decent policy to beat them with darnit!
- d.
On 31/08/06, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
On 31/08/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 31/08/06, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
True, but policy also needs to be good sense.
Or, to summarise the summary of the summary, people are a problem.
Always, but at least I should have a decent policy to beat them with darnit!
I found the following Arbitration Committee finding earlier this year most heartening (and not just because I was involved):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Pedophilia_u...
Admins who got deadminned for doing jawdroppingly dumb things, despite having arguably followed written process all the way. Process is important - the right amount does keep us all from killing each other - but not so important as to be an excuse for stupid.
- d.
On 8/31/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I found the following Arbitration Committee finding earlier this year most heartening (and not just because I was involved):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Pedophilia_u...
Admins who got deadminned for doing jawdroppingly dumb things, despite having arguably followed written process all the way. Process is important - the right amount does keep us all from killing each other
- but not so important as to be an excuse for stupid.
The conter to that is that if people had followed policy (in this case done nothing but talk) we wouldn't have been in that mess in the first place. On the pluss side with luck it provides a solid case for not haveing a "never revert another admins actions" rule.
David Gerard wrote:
On 31/08/06, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
On 31/08/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Remember: process is important, but good sense is more important.
True, but policy also needs to be good sense.
Or, to summarise the summary of the summary, people are a problem.
If we automate enough processes, we should be able to eliminate that problem. ;-)
By building up an adequate stock of bots, templates, rigid formats and detailed rules we can make them all go away.
Ec
Phil Sandifer wrote:
Note also that unless it got changed again, you are specifically told not to {{cite}} tag or remove information you don't actually think might be erroneous.
There should also be some sort of sanity check on how much the information matters. If someone is accused of being a pedophile with no citation, it makes sense to remove it pending one appearing. Removing something like a random uncited date of birth is quite different.
-Mark
On 8/31/06, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Note also that unless it got changed again, you are specifically told not to {{cite}} tag or remove information you don't actually think might be erroneous.
I usually use the {{cite}} tag when I read something and think "really, that's neat, how do we know this is true?" Seems to me to be exactly what it was invented for. If I actually doubt the information is true, on the other hand, I'll remove it rather than tag it.
Anthony