This may have come up before so if there's a previous discussion on en or here, please direct me to it.
Do we have an official stance on using primary sources like the US census and the Social Security Death Index to prove a case of [[age fabrication]]? My take on it is that it is prohibited original research, using primary sources to disprove secondary ones, compounded by the fact that we could easily confuse the subject of the article with another person of the same or similar name.
If you want to be specific, here it is: Every published source has a birthdate of 1918 for the late psychic Jeane Dixon. However the SSDI has her birthdate as 1904 and the brother-in-law of her nephew swears on the talk page that the 1904 date is the correct one. I think the 1904 is correct, and it's frustrating because likely no journalist or historian is going to bother publishing something about such a minor matter, but my opinion is irrelevant and we should defer to published sources. Verifiability not truth and all that. Or should we IAR in cases like this and go with the "correct" date?
You could phrase it like this:
"The SSDI says 1904[source] while all these other publications say 1918[source]." Or you could discredit the reliability of the sources (which would be the right thing to do, since the SSDI is not likely to get birth dates wrong) and just say "Dixon was born in 1904.[source]"
On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 7:43 PM, Rob gamaliel8@gmail.com wrote:
This may have come up before so if there's a previous discussion on en or here, please direct me to it.
Do we have an official stance on using primary sources like the US census and the Social Security Death Index to prove a case of [[age fabrication]]? My take on it is that it is prohibited original research, using primary sources to disprove secondary ones, compounded by the fact that we could easily confuse the subject of the article with another person of the same or similar name.
If you want to be specific, here it is: Every published source has a birthdate of 1918 for the late psychic Jeane Dixon. However the SSDI has her birthdate as 1904 and the brother-in-law of her nephew swears on the talk page that the 1904 date is the correct one. I think the 1904 is correct, and it's frustrating because likely no journalist or historian is going to bother publishing something about such a minor matter, but my opinion is irrelevant and we should defer to published sources. Verifiability not truth and all that. Or should we IAR in cases like this and go with the "correct" date?
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On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 12:58 AM, James Hare messedrocker@gmail.com wrote:
You could phrase it like this:
"The SSDI says 1904[source] while all these other publications say 1918[source]." Or you could discredit the reliability of the sources (which would be the right thing to do, since the SSDI is not likely to get birth dates wrong) and just say "Dixon was born in 1904.[source]"
<snip>
Is it common to get birth years wrong by 14 years?
Carcharoth
On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 12:05 PM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.comwrote:
Is it common to get birth years wrong by 14 years?
Yes. Ask any work colleague over 60 how old they are - "Oh, I'm 40 next birthday"!
More to the point claims of older age than one has (or younger youth) may be strongly upheld all of one's life, due to credibility or advantage it brings.
Paul.
On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 7:58 PM, James Hare messedrocker@gmail.com wrote:
You could phrase it like this:
"The SSDI says 1904[source] while all these other publications say 1918[source]." Or you could discredit the reliability of the sources (which would be the right thing to do, since the SSDI is not likely to get birth dates wrong) and just say "Dixon was born in 1904.[source]"
SSDI might very well be wrong. It's worth mentioning, but shouldn't be taken as definitive.
And it's not a primary source. "In historiography, a primary source (also called original source) is a document, recording, artifact, or other source of information that was created at the time under study, usually by a source with direct personal knowledge of the events being described." Social security didn't even exist in 1904, so clearly this information was not created in 1904.
And primary sources aren't banned under OR. "Primary sources that have been reliably published (for example, by a university press or mainstream newspaper) may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them." There's nothing interpretive about this use.
Anthony wrote:
On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 7:58 PM, James Hare wrote
You could phrase it like this:
"The SSDI says 1904[source] while all these other publications say 1918[source]." Or you could discredit the reliability of the sources (which would be the right thing to do, since the SSDI is not likely to get birth dates wrong) and just say "Dixon was born in 1904.[source]"
SSDI might very well be wrong. It's worth mentioning, but shouldn't be taken as definitive.
*Any* source may be wrong, including ones with a high reputation for accuracy. Nevertheless, we have no measure of reliability for any source. Has anyone ever taken a statistically significant random sample of SSDI records and tried to determine what percentage of those records are erroneous? If that study determines that no record in a sample (greater than 100) is in error I may be able to safely hypothesize that the error rate is less than 1%. That is still not enough to say that the SSDI is error free.
And it's not a primary source. "In historiography, a primary source (also called original source) is a document, recording, artifact, or other source of information that was created at the time under study, usually by a source with direct personal knowledge of the events being described." Social security didn't even exist in 1904, so clearly this information was not created in 1904.
The requirement that Social Security Numbers of newborn children appear on a tax return is relatively recent. Before 1989 the person applied himself.
Ec
On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 12:59 PM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Anthony wrote:
And it's not a primary source. "In historiography, a primary source
(also
called original source) is a document, recording, artifact, or other
source
of information that was created at the time under study, usually by a
source
with direct personal knowledge of the events being described." Social security didn't even exist in 1904, so clearly this information was not created in 1904.
The requirement that Social Security Numbers of newborn children appear on a tax return is relatively recent. Before 1989 the person applied himself.
I thought your parents could still apply for you back then, but maybe I'm wrong. Nowadays they don't quite force you to get them but you can't claim any tax deductions/credits/etc without them. But even today I'm not sure it's a primary source. It's generally a secondary source, which is based on your birth certificate, which is the primary source. (And there are plenty of exceptions to that - not everyone has a birth certificate, after all.) It's just a bad secondary source, because it presents conclusions without backing those conclusions up with explanations.
Still, probably worthy of a mention if it contradicts others sources which are presented in the article, and isn't proven to be incorrect by any of those other sources. (But how do you come up with a hard and fast rule about that? I don't think you can.)
On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 1:11 PM, Rob gamaliel8@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 12:58 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
If they're available. But what if they're not? Is it okay to mention
that
the contradictory information exists?
I doubt you're going to come up with a hard and fast rule which doesn't
have
any unintended consequences. Ultimately, the fact that "everyone can
edit"
ensures a system of "verifiability, not truth".
You're absolutely right, availability is an issue. But if we have a hard and fast rule the other way and say sources like the SSDI are okay, then there's no incentive to look for that secondary source which does explain the issue. We might, in rare cases, settle for the SSDI if absolutely necessary, but not without a reasonable search, which in this particular case clearly hadn't been done.
Right, the problem cuts both ways. The best source, it seems, would be a reliable secondary source which details the primary sources it relies upon and explains why it has come to the conclusions it has come to about them. But that's not always available.
On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 7:43 PM, Rob gamaliel8@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
matter, but my opinion is irrelevant and we should defer to published sources. Verifiability not truth and all that. Or should we IAR in cases like this and go with the "correct" date?
You can usually punt and say "This primary source says X; these other references say Y" (with the implied: If this matters to you, go figure it out for yourself).
We should avoid false certainty, the world is a complicated and confusing case. When a question of fact is hard NPOV instructs us to take a step back and address the meta-fact instead.
We're an encyclopedia. Often sources conflict. If so, mention what both sources say. An example where this has happened in another article is here:
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Parliamentary_expenses_scandal#S...
See last para of that section. May help you. Another is here, where there is some genuine historical uncertainty to whether the matter existed or not:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin's_speech_on_August_19,_1939
Between those two, you should get some good ideas.
FT2
On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 12:43 AM, Rob gamaliel8@gmail.com wrote:
This may have come up before so if there's a previous discussion on en or here, please direct me to it.
Do we have an official stance on using primary sources like the US census and the Social Security Death Index to prove a case of [[age fabrication]]? My take on it is that it is prohibited original research, using primary sources to disprove secondary ones, compounded by the fact that we could easily confuse the subject of the article with another person of the same or similar name.
If you want to be specific, here it is: Every published source has a birthdate of 1918 for the late psychic Jeane Dixon. However the SSDI has her birthdate as 1904 and the brother-in-law of her nephew swears on the talk page that the 1904 date is the correct one. I think the 1904 is correct, and it's frustrating because likely no journalist or historian is going to bother publishing something about such a minor matter, but my opinion is irrelevant and we should defer to published sources. Verifiability not truth and all that. Or should we IAR in cases like this and go with the "correct" date?
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Adding to that:
From a Wikipedia editorial stance, stating that "date of birth" has multiple
reliable sources that conflict, is fine. Books state X, official government records state Y, both are "RS" enough to be worth citing and the difference is probably worth noting in the context of her article as well.
So state the facts. It's fine to say "source X states Y and source P states Q" or the like.
Where it becomes OR is if you then start to draw your own conclusions from it, which one is "right", etc, if you don't have a good basis to do so.
FT2
On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 2:22 AM, FT2 ft2.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
We're an encyclopedia. Often sources conflict. If so, mention what both sources say. An example where this has happened in another article is here:
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Parliamentary_expenses_scandal#S...
See last para of that section. May help you. Another is here, where there is some genuine historical uncertainty to whether the matter existed or not:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin's_speech_on_August_19,_1939
Between those two, you should get some good ideas.
FT2
On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 12:43 AM, Rob gamaliel8@gmail.com wrote:
This may have come up before so if there's a previous discussion on en or here, please direct me to it.
Do we have an official stance on using primary sources like the US census and the Social Security Death Index to prove a case of [[age fabrication]]? My take on it is that it is prohibited original research, using primary sources to disprove secondary ones, compounded by the fact that we could easily confuse the subject of the article with another person of the same or similar name.
If you want to be specific, here it is: Every published source has a birthdate of 1918 for the late psychic Jeane Dixon. However the SSDI has her birthdate as 1904 and the brother-in-law of her nephew swears on the talk page that the 1904 date is the correct one. I think the 1904 is correct, and it's frustrating because likely no journalist or historian is going to bother publishing something about such a minor matter, but my opinion is irrelevant and we should defer to published sources. Verifiability not truth and all that. Or should we IAR in cases like this and go with the "correct" date?
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On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 11:32 AM, FT2 ft2.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
From a Wikipedia editorial stance, stating that "date of birth" has multiple reliable sources that conflict, is fine. Books state X, official government records state Y, both are "RS" enough to be worth citing and the difference is probably worth noting in the context of her article as well.
Yep. I'd probably list the most commonly published one in the lede, with a footnote explaining the issue.
One place I did something slightly similar was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_McTell - see the "Note".
Steve
"Verifiability, not truth" means that sometimes we'll put in something that's verifiable but isn't true.
If you use IAR now, you'll have a hard time justifying not using it every time something's verifable-but-false. And if you do use it every time, why not just fix the rule? (Aside from "it's so easy to filibuster a rule change and people are so attached to the existing rules that it's impossible to fix them".)
On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 7:27 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
"Verifiability, not truth" means that sometimes we'll put in something that's verifiable but isn't true.
That statement gets abused. The prime exception is the "Verifyable, but untrue" case.
If it's "Verifyable, but verifyably untrue" it's easy - "Commonly used source A says X, but source B and others indicate that source A is incorrect on this point and the correct value is Y."
"Verifyable, but untrue" - where there's evidence to disprove but it's not compellingly better quality data than the untrue data - is the hard case. Either walk the narrow line and present both or pick one and defend using it, staying aware that more info may clarify the situation into the first case above.
"Verifyable, but I assert it's untrue" is a variation on "Because I said so". This is what the statement is meant for. If you assert it's untrue and you're right, you have a reason for knowing that it's untrue - you can cite what informed you. If you assert it's untrue and you have an opinion but not actual factual knowledge, your opinion is trumped by a verifyable statement, even if you legitimately think it's an untrue statement.
If you AGF about someone who thinks they might be able to find a reference to back up their opinion or memory, the best thing to do is help them do a search for reference materials to back them up. Encouraging people to dig up info and cite it solidly is good practice anyways.
Exceptions include BLP, where "I'm person Z, and that never happened to me..." does hold some weight...
On Tue, 29 Sep 2009, George Herbert wrote:
"Verifiability, not truth" means that sometimes we'll put in something that's verifiable but isn't true.
"Verifyable, but untrue" - where there's evidence to disprove but it's not compellingly better quality data than the untrue data - is the hard case. Either walk the narrow line and present both or pick one and defend using it, staying aware that more info may clarify the situation into the first case above.
The problem is that the data may actually be better quality (by non- Wikipedian standards) but not verifiable by Wikipedia standards. (Like the case of the bridge which was said in a source to have no traffic, and someone visited it and saw it has traffic. You could make up far-fetched scenarios of why the reliable source could still be correct, but it's far more likely that none of those scenarios are and that the source is simply wrong.)
"Verifyable, but I assert it's untrue" is a variation on "Because I said so". This is what the statement is meant for. If you assert it's untrue and you're right, you have a reason for knowing that it's untrue - you can cite what informed you. If you assert it's untrue and you have an opinion but not actual factual knowledge, your opinion is trumped by a verifyable statement, even if you legitimately think it's an untrue statement.
Same problem: You're assuming that "acceptable citable Wikipedia source" is equivalent to "good source of information" and that if the source cannot be cited, it's equivalent to "because I say so". Wikipedia's standards for sources do not allow some things that common sense tells us are at least as reliable as using Wikipedia-acceptable sources, like visiting a bridge yourself or using a primary source for a birthdate which contradicts a secondary source.
Exceptions include BLP, where "I'm person Z, and that never happened to me..." does hold some weight...
The only reason BLP is an exception that Argumentum ad Jimbonium is strong enough that we can ignore all the broken rules that would otherwise prevent us from doing it.
On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 6:36 AM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Tue, 29 Sep 2009, George Herbert wrote:
"Verifiability, not truth" means that sometimes we'll put in something that's verifiable but isn't true.
"Verifyable, but untrue" - where there's evidence to disprove but it's not compellingly better quality data than the untrue data - is the hard case. Either walk the narrow line and present both or pick one and defend using it, staying aware that more info may clarify the situation into the first case above.
The problem is that the data may actually be better quality (by non- Wikipedian standards) but not verifiable by Wikipedia standards. (Like the case of the bridge which was said in a source to have no traffic, and someone visited it and saw it has traffic. You could make up far-fetched scenarios of why the reliable source could still be correct, but it's far more likely that none of those scenarios are and that the source is simply wrong.)
I believe that primary source evidence, including Wikipedian fact checking (that they then publish somewhere, i.e. a video on YouTube etc) would count for impugning the reliability of a source where the source is demonstrated wrong.
Sources which appear reliable - written by people who should know what they're doing, published with fact checking by reputable publishers, etc. - have a presumption of reliability and accuracy. But that's rebuttable.
Once a valid concern about its accuracy is raised, if you can demonstrate it's not reliable, it's out. Presumption rebutted.
On the bridge example, at the very least it can demonstrate that the statement in the book of no traffic was not currently true, though it might have been at the time of the book's publication.
Some people object to such rebuttals and feel that Wikipedians should not make judgement calls on whether the sources are reliable. Those people are wrong. There is plenty of crap information out there in apparently reliable sources.
WP:RS is not a suicide pact - appearances are sometimes deceiving, and we have a complete freedom to investigate and throw out sources.
George Herbert wrote:
"Verifyable, but untrue" - where there's evidence to disprove but it's not compellingly better quality data than the untrue data - is the hard case. Either walk the narrow line and present both or pick one and defend using it, staying aware that more info may clarify the situation into the first case above.
The advantage of raising doubts by presenting both is that some yet unknown person with access to better sources may become aware of the uncertainty. Honestly admitting uncertainties improves reliability.
Ec
2009/9/30 Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net:
George Herbert wrote:
"Verifyable, but untrue" - where there's evidence to disprove but it's not compellingly better quality data than the untrue data - is the hard case. Either walk the narrow line and present both or pick one and defend using it, staying aware that more info may clarify the situation into the first case above.
The advantage of raising doubts by presenting both is that some yet unknown person with access to better sources may become aware of the uncertainty. Honestly admitting uncertainties improves reliability.
Yeah. NPOV is akin to a survey from 20,000 feet of the landscape. Mentioning all important sources is useful.
Tangentially - one example that I edited in passing is [[Thomas Crapper]] - one source, "Flushed With Pride", is a satirical biography in the style of scholarship, i.e. complete lies for the lulz - but it's such a famous source that the article actually had to address the claims in it, even though they're all fiction. It helps that Adam Hart-Davis had done much better, and that the revived Thomas Crapper company has lots of archival material.
But yeah, famous but bad sources. Gosh they're fun.
The answer to Ken's questions in this thread - don't do what's bloody stupid, even if people think you're required to by the rules. That's just silly.
- d.
On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 3:27 AM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
"Verifiability, not truth" means that sometimes we'll put in something that's verifiable but isn't true.
If you use IAR now, you'll have a hard time justifying not using it every time something's verifable-but-false. And if you do use it every time, why not just fix the rule? (Aside from "it's so easy to filibuster a rule change and people are so attached to the existing rules that it's impossible to fix them".)
Verifiability not truth is probably one of the most poorly understood expressions on the wiki.
It roughly means that we document what can be factually checked, in preference to what we "believe". Most of the time the two coincide - I believe people have lungs, and it's a fact that a wide range of very credible sources on human anatomy say they do as well. Pure unsupported (or poorly supported) belief is not, by itself, a good basis to tell the rest of the world "this is what's so". As a reference source, the mandate we have is to document information, that means not introducing our own beliefs about "whats true" too much into it.
"Write about what is verifiable, rather than what you or someone happens to believe is true" is a soundbite, a way to express that approach. We don't know 100.000% about reality, or history, or culture, or any area. We do know what credible students of reality, history and culture have concluded and without dipping into philosophy, that is what we document.
It's not fireworks and adventure. It's documenting what credible sources state, and the fact that credible sources do state those things.
IAR is the other main "poorly understood" policy ;)
FT2
On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 1:13 PM, FT2 ft2.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 3:27 AM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
"Write about what is verifiable, rather than what you or someone happens to believe is true" is a soundbite, a way to express that approach. We don't know 100.000% about reality, or history, or culture, or any area. We do know what credible students of reality, history and culture have concluded and without dipping into philosophy, that is what we document.
The soundbite I use is that "Wikipedia outsources truth". The debate about what is or isn't true is not ours but is played out amongst the various sources that we can draw upon as references.
-Liam [[witty lama]]
wittylama.com/blog Peace, love & metadata
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On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 11:29 PM, Liam Wyatt liamwyatt@gmail.com wrote:
The soundbite I use is that "Wikipedia outsources truth". The debate about what is or isn't true is not ours but is played out amongst the various sources that we can draw upon as references.
Good soundbite. :-)
-Kat
Suppose for discussion's sake we can fully trust that the brother-in-law of Jeane Dixon's nephew has indeed commented upon the matter. Relatives have been known to get their facts wrong. The more distant, the more likely a mistake.
My own cousins and I debate the spelling of a grandmother's name. And certain records are unverifiable because of warehouse fires. In a few instances I know the later records are wrong because I was present when the later data was recorded and the person who answered the questions, who was choked with grief, simply misspoke. Others who were present were jet lagged from sudden arrangements to attend the funeral and too slow to react. There's a family member who ought to have a military honor on his burial marker but doesn't, because of that. I wish I'd had the presence of mind to correct the omission when the opportunity came.
Let's go with the secondary sources here. No disrespect intended.
On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 9:08 PM, Kat Walsh kat@mindspillage.org wrote:
On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 11:29 PM, Liam Wyatt liamwyatt@gmail.com wrote:
The soundbite I use is that "Wikipedia outsources truth". The debate
about
what is or isn't true is not ours but is played out amongst the various sources that we can draw upon as references.
Good soundbite. :-)
-Kat
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On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 12:53 AM, Durova nadezhda.durova@gmail.com wrote:
Suppose for discussion's sake we can fully trust that the brother-in-law of Jeane Dixon's nephew has indeed commented upon the matter. Relatives have been known to get their facts wrong. The more distant, the more likely a mistake.
But thats not the case here: The SSDI supports the claim. True— it could just be the kind of clerical error that you find in a primary source from time to time, but it's a verifiable record.
We do our readers a service to point to the diversity of possibly credible answers and to avoid presenting false confidence.
(My position would be different if it were clear that one of the secondaries had examined the SSDI and concluded that the information was incorrect, I'm assuming that isn't the case here)
In the case of living people I think that their own sourcable claims about themselves are automatically notable and reasonable for inclusion, placed against what the external sources say. "Jim has stated that he is X[], however sources A[], B[] and C[] cite records X, Y and, Z and state he is Q" ... Some version of this position might also reasonably apply to the heirs of the deceased: That it might be interesting and notable that the children of someone all insist one thing although every reasonable source is quite confident that the truth is something else.
On Tue, 29 Sep 2009, Durova wrote:
Suppose for discussion's sake we can fully trust that the brother-in-law of Jeane Dixon's nephew has indeed commented upon the matter. Relatives have been known to get their facts wrong. The more distant, the more likely a mistake.
But that argument applies to anything. Even the kind of sources we accept have been known to get their facts wrong. "We shouldn't listen to the relatives because they might be wrong" is not just an argument for ignoring the relatives, it's one for not having Wikipedia at all.
What you have to argue is "it's far more likely that the relatives got it wrong than the reliable sources", and that's a lot harder to justify.
Durova wrote:
Suppose for discussion's sake we can fully trust that the brother-in-law of Jeane Dixon's nephew has indeed commented upon the matter. Relatives have been known to get their facts wrong. The more distant, the more likely a mistake.
Your presumption here is that the information came from "the brother-in-law of Jeane Dixon's nephew". That may very well have some weight in evaluating the information on a death certificate. The birth information in the SSDI could reasonably be from a different source: her own application for a social security number. Other official sources exist
My own cousins and I debate the spelling of a grandmother's name. And certain records are unverifiable because of warehouse fires. In a few instances I know the later records are wrong because I was present when the later data was recorded and the person who answered the questions, who was choked with grief, simply misspoke. Others who were present were jet lagged from sudden arrangements to attend the funeral and too slow to react. There's a family member who ought to have a military honor on his burial marker but doesn't, because of that. I wish I'd had the presence of mind to correct the omission when the opportunity came.
Spelling gives rise to a broad range of different errors. My own father misspelled my middle name on my birth record as "Micheal" even though his own first name was "Michael".
On census records spelling errors abound. When census takers went out to gather information in a less literate era they were left to their own devices when they had to record the name of an illiterate, particularly in the case of an immigrant whose name was in a strange tongue. Priests who performed marriages often "fixed" names to make them more consistent with community norms.
Let's go with the secondary sources here. No disrespect intended.
Leaving data from a secondary source untouched when it is in reasonable doubt is more obtuse than disrespectful. If we continue in this way we perpetuate errors, and only add fuel for those who consider Wikipedia unreliable
One secondary source that uses 1904 for Jeane Dixon's birth is IMDB, but they err in their link to her husband James Dixon. He was an acquaintance of Hal Roach, and the Dixons were married in 1939, but the linked James Dixon was *born* in 1939.
Ec
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Ray Saintonge wrote:
Durova wrote:
Suppose for discussion's sake we can fully trust that the brother-in-law of Jeane Dixon's nephew has indeed commented upon the matter. Relatives have been known to get their facts wrong. The more distant, the more likely a mistake.
Your presumption here is that the information came from "the brother-in-law of Jeane Dixon's nephew". That may very well have some weight in evaluating the information on a death certificate. The birth information in the SSDI could reasonably be from a different source: her own application for a social security number. Other official sources exist
My own cousins and I debate the spelling of a grandmother's name. And certain records are unverifiable because of warehouse fires. In a few instances I know the later records are wrong because I was present when the later data was recorded and the person who answered the questions, who was choked with grief, simply misspoke. Others who were present were jet lagged from sudden arrangements to attend the funeral and too slow to react. There's a family member who ought to have a military honor on his burial marker but doesn't, because of that. I wish I'd had the presence of mind to correct the omission when the opportunity came.
Spelling gives rise to a broad range of different errors. My own father misspelled my middle name on my birth record as "Micheal" even though his own first name was "Michael".
On census records spelling errors abound. When census takers went out to gather information in a less literate era they were left to their own devices when they had to record the name of an illiterate, particularly in the case of an immigrant whose name was in a strange tongue. Priests who performed marriages often "fixed" names to make them more consistent with community norms.
Let's go with the secondary sources here. No disrespect intended.
Leaving data from a secondary source untouched when it is in reasonable doubt is more obtuse than disrespectful. If we continue in this way we perpetuate errors, and only add fuel for those who consider Wikipedia unreliable
One secondary source that uses 1904 for Jeane Dixon's birth is IMDB, but they err in their link to her husband James Dixon. He was an acquaintance of Hal Roach, and the Dixons were married in 1939, but the linked James Dixon was *born* in 1939.
In my experience, IMDB is hugely unreliable as a secondary source, notably because the material can be edited by you and me (provided you have an account); and while it is all subject to editorial review, a good portion of the data is accepted without question.
- -- Cary Bass Volunteer Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Cary Bass wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
One secondary source that uses 1904 for Jeane Dixon's birth is IMDB, but they err in their link to her husband James Dixon. He was an acquaintance of Hal Roach, and the Dixons were married in 1939, but the linked James Dixon was *born* in 1939.
In my experience, IMDB is hugely unreliable as a secondary source, notably because the material can be edited by you and me (provided you have an account); and while it is all subject to editorial review, a good portion of the data is accepted without question.
So they suffer from the same crowd sourcing problems as Wikipedia? ;-)
If we are aware of its problems we are warned to proceed with caution. That's not entirely a knockout blow to it as a source.
Ec
On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 12:24 PM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Durova wrote:
Suppose for discussion's sake we can fully trust that the brother-in-law
of
Jeane Dixon's nephew has indeed commented upon the matter. Relatives
have
been known to get their facts wrong. The more distant, the more likely a mistake.
Your presumption here is that the information came from "the brother-in-law of Jeane Dixon's nephew". That may very well have some weight in evaluating the information on a death certificate. The birth information in the SSDI could reasonably be from a different source: her own application for a social security number. Other official sources exist
Not a presumption but a direct reference to the opening thread post. No
secondary source and no other primary confirms his assertion, according to the opening post. That's subnotable.
My own cousins and I debate the spelling of a grandmother's name. And certain records are unverifiable because of warehouse fires. In a few instances I know the later records are wrong because I was present when
the
later data was recorded and the person who answered the questions, who
was
choked with grief, simply misspoke. Others who were present were jet
lagged
from sudden arrangements to attend the funeral and too slow to react. There's a family member who ought to have a military honor on his burial marker but doesn't, because of that. I wish I'd had the presence of mind
to
correct the omission when the opportunity came.
Spelling gives rise to a broad range of different errors. My own father misspelled my middle name on my birth record as "Micheal" even though his own first name was "Michael".
I may be the only person alive who knows the original spelling of my
father's middle name (hint: if you started kindergarten in 1945 it was slightly uncool to have a name that was recognizably German).
On census records spelling errors abound. When census takers went out
to gather information in a less literate era they were left to their own devices when they had to record the name of an illiterate, particularly in the case of an immigrant whose name was in a strange tongue. Priests who performed marriages often "fixed" names to make them more consistent with community norms.
But does any census record, ever, give the 1904 birthdate? Has any
secondary source determined it was worth repeating? That would change the discussion substantially. What we're discussing is near unanimity. A single primary source from the close of her life and a putative distant relative are all that contest it. A fourteen year gap would be substantial; [[WP:UNDUE]] that isn't enough to merit coverage. Plenty of reliable small presses would run the story if the nephew's brother-in-law cares enough and has a good case to make for it.
Kat Walsh wrote:
On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 11:29 PM, Liam Wyatt liamwyatt@gmail.com wrote:
The soundbite I use is that "Wikipedia outsources truth". The debate about what is or isn't true is not ours but is played out amongst the various sources that we can draw upon as references.
Does have the slightly unfortunate implication that anyone on the site who actually knows facts could find themselved "downsized". And, of course, that we have a perfectly transparent notion of "reliable source", which would be a lie.
Charles
liamwyatt@gmail.com wrote:
The soundbite I use is that "Wikipedia outsources truth". The debate about what is or isn't true is not ours but is played out amongst the various sources that we can draw upon as references.
Kat Walsh kat@mindspillage.org wrote:
Good soundbite. :-)
Very good in fact. But there is a sort of paradox that exists between the free culture we export and the proprietary culture our exports are actually based on. There is a nice balance there, but still, think now of all those "truth-based" jobs that are getting "outsourced" to other entities -- particularly the ethnic, commercial, and political ones.
-Stevertigo
On Wed, 30 Sep 2009, FT2 wrote:
Verifiability not truth is probably one of the most poorly understood expressions on the wiki.
It roughly means that we document what can be factually checked, in preference to what we "believe".
Unfortunately, "roughly" isn't "precisely".
This argument started with a verifiable-but-false claim which was factually checked, but where we're not allowed to use the result of the fact-checking (since it was a primary source and secondary sources take preference). The covered bridge example was also one ("I fact-checked the source by looking at the bridge. The source was wrong." is not acceptable.)
On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 2:42 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
Unfortunately, "roughly" isn't "precisely".
This argument started with a verifiable-but-false claim which was factually checked, but where we're not allowed to use the result of the fact-checking (since it was a primary source and secondary sources take preference). The covered bridge example was also one ("I fact-checked the source by looking at the bridge. The source was wrong." is not acceptable.)
You're mistaken about sourcing, I think. I'll try for a simple lay-description of a complex subject needing judgment:
Information comes in a variety of forms. Some information anyone can verify for themselves (in principle). It's factual, it's presented to the senses, it requires no interpretation or analysis, it is what it is.
A photocopy of my passport is a piece of paper that appears to be a photocopy of a passport and contains a picture, and anyone can agree on that. The Declaration of Independence in the National Archives contains the words "We hold these truths to be self-evident". The Golden Gate bridge crosses water. My birth certificate states a given date. Dickens' book "Bleak House" focuses on a legal dispute and its consequences and is narrated in part by character Esther Summerson. There are 13 stripes and 50 stars on the American flag.
These are primary sources (in Wikipedia terms), they are what they are, and any reasonable person with access can verify and agree.
Other sources are opinions, analysis, research and conclusions. We don't get into this area, we defer to what we conclude or believe to be experts and credible sources, and document the main opinions/views/beliefs that exist in the world.
So the resolution of your question above is, if anyone could in principle check it without analysis, just by witnessing the object or document and attesting it says what it says (or is what it is, or has certain obvious qualities), then that's verifiable. If it would need analysis, interpretation or deduction to form the view, so that some views might be credible/expert and some might not, then we don't try to "play the expert" here, we look at what credible sources/experts say instead.
So yes, you can look at the bridge. Anyone can. That would in principle suffice for something that anyone could check and anyone agree upon -- obvious, clear, blatant, unambiguous, verifiable. Because reliable sources are expected to be correct, if it's contradicted by sources, then other editors will require some kind of evidence that the bridge does truly have those obvious attributes, that any visitor could clearly see, not just "some Wikipedian says so".
FT2
On Wed, 30 Sep 2009, FT2 wrote:
So the resolution of your question above is, if anyone could in principle check it without analysis, just by witnessing the object or document and attesting it says what it says (or is what it is, or has certain obvious qualities), then that's verifiable. If it would need analysis, interpretation or deduction to form the view, so that some views might be credible/expert and some might not, then we don't try to "play the expert" here, we look at what credible sources/experts say instead.
1) That doesn't seem to be actual Wikipedia policy.
2) It's always possible to come up with some farfetched scenario where the direct observation is wrong, "proving" that you need analysis, interpretation, or deduction every single time. "Maybe the bridge was opened one day for a special festival and it's usually closed to traffic." "Maybe the document states a false date for some legal reason that you, not being an expert, wouldn't know about". Heck, this happened right now; someone basically suggested "maybe the family members recall the date incorrectly" (even though it wasn't just family members).
On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 1:53 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Wed, 30 Sep 2009, FT2 wrote:
So the resolution of your question above is, if anyone could in principle check it without analysis, just by witnessing the object or document and attesting it says what it says (or is what it is, or has certain obvious qualities), then that's verifiable. If it would need analysis, interpretation or deduction to form the view, so that some views might be credible/expert and some might not, then we don't try to "play the expert" here, we look at what credible sources/experts say instead.
That doesn't seem to be actual Wikipedia policy.
It's always possible to come up with some farfetched scenario where the
direct observation is wrong, "proving" that you need analysis, interpretation, or deduction every single time. "Maybe the bridge was opened one day for a special festival and it's usually closed to traffic." "Maybe the document states a false date for some legal reason that you, not being an expert, wouldn't know about". Heck, this happened right now; someone basically suggested "maybe the family members recall the date incorrectly" (even though it wasn't just family members).
An example of the kinds of problems you bump into when depending on primary sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Swampyank&diff=prev&...
But there should be no problem under policy for pointing out BOTH what a respectable primary source says along with disagreeing secondary sources. If any policy says otherwise it should be fixed.
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
An example of the kinds of problems you bump into when depending on primary sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Swampyank&diff=prev&...
But there should be no problem under policy for pointing out BOTH what a respectable primary source says along with disagreeing secondary sources. If any policy says otherwise it should be fixed.
Is there a _primary_ source for a date of birth beyond a birth certificate or other official registration? Seems to me that dragging "thou shalt not quote primary sources" into arguments is more likely a source of confusion than of clarification. Just because we don't want people doing original research of a tendentious sort from primary sources that need interpretative care and publishing it on Wikipedia, it doesn't mean that we have always to wait for a secondary source to copy across straight data.
Charles
Ken Arromdee wrote:
On Wed, 30 Sep 2009, FT2 wrote:
So the resolution of your question above is, if anyone could in principle check it without analysis, just by witnessing the object or document and attesting it says what it says (or is what it is, or has certain obvious qualities), then that's verifiable. If it would need analysis, interpretation or deduction to form the view, so that some views might be credible/expert and some might not, then we don't try to "play the expert" here, we look at what credible sources/experts say instead.
- That doesn't seem to be actual Wikipedia policy.
One of the functions of IAR is to protect us from becoming slaves to policy that leads us to information which defies common sense or which leads us into absurdities.
Ec
On Wed, 30 Sep 2009, Ray Saintonge wrote:
- That doesn't seem to be actual Wikipedia policy.
One of the functions of IAR is to protect us from becoming slaves to policy that leads us to information which defies common sense or which leads us into absurdities.
IAR is only useful when everyone agrees that what you want to do is common sense. If there's any conflict about it, IAR is pretty much worthless--that is, it's worthless exactly when you need it. And Wikipedia is peppered with conflicts where rule wonks always want you to follow rules, and quoting IAR to them means you lose.
And as I pointed out, if you need IAR to make a rule not totally break things in the cases where the rule matters--that's really a sign that you should just fix the rule, rather than quoting IAR. Of course, rules are nearly impossible to fix (except by abusing other rules).
Policies and rules don't work that way, exactly. They're a bit "zen", they point to the moon, but they aren't the moon themselves. if you want a formal policy that everyone /must/ follow, then 5 pillars, or WP:CLUE are in some ways more speaking to the spirit of things, rather than the detail of it.
No written page can capture the full precise black and white version, because there isn't such a thing. We fix it to get fairly close on big stuff, and hope people figure out the small stuff on their own, or by seeing how others react to their trying things out.
If you try and run Wikipedia literally "by the policies" (including IAR) but not the spirit, you'll get close but there will regularly be areas you'll miss the point, the "what a clueful person might intuit" (which will surely be divergent with others!)
FT2
On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 11:20 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Wed, 30 Sep 2009, Ray Saintonge wrote:
- That doesn't seem to be actual Wikipedia policy.
One of the functions of IAR is to protect us from becoming slaves to policy that leads us to information which defies common sense or which leads us into absurdities.
IAR is only useful when everyone agrees that what you want to do is common sense. If there's any conflict about it, IAR is pretty much worthless--that is, it's worthless exactly when you need it. And Wikipedia is peppered with conflicts where rule wonks always want you to follow rules, and quoting IAR to them means you lose.
And as I pointed out, if you need IAR to make a rule not totally break things in the cases where the rule matters--that's really a sign that you should just fix the rule, rather than quoting IAR. Of course, rules are nearly impossible to fix (except by abusing other rules).
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Getting back Dixon, I've found an article about "offbeat attractions" in Virginia which was published in the "Roanoke Times and World News" that says:
Displays lead you from Dixon's birth in Wisconsin in 1904** (she liked to say it was 1918), through her short singing career, her marriage and her meetings with presidents and celebrities. You can hear an audio clip of Dixon making a prediction, view her notes on Nostradamus' forecasts and see her ornate, gold-crowned bed that once belonged to French Empress Eugenie.
-Sarah
On 30/09/2009, FT2 ft2.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Policies and rules don't work that way, exactly. They're a bit "zen", they point to the moon, but they aren't the moon themselves. if you want a formal policy that everyone /must/ follow, then 5 pillars, or WP:CLUE are in some ways more speaking to the spirit of things, rather than the detail of it.
No written page can capture the full precise black and white version, because there isn't such a thing. We fix it to get fairly close on big stuff, and hope people figure out the small stuff on their own, or by seeing how others react to their trying things out.
If you try and run Wikipedia literally "by the policies" (including IAR) but not the spirit, you'll get close but there will regularly be areas you'll miss the point, the "what a clueful person might intuit" (which will surely be divergent with others!)
In my experience the problems are usually more to do with people not following policies. It's precisely the people that *think* they understand the wikipedia that usually become deletionists or inclusionists.
FT2
Ian Woollard wrote:
On 30/09/2009, FT2 ft2.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Policies and rules don't work that way, exactly. They're a bit "zen", they point to the moon, but they aren't the moon themselves. if you want a formal policy that everyone /must/ follow, then 5 pillars, or WP:CLUE are in some ways more speaking to the spirit of things, rather than the detail of it.
No written page can capture the full precise black and white version, because there isn't such a thing. We fix it to get fairly close on big stuff, and hope people figure out the small stuff on their own, or by seeing how others react to their trying things out.
If you try and run Wikipedia literally "by the policies" (including IAR) but not the spirit, you'll get close but there will regularly be areas you'll miss the point, the "what a clueful person might intuit" (which will surely be divergent with others!)
In my experience the problems are usually more to do with people not following policies. It's precisely the people that *think* they understand the wikipedia that usually become deletionists or inclusionists.
I don't know, I tend to find deletionists and inclusionists are the ones who tend to follow policy to the "very" letter. "But you're forgetting the editing policy says we should preserve information", usually countered by deletionists stating that "Wikipedia is not the place for indiscriminate information". Most everyone else knows the truth is actually found in the debate, which focuses on the merits of the content. Anyone not interested in being an extremist will almost always reach a consensus. The trouble is, we've gotten so used to cramming our arguments with [[WP:THIS]] that we've made it hard to separate the good, the bad and the ugly.
On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 3:04 AM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
It's precisely the people that *think* they understand the wikipedia that usually become deletionists or inclusionists.
Read carefully:
"...WP:CLUE in some ways more speak[s] to the spirit of things..."
Same point. And agreed that it is infuriatingly vague in a way, to some people, because something not written can matter more than the words on the page.
FT2
The reason I balk at using the SSDI or the census is I don't think we should be using primary sources in this manner. There are numerous pitfalls, including many errors of spelling and fact, to using these sources. Historians and journalists should be evaluating these sources, not us. In this particular case, editors are using a primary source to disprove reliable secondary sources, which are plentiful and unanimous (until now, see below) when it comes to the birthdate. Isn't this the kind of primary source research that we always discourage Wikipedians from doing?
The fact that original secondary sources were wrong in this case is immaterial. Errors in secondary sources should be a reason to dig up more secondary sources, not to make a point using primary ones. In my initial message I expressed doubt that a historian or journalist would ever write about such a minor point. I was wrong; the relative posted a link to a Fortean Times article which cited as sources for the real birthdate a newspaper article from the 70s and a biography of Dixon. When I get my hands on those through the magic of interlibrary loan, I'll update the article accordingly. This has convinced me that we shouldn't be using those primary sources. It's tempting, certainly. An editor can just type a name into the SSDI webpage or a census database and say "I've done research!". That's easy, but tracking down decades-old articles and biographies requires going to the library or having a familiarity with databases you can only find in a library. But that's the kind of hard work we should be doing.
On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 1:21 AM, Rob gamaliel8@gmail.com wrote:
The reason I balk at using the SSDI or the census is I don't think we should be using primary sources in this manner. There are numerous pitfalls, including many errors of spelling and fact, to using these sources. Historians and journalists should be evaluating these sources, not us. In this particular case, editors are using a primary source to disprove reliable secondary sources, which are plentiful and unanimous (until now, see below) when it comes to the birthdate. Isn't this the kind of primary source research that we always discourage Wikipedians from doing?
It's worth drawing the distinction between a secondary source which explains its disagreement with a notable primary source from one which doesn't.
If the secondary sources provide uncontroversial cause for believing the SSDI (a notable and relevant primary source) to be incorrect in this case, then it may well be best to not even mention the SSDI data. But if no reliable source gives us an objective reason for the primary data to be considered incorrect, beyond mere inconsistency, it would only be reasonable for the article to disclose the disagreement without taking a position ('however, the SSDI states X').
Stated generally, in a form suitable for a policy page:
Although we believe secondary sources (Works which relate or discuss information originally presented elsewhere) to be more reliable than primary sources, they are still often incorrect. One cause for errors in a secondary source is that its author was unaware of an important primary source. A secondary source which fails to explain its disagreement with an obvious primary source was either created without considering that source or fails to be thorough scholarship, and mere disagreement with such a secondary source cannot be sufficient reason to believe the primary source is incorrect.
Where no source can be found stating that a particular primary source is incorrect, we can not know (in any source-tractable manner) whether that primary source is correct. Since we do not know, we should not take any position on its correctness. Presuming that the primary source in question is uncontroversially relevant and sufficiently notable, using it in the form of a mere statement of fact is the more neutral action. An intentional omission of a relevant and notable primary source would be a value judgment which, in the absence of a sourceable cause, NPOV philosophically prohibits us from making.
On Fri, 2 Oct 2009, Rob wrote:
The fact that original secondary sources were wrong in this case is immaterial. Errors in secondary sources should be a reason to dig up more secondary sources, not to make a point using primary ones.
Wikipedia is already full of places where people are required to jump through hoops merely because that's what the rules require, even if it doesn't actually help. This is another one.
Searching far and wide to find a secondary source that quoted the primary source gains you *nothing* except compliance with Wikipedia rules. The secondary source isn't going to do any better fact-checking than you did when you just looked at the primary source directly--it just fills a rules requirement.
On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 2:21 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Fri, 2 Oct 2009, Rob wrote:
The fact that original secondary sources were wrong in this case is immaterial. Errors in secondary sources should be a reason to dig up more secondary sources, not to make a point using primary ones.
Wikipedia is already full of places where people are required to jump through hoops merely because that's what the rules require, even if it doesn't actually help. This is another one.
No it's not. If the you've understood a rule as some formality that you must comply with when it clearly does not help you've misunderstood something. (Either the rule, the applicability of the rule, or that it helps; Even a poorly drafted rule can't bind you to pointless mechanisations: thats part of the core purpose of WP:IAR)
Searching far and wide to find a secondary source that quoted the primary source gains you *nothing* except compliance with Wikipedia rules. The secondary source isn't going to do any better fact-checking than you did when you just looked at the primary source directly--it just fills a rules requirement.
If a secondary source isn't a synthesis and analysis of primary source material, then it's not really a secondary source.
There is a lot of primary source material which is simply data: Stuff that has almost no sanity checking. "Number of votes cast. District 413: -32768". A decent secondary source, written by people familiar with the limitations of the primary material and with consideration of the available data and scholarship, is that sanity checking.
Part of your confusion probably stems from that fact that wikipedians often treat news reports like secondary sources. Good reporting is a kind of scolarship, but good reporting is rare. More often news reporting is just a lossy regurgitation of primary source material (or wikipedia!) or even just barely informed speculation. But thats a problem with Wikipedia's misunderstanding the general worthlessness of news-media, not a problem with preferring secondary sources over primary sources. The whole notion of distinct classes of "primary source" and "secondary source" doesn't map especially well. To the extent that something is raw or unreviewed and otherwise single sourced it should be less preferred to references which are a synthesis from multiple sources, reviewed, and generally consisting of digested knowledge rather than raw facts.
It's great to provide people with maximal access to primary source material, but the obvious conclusions drawn from it can be wrong this is why we need to reference scholarship rather than just tables of facts. An example I like of an uninformed analysis of the primary source material being misleading is http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/187/4175/398
On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 4:46 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
If the you've understood a rule as some formality that you must comply with when it clearly does not help you've misunderstood something. (Either the rule, the applicability of the rule, or that it helps; Even a poorly drafted rule can't bind you to pointless mechanisations: thats part of the core purpose of WP:IAR)
I'm not sure about that. The rule against original research is a good example of a rule to which IAR can't really apply - at least not in all situations. The rule is there to protect the encyclopedia from crackpots. But no one thinks they're a crackpot. So if you have an exception for original research which improves the encyclopedia, you might as well not have the rule in the first place.
If a secondary source isn't a synthesis and analysis of primary source
material, then it's not really a secondary source.
[snip]
Part of your confusion probably stems from that fact that wikipedians
often treat news reports like secondary sources. Good reporting is a kind of scolarship, but good reporting is rare. More often news reporting is just a lossy regurgitation of primary source material (or wikipedia!) or even just barely informed speculation. But thats a problem with Wikipedia's misunderstanding the general worthlessness of news-media, not a problem with preferring secondary sources over primary sources. The whole notion of distinct classes of "primary source" and "secondary source" doesn't map especially well.
Right on. Very well put.
On Fri, 2 Oct 2009, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
No it's not. If the you've understood a rule as some formality that you must comply with when it clearly does not help you've misunderstood something.
That's how rules actually work in Wikipedia. Ignoring a rule--especially a rule about sourcing--is going to get you pounced upon by rule mongers. And in a dispute, the rule mongers are always right. It doesn't matter if the rule actually does any good.
You're talking about an ideal Wikipedia and I'm talking about the one we're stuck with.
A decent secondary source, written by people familiar with the limitations of the primary material and with consideration of the available data and scholarship, is that sanity checking.
In that case, it's not a (decent) secondary source at all, and the initial idea--that there are no secondary sources--was correct.
The idea that a newspaper article that quotes the date from the primary source is going to do any more sanity checking than you would... isn't true. It's a legal fiction, or we might say, a rules fiction. We pretend that the source will do more checking... but we're just pretending, because we have a rule which says "secondary sources are better because they check things", and the rule has to be true.
On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 12:00 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Fri, 2 Oct 2009, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
No it's not. If the you've understood a rule as some formality that you must comply with when it clearly does not help you've misunderstood something.
That's how rules actually work in Wikipedia. Ignoring a rule--especially a rule about sourcing--is going to get you pounced upon by rule mongers. And in a dispute, the rule mongers are always right. It doesn't matter if the rule actually does any good.
You're talking about an ideal Wikipedia and I'm talking about the one we're stuck with.
Funny— It's worked for me many many times. I think you're overemphasizing the corner cases where it fails. It's only natural, 999 out of 1000 times something works fine, people are going to remember the one time where it blew up in their face. Most edits don't provide source data, most aren't reverted... Doesn't mean that the system doesn't need to be improved, but it's not helpful to characterize it as always failing to do the right thing.
(or perhaps you should try editing in a less contentious area, or stop pushing a fringe viewpoint… if either of those things apply to you, your experience would be understandably different from average)
A decent secondary source, written by people familiar with the limitations of the primary material and with consideration of the available data and scholarship, is that sanity checking.
In that case, it's not a (decent) secondary source at all, and the initial idea--that there are no secondary sources--was correct.
The idea that a newspaper article that quotes the date from the primary source is going to do any more sanity checking than you would... isn't true.
[snip]
In this context, the secondary source is "I found a reference to a newspaper article which quotes the date". It's not going to discuss the conflict the way you describe--it's just more acceptable because it better fits the rule.
So I went to some effort in a previous message to slam newsmedia as a secondary source. It usually isn't in any meningful way. But the problem there is the misguided belief that it is, not the preference for secondary sources.
I don't know how it is outside of the US, but primary education in the US places news media (and encyclopaedias!) as high quality sources of digested information. When I first got access to a university library (along with journals, and specialist reference works) it was a incredibly eye opening experience for me. I expect that as more references works become accessible online along with open access journals people will recognize that newspapers are not usually good secondary sources and the norms on Wikipedia will change... but that will take time.
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 12:00 PM, Ken Arromdee wrote:
The idea that a newspaper article that quotes the date from the primary source is going to do any more sanity checking than you would... isn't true.
[snip]
In this context, the secondary source is "I found a reference to a newspaper article which quotes the date". It's not going to discuss the conflict the way you describe--it's just more acceptable because it better fits the rule.
So I went to some effort in a previous message to slam newsmedia as a secondary source. It usually isn't in any meningful way. But the problem there is the misguided belief that it is, not the preference for secondary sources.
I don't know how it is outside of the US, but primary education in the US places news media (and encyclopaedias!) as high quality sources of digested information. When I first got access to a university library (along with journals, and specialist reference works) it was a incredibly eye opening experience for me. I expect that as more references works become accessible online along with open access journals people will recognize that newspapers are not usually good secondary sources and the norms on Wikipedia will change... but that will take time.
That's an interesting observation. News media and encyclopedias are easily accessible sources, but the people who depend on them don't even take the next step of going to popular weeklies like "Time" which at least goes beyond the immediacy of the daily newspaper. Those who have used a university library know what you mean, but one can't escape the fact that the majority does not go to university, and that a significant proportion of those who do attend a post-secondary institution do their best to avoid going to the library, and only attend there under severe duress. Having open access to journals is only a part of the battle; grokking there importance also needs too be better communicated.
Ec
Quite apart from the incredible range available from a research library, the great majority of Wikipedians, even experienced ones, do not use even those sources which are made available free from local public libraries to residents. Many seem not to even think about using anything free on the internet except that reachable through the Googles. if Google News reports a newspaper or magazine behind a pay wall, they do not even think of looking for it in other databases or web sites that they may have available. (I'm judging from experience at AfD and other rescues. Many of the relatively few dedicated article writers, non-academic as well as academic, are of course very competent at research in their areas, and I frequently learn about resources new to me when they join in a discussion. )
None of this surprises me -- I've seen it in other settings. it's the challenge of the library profession that we have not found a way to get people to use any resources they are not thoroughly familiar with.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 8:32 PM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 12:00 PM, Ken Arromdee wrote:
The idea that a newspaper article that quotes the date from the primary source is going to do any more sanity checking than you would... isn't true.
[snip]
In this context, the secondary source is "I found a reference to a newspaper article which quotes the date". It's not going to discuss the conflict the way you describe--it's just more acceptable because it better fits the rule.
So I went to some effort in a previous message to slam newsmedia as a secondary source. It usually isn't in any meningful way. But the problem there is the misguided belief that it is, not the preference for secondary sources.
I don't know how it is outside of the US, but primary education in the US places news media (and encyclopaedias!) as high quality sources of digested information. When I first got access to a university library (along with journals, and specialist reference works) it was a incredibly eye opening experience for me. I expect that as more references works become accessible online along with open access journals people will recognize that newspapers are not usually good secondary sources and the norms on Wikipedia will change... but that will take time.
That's an interesting observation. News media and encyclopedias are easily accessible sources, but the people who depend on them don't even take the next step of going to popular weeklies like "Time" which at least goes beyond the immediacy of the daily newspaper. Those who have used a university library know what you mean, but one can't escape the fact that the majority does not go to university, and that a significant proportion of those who do attend a post-secondary institution do their best to avoid going to the library, and only attend there under severe duress. Having open access to journals is only a part of the battle; grokking there importance also needs too be better communicated.
Ec
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David Goodman wrote:
Quite apart from the incredible range available from a research library, the great majority of Wikipedians, even experienced ones, do not use even those sources which are made available free from local public libraries to residents. Many seem not to even think about using anything free on the internet except that reachable through the Googles. if Google News reports a newspaper or magazine behind a pay wall, they do not even think of looking for it in other databases or web sites that they may have available.
David's issue here is something he describes as familiar generally to librarians. It does seem to me to be a hybrid of that one (leading the horse to the reference library water is not the same as having the horse drink), with another one. Tim Berners-Lee is apparently interested in the [[Deep Web]], which is to a first approximation what you can't Google for, but is out there. One clear cause is online databases, where if the webcrawler can't think up a good query, the potential web page answer won't get reported.
I was thinking about this more obliquely, because of my current interests: another couple of causes occur to me. There are texts online which are reference material, but need proof-reading (tell me about it) before the text is accurate enough for the search term to be there "in clear". And (as I found out just now) there are texts online that are downloads that are huge files. I've just looked at a PDF that is over 500 Mb. Both these issues are obvious to me as user of archive.org. There is a route for information to migrate onto the Web as
book -> scan -> post to archive.org.
Which is fruitful and gets it "out there". It happens that for reference information our model is more useful by a factor of at least 1000 (you can check the figures for archive.org downloads).
So, the deeper Web needs "dredging" work before such things turn up on most people's first page of search engine hits. I'd quite agree with David that simply using the "shallow Web" and moving information from one part of it to another is not the only thing research for WP should be about. It seems to me that during Wikipedia's second decade we'll need to become more thoughtful about what is involved. (In Wikisource terms, for example, it would be great to see development of that project as the "reference Commons", matching the function the Commons serves for media files. But that's a potentially divisive idea, since it is already a "free library" with its own mission.)
Charles
David Goodman wrote:
Quite apart from the incredible range available from a research library, the great majority of *Wikipedians,* even experienced ones, do not use even those sources which are made available free from local public libraries to residents.
Do these libraries *digitize* their books and make them available online? The paradigm shift is relevant: A keydrive full of PDFs is *so much easier to skateboard around with than a backpack full of wood industry products.
-Stevertigo "and you who judge your freedom...
If they are not in copyright, Open Libraries Intiiative and Google Books are doing quite nicely; David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 8:52 PM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
David Goodman wrote:
Quite apart from the incredible range available from a research library, the great majority of *Wikipedians,* even experienced ones, do not use even those sources which are made available free from local public libraries to residents.
Do these libraries *digitize* their books and make them available online? The paradigm shift is relevant: A keydrive full of PDFs is *so much easier to skateboard around with than a backpack full of wood industry products.
-Stevertigo "and you who judge your freedom...
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Most major research libraries are engaged in digitization projects, at least for their out-of-copyright material, via either Google Book Search, the Open content Alliance, or various similar projects. this will of course make it much easier to deal with this material online--it is already quite a bit easier than 2 years ago.
In-copyright material is quite another matter. See the WP articles on Google Books Library Project and on Google Book Search Settlement Agreement, which would need to be 100 X longer to really explain the complexities involved. A good deal of this material is in digital form, or soon will be, but is not going to be available outside libraries to the general public until copyright expires or the copyright legislation is greatly altered. Public libraries will have some of the material, but probably not much of it outside the library building.
That most of us here regard this situation deplorable does not affect the reality of it. Much material is sufficiently expensive to produce that until there are arrangements to subsidize the production, they cannot be realistically expected to be free for the reading. for the problems involved, see the WP article on Open Access.
As for PDFs, consider 1/the amount of apparatus required to use them as compared with that required to use printed books. Several more iteration of and 2/the general preference of print for extensive reading over any available electronic device--this may be a temporary limitation, but we are talking about here and now, not 5 or 10 years from now. Many university presses expect to make most of their income from print on demand services. Personally, if I want to read a paper from a journal I read it on screen; if I want to store a copy, I store the pdf; if I want to really study it, I print it out. (3 years ago I would store that printed copy, often in addition to the pdf, but I no longer do, for I can always print another. ) Most 20 year olds I know read them all on screen, so yes, there is a paradigm shift there.
I could talk about this for days, & I have been known to do so.
Charles wrote:
book -> scan -> post to archive.org.
David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
If they are not in copyright, Open Libraries Intiiative and Google Books are doing quite nicely;
This is of course the right idea, but to rely on these negates what WP:RS means: Outside of online published papers and pre-1920's works, "reliable" sources are almost always "copyrighted" sources (in fact that deals with two of WP's most interesting paradoxes). It's not a big deal to copy a block text in from a magazine that's handy, but put that same magazine online (to simply make it digitized, searchable, and shareable -- typical modern conveniences) and it somehow becomes some kind of issue of global criminality.
Most major research libraries are engaged in digitization projects, at least for their out-of-copyright material, In-copyright material is quite another matter. That most of us here regard this situation deplorable does not affect the reality of it. Much material is sufficiently expensive to produce that until there are arrangements to subsidize the production, they cannot be realistically expected to be free for the reading. for the problems involved, see the WP article on Open Access.
Well the WP:SOHE idea to me seems a reasonable compromise -- one that makes small parts of copyright texts open to our research needs, while still respecting the needs of authors to keep whole works marketable. No doubt our usage increases their sales, so there's a winning prospect for creators. And sharing passages from the better books means that we won't have to quote the lesser ones, or rely exclusively on those who own copies to deal with the article. The commercial world is, in fact, a bottleneck to NPOV.
Our main reading audience *is those '20 year olds.' And younger. So what we are talking about is increasing our dimensions of freedom to collaborative not just in the task of writing articles, but in sharing sources that make those articles better. That book on your shelf is useless to us unless its in the hands of someone who's right now energetic and interested enough to deal with it and write about it. LibraryThing doesn't quite facilitate what we need in terms of a generalized interface, still it's basic concept is entirely relevant here.
-Stevertigo "a big bouquet of cactus...
On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 5:37 AM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
Well the WP:SOHE idea to me seems a reasonable compromise -- one that makes small parts of copyright texts open to our research needs, while still respecting the needs of authors to keep whole works marketable.
WP:SOHE being the page that you wrote recently:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sourcehelpers
"A nearly identical concept at Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange (consisting of shared resources and resource requests) while expansive, is fairly inactive."
Did you not think of trying to make Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange more active, rather than starting a new page and a new proposal?
Carcharoth
Carcharoth wrote:
On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 5:37 AM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
Well the WP:SOHE idea to me seems a reasonable compromise -- one that makes small parts of copyright texts open to our research needs, while still respecting the needs of authors to keep whole works marketable.
WP:SOHE being the page that you wrote recently:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sourcehelpers
"A nearly identical concept at Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange (consisting of shared resources and resource requests) while expansive, is fairly inactive."
Did you not think of trying to make Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange more active, rather than starting a new page and a new proposal?
I don't care that much where WP:DREDGE ends up redirecting. I rhink we may still be at an early stage of conceptualising the useful "dredging" that needs to go on.
For free texts, this currently looks like an internal Wikisource debate, which is why I was a bit guarded in discussing it. For "fair use" texts thre is sn obvious issue whcich is that fair use is determined to an extent by issues of context (or in other words it isn't a matter of delegating collection to a Wikiquote or clone). For database querying, unless the database is free/open, there are obvious issues about how useful it would be for verification. You'd have thought it would anyway be part of fact-checking in some cases, but the "age fabrication" thread would not have arisen if it was really straightforward as an issue.
I wonder what a survey across WikiProjects would reveal, about the most standard or routine ways people do research in areas they know well.. I'm certainly interested in the general issues of "lists of redlinks" and how they get matched to combiuations of resources for articles.
Charles
Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
WP:SOHE being the page that you wrote recently: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sourcehelpers Did you not think of trying to make Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange more active, rather than starting a new page and a new proposal?
I thought about it. Different concept though, and with too many bottlenecks. "Near identical" may have been overstated. Newer ideas will have to avoid those same bottlenecks, and that's why I wrote up a draft for a new idea. In certain ways we have to be open and openly helpful about not just collaborative writing, but collaborative source-finding. To some that seems to mean swinging from the Britannica ideal toward the Google/PirateBay direction. I little bit perhaps, but not all the way.
And the "encyclopedia" (WP:ENC) characterization is way overstated anyway. Wikipedia's philosophy is entirely different from Britannica's -- which doesn't even have articles about 'paid erection maintainers' and 'stand-by penis alternates.' We on the other hand, do.
-Stevertigo "Nothing we can't shake...
stevertigo wrote:
Carcharoth wrote:
WP:SOHE being the page that you wrote recently: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sourcehelpers Did you not think of trying to make Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange more active, rather than starting a new page and a new proposal?
I thought about it. Different concept though, and with too many bottlenecks. "Near identical" may have been overstated. Newer ideas will have to avoid those same bottlenecks, and that's why I wrote up a draft for a new idea. In certain ways we have to be open and openly helpful about not just collaborative writing, but collaborative source-finding. To some that seems to mean swinging from the Britannica ideal toward the Google/PirateBay direction. I little bit perhaps, but not all the way.
The philosophic roots of this view make sense, but how do we resolve the opposing tendencies of bottlenecks on one side and dispersion of ideas on the other?
And the "encyclopedia" (WP:ENC) characterization is way overstated anyway. Wikipedia's philosophy is entirely different from Britannica's -- which doesn't even have articles about 'paid erection maintainers' and 'stand-by penis alternates.' We on the other hand, do.
-Stevertigo "Nothing we can't shake...
I really don't care whether Wikipedia has articles about what we can't shake on the other hand. ;-)
Ec
Carcharoth wrote:
On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 5:37 AM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
Well the WP:SOHE idea to me seems a reasonable compromise -- one that makes small parts of copyright texts open to our research needs, while still respecting the needs of authors to keep whole works marketable.
WP:SOHE being the page that you wrote recently:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sourcehelpers
"A nearly identical concept at Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange (consisting of shared resources and resource requests) while expansive, is fairly inactive."
Did you not think of trying to make Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange more active, rather than starting a new page and a new proposal?
Indeed! Without commenting for or against the content of that page, I am disturbed by the acronymic profligacy that this represents. Gracing the page with an acronym as though it's something that everyone should know about does not help with communication. When I encounter an acronym like that my instinct tells me to ignore it.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Indeed! Without commenting for or against the content of that page, I am disturbed by the acronymic profligacy that this represents.
Don't be too peeved. It was previously called "Sourcemonkeys."
The philosophic roots of this view make sense, but how do we resolve the opposing tendencies of bottlenecks on one side and dispersion of ideas on the other?
Instead of fixing a hole, or not doing something for fear of creating new holes (or just for fear of holes in general), we 'apply good faith' -- understanding how we can help others be helpful to... others.
It's called "empowerment." I think. "Facilitation," maybe? Hm: "The facilitation of empowerment and the empowerment of facilitation?" Heh - needs work.
I really don't care whether Wikipedia has articles about what we can't shake on the other hand. ;-)
And inspiring topical pictures to go along with the article, I suppose?
-Stevertigo
stevertigo wrote:
The philosophic roots of this view make sense, but how do we resolve the opposing tendencies of bottlenecks on one side and dispersion of ideas on the other?
Instead of fixing a hole, or not doing something for fear of creating new holes (or just for fear of holes in general), we 'apply good faith' -- understanding how we can help others be helpful to... others.
It's called "empowerment." I think. "Facilitation," maybe? Hm: "The facilitation of empowerment and the empowerment of facilitation?" Heh
- needs work.
I don't know if you understood my point. Good faith is not a factor here since we assume it is present in both paths. In bottlenecks we get people digging in their heels and defending certain perceptions of an idea. Dispersion happens when someone abandons the bottlenecked sandbox and starts his own brand-new sandbox; with enough of these it becomes difficult for the new kid on the playground to choose which sandbox to play in.
Ec
Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Good faith is not a factor here since we assume it is present in > both paths. In bottlenecks we get people digging in their heels > and defending certain perceptions of an idea. Dispersion happens when someone abandons the bottlenecked sandbox
Good faith is always relevant when you are asking people to trust other people with their valuables, and to make themselves available to other people in ways which those others can potentially abuse.
But I understand your point about POV creep. That is why sourcewallas must remain neutral: The requester submits a concept to the sourcewalla and the sourcewalla finds a selection of various different relevant citations. The sourcewalla is simply an intelligent and open human interface to a copyright search engine.
-Stevertigo "And if she asks you why...
neutrality does not exist. it is impossible to work intelligently on a subject without developing a view about the disputed questions. To search for documents on must know what the issues are; to find relevant documents it is necessary to examine the documents found, so one inevitably forms an opinion on the subject.
One has to be aware of ones biases and know the devices for overcoming them. (the simplest one is to ask oneself--what material will the opponent use?) Even if you say, retrieve everything on both sides, there is usually no sharp boundary for everything, and one is likely to look harder for what one wants to find.
The only sort of search where this doesn't apply are the purely mechanical ones that can be properly carried out by the current level of artificial intelligence.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 12:56 PM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Good faith is not a factor here since we assume it is present in > both paths. In bottlenecks we get people digging in their heels > and defending certain perceptions of an idea. Dispersion happens when someone abandons the bottlenecked sandbox
Good faith is always relevant when you are asking people to trust other people with their valuables, and to make themselves available to other people in ways which those others can potentially abuse.
But I understand your point about POV creep. That is why sourcewallas must remain neutral: The requester submits a concept to the sourcewalla and the sourcewalla finds a selection of various different relevant citations. The sourcewalla is simply an intelligent and open human interface to a copyright search engine.
-Stevertigo "And if she asks you why...
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David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
neutrality does not exist.
[[WP:NPOV]]??
it is impossible to work intelligently on a subject without developing a view about the disputed questions.
Well, Sourcewallas don't need to work intelligently, really. We already have lots of functions that similarly avoid the use of unnecessary intelligence - speedy deletion of subspace drafts, for example. So it's not an editorial concept as much as it is a gathering concept, and the role is not so much an editorial role but one of interface.
One has to be aware of ones biases and know the devices for overcoming them.
I understand both bias and device, but I don't think these are really all that relevant if we can still AGF a little bit. Roles help keep things simple, and applying concepts of principle to simple roles means that any deviations can be detected without much subjectivity involved.
Redundancy can work too - there is no need to rely on just one sourcewalla. And in any case good people can keep each other honest if their collective mode of function is one of openness.
-Stevertigo "but it don't look like me..
stevertigo wrote:
David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
neutrality does not exist.
[[WP:NPOV]]??
Just because one strives for neutrality does not mean that one ever achieves it.
it is impossible to work intelligently on a subject without developing a view about the disputed questions.
Well, Sourcewallas don't need to work intelligently, really. We already have lots of functions that similarly avoid the use of unnecessary intelligence - speedy deletion of subspace drafts, for example. So it's not an editorial concept as much as it is a gathering concept, and the role is not so much an editorial role but one of interface.
Subspace drafts are usually associated with Star Trek or a poorly insulated crawl space under one's house. ;-)
Am I interpreting your neologism "sourcewallahs" /(sp!)/ correctly? I'm reading it as individuals who randomly attach sources for material without regard to its relevance.
One has to be aware of ones biases and know the devices for overcoming them.
I understand both bias and device, but I don't think these are really all that relevant if we can still AGF a little bit. Roles help keep things simple, and applying concepts of principle to simple roles means that any deviations can be detected without much subjectivity involved.
Redundancy can work too - there is no need to rely on just one sourcewalla. And in any case good people can keep each other honest if their collective mode of function is one of openness.
One assumes good faith by recognizing that the other may not be aware if his own biases. Being too vigorous about shaking the tree of his biases may only serve to expose one's own biases. In the myth of Adam and Eve Adam would have been unable to move forward if Eve had not shaken down that one fruit. Shaking the tree too vigorously could have brought a rain of fruit to drive Adam away ... this is the same effect as going all-in prematurely with a good poker hand.
Ec
Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Just because one strives for neutrality does not mean that one ever achieves it.
Some of don't strive for objective neutrality - some of us strive for subjective perfection! Take the politicized and the religious, for example. Objectivity does not necessarily need to be an "-ism" to have an idealistic conceptualization, but that doesn't mean that objectivity neutrality is something irrelevant, ignorable, or dismiss-able (as you say) as just a pipe-dream.
Am I interpreting your neologism "sourcewallahs" /(sp!)/ correctly? I'm reading it as individuals who randomly attach sources for material without regard to its relevance.
No. Sourcewallas would simply have 1) copyright search engine access 2) an open way to communicate privately with random requesters, and 3) a simple standard methodology for searching for sources that requires only: a) the requester submitting the exact search string they want and b) the sourcewalla returning the exact search results given. The better search engines should return -- or give the option of returning -- excised paragraphs in a list form.
By "an open way," I mean a) making oneself available for immediate contact. ("User is currently online" functionality would be good). By "communicate privately" I mean we can't expect we can get in the habit of posting full-page search results in full to talk pages. ("Private invite-only user talk page" functionality would good, too).
"Sourcewalla" - ie. [[Dabbawala]]. Using "ah" to represent an /a/ sound is not necessary for non-aspirated /h/ final sounds -- as with the most widely-used late-Semitic name for God.
One assumes good faith by recognizing that the other may not be aware if his own biases.
Yeah, but making someone aware of the fact that they are acting like an ass in certain part due to those biases is, of course, just a natural part of honesty and friendship.
Being too vigorous about shaking the tree of his biases may only > serve to expose one's own biases.
Can't we just agree that there are different ways to shake it, and that some of these ways are more extroverted than are others?
In the myth of Adam and Eve Adam would have been unable to move forward if Eve had not shaken down that one fruit.
Well, you know they say girls develop faster.
Shaking the tree too vigorously could have brought a rain of fruit > to drive Adam away ... this is the same effect as going all-in prematurely with a good poker hand.
In spite of our tendencies here to speak to the contrary, keep in mind again that most things have degrees. And going all-in with a good hand is actually a standard move, when one is short-stacked, and won't get anything more out of the pot by slow-poking it anyway. Some spectrum can include both standard and quite unconventional ideas (bluffing, in this case).
-Stevertigo "You're made of card..
On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 9:56 AM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Good faith is not a factor here since we assume it is present in > both paths. In bottlenecks we get people digging in their heels > and defending certain perceptions of an idea. Dispersion happens when someone abandons the bottlenecked sandbox
Good faith is always relevant when you are asking people to trust other people with their valuables, and to make themselves available to other people in ways which those others can potentially abuse.
But I understand your point about POV creep. That is why sourcewallas must remain neutral: The requester submits a concept to the sourcewalla and the sourcewalla finds a selection of various different relevant citations. The sourcewalla is simply an intelligent and open human interface to a copyright search engine.
*cough* librarians? *cough*
anyway, the way the page above is framed betrays the assumption that finding sources is a much more clear-cut process than it is, and that the only expertise required in neutrally evaluating a wide range of texts about a particular (often obscure) topic is access to a particular database of articles. Which is not to say that I wouldn't love to see a broad network of people who love to work on sourcing problems, much in the same way we have a broad network of copyeditors and speedy-deleters. Perhaps trying to reinvigorate WikiProject Fact & Reference Check would be a good idea.
It's also worth noting with many commercial library databases that it's the act of doing the search and viewing abstracts that is restricted by license, not just any full-text that may be attached.
-- phoebe
phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
*cough* librarians? *cough* anyway, the way the page above is framed betrays the assumption that finding sources is a much more clear-cut process than it is, and that the only expertise required in neutrally evaluating a wide range of texts about a particular (often obscure) topic is access to a particular database of articles.
Hm. May I also "betray the assumption" that we may want some input from those experienced in using some particular copyright access search engine? I mean, "clear-cut process" may it may not be. Searching through piles of books is certainly never easy, but are you saying that searching *cough* online databases of digitized text isn't any easier? I have to assume good faith, that people can in a certain way act online in a "librarian"-like capacity, or else learn by their mistakes how to do so.
Which is not to say that I wouldn't love to see a broad network of people who love to work on sourcing problems, much in the same way we have a > broad network of copyeditors and speedy-deleters. Perhaps trying to reinvigorate WikiProject Fact & Reference Check would > be a good idea.
You appear to be involved at Project:Resource Exchange, which looks like its well on the right track, even though it also seems to be somewhat inactive. I and others might have a few ideas for how to tweak that project a little bit, and get it up and running. Some of the same points I've made above about availability and private communications are the obvious requirements -- open availability, private requests, code of conduct (works both ways), private returns.
The thing I suggest is to nuke Project:Librarians (which you also appear to be involved with) and merge those people into Project:Resources (note, move WP:LIB to ~Project:Resources). The reason being is that such a well-qualified group of people needs an actual purpose. WP:LIB/WP:REX seem like just that.
Also, these people obviously need a name. And "librarians" just might work, assuming that this new meaning can be integrated, or else the other meaning deprecated.
It's also worth noting with many commercial library databases that it's the act of doing the search and viewing abstracts that is restricted by license, not just any full-text that may be attached.
Yeah, but private sharing of full copies can also be allowed, and different companies have their own rules, etc. There also may be trust issues at some point too, but nothing that honest (AGF) people can't handle.
-Stevertigo "Had to listen, had no choice..
Steve,some comments:
1. The best role of a librarian is to teach other people how to do research, just as Phoebe didi with Charles Matthews, and Ben Yates for her colleagues did with Charles Matthews, and Ben Yates in ''How Wikipedia Works'' (http://howwikipediaworks.com/ the free online version.)
2, Another excellent goal is to help people do their searches,, because it is not the least trivial to "formulate search strings." and have someone else run them on the data bases they have access to. The art of a librarian or other proper literature searcher is rather more complex: selecting the best database to run it , formulating the proper search statement, evaluating the preliminary results, and then repeating the necessary number of iterations until one finds just what one does want or concludes it isn't there. Myself, even for the simplest searches to check on refs. for notability on a current topic, I typically do about 3 or 4 intermediate searches before I think I get it right-. If I get it right the first time, it's only because of many years of knowledge in doing these searches. We're not technicians. (And it does not require a formal library degree--many people learn either by instruction or experience how to get it right in their subjects)
3. I do not advise testing how far AGF gets us with or some of the more hostile publishers in law and engineering.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 2:31 AM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
*cough* librarians? *cough* anyway, the way the page above is framed betrays the assumption that finding sources is a much more clear-cut process than it is, and that the only expertise required in neutrally evaluating a wide range of texts about a particular (often obscure) topic is access to a particular database of articles.
Hm. May I also "betray the assumption" that we may want some input from those experienced in using some particular copyright access search engine? I mean, "clear-cut process" may it may not be. Searching through piles of books is certainly never easy, but are you saying that searching *cough* online databases of digitized text isn't any easier? I have to assume good faith, that people can in a certain way act online in a "librarian"-like capacity, or else learn by their mistakes how to do so.
Which is not to say that I wouldn't love to see a broad network of people who love to work on sourcing problems, much in the same way we have a > broad network of copyeditors and speedy-deleters. Perhaps trying to reinvigorate WikiProject Fact & Reference Check would > be a good idea.
You appear to be involved at Project:Resource Exchange, which looks like its well on the right track, even though it also seems to be somewhat inactive. I and others might have a few ideas for how to tweak that project a little bit, and get it up and running. Some of the same points I've made above about availability and private communications are the obvious requirements -- open availability, private requests, code of conduct (works both ways), private returns.
The thing I suggest is to nuke Project:Librarians (which you also appear to be involved with) and merge those people into Project:Resources (note, move WP:LIB to ~Project:Resources). The reason being is that such a well-qualified group of people needs an actual purpose. WP:LIB/WP:REX seem like just that.
Also, these people obviously need a name. And "librarians" just might work, assuming that this new meaning can be integrated, or else the other meaning deprecated.
It's also worth noting with many commercial library databases that it's the act of doing the search and viewing abstracts that is restricted by license, not just any full-text that may be attached.
Yeah, but private sharing of full copies can also be allowed, and different companies have their own rules, etc. There also may be trust issues at some point too, but nothing that honest (AGF) people can't handle.
-Stevertigo "Had to listen, had no choice..
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David Goodman wrote:
- The best role of a librarian is to teach other people how to do research,
Well, are they "librarians" or "teachers" in information science?
''How Wikipedia Works'' (http://howwikipediaworks.com/ the free online version.)
Ah. Apparently only chapter 12 is "free." Does someone here have a copy they would like to share? Or maybe a torrent link?
2, Another excellent goal is to help people do their searches,, because it is not the least trivial to "formulate search strings." and have someone else run them on the data bases they have access to.
I think that for the most part, the way to formulate search strings begins as a written expression: The statement in the request comes in the form of some ostensibly factual expression -- one that simply needs corroboration with some similar expression to be validated and sourced. Then others -- even those who aren't going to perform the search itself -- can reformulate those expressions into search strings, while leaving the core expression intact. The resulting phrases can then be compared side-by-side with the original expression.
The art of a librarian or other proper literature searcher is rather more complex: selecting the best database to run it , formulating the proper search statement, evaluating the preliminary results, and then repeating the necessary number of iterations until one finds just what one does want or concludes it isn't there.
I typically do about 3 or 4 intermediate searches before I think I get it right-.
Well, it will no doubt be a challenge you can handle.
If I get it right the first time, it's only because of many years of knowledge in doing these searches. We're not technicians.
Its not always necessary to have expertise or even deliberate choice in the matter, is it? For example on [[Talk:American Dream]], Binksternet was an unwitting "sourcewalla" -- not a truly neutral sourcewalla, Binksternet in fact disliked my inserting the language "ethos of prosperity" into the AD lede. He reverted my edit and complained about it, but in a stroke of (helpful) genius, Bink listed some Google Book search returns (string: 'ethos of prosperity') as examples of my erroneous original research: None of these sources, he said, at all validated my conceptualization "ethos of prosperity." My contribution was then to simply read the sources he helped find, and then to demonstrate in a detailed and obtusely incontrovertible way how at least two of these sources actually *did corroborate my language "ethos of prosperity," in absolutely no ambiguous terms.
Side note: In typical fashion, this opponent also just sort of dropped the issue without conceding or undoing his unnecessary reverts. I had also stated that his own unsourced writing (correcting mine) "ethos of idealism" was "not even English." Which, in retrospect probably did not inspire him to continue being helpful. So, the sourcewalla idea does not just mean that partisanship can be removed from sourcing, but that the citation onus is less asinine, article disputes can be resolved more quickly, people such as myself will not feel the need to resort to sarcasm and trout to overcome their obtuse opposition, and the one(s) who do(es) the revert will also feel like actually undoing their reverts (WP:CIVIL) instead of just walking away after making a mess to begin with.
- I do not advise testing how far AGF gets us with or some of the
more hostile publishers in law and engineering.
In the views of these "hostile publishers," is it we who are the "hostile publisher?"
-Stevertigo "for all the honest world to feel...
stevertigo wrote:
David Goodman wrote:
- The best role of a librarian is to teach other people how to do research,
Well, are they "librarians" or "teachers" in information science?
Why promote a false dichotomy?
''How Wikipedia Works'' (http://howwikipediaworks.com/ the free online version.)
Ah. Apparently only chapter 12 is "free." Does someone here have a copy they would like to share? Or maybe a torrent link?
The whole book is free under the GFDL.
The only reason for keeping this thread going would be that the Monday lull seems to have stretched to Thursday this week. To sum up a bit, I was pushing for a broader definition of the part of the Web complementary to what Google or other search engines find with ease: the Deep Web includes webpage returns from online databases where the search you run is unobvious, but is not limited to those pages. The division of labour for exploring the Deep Web has to include more than webcrawlers, by definition. It could include both "explorers" and "dredgers". Explorers would be humans who carry out particularly arduous searches, either on their own behalf or for others, either self-taught or tutored in techniques and approaches that are "librarian-approved". They are recognisable as generic "researchers" as found in other fields. The other approach, which I'm calling dredger, is something like a collector of materials for an as-yet unspecified project. Wikimedia Commons in part of its operations is an example of dredging of this nature; I was suggesting that the idea isn't limited in its scope to media. The thing to add, as is apparent from the librarians' contributions to the thread, is that the maps are not yet good enough for us to withdraw the term "explorer", and "here be dragons" still applies.
Charles
A very good supplement to Google Scholar is Scirus, a free database from Elsevier, which I suspect they made as a prototype for their very expensive Scopus-- and as a way to promote it. http://www.scirus.com/ (disclosure: I'm on the Scirus Library Advisory Board)
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 10:32 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
stevertigo wrote:
David Goodman wrote:
- The best role of a librarian is to teach other people how to do research,
Well, are they "librarians" or "teachers" in information science?
Why promote a false dichotomy?
''How Wikipedia Works'' (http://howwikipediaworks.com/ the free online version.)
Ah. Apparently only chapter 12 is "free." Does someone here have a copy they would like to share? Or maybe a torrent link?
The whole book is free under the GFDL.
The only reason for keeping this thread going would be that the Monday lull seems to have stretched to Thursday this week. To sum up a bit, I was pushing for a broader definition of the part of the Web complementary to what Google or other search engines find with ease: the Deep Web includes webpage returns from online databases where the search you run is unobvious, but is not limited to those pages. The division of labour for exploring the Deep Web has to include more than webcrawlers, by definition. It could include both "explorers" and "dredgers". Explorers would be humans who carry out particularly arduous searches, either on their own behalf or for others, either self-taught or tutored in techniques and approaches that are "librarian-approved". They are recognisable as generic "researchers" as found in other fields. The other approach, which I'm calling dredger, is something like a collector of materials for an as-yet unspecified project. Wikimedia Commons in part of its operations is an example of dredging of this nature; I was suggesting that the idea isn't limited in its scope to media. The thing to add, as is apparent from the librarians' contributions to the thread, is that the maps are not yet good enough for us to withdraw the term "explorer", and "here be dragons" still applies.
Charles
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Sorry to keep the thread going, but there's a couple of things that I am going to long-windedly expound on... apologies in advance to people who don't care.
On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 11:31 PM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
*cough* librarians? *cough* anyway, the way the page above is framed betrays the assumption that finding sources is a much more clear-cut process than it is, and that the only expertise required in neutrally evaluating a wide range of texts about a particular (often obscure) topic is access to a particular database of articles.
Hm. May I also "betray the assumption" that we may want some input from those experienced in using some particular copyright access search engine? I mean, "clear-cut process" may it may not be. Searching through piles of books is certainly never easy, but are you saying that searching *cough* online databases of digitized text isn't any easier? I have to assume good faith, that people can in a certain way act online in a "librarian"-like capacity, or else learn by their mistakes how to do so.
They aren't "copyright access search engines". Gah. Library databases are typically:
* digitized indexes of citations to materials in a particular field of study, eg. engineering, law, biology, etc. * those citations are typically to magazine articles, newspaper articles, journal articles, and sometimes book chapters, conference proceedings, government reports, and more. The materials referenced might be in copyright, out of copyright, or somewhere nebulously in between. Obviously, more recent stuff is generally copyrighted. * The reason that for-pay library databases are useful is that they represent the collective, long-term effort to capture citations to literature in a particular area, often with human indexers manually going through journal table of contents and the like. Large-scale automatic efforts like Google Scholar are also useful, but they return different results because the indexing is done automatically of stuff available online, which isn't everything. Also they don't feature things like manually-added indexing terms, etc. * For-pay library databases may or may not include the full text of the item to which the citation refers [they usually do not]; the item may or may not be available in any form to the person doing the search.
Therefore, as David said, there's a lot of steps involved in doing good research:
* figuring out what the question is * figuring out what sort of source might have the answer to that question (a newspaper article, a book, a handbook?) * figuring out where to look (e.g., I need books, therefore I shall check worldcat) * figuring out if you have access to the best place to look (worldcat is free to all, hurrah!) [this can be more complicated than it sounds. My library has access to ~500 databases, plus print stuff, plus the internet]. * searching in that place; figuring out how to best search for that question in that particular database (in worldcat, I can use LC subject headings! but I sure can't in google scholar); iterating your search until you find something, or not; * rinse, wash and repeat for each possible database; * figuring out if you can obtain your results (if the best result is a book in the Swedish national library, 'm going to have a tough time getting it; but hey, if this is for a Wikipedian in Sweden, they might have better luck).
Add in Wikipedia criteria: * prefer free online sources * prefer npov sources * prefer widely accessible sources
And repeat, for each and every referencing question. Which is why it takes a while to source an article *properly*. And also, why the answer to our sourcing problems is not really "let's buy some library databases for everyone to access" [which ones? for what questions? will it help at all, if you can't then get the materials referenced?].
Which is not to say that I wouldn't love to see a broad network of people who love to work on sourcing problems, much in the same way we have a > broad network of copyeditors and speedy-deleters. Perhaps trying to reinvigorate WikiProject Fact & Reference Check would > be a good idea.
You appear to be involved at Project:Resource Exchange, which looks like its well on the right track, even though it also seems to be somewhat inactive. I and others might have a few ideas for how to tweak that project a little bit, and get it up and running. Some of the same points I've made above about availability and private communications are the obvious requirements -- open availability, private requests, code of conduct (works both ways), private returns.
I actually helped start the resource exchange, but am no longer active because I have no interest in violating the license agreements of the various publishers I work with [which generally e.g. prohibit doing research for off-campus people]. I wish there were a better way to deal with this. Besides pushing for open access, I haven't thought of anything.
Maybe you could call it WikiProject:Research exchange, instead.
The thing I suggest is to nuke Project:Librarians (which you also appear to be involved with) and merge those people into Project:Resources (note, move WP:LIB to ~Project:Resources). The reason being is that such a well-qualified group of people needs an actual purpose. WP:LIB/WP:REX seem like just that.
Well, Wp:Librarians is pretty inactive, but it's also not really meant as a research servic; it's instead a group of people with a common interest and profession (would you ask the wikiproject:lawyers to do all of the legal support for wikipedia?) So while I'm sure many folks there would be interested in your ideas and the proposed projects, there's not 100% overlap.
Also, these people obviously need a name. And "librarians" just might work, assuming that this new meaning can be integrated, or else the other meaning deprecated.
I hope the other meaning isn't deprecated. I'd be even closer to being out of a job than I am already :P
-- phoebe
p.s. as Charles said, "How Wikipedia Works" is all GFDL and should be 100% available online. I got to it fine earlier; let me know if you had trouble accessing it.
stevertigo wrote:
David Goodman wrote:
Quite apart from the incredible range available from a research library, the great majority of *Wikipedians,* even experienced ones, do not use even those sources which are made available free from local public libraries to residents.
Do these libraries *digitize* their books and make them available online? The paradigm shift is relevant: A keydrive full of PDFs is *so much easier to skateboard around with than a backpack full of wood industry products.
The main problem is not one of digitization. It has more to do with making the digitized material useful. Digitizing major libraries' content will obviate the need for digitizing the duplicate material in smaller libraries, but these smaller libraries will still contain important material that may be unique.
Once the material is digitized, how do you find it? There is more to that than depending on Google searches.
Ec
On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 2:21 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
Searching far and wide to find a secondary source that quoted the primary source gains you *nothing* except compliance with Wikipedia rules. The secondary source isn't going to do any better fact-checking than you did when you just looked at the primary source directly--it just fills a rules requirement.
The secondary sources (presumably, ideally) will discuss why there is a discrepancy between the birth records and the obituaries and encyclopedias and dig into the issue a lot further than just merely announcing "the obituaries are wrong". Searching far and wide may be too much to ask, and I realize that not every editor has the research mojo of a librarian, but all I did was track down a newspaper article and a biography. Perhaps digging up the former is too much, but is it really too much to ask that editors working on a biographical article crack open a biography of the subject?
On Fri, 2 Oct 2009, Rob wrote:
Searching far and wide to find a secondary source that quoted the primary source gains you *nothing* except compliance with Wikipedia rules. The secondary source isn't going to do any better fact-checking than you did when you just looked at the primary source directly--it just fills a rules requirement.
The secondary sources (presumably, ideally) will discuss why there is a discrepancy between the birth records and the obituaries and encyclopedias and dig into the issue a lot further than just merely announcing "the obituaries are wrong".
In this context, the secondary source is "I found a reference to a newspaper article which quotes the date". It's not going to discuss the conflict the way you describe--it's just more acceptable because it better fits the rule.
On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 12:02 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Fri, 2 Oct 2009, Rob wrote: In this context, the secondary source is "I found a reference to a newspaper article which quotes the date". It's not going to discuss the conflict the way you describe--it's just more acceptable because it better fits the rule.
I got the newspaper article today and it turns out it discusses the birth date discrepancy in detail, with references to interviews with family, a number of documents, and court testimony. This is exactly the reason we should be using these kinds of sources as opposed to our own amateur database lookups, not the strawman of a rules fetish.
On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 12:31 PM, Rob gamaliel8@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 12:02 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Fri, 2 Oct 2009, Rob wrote: In this context, the secondary source is "I found a reference to a
newspaper
article which quotes the date". It's not going to discuss the conflict
the
way you describe--it's just more acceptable because it better fits the
rule.
I got the newspaper article today and it turns out it discusses the birth date discrepancy in detail, with references to interviews with family, a number of documents, and court testimony. This is exactly the reason we should be using these kinds of sources as opposed to our own amateur database lookups, not the strawman of a rules fetish.
If they're available. But what if they're not? Is it okay to mention that the contradictory information exists?
I doubt you're going to come up with a hard and fast rule which doesn't have any unintended consequences. Ultimately, the fact that "everyone can edit" ensures a system of "verifiability, not truth".
On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 12:58 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 12:31 PM, Rob gamaliel8@gmail.com wrote:
If they're available. But what if they're not? Is it okay to mention that the contradictory information exists?
I doubt you're going to come up with a hard and fast rule which doesn't have any unintended consequences. Ultimately, the fact that "everyone can edit" ensures a system of "verifiability, not truth".
You're absolutely right, availability is an issue. But if we have a hard and fast rule the other way and say sources like the SSDI are okay, then there's no incentive to look for that secondary source which does explain the issue. We might, in rare cases, settle for the SSDI if absolutely necessary, but not without a reasonable search, which in this particular case clearly hadn't been done.
Ken Arromdee wrote:
On Fri, 2 Oct 2009, Rob wrote:
The fact that original secondary sources were wrong in this case is immaterial. Errors in secondary sources should be a reason to dig up more secondary sources, not to make a point using primary ones.
Wikipedia is already full of places where people are required to jump through hoops merely because that's what the rules require, even if it doesn't actually help. This is another one.
Searching far and wide to find a secondary source that quoted the primary source gains you *nothing* except compliance with Wikipedia rules. The secondary source isn't going to do any better fact-checking than you did when you just looked at the primary source directly--it just fills a rules requirement.
Perhaps the rule should be rephrased to require the use of the most reliable fallacy? ;-)
Ec
Ken Arromdee wrote:
On Wed, 30 Sep 2009, FT2 wrote:
So the resolution of your question above is, if anyone could in principle check it without analysis, just by witnessing the object or document and attesting it says what it says (or is what it is, or has certain obvious qualities), then that's verifiable. If it would need analysis, interpretation or deduction to form the view, so that some views might be credible/expert and some might not, then we don't try to "play the expert" here, we look at what credible sources/experts say instead.
- That doesn't seem to be actual Wikipedia policy.
Sure it is. Have a look at the section on dealing with primary sources. That's almost a perfect summary of it.
On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 9:35 AM, Surreptitiousness < surreptitious.wikipedian@googlemail.com> wrote:
Ken Arromdee wrote:
On Wed, 30 Sep 2009, FT2 wrote:
So the resolution of your question above is, if anyone could in
principle
check it without analysis, just by witnessing the object or document and attesting it says what it says (or is what it is, or has certain obvious qualities), then that's verifiable. If it would need analysis, interpretation or deduction to form the view, so that some views might
be
credible/expert and some might not, then we don't try to "play the
expert"
here, we look at what credible sources/experts say instead.
- That doesn't seem to be actual Wikipedia policy.
Sure it is. Have a look at the section on dealing with primary sources. That's almost a perfect summary of it.
To add to this, note that "primary sources" are stated to include "...archeological artifacts; photographs.."
NOR, a core policy in this area, doesn't say that the "writings about an artifact" are the source. It says clearly that artifacts themselves are categorized as primary sources.
The only way an "artifact" or photograph could ever be a "source" is that by its very existence, it has a number of obvious descriptive qualities and the like that any reasonable person witnessing it would agree upon, and that anyone with access to the artifact could verify.
FT2
FT2 wrote:
To add to this, note that "primary sources" are stated to include "...archeological artifacts; photographs.."
NOR, a core policy in this area, doesn't say that the "writings about an artifact" are the source. It says clearly that artifacts themselves are categorized as primary sources.
The only way an "artifact" or photograph could ever be a "source" is that by its very existence, it has a number of obvious descriptive qualities and the like that any reasonable person witnessing it would agree upon, and that anyone with access to the artifact could verify.
And of course, it is this portion of policy that causes us issues with regards fiction. Since the work itself is a primary source. We haven't yet worked out to what extent a article on a fictional subject should rely on secondary sources. Or at least reached a consensus. It's easier to tackle fiction articles by removing speculation and interpretation. Generally, I think that should be the better approach, and I'd like to see a similar policy, in terms of scope rather than content, created for articles on fictional subjects. I think Phul Sandifer had a draft somewhere, but it's real hard to organise a consensus in this area, there's real division running deep.
On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 10:47 AM, Surreptitiousness < surreptitious.wikipedian@googlemail.com> wrote:
And of course, it is this portion of policy that causes us issues with regards fiction. Since the work itself is a primary source. We haven't yet worked out to what extent a article on a fictional subject should rely on secondary sources. Or at least reached a consensus. It's easier to tackle fiction articles by removing speculation and interpretation. Generally, I think that should be the better approach, and I'd like to see a similar policy, in terms of scope rather than content, created for articles on fictional subjects. I think Phul Sandifer had a draft somewhere, but it's real hard to organise a consensus in this area, there's real division running deep.
The issue for fiction can be summed up within with one question, almost. Here is a nice simple book. Obviously any /analysis/ will be from good quality sources. But what kind of sourcing is appropriate to its plot summary? Many well-read books don't have plot summaries in reliable sources, and yet "anyone reading the book can see what its basic plot is", and we have hundreds of editors to reach consensus on what it says.
(Key issue: any book is a primary source on its own contents.)
FT2
FT2 wrote:
The issue for fiction can be summed up within with one question, almost. Here is a nice simple book. Obviously any /analysis/ will be from good quality sources. But what kind of sourcing is appropriate to its plot summary? Many well-read books don't have plot summaries in reliable sources, and yet "anyone reading the book can see what its basic plot is", and we have hundreds of editors to reach consensus on what it says.
(Key issue: any book is a primary source on its own contents.)
You've misread me. The key question is, why should we summarise this plot. That's what's causing the problems with fiction on Wikipedia at the minute. Although having said that, the drama does seem to have died off a bit lately. Which kind of suggests a consensus of sorts exists.
2009/10/1 Surreptitiousness surreptitious.wikipedian@googlemail.com:
You've misread me. The key question is, why should we summarise this plot. That's what's causing the problems with fiction on Wikipedia at the minute. Although having said that, the drama does seem to have died off a bit lately. Which kind of suggests a consensus of sorts exists.
Yeah. Don't prod it with sticks too hard for the moment ;-p Though grossly excessive plot summaries are getting tagged as such, and many are being greatly improved as individuals get around to them.
- d.
On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 1:28 PM, Surreptitiousness surreptitious.wikipedian@googlemail.com wrote:
FT2 wrote:
The issue for fiction can be summed up within with one question, almost. Here is a nice simple book. Obviously any /analysis/ will be from good quality sources. But what kind of sourcing is appropriate to its plot summary? Many well-read books don't have plot summaries in reliable sources, and yet "anyone reading the book can see what its basic plot is", and we have hundreds of editors to reach consensus on what it says.
(Key issue: any book is a primary source on its own contents.)
You've misread me. The key question is, why should we summarise this plot. That's what's causing the problems with fiction on Wikipedia at the minute. Although having said that, the drama does seem to have died off a bit lately. Which kind of suggests a consensus of sorts exists.
I think plot summaries are OK, as long as there is some real-world context and analysis. Just a description of what the book is about is not enough. Links to reviews and criticism is a must, in my view. Some examples would help here, from stubs, to "only" plot summary (more like a directory of books), to "mixtures" to "featured articles about books" (we have a few of those).
Carcharoth
Carcharoth wrote:
On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 1:28 PM, Surreptitiousness wrote:
FT2 wrote:
The issue for fiction can be summed up within with one question, almost. Here is a nice simple book. Obviously any /analysis/ will be from good quality sources. But what kind of sourcing is appropriate to its plot summary? Many well-read books don't have plot summaries in reliable sources, and yet "anyone reading the book can see what its basic plot is", and we have hundreds of editors to reach consensus on what it says.
(Key issue: any book is a primary source on its own contents.)
You've misread me. The key question is, why should we summarise this plot. That's what's causing the problems with fiction on Wikipedia at the minute. Although having said that, the drama does seem to have died off a bit lately. Which kind of suggests a consensus of sorts exists.
I think plot summaries are OK, as long as there is some real-world context and analysis. Just a description of what the book is about is not enough. Links to reviews and criticism is a must, in my view. Some examples would help here, from stubs, to "only" plot summary (more like a directory of books), to "mixtures" to "featured articles about books" (we have a few of those).
Why shouldn't a plot summary or book description be enough? It's a fundamental building block for any article. While it would be nice to have reviews and criticisms a simple tag that we would like these added should suffice to alert someone else to add them. The people who write a good summary are often not the same people who condense reviews and criticisms well.
Ec
On Thu, 1 Oct 2009, FT2 wrote:
To add to this, note that "primary sources" are stated to include "...archeological artifacts; photographs.."
NOR, a core policy in this area, doesn't say that the "writings about an artifact" are the source. It says clearly that artifacts themselves are categorized as primary sources.
The only way an "artifact" or photograph could ever be a "source" is that by its very existence, it has a number of obvious descriptive qualities and the like that any reasonable person witnessing it would agree upon, and that anyone with access to the artifact could verify.
This is logical, but only proves that our rules contradict ourselves every which way.
If you read NOR and RS, the general impression is that a source is written or otherwise published material about something. Those words you quoted are pretty much the only references to a source being an object, rather than what someone writes about the object. It's a matter of emphasis--everything else pretty much implies (regardless of whether it says so outright) that this kind of source isn't good. This is, in fact, one of the problems with a lot of Wikipedia rules: we so strongly emphasize a rule that nobody will believe in any exceptions, even if we didn't literally say the rule needed to be followed 100% of the time.
Also, there are phrases which seem to directly contradict it. For instance, NOR contains this:
Unsourced material obtained from a Wikipedian's personal experience, such as an unpublished eyewitness account, should not be added to articles. It would violate both this policy and Verifiability, and would cause Wikipedia to become a primary source for that material.
This implies that you *can't* use an object as a source, since it would be your personal eyewitness account of the bridge or whatever.
On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 6:27 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
This is logical, but only proves that our rules contradict ourselves every which way.
Indeed. And we are broadly fine with that, to an extent. A number of policy and project pages explicitly point out that not everything will be 100% consistent.
This implies that you *can't* use an object as a source, since it would be your personal eyewitness account of the bridge or whatever.
But that affects all sources. How do we know that report X in peer-reviewed journal Y is fairly summed up as described? All we have is one or more editors who read it, and wrote about what they think it says. To be unsubtle, take the most highly regarded authoritative book on a topic, and cite it in a topic as a source for some point or other. What enters Wikipedia will be "your personal eyewitness account" of what ultra-widely-acknowledged expert X wrote or ultra-authoritatively-regarded journal Y says.
A bridge is presented to the senses of eyewitness no more nor less than a paper, a rock, or any artifact. It's editor interpretation, opinion and judgment that we avoid, not reporting faithfully what any reasonable witness exposed to that same item would agree is obvious to the five senses.
FT2
2009/10/1 Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net:
This is logical, but only proves that our rules contradict ourselves every which way.
Yes. The rules are not a consistent legal framework, they're a series of quick hacks.
If you regard them as an immaculate stainless steel construction of flawless design every component of which is intended to mesh perfectly with every other component ... then you have badly misunderstood how Wikipedia works and will be continually frustrated (much as you are now).
That a lot of people seem to assume this doesn't make it any truer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Practical_process - does this help explain how we got here?
I'm not saying it's desirable, I'm saying this is how it is.
- d.
On Thu, 1 Oct 2009, David Gerard wrote:
This is logical, but only proves that our rules contradict ourselves every which way.
Yes. The rules are not a consistent legal framework, they're a series of quick hacks.
The literal words aren't the only problem, though. Usually our rules are written so as to emphasize that the user should or should not do some specific thing. But if you emphasize something strongly in the rules, that *affects how the spirit of the rules is interpreted*.
It's not just that people are too literal about primary sources--it's that even if they go by the spirit of the rules, the lopsided emphasis makes it seem like the spirit of the rules is as restrictive as the literal rules.
And back to literal words... I'm really tired of the attitude "since the rules aren't meant to be taken literally, we won't fix them so that they make more sense if someone does try to read them literally".
On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 7:24 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
And back to literal words... I'm really tired of the attitude "since the rules aren't meant to be taken literally, we won't fix them so that they make more sense if someone does try to read them literally".
Not really so. For example, I spend a huge amount of timehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:FT2/Project_contributionstrying to make things make more sense, be more balanced and representative of "how it really is intended to be taken". Just today and yesterday I spent reviewing the interface wordings for RevDelete and Flagged Revisions to try and improve their commonsense-ness -- see my contribshttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&offset=20091001134721&limit=50&target=FT2here and on the flagged rev's test wikihttp://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&offset=20091001115755&limit=200&target=FT2for this weeks work.
The problem is there comes a point where you can't improve them in terms of definitiveness without them being so long as to defeat easy readability ("tl;dr"). At that point we rely on the reader to figure it out. if you can spot improvements that others haven't, and they reflect the spirit better than the present wording, then Be Bold and see if others agree they are an improvement, and fix them!
FT2
2009/10/1 FT2 ft2.wiki@gmail.com:
The problem is there comes a point where you can't improve them in terms of definitiveness without them being so long as to defeat easy readability ("tl;dr"). At that point we rely on the reader to figure it out. if you can spot improvements that others haven't, and they reflect the spirit better than the present wording, then Be Bold and see if others agree they are an improvement, and fix them!
Yes. The key problem is that no rules can stop stupidity or bad faith. Particularly not stupidity. Ken, you appear to be demanding wording that will be so good that people can't apply it stupidly. There is no such possible quality of wording where human judgement can possibly be involved; and removing human judgement makes it stupider.
- d.
On Thu, 1 Oct 2009, FT2 wrote:
The problem is there comes a point where you can't improve them in terms of definitiveness without them being so long as to defeat easy readability ("tl;dr"). At that point we rely on the reader to figure it out. if you can spot improvements that others haven't, and they reflect the spirit better than the present wording, then Be Bold and see if others agree they are an improvement, and fix them!
Well, the last time I ran into this was the way IAR is worded. For such a short rule it has a huge flaw: it says you can only ignore rules for the purpose of improving or maintaining the encyclopedia. The result is people constantly claiming that you can't ignore rules for BLP or privacy concerns, since helping the BLP subject is not a form of improving the encyclopedia. Obviously it would be overkill to edit IAR itself, but nobody was even interested on the talk page of WIARM, except one person who said that it's okay that's badly worded because our rules don't literally mean what they say.
2009/10/1 Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net:
Well, the last time I ran into this was the way IAR is worded. For such a short rule it has a huge flaw: it says you can only ignore rules for the purpose of improving or maintaining the encyclopedia. The result is people constantly claiming that you can't ignore rules for BLP or privacy concerns, since helping the BLP subject is not a form of improving the encyclopedia. Obviously it would be overkill to edit IAR itself, but nobody was even interested on the talk page of WIARM, except one person who said that it's okay that's badly worded because our rules don't literally mean what they say.
Handy guide to IAR:
If the reactions to your actions when you try to apply IAR are "you're clueless", then perhaps you don't understand IAR.
But, by all means, do please keep posting to wikien-l about IAR.
- d.
On 10/2/09, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
Well, the last time I ran into this was the way IAR is worded. For such a short rule it has a huge flaw: it says you can only ignore rules for the purpose of improving or maintaining the encyclopedia. The result is people constantly claiming that you can't ignore rules for BLP or privacy concerns, since helping the BLP subject is not a form of improving the encyclopedia.
That's an interesting point. Perhaps its scope should be widened.
Steve
I depends on what one does. One cannot ignore the basic rules of BLP any more than you can copyright, because they're requirements from the WMF. And you can't ignore basic considerations about privacy, because that's just as fundamental. But you can sometimes ignore a detail or procedure connected with them if you are absolutely certain it will help Wikipedia and not harm anything else. How we interpret the rules is under the control of the community, but we need to be responsible about it, and these are areas where we need to be particularly cautious.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 7:29 PM, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/2/09, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
Well, the last time I ran into this was the way IAR is worded. For such a short rule it has a huge flaw: it says you can only ignore rules for the purpose of improving or maintaining the encyclopedia. The result is people constantly claiming that you can't ignore rules for BLP or privacy concerns, since helping the BLP subject is not a form of improving the encyclopedia.
That's an interesting point. Perhaps its scope should be widened.
Steve
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On 10/2/09, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
I depends on what one does. One cannot ignore the basic rules of BLP any more than you can copyright, because they're requirements from the WMF. And you can't ignore basic considerations about privacy, because that's just as fundamental. But you can sometimes ignore a detail or procedure connected with them if you are absolutely certain it will help Wikipedia and not harm anything else. How we interpret the
Ken is saying the opposite: you need to sometimes ignore rules even if the benefit of your doing so goes to a person outside Wikipedia. Ie, currently the rule says you can ignore a Wikipedia rule to improve Wikipedia. He's saying it should allow you to ignore a Wikipedia rule to help someone else (or more commonly, avoid harming them).
Steve
Ken Arromdee wrote:
The result is people constantly claiming that you can't ignore rules for BLP or privacy concerns, since helping the BLP subject is not a form of improving the encyclopedia.
Hang on, you've set up a straw man there. You haven't shown how "helping the BLP subject is not a form of improving the encyclopedia" is actually true. Which is wrong, because there are instances where helping the BLP subject does improve the encyclopedia. Most people who participate in debates of this nature are usually wise enough to recognise that there are two sides to the debate: the side that says maintaining good PR and taking moral and ethical concerns into consideration makes us a better encyclopedia, and the side that thinks that presenting information that is reliably sourced, verifiable and neutrally presented best improves the encyclopedia. Most sides will concede that you can IAR either way, but the important thing is that if you do IAR either way and someone feels you called it wrong, you don't actually quote IAR but instead you join the debate and reach and respect a consensus. IAR works fine until you use it as a defense. It isn't a defense. The defense is why you used IAR, not that you used IAR. I'd hate to arrest some of the people who misuse IAR; they probably carry a "get out of jail free" card from monopoly in their pocket for use in such circumstances.
On 02/10/2009, Surreptitiousness surreptitious.wikipedian@googlemail.com wrote:
Ken Arromdee wrote:
The result is people constantly claiming that you can't ignore rules for BLP or privacy concerns, since helping the BLP subject is not a form of improving the encyclopedia.
Hang on, you've set up a straw man there. You haven't shown how "helping the BLP subject is not a form of improving the encyclopedia" is actually true.
Which is wrong, because there are instances where helping the BLP subject does improve the encyclopedia.
Sure, but what about the instances where it *doesn't* help the subject but *does* improve the encyclopedia? There's bound to be some.
As a recent example, the journalists that were kidnapped; if the wikipedia had covered that, then the wikipedia would have been improved, but I'm pretty sure that in practice the consensus would not have supported IARing it in.
But the IAR policy is clear, if ANY policy, including BLP stops you improving the wikipedia then you can override it.
But that's not consensus-in practice I don't think you can IAR over BLP issues; that seems to be a mistake in the policy.
On 10/2/09, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
But the IAR policy is clear, if ANY policy, including BLP stops you improving the wikipedia then you can override it.
...until someone objects.
The important caveat.
Steve
Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/2/09, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
But the IAR policy is clear, if ANY policy, including BLP stops you improving the wikipedia then you can override it.
...until someone objects. The important caveat.
Heh.
That's interesting that the application of a "policy" ("pillar" even) that itself is simply a caveat, requires another caveat with regard to its application.
In any case, the problem lies with both "policies:" IAR, as everyone here knows is a practical oxymoron, and a relic from a bygone era of adequate-ness, where a simplistic policy could substitute for a simple one.
BLP is just a range-specific application of OFFICE and RS -- "reliable sources" itself being a necessary, but nevertheless idiopathic stepchild of the [[objectivity (journalism)]] principle (our NPOV), with a quasi-subjective misnomer in its name.
-Stevertigo
On Fri, 2 Oct 2009, Surreptitiousness wrote:
The result is people constantly claiming that you can't ignore rules for BLP or privacy concerns, since helping the BLP subject is not a form of improving the encyclopedia.
Hang on, you've set up a straw man there. You haven't shown how "helping the BLP subject is not a form of improving the encyclopedia" is actually true.
It doesn't need to be true, it just needs to be something that people believe and which can be gotten from a fairly straightforward reading of the rule. Which it is.
On 02/10/2009, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
It doesn't need to be true, it just needs to be something that people believe and which can be gotten from a fairly straightforward reading of the rule. Which it is.
The problem is, IAR doesn't specify or imply what they mean by 'improve'. Improve in what way? Is an encyclopedia improved by adding encyclopedic content on somebody who has been kidnapped or not?
There's no value system; NOR, NPOV, BLP, ISNOT all give a value system, the wikipedia values this or that, but not that or the other. IAR doesn't, but can over-rule the rest. I'm saying no, it *can't* override BLP, because BLP is about protecting, not the wikipedia but a real life person from what is essentially libel.
On 10/2/09, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
The problem is, IAR doesn't specify or imply what they mean by 'improve'.
That's intrinsic to ignoring all rules. If they could give you a rule for when to ignore the rules, then they could codify that as a new rule and ignoring rules would never be necessary--every conceivable eventuality on Wikipedia would be covered by a rule. The world doesn't work like that.
This policy relies on people trusting themselves to make decisions and take actions that seem okay to them, knowing that if there is a problem somebody else will spot it and fix it. It's an anti-policy, a way of saying that the rules are only there to make things better and they should not ever be used to stop that happening.
There is a theory that when everybody finally understands Ignore all Rules it will be taken away and replaced by something even more baffling. There are some people who say this has already happened.
Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
That's intrinsic to ignoring all rules. If they could give you a rule for when to ignore the rules, then they could codify that as a new rule and ignoring rules would never be necessary--every conceivable eventuality on Wikipedia would be covered by a rule. > The world doesn't work like that. This policy relies on people trusting themselves to make decisions and take actions that seem okay to them, knowing that if there is a problem somebody else will spot it and fix it.
How does IAR help limit Civility violations, personal attacks, and slander?
-Stevertigo
Because it reminds people that the true responsibility to be a good Wikipedian lies with themselves, and not official police or arbiters.
On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 2:28 PM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
That's intrinsic to ignoring all rules. If they could give you a rule for when to ignore the rules, then they could codify that as a new rule
and ignoring rules would never be necessary--every conceivable eventuality on Wikipedia would be covered by a rule. > The world doesn't work like that.
This policy relies on people trusting themselves to make decisions and take actions that seem okay to them, knowing that if there is a problem somebody else will spot it and fix it.
How does IAR help limit Civility violations, personal attacks, and slander?
-Stevertigo
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The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
Because it [IAR] reminds people that the true responsibility to be a good Wikipedian lies with themselves, and not official police or arbiters.
Then do we even need WP:Civility, if we have IAR?
-Stevertigo
2009/10/4 stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com:
The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
Because it [IAR] reminds people that the true responsibility to be a good Wikipedian lies with themselves, and not official police or arbiters.
Then do we even need WP:Civility, if we have IAR?
That's actually a subclass of [[m:Don't be a dick]].
- d.
2009/10/4 stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com:
Then do we even need WP:Civility, if we have IAR?
David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
That's actually a subclass of [[m:Don't be a dick]].
Well your heirarchical classification skills leave something to be desired. By the way, according to Charles: "There is actually no substantive consensus position that uncivil editors are a net negative to the site."
With the current mantra being 'all for the good of the project,' In your opinion, shouldn't the rule instead be "[[WP:Be a huge dick]]?"
-Stevertigo
On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 2:59 PM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
2009/10/4 stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com:
Then do we even need WP:Civility, if we have IAR?
David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
That's actually a subclass of [[m:Don't be a dick]].
Well your heirarchical classification skills leave something to be desired. By the way, according to Charles: "There is actually no substantive consensus position that uncivil editors are a net negative to the site."
With the current mantra being 'all for the good of the project,' In your opinion, shouldn't the rule instead be "[[WP:Be a huge dick]]?"
How's that working out for you?
(rimshot)
stevertigo wrote:
With the current mantra being 'all for the good of the project,' In your opinion, shouldn't the rule instead be "[[WP:Be a huge dick]]?"
The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
How's that working out for you?
(rimshot)
What do you mean?
-Stevertigo
On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 7:28 PM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
How does IAR help limit Civility violations, personal attacks, and slander?
That's an easy one.
If there was a strict rule set up on these things, a checklist that one could definitively say yes or no, then there would also be users who would find ways around it, ways to offend, upset, annoy, provoke, or distress, that they could claim wasn't strictly "against" the rules. We saw that with "civil POV warriors".
IAR guarantees that no matter how sneaky their evasion, we can say to someone "yes you did follow the strict rules. But you're still not following the spirit of them."
FT2
FT2 ft2.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
there would also be users who would find ways around [Civil], ways to offend, upset, annoy, provoke, or distress, that they could claim wasn't strictly "against" the rules.
But a great number of people do these things and get away with it within the current climate. I can offer examples, if you like. Are you're really just saying that IAR allows only the *good* dicks to act like dicks?
We saw that with "civil POV warriors".
{{fact}}
Who is the implied opposition here? "Incivil NPOV warriors?" It is an intrinsic understanding within NPOV that everyone has a POV. Perhaps you are referring to some invisible policy that thinks that admins, Arbcom, etc. *can (thus should, and thus do)* somehow always act with neutrality.
IAR guarantees that no matter how sneaky their evasion, we can say to someone "yes you did follow the strict rules. But you're still not following the spirit of them."
Ah. So, putting these together, you are talking about "Pencil laws" being necessary to subvert the "sneaky use of Civil discourse." Those damn pesky Civilitarians.
-Stevertigo
stevertigo wrote:
FT2 ft2.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
there would also be users who would find ways around [Civil], ways to offend, upset, annoy, provoke, or distress, that they could claim wasn't strictly "against" the rules.
But a great number of people do these things and get away with it within the current climate. I can offer examples, if you like. Are you're really just saying that IAR allows only the *good* dicks to act like dicks?
We saw that with "civil POV warriors".
{{fact}}
[[Wikipedia:Tendentious editing]]
I recall a case, was it RJ? He used to be fairly civil, but tendentious none the less.
Surreptitiousness surreptitious.wikipedian@googlemail.com wrote:
[[Wikipedia:Tendentious editing]] I recall a case, was it RJ? He used to be fairly civil, but tendentious none the less.
If it was the same "RJ" I am thinking of, his Civility violations were objectively straightforward. "Tendentiousness," as an objective concept, is itself.. tendentious.
-Stevertigo
On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 8:46 PM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
But a great number of people do these things and get away with it within the current climate. I can offer examples, if you like. Are you're really just saying that IAR allows only the *good* dicks to act like dicks?
No. I'm saying IAR ensures that /if/ an admin wishes to act against a genuinely problematic editor, wikilawyering ("but policy allows what I did!") won't easy prevent them doing so.
There is a perennial open doorway that says "The wording only goes so far. The spirit and the benefit of the project trump exact wording". There is a perennially open doorway that says "even if it hasn't come up before, and policy is designed to prevent some misconduct that is superficially similar in some ways, or policy has an unfortunate wording loophole, you can make an indfividual judgment on it."
In a project where anyone can write wordings, the communal sense of the spirit of a policy, and its pre-eminence, is quite a significant thing.
FT2
stevertigo wrote:
Are you're really just saying that IAR allows only the *good* dicks to act like dicks?
FT2 wrote:
No. I'm saying IAR ensures that /if/ an admin wishes to act against a genuinely problematic editor, wikilawyering ("but policy allows what I did!") won't easy prevent them doing so.
Breaking that down:
5) There is nothing "easy" about "wikilawyering." Blocking for "wikilawyering" on the other hand can be quite dickish.4) "Wikilawyering" is just a subjective ad-hominem (I'm alleged to be an expert, so I should know). Its an under-handed label that has meaning only because Arbcom is short-handed. 3) "genuinely problematic editor" is a total oxymoron (editors are not problematic), in addition to being a quarrelsome subjective, if "genuinely" is not [[well-defined]]. 2) "/if/ an admin wishes..." has to be a joke: 'If and only if [anyone] really really wants to...' "If an admin wishes" cannot qualify as a definition. 1) "IAR ensures" has to be a joke: i.e. 'this caveat guarantees...'
[if] policy has an unfortunate wording loophole, you can make an indfividual judgment on it."
I try to do that all the time, but my opposition in particular squabbled lately have *also* cited IAR to violate even Civil (an actual pillar). IAR only creates discordian paradoxes.
In a project where anyone can write wordings, the communal sense of the spirit of a policy, and its pre-eminence, is quite a significant thing.
"Communal sense" does'nt mean anything -- the Nazis had one also. We don't let "wikiality" guide article development for a reason -- why should "wikiality" continue to guide policy?
-Stevertigo
hooray for godwin!
On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 6:48 PM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
stevertigo wrote:
Are you're really just saying that IAR allows only the *good* dicks to act like dicks?
FT2 wrote:
No. I'm saying IAR ensures that /if/ an admin wishes to act against a genuinely problematic editor, wikilawyering ("but policy allows what I did!") won't easy prevent them doing so.
Breaking that down:
- There is nothing "easy" about "wikilawyering." Blocking for
"wikilawyering" on the other hand can be quite dickish.4) "Wikilawyering" is just a subjective ad-hominem (I'm alleged to be an expert, so I should know). Its an under-handed label that has meaning only because Arbcom is short-handed. 3) "genuinely problematic editor" is a total oxymoron (editors are not problematic), in addition to being a quarrelsome subjective, if "genuinely" is not [[well-defined]]. 2) "/if/ an admin wishes..." has to be a joke: 'If and only if [anyone] really really wants to...' "If an admin wishes" cannot qualify as a definition.
- "IAR ensures" has to be a joke: i.e. 'this caveat guarantees...'
[if] policy has an unfortunate wording loophole, you can make an indfividual judgment on it."
I try to do that all the time, but my opposition in particular squabbled lately have *also* cited IAR to violate even Civil (an actual pillar). IAR only creates discordian paradoxes.
In a project where anyone can write wordings, the communal sense of the spirit of a policy, and its pre-eminence, is quite a significant thing.
"Communal sense" does'nt mean anything -- the Nazis had one also. We don't let "wikiality" guide article development for a reason -- why should "wikiality" continue to guide policy?
-Stevertigo
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
FT2 wrote:
In a project where anyone can write wordings, the communal sense of the spirit of a policy, and its pre-eminence, is quite a significant thing.
stevertigo wrote:
"Communal sense" does'nt mean anything -- the *Nazis* had one > also. We don't let "wikiality" guide article development for a reason -- why should "wikiality" continue to guide policy?
The Cunctator wrote:
hooray for godwin!
You caught that, eh? Godwin's_rule doesn't apply in cases of ironic humor disguised as obtuse analogies. Nice try though.
-Stevertigo
Wow, you really do love wikilawyering.
On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 6:56 PM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
FT2 wrote:
In a project where anyone can write wordings, the communal sense of the spirit of a policy, and its pre-eminence, is quite a significant thing.
stevertigo wrote:
"Communal sense" does'nt mean anything -- the *Nazis* had one > also. We
don't let "wikiality" guide article development for a
reason -- why should "wikiality" continue to guide policy?
The Cunctator wrote:
hooray for godwin!
You caught that, eh? Godwin's_rule doesn't apply in cases of ironic humor disguised as obtuse analogies. Nice try though.
-Stevertigo
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
stevertigo wrote: Godwin's_rule doesn't apply in cases of ironic humor disguised as obtuse analogies. Nice try though.
The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
Wow, you really do love wikilawyering.
I'm here to fix deine cable. I am expert.
-Stevertigo
On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 11:48 PM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
stevertigo wrote:
Are you're really just saying that IAR allows only the *good* dicks to act like dicks?
FT2 wrote:
No. I'm saying IAR ensures that /if/ an admin wishes to act against a genuinely problematic editor, wikilawyering ("but policy allows what I did!") won't easy prevent them doing so.
Breaking that down:
- There is nothing "easy" about "wikilawyering." Blocking for
"wikilawyering" on the other hand can be quite dickish.4) "Wikilawyering" is just a subjective ad-hominem (I'm alleged to be an expert, so I should know). Its an under-handed label that has meaning only because Arbcom is short-handed. 3) "genuinely problematic editor" is a total oxymoron (editors are not problematic), in addition to being a quarrelsome subjective, if "genuinely" is not [[well-defined]]. 2) "/if/ an admin wishes..." has to be a joke: 'If and only if [anyone] really really wants to...' "If an admin wishes" cannot qualify as a definition.
- "IAR ensures" has to be a joke: i.e. 'this caveat guarantees...'
[if] policy has an unfortunate wording loophole, you can make an indfividual judgment on it."
I try to do that all the time, but my opposition in particular squabbled lately have *also* cited IAR to violate even Civil (an actual pillar). IAR only creates discordian paradoxes.
In a project where anyone can write wordings, the communal sense of the spirit of a policy, and its pre-eminence, is quite a significant thing.
"Communal sense" does'nt mean anything -- the Nazis had one also. We don't let "wikiality" guide article development for a reason -- why should "wikiality" continue to guide policy?
We may have to disagree. I find that there's a fairly good consensus and understanding on these things among long-standing, experienced users -- especially those acknowledged by their peers in some significant way, such as arbs, checkusers, oversighters, crats, stewards, etc.
They may not agree always what's best, but there is remarkable consensus on what's desirable and what sort of approaches are in line with the spirit of the project.
In bullet point:
- Wikilawyering's common, and damaging. Be an admin or arb trying to resolve a heated POV warred dispute, for the experience. We're here to write an encyclopedia, which means fostering a specific kind of collegial community. Not to endlessly babysit those who look for rules that can be fiangled to enable disruption. Experienced users are often quite good at spotting disruption. - "genuinely problematic editor" is an oxymoron. It's also a socially usable expression to refer to users who are indeed disruptive in the effects of their conduct, rather than those superficially seeming or claimed on shallow evidence to be so. - "If X wishes" does not exclude that Y may do so as well.
And so on.
We may best agree to differ.
FT2
On 04/10/2009, FT2 ft2.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
No. I'm saying IAR ensures that /if/ an admin wishes to act against a genuinely problematic editor, wikilawyering ("but policy allows what I did!") won't easy prevent them doing so.
To be perfectly honest, I think the potential problems of 'wishes of admin' are worse than any problems of wikilawyering.
I've never been ganged up on by a bunch of policies, but I've certainly been ganged up on by a bunch of admins.
In a project where anyone can write wordings, the communal sense of the spirit of a policy, and its pre-eminence, is quite a significant thing.
Indeed, it was the policies that stopped them. And that's what concerns me about the attacks on wikilawyering. Rules are intended to *avoid* problems.
FT2
Ian Woollard wrote:
To be perfectly honest, I think the potential problems of 'wishes of admin' are worse than any problems of wikilawyering. I've never been ganged up on by a bunch of policies, but I've certainly been ganged up on by a bunch of admins.
Well yeah. And the fact is that we do need to sort out what adminship means again. That meaning has fallen a bit into dissonance, by my reckoning. The fact that there is a page for admins stating that they are "willing to make tough blocks" comes out of several basic misconceptions - that 1) that decisions about who and when to block are optional and admin discretion 3) that blocks can be "tough" is entirely ambiguous -- either it mean that they are blocking someone they probably shouldn't, or they are just too scared to block someone they should. Either way, its a pansycrat notion to declare oneself "tough," which, come to think of it, is probably the actual purpose of that page.
Ian Woollard wrote:
Indeed, it was the policies that stopped them. And that's what concerns me about the attacks on wikilawyering. Rules are intended to *avoid* problems.
The caution to 'treat rules with care and discretion' is a valid one, and maybe that's what IAR means, and is usually interpreted that way. I would prefer we rename IAR to something like UGJ ("use good judgment") and state upfront that 'this "policy" was formerly called "ignore all rules -- one our very first "policies" that helped define Wikipedia."
-Stevertigo TRWBL
On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 8:21 PM, FT2 ft2.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 7:28 PM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
How does IAR help limit Civility violations, personal attacks, and slander?
That's an easy one.
If there was a strict rule set up on these things, a checklist that one could definitively say yes or no, then there would also be users who would find ways around it, ways to offend, upset, annoy, provoke, or distress, that they could claim wasn't strictly "against" the rules. We saw that with "civil POV warriors".
The danger there has always been that examination of civility gets elevated over examination of POV pushing. The POV pushing should always come first and be examined first. If you don't do that, the danger is that people use claims of civil POV-pushing to bludgeon opponents in content disputes, and say "look, he is being civil, how awful!". The correct approach is to say "he is pushing a POV". Otherwise the arguments descends into whether or not someone is being civil, and the correct debate (over whether and who is pushing a POV) gets missed.
Quite often, you find that both sides are pushing a POV.
IAR guarantees that no matter how sneaky their evasion, we can say to someone "yes you did follow the strict rules. But you're still not following the spirit of them."
That applies especially to POV pushers accusing others of pushing an opposite POV. Sometimes *no-one* is editing with NPOV in mind, and are merely battling to get others banned. Those are the most depressing disputes.
Carcharoth
Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
The danger there...
...is in starting out statements with phrases like "the danger there."
...has always been...
There is "a danger" in saying a thing "has always been." For example, there is the danger that it is not true.
...that examination of civility gets elevated over examination of POV pushing. The POV pushing should always come first and be examined first.
If, Carcharoth, you are saying here that we need some kind of conceptual separation between issues and behavioral disputes -- between behaviourist and editorialist approaches -- I strongly agree with your agreement to my idea.
If you don't do that [treat POV pushing above incivility], the danger is that people use claims of civil POV-pushing to bludgeon opponents in content disputes...
Using myself as an example, would people here appreciate it more if I was less "civil" when I "bludgeon" someone? In my experience, people will just jump on the Civility violation anyway - the only difference being their emphasis on mine and not theirs.
-Stevertigo
I took Carcharoth's use of "bludgeon" here a bit out of context. He wrote:
the danger is that people use claims of civil POV-pushing to bludgeon opponents in content disputes, and say "look, he is being civil, how awful!".
I've been accused of late of 'bludgeoning opponents' *while* being Civil, and so I had a different concept in mind. In fact his point is apt to my case: "Look, he is being civil, how awful!" - is precisely how some are trying 'bludgeon' me, while ignoring the actual editorial / POV issues.
-Stevertigo
On 10/4/09, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
How does IAR help limit Civility violations, personal attacks, and slander?
It doesn't. It is also remarkably ineffective against swine flu.
Just because a policy does not work miracles, does not mean it is not useful.
stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
How does IAR help limit Civility violations, personal attacks, and slander?
Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
It doesn't. It is also remarkably ineffective against swine flu. Just because a policy does not work miracles, does not mean it is > not useful.
Ok. But incivility *is* a serious problem, just like... AIDS.
So it makes sense to address the problem directly -- research into cures, vaccines, precautionary notifications, safe sex techniques, repressive therapies, palliative care, etc. -- and to remove those things like IAR, which like other careless notions -- sharing needles, receiving blood, going bareback -- only tend to lead to un-miraculous results.
-Stevertigo "mailboxes drip like lampposts...
On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 10:26 AM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
How does IAR help limit Civility violations, personal attacks, and slander?
Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
It doesn't. It is also remarkably ineffective against swine flu. Just because a policy does not work miracles, does not mean it is > not useful.
Ok. But incivility *is* a serious problem, just like... AIDS.
So it makes sense to address the problem directly -- research into cures, vaccines, precautionary notifications, safe sex techniques, repressive therapies, palliative care, etc. -- and to remove those things like IAR, which like other careless notions -- sharing needles, receiving blood, going bareback -- only tend to lead to un-miraculous results.
You're jumping from "IAR does not cure all" (no disagreement) to "IAR is harmful and must be removed", which does not logically follow.
George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
You're jumping from "IAR does not cure all" (no disagreement) to "IAR is harmful and must be removed", which does not logically follow.
No I am not. I am saying however that "slow is fast" and "you've got to learn the rules before you can break them." These are not "pillars" - these are *arcana derived through a teaching environment, and should never be expressed to novices. The core policies are not just cider house rules - they are principles. Foundational ones, even.
By the way, would anyone like to take a guess as to who (whom?) added the language to WP:DISRUPT that instructs us to treat even comments (ie. 'on talk pages') to be regarded, and thus treated, as "edits?"
And who here in general thinks its cool to block people with a different point of view just for trying to discuss their edits on talk pages?
-Stevertigo "Skyscrapers are scraping together your voice..
PPCD: stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote: - that instructs us to treat even comments (ie. 'on talk pages') to be regarded, and thus treated, as "edits?" + that instructs us to treat, and thus regard even comments (ie. 'on talk pages') as "edits?"
Eugh. -Stevertigo