Consider this another entry in that time-tested genre of "obviously futile suggestions to nuke things that nobody is ever going to nuke, but probably should anyway" posts. (The classic, of course, being Nuke AfD. Which we should still do.)
We should nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]. They are not working. They have never worked. It is not a feasible project to go and add sources to everything, and new contributors who are editing casually are never going to be willing to do the extra work of having sources. The result is a rule where we are always going to be playing catch-up.
Nor do the pages prevent incidents like Siegenthaler, which was a problem with exactly one cause, which is that nobody had ever actually looked at that page after it was created. No policy in the world will fix a page that nobody is editing.
Yes, we need to ensure that people do not add crap information. This can be covered easily with "Information that people doubt the validity of should be sourced." And we can then leave the community to deal with issues on a case by case basis with the direction that they should be careful to make sure that information is accurate. And we should shoot people who continue to add dubious information over the objections of other editors. Which is basically how we wrote an encyclopedia that has proven pretty trustworthy, and, more to the point, is how we actually operate now on the vast majority of our articles, since [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]] are not actually useful pages.
But to have a pair of policies that cannot be honestly implemented serves only one purpose: causing debates among editors that waste time and good faith.
Nuke them.
-Phil
On 1/25/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Consider this another entry in that time-tested genre of "obviously futile suggestions to nuke things that nobody is ever going to nuke, but probably should anyway" posts. (The classic, of course, being Nuke AfD. Which we should still do.)
We should nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]. They are not working.
Niether do most forms of goverment but people still tend to try and keep some form of them arround
They have never worked. It is not a feasible project to go and add sources to everything, and new contributors who are editing casually are never going to be willing to do the extra work of having sources. The result is a rule where we are always going to be playing catch-up.
That differes from our copyright policy how?
On Jan 24, 2007, at 9:50 PM, geni wrote:
That differes from our copyright policy how?
Our copyright policy is mostly intuitive, and can be explained in a sentence in such a way that an average person can understand it. It's slightly trickier with images, but only slightly since we've been cracking down pretty hard on "fair use" of late. Copyvio is not nearly as widespread as lack of sourcing. Copyvio is not a newbie- unfriendly concept.
-Phil
On 1/25/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 24, 2007, at 9:50 PM, geni wrote:
That differes from our copyright policy how?
Our copyright policy is mostly intuitive,
False.
It includes elements of law so beautifully complex in their construction that a lifetime of study would hardly scratch the surface
and can be explained in a sentence in such a way that an average person can understand it. It's slightly trickier with images, but only slightly since we've been cracking down pretty hard on "fair use" of late.
You have no idea do you? You really have no idea.
wil still have 100Ks of "fair use" images. Will have stuff under very complex areas of copyright law and downright insane ones.
Do you know what the copyright status of Works of the Philippines government really are? Image scans made in the UK? engravings under crown copyright?
Did you follow the PD soviet debate?
The average person doesn't have a hope in Hades and we are forever playing catchup.
Copyvio is not nearly as widespread as lack of sourcing. Copyvio is not a newbie- unfriendly concept.
Oh but it is. oh but it is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_with_unknown_copyright_status http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_with_no_copyright_tag http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_with_unknown_source
On 1/25/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
geni wrote:
False.
It includes elements of law so beautifully complex in their construction that a lifetime of study would hardly scratch the surface
False. Our fair use policy is rooted in copyright paranoia.
No it isn't. In any case I wasn't talking about "fair use".
geni wrote:
On 1/25/07, Jeff Raymond wrote:
geni wrote:
False.
It includes elements of law so beautifully complex in their construction that a lifetime of study would hardly scratch the surface
False. Our fair use policy is rooted in copyright paranoia.
No it isn't. In any case I wasn't talking about "fair use".
Fair use is only one small corner of copyright law. In many respects I agree with both of you. International copyright law as we know it is incredibly complex, but adopting a policy based on lowest common denominatior of risk aversion is paranoia at the same time. Risk frightens most people, and they would prefer not to take any at all. It's no wonder that the risk averse will win nearly every time the matter comes to a vote somewhere.
That being said, and as important as discussions about copyright are. at this juncture they tend to set this important discussion off on a tangent. The need (or lack of need) to deal with sourcing issues will still be there with or without copyritght material.
Ec
On 1/26/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Fair use is only one small corner of copyright law. In many respects I agree with both of you. International copyright law as we know it is incredibly complex, but adopting a policy based on lowest common denominatior of risk aversion is paranoia at the same time.
That would be Mexican copyright terms of life plus 100 years. We don't follow them.
Risk frightens most people, and they would prefer not to take any at all. It's no wonder that the risk averse will win nearly every time the matter comes to a vote somewhere.
That makes the rather flawed assumption that people understand the risks. They don't.
That being said, and as important as discussions about copyright are. at this juncture they tend to set this important discussion off on a tangent. The need (or lack of need) to deal with sourcing issues will still be there with or without copyritght material.
I was demonstrating that cite and RS ware hardly unique.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Jeff Raymond stated for the record:
geni wrote:
False.
It includes elements of law so beautifully complex in their construction that a lifetime of study would hardly scratch the surface
False. Our fair use policy is rooted in copyright paranoia.
-Jeff
False. It is rooted in free redistributability.
- -- Sean Barrett | Modern art is what happens when painters stop sean@epoptic.com | looking at girls and persuade themselves | that they have a better idea. --John Ciardi
On 1/25/07, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.com wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Jeff Raymond stated for the record:
geni wrote:
False.
It includes elements of law so beautifully complex in their construction that a lifetime of study would hardly scratch the surface
False. Our fair use policy is rooted in copyright paranoia.
-Jeff
False. It is rooted in free redistributability.
I think both are true. The goal from the organizational point is both to be able to redistribute the content without any concern for what's in it, and avoid people filing complaints (or worse, suits) about copyright violation.
The enforcement seems more rooted in copyright paranoia, from my experience. Not the "ok, you stole this image" part, where whapping people over the head is appropriate, but "this is a fair use of the image" is legally true (in the US at least) for a lot of things where the current policy as enforced is removing them. And would be true for anyone else who downloaded and redistributed a copy of the WP article and images.
Fair use is generally (but not always) transitive, and would generally be to others who re-distribute WP content. This is not generally acknowledged in the debate or policy but remains true.
It's hard to avoid looking at the policy as enforced some days and see an unholy alliance of the hyper-free-content freaks who demand that everything in the world be GFDLed or die, and the copyright police.
On 1/25/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/25/07, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.com wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Jeff Raymond stated for the record:
geni wrote:
False.
It includes elements of law so beautifully complex in their construction that a lifetime of study would hardly scratch the
surface
False. Our fair use policy is rooted in copyright paranoia.
-Jeff
False. It is rooted in free redistributability.
I think both are true. The goal from the organizational point is both to be able to redistribute the content without any concern for what's in it, and avoid people filing complaints (or worse, suits) about copyright violation.
The enforcement seems more rooted in copyright paranoia, from my experience. Not the "ok, you stole this image" part, where whapping people over the head is appropriate, but "this is a fair use of the image" is legally true (in the US at least) for a lot of things where the current policy as enforced is removing them. And would be true for anyone else who downloaded and redistributed a copy of the WP article and images.
Some people are definitely descending into copyright paranoia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Abramoff_scotland_small.jpg
The Cunctator schreef:
Some people are definitely descending into copyright paranoia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Abramoff_scotland_small.jpg
Why is this copyright paranoia? There is no mention of who took that picture, neither on the image description page, nor in the original source. So there is no way for us to check the claim it is {{PD-USGov}}.
According to the other copyright claim, it is "public use" because it is "a picture introduced at a federal trial". If the uploader meant "public domain": I've not seen this before; I doubt it is true.
Maybe it's fair use. Maybe. But surely not in all 5 of the articles it is included in at the moment?
Eugene
The Cunctator wrote:
Some people are definitely descending into copyright paranoia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Abramoff_scotland_small.jpg
What, having your copyrighted work introduced into a trial means your lose all your rights to it? If so, that would be useful, since Disney has been in court a few times. Maybe Mickey Mouse has been PD all this time and we didn't even know it! And haven't there been a bunch of movies involved in court cases too? Free movie uploads tonight!
:-)
Stan
On 1/25/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
Some people are definitely descending into copyright paranoia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Abramoff_scotland_small.jpg
What, having your copyrighted work introduced into a trial means your lose all your rights to it? If so, that would be useful, since Disney has been in court a few times. Maybe Mickey Mouse has been PD all this time and we didn't even know it! And haven't there been a bunch of movies involved in court cases too? Free movie uploads tonight!
:-)
It's been established in the US that you lose trade secret status with stuff in open court filings (hence a lot of sealed filings in civil cases), and that copyrighted stuff doesn't lose copyright but enters the "suitable for fair use in coverage in the media and legal commentary and the like" realm.
On 1/25/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/25/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
Some people are definitely descending into copyright paranoia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Abramoff_scotland_small.jpg
What, having your copyrighted work introduced into a trial means your lose all your rights to it? If so, that would be useful, since Disney has been in court a few times. Maybe Mickey Mouse has been PD all this time and we didn't even know it! And haven't there been a bunch of movies involved in court cases too? Free movie uploads tonight!
:-)
It's been established in the US that you lose trade secret status with stuff in open court filings (hence a lot of sealed filings in civil cases), and that copyrighted stuff doesn't lose copyright but enters the "suitable for fair use in coverage in the media and legal commentary and the like" realm.
Which if I put on my copyright-paranoid hat I would say is insufficient for Wikipedia (aka "FAIR USE ISN'T FREE USE") but taking it off and being a practical Wikipedia I would say is plenty sufficient.
In other words I don't think Wikipedia should (in this regard) hold itself to a higher copyright standard than the New York Times.
On 1/26/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
Which if I put on my copyright-paranoid hat I would say is insufficient for Wikipedia (aka "FAIR USE ISN'T FREE USE") but taking it off and being a practical Wikipedia I would say is plenty sufficient.
In other words I don't think Wikipedia should (in this regard) hold itself to a higher copyright standard than the New York Times.
New York Times uses with permission for New York Times only. We don't.
On 1/25/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
New York Times uses with permission for New York Times only. We don't.
"We did", you mean.
On 1/26/07, Omegatron omegatron+wikienl@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/25/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
New York Times uses with permission for New York Times only. We don't.
"We did", you mean.
I tend to deal with how things are. We also once allowed unlimited reverts and had the US flag as our logo what of it?
On 1/26/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/26/07, Omegatron omegatron+wikienl@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/25/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
New York Times uses with permission for New York Times only. We don't.
"We did", you mean.
I tend to deal with how things are. We also once allowed unlimited reverts and had the US flag as our logo what of it?
We never allowed edit wars.
The US flag as our logo?
Wha?
I tend to deal with how things are. We also once allowed unlimited reverts and had the US flag as our logo what of it?
We never allowed edit wars.
Indeed. Just because we didn't have a specific limit on how many reverts doesn't mean we allowed an unlimited number. It was left to common sense and the judgement of admins, I guess (I wasn't very active in those days) - the site has grown since then, and common sense doesn't work as well as it used to...
On 1/26/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
We never allowed edit wars.
There were some pretty impressive revert wars though
The US flag as our logo?
Wha?
I think it was used at the start of day one since it was the first thing jimbo could get his hands on.
On 1/26/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/26/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
We never allowed edit wars.
There were some pretty impressive revert wars though
Indeedy!
The US flag as our logo?
Wha?
I think it was used at the start of day one since it was the first thing jimbo could get his hands on.
Old-timer.
On 1/26/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
I think it was used at the start of day one since it was the first thing jimbo could get his hands on.
Old-timer.
You pre-date me.
On 1/26/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/26/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
I think it was used at the start of day one since it was the first thing jimbo could get his hands on.
Old-timer.
You pre-date me.
Oh, you're relying on the histories. I only got to Wikipedia around June 2001; the flag wasn't around by then.
The Cunctator wrote:
On 1/26/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/26/07, Omegatron omegatron+wikienl@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/25/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
New York Times uses with permission for New York Times only. We don't.
"We did", you mean.
I tend to deal with how things are. We also once allowed unlimited reverts and had the US flag as our logo what of it?
We never allowed edit wars.
The US flag as our logo?
Wha?
I don't remember that either, but then I've only been here for five years.
Ec
On 1/26/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
New York Times uses with permission for New York Times only. We don't.
"We did", you mean.
I tend to deal with how things are. We also once allowed unlimited reverts and had the US flag as our logo what of it?
Of course I am implying that this relatively recent change to our policies should not have happened. (And we should repeal it.)
But that's another thread...
George Herbert wrote:
On 1/25/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
Some people are definitely descending into copyright paranoia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Abramoff_scotland_small.jpg
What, having your copyrighted work introduced into a trial means your lose all your rights to it? If so, that would be useful, since Disney has been in court a few times. Maybe Mickey Mouse has been PD all this time and we didn't even know it! And haven't there been a bunch of movies involved in court cases too? Free movie uploads tonight!
:-)
It's been established in the US that you lose trade secret status with stuff in open court filings (hence a lot of sealed filings in civil cases), and that copyrighted stuff doesn't lose copyright but enters the "suitable for fair use in coverage in the media and legal commentary and the like" realm.
Which is fine, we have a whole set of rules for all that. The original claim was that the picture was a production of the US government, for which the main evidence seemed to be that it was introduced at a federal trial. We still don't know whether the picture was taken by a random person in the group or by a professional, and if the latter, who the professional was working for. Copyright paranoia? Well, I would be pretty angry if someone copied all of my photos, removed my name, and declared them "PD-USGov" on some flimsy pretext.
Stan
On 1/25/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
It's been established in the US that you lose trade secret status with stuff in open court filings (hence a lot of sealed filings in civil cases), and that copyrighted stuff doesn't lose copyright but enters the "suitable for fair use in coverage in the media and legal commentary and the like" realm.
Which is fine, we have a whole set of rules for all that. The original claim was that the picture was a production of the US government, for which the main evidence seemed to be that it was introduced at a federal trial. We still don't know whether the picture was taken by a random person in the group or by a professional, and if the latter, who the professional was working for. Copyright paranoia? Well, I would be pretty angry if someone copied all of my photos, removed my name, and declared them "PD-USGov" on some flimsy pretext.
Yeah, I was responding in the general here.
I think it's fair use to use these, but they're clearly not PD-USGov; someone took them, and unless they released them in a way we don't know about, they're still private copyrighted photos.
It's copyright paranoia to say that there's no fair use to be found here. It's not copyright paranoia to take the PD-USGov tag off. The owner would have a perfect right to be upset over that.
On 1/25/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/25/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
It's been established in the US that you lose trade secret status with stuff in open court filings (hence a lot of sealed filings in civil cases), and that copyrighted stuff doesn't lose copyright but enters the "suitable for fair use in coverage in the media and legal commentary and the like" realm.
Which is fine, we have a whole set of rules for all that. The original claim was that the picture was a production of the US government, for which the main evidence seemed to be that it was introduced at a federal trial. We still don't know whether the picture was taken by a random person in the group or by a professional, and if the latter, who the professional was working for. Copyright paranoia? Well, I would be pretty angry if someone copied all of my photos, removed my name, and declared them "PD-USGov" on some flimsy pretext.
Yeah, I was responding in the general here.
I think it's fair use to use these, but they're clearly not PD-USGov; someone took them, and unless they released them in a way we don't know about, they're still private copyrighted photos.
It's copyright paranoia to say that there's no fair use to be found here. It's not copyright paranoia to take the PD-USGov tag off. The owner would have a perfect right to be upset over that.
Okay, so what's the right tag?
The Cunctator wrote:
Okay, so what's the right tag?
Strictly speaking, you'd have to ask the owner of the photo. Given the specifics of that crowd, it wouldn't surprise me if they were planning to make money selling it. :-) In practice, it's probably a "fairusein", enumerating the articles for which you plan to use it. Lack of the actual photographer's name is going to be a problem - without that, no guarantee I wouldn't hit it with a "no source" tag should I run across it in future.
Stan
On 1/25/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
Okay, so what's the right tag?
Strictly speaking, you'd have to ask the owner of the photo. Given the specifics of that crowd, it wouldn't surprise me if they were planning to make money selling it. :-) In practice, it's probably a "fairusein", enumerating the articles for which you plan to use it. Lack of the actual photographer's name is going to be a problem - without that, no guarantee I wouldn't hit it with a "no source" tag should I run across it in future.
Nice to see you standing up for the rights of felons everywhere. :)
The Cunctator wrote:
On 1/25/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
Okay, so what's the right tag?
Strictly speaking, you'd have to ask the owner of the photo. Given the specifics of that crowd, it wouldn't surprise me if they were planning to make money selling it. :-) In practice, it's probably a "fairusein", enumerating the articles for which you plan to use it. Lack of the actual photographer's name is going to be a problem - without that, no guarantee I wouldn't hit it with a "no source" tag should I run across it in future.
Nice to see you standing up for the rights of felons everywhere. :)
One never knows - haven't there been some convicted writers/photographers who were ordered by the court to sell their work so as to make restitutions from the proceeds?
Stan
Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net writes:
The Cunctator wrote:
On 1/25/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
Okay, so what's the right tag?
Strictly speaking, you'd have to ask the owner of the photo. Given the specifics of that crowd, it wouldn't surprise me if they were planning to make money selling it. :-) In practice, it's probably a "fairusein", enumerating the articles for which you plan to use it. Lack of the actual photographer's name is going to be a problem - without that, no guarantee I wouldn't hit it with a "no source" tag should I run across it in future.
Nice to see you standing up for the rights of felons everywhere. :)
One never knows - haven't there been some convicted writers/photographers who were ordered by the court to sell their work so as to make restitutions from the proceeds?
Stan
Curiously enough, the Unabomber is contesting that right now: http://www.slate.com/id/2158220/
,---- | Does the government get the copyright when it seizes a prisoner's personal writings? Some legal scholars think it does, although Kaczynski is arguing otherwise. Even if the feds couldn't transfer the copyright on Kaczynski's writings, they'd probably be able to sell them. That's because they're not trying to reproduce them; instead, they're selling the papers as physical objects, along with other items he owned. `----
On 1/25/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/25/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/25/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
It's been established in the US that you lose trade secret status with stuff in open court filings (hence a lot of sealed filings in civil cases), and that copyrighted stuff doesn't lose copyright but enters the "suitable for fair use in coverage in the media and legal commentary and the like" realm.
Which is fine, we have a whole set of rules for all that. The original claim was that the picture was a production of the US government, for which the main evidence seemed to be that it was introduced at a federal trial. We still don't know whether the picture was taken by a random person in the group or by a professional, and if the latter, who the professional was working for. Copyright paranoia? Well, I would be pretty angry if someone copied all of my photos, removed my name, and declared them "PD-USGov" on some flimsy pretext.
Yeah, I was responding in the general here.
I think it's fair use to use these, but they're clearly not PD-USGov; someone took them, and unless they released them in a way we don't know about, they're still private copyrighted photos.
It's copyright paranoia to say that there's no fair use to be found here. It's not copyright paranoia to take the PD-USGov tag off. The owner would have a perfect right to be upset over that.
Okay, so what's the right tag?
We don't have enough tags, to be honest, in some cases because of disagreement over what WP fair use policy is in a particular case.
geni wrote:
On 1/25/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Consider this another entry in that time-tested genre of "obviously futile suggestions to nuke things that nobody is ever going to nuke, but probably should anyway" posts. (The classic, of course, being Nuke AfD. Which we should still do.)
We should nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]. They are not working.
Niether do most forms of goverment but people still tend to try and keep some form of them arround
:-D Some would say that they continue to exist despite the peopl.
Ec
Also, if CITE and RS were to be nuked, there's not much point in keeping WP:V; and if verifiability goes out of the window, I might as well give up, because then Wikipedia will never be a accurate encyclopedia.
A while back I said that I think sources by an article's subject are perfectly when they're used to back up content rather than the subject's claim of notability, which is basically a comment on reliable sources too.
I think that shows the page needs to be altered.
Mgm
On 1/25/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
geni wrote:
On 1/25/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Consider this another entry in that time-tested genre of "obviously futile suggestions to nuke things that nobody is ever going to nuke, but probably should anyway" posts. (The classic, of course, being Nuke AfD. Which we should still do.)
We should nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]. They are not working.
Niether do most forms of goverment but people still tend to try and keep some form of them arround
:-D Some would say that they continue to exist despite the peopl.
Ec
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
Also, if CITE and RS were to be nuked, there's not much point in keeping WP:V; and if verifiability goes out of the window, I might as well give up, because then Wikipedia will never be a accurate encyclopedia.
Verifiability is a goal, citations and sources are means to achieving that goal. Getting rid of CITE and RS does not necessarily imply getting rid of the goal of verifiability, it merely means changing the means by which it is achieved. It doesn't even mean getting rid of citations, I don't think anyone's suggesting that they be forbidden.
A while back I said that I think sources by an article's subject are perfectly when they're used to back up content rather than the subject's claim of notability, which is basically a comment on reliable sources too.
I think that shows the page needs to be altered.
I suspect the "nuke CITE/RS" suggestion comes out of the same sort of desire to loosen the current rules, just a little more extreme. I think the "nuke the policy" position comes from the feeling that incremental changes to existing policy will be too hard to pull off effectively and so it's better to start from a clean slate.
I just spent two days trying to preserve a 1911 Britannica citation that was removed because it wikilinked to [[Encyclopedia Britannica]] and "Wikipedia is not a reliable source". When I finally managed (I think) to convince the other editors that it wasn't actually meant to reference our article about EB but rather the encyclopedia itself they removed it anyway because it didn't specify which page in the encyclopedia was being referenced. So I can definitely sympathize with this level of frustration. :)
On Jan 25, 2007, at 3:37 AM, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
Also, if CITE and RS were to be nuked, there's not much point in keeping WP:V; and if verifiability goes out of the window, I might as well give up, because then Wikipedia will never be a accurate encyclopedia.
Not true. There is a difference between "all information must be verifiable" and "all information must be cited." One refers to a potential, the other to an actual fact and outcome.
Best, Phil Sandifer sandifer@english.ufl.edu
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
On Thu, 25 Jan 2007, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
Also, if CITE and RS were to be nuked, there's not much point in keeping WP:V; and if verifiability goes out of the window, I might as well give up, because then Wikipedia will never be a accurate encyclopedia.
Perhaps true if you completely nuke them, but to say that they need to be nuked is really an exaggeration for effect.
We don't need to nuke CITE and RS. What we do need is to be less extreme about when they are used.
On Jan 24, 2007, at 8:39 PM, Phil Sandifer wrote:
Consider this another entry in that time-tested genre of "obviously futile suggestions to nuke things that nobody is ever going to nuke, but probably should anyway" posts. (The classic, of course, being Nuke AfD. Which we should still do.)
We should nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]. They are not working. They have never worked. It is not a feasible project to go and add sources to everything, and new contributors who are editing casually are never going to be willing to do the extra work of having sources. The result is a rule where we are always going to be playing catch-up.
Nor do the pages prevent incidents like Siegenthaler, which was a problem with exactly one cause, which is that nobody had ever actually looked at that page after it was created. No policy in the world will fix a page that nobody is editing.
Yes, we need to ensure that people do not add crap information. This can be covered easily with "Information that people doubt the validity of should be sourced." And we can then leave the community to deal with issues on a case by case basis with the direction that they should be careful to make sure that information is accurate. And we should shoot people who continue to add dubious information over the objections of other editors. Which is basically how we wrote an encyclopedia that has proven pretty trustworthy, and, more to the point, is how we actually operate now on the vast majority of our articles, since [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]] are not actually useful pages.
But to have a pair of policies that cannot be honestly implemented serves only one purpose: causing debates among editors that waste time and good faith.
Nuke them.
-Phil
Sorry to quote the whole thing, but there weren't really any sections I felt I could snip.
I'm not sure I understand what your reasoning behind this is. You say that [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]] are "not actually useful pages" and "cannot be honestly implemented." To your first statement, I think they're incredibly useful and I didn't see a shred of letters exhibiting why they are not in your e-mail. As to your second statement, that's true of nearly all (if not all) of our policies. Those are *goals*. Of course it's not feasible that every single sentence in every single article across every localized Wikipedia be sourced from reliable sources. That's ridiculous. But in order for an article to be a good one, it must be sourced from reliable sources, and that's what those policies state.
Encyclopedias are tertiary sources; if they're good, they provide an adequate summation, but hardly the whole picture. Encyclopedias, when used correctly, are merely a "jump-off point" for new reading and learning. If we alter our goals so that we do not strive for providing sources and references, then not only will we have failed in providing a credible encyclopedic article, we will have failed in providing an article that serves any sort of purpose for our readers.
I have no idea where the idea that all WP:CITE and WP:RS do is cause debates among editors, because I personally have seen nothing of the sort. I'd really appreciate some background perhaps to better understand where you're coming from.
Just my $0.02, [[User:bbatsell]]
On Jan 24, 2007, at 9:54 PM, bbatsell wrote:
Sorry to quote the whole thing, but there weren't really any sections I felt I could snip.
I'm not sure I understand what your reasoning behind this is. You say that [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]] are "not actually useful pages" and "cannot be honestly implemented." To your first statement, I think they're incredibly useful and I didn't see a shred of letters exhibiting why they are not in your e-mail. As to your second statement, that's true of nearly all (if not all) of our policies. Those are *goals*. Of course it's not feasible that every single sentence in every single article across every localized Wikipedia be sourced from reliable sources. That's ridiculous. But in order for an article to be a good one, it must be sourced from reliable sources, and that's what those policies state.
Our policies should not be goals - they should be policies. If we cannot meaningfully implement the policy across all of our pages then it's a bad policy. This isn't actually a problem for most of our policies. [[WP:NPOV]] is actually basically understandable by any reasonably intelligent person, can be kept in mind, doesn't really require extra work. As a result, most of our pages do make a passing effort on NPOV. That is not true for sourcing.
Encyclopedias are tertiary sources; if they're good, they provide an adequate summation, but hardly the whole picture. Encyclopedias, when used correctly, are merely a "jump-off point" for new reading and learning. If we alter our goals so that we do not strive for providing sources and references, then not only will we have failed in providing a credible encyclopedic article, we will have failed in providing an article that serves any sort of purpose for our readers.
There's a difference between having sourcing policies and making it a goal that we have sources and references. A good encyclopedia article should point towards further reading, yes. That's not what [[WP:CITE]] or [[WP:RS]] say, though. This should be something akin to adding images to an article - something we like to do, but not something that we freak out over.
I have no idea where the idea that all WP:CITE and WP:RS do is cause debates among editors, because I personally have seen nothing of the sort. I'd really appreciate some background perhaps to better understand where you're coming from.
Pop onto AfD for a bit. Or to articles on popular culture. Or [[WP:FAC]]. Sourcing disputes are a more or less constant din - both with articles that are accurate being taken to task for not being well-sourced enough (This has become a pernicous flavor of deletionism in the past year or so) and with articles that are complete shit getting a pass because they have sources, even if the sources are bollocks.
-Phil
--- Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Pop onto AfD for a bit. Or to articles on popular culture. Or [[WP:FAC]]. Sourcing disputes are a more or less constant din - both with articles that are accurate being taken to task for not being well-sourced enough (This has become a pernicous flavor of deletionism in the past year or so) and with articles that are complete shit getting a pass because they have sources, even if the sources are bollocks.
Even for the best policies and guidelines, there'll always be some people who try to abuse, wikilawyer, or generally twist them to their own ends. NPOV disputes are more or less a constant din, too, but that's no reason to nuke NPOV.
In cryptography, there's this rhetoric about people who view crypto as "magic pixie dust" that somehow makes a system secure if you just sprinkle some about. The same holds for RS and CITE: they don't magically guarantee quality by themselves, but they are great tools for doing so if not abused.
By all means, let's discuss where we need to improve things, but let's not throw the proverbial baby out with the, well, you know.
-- Matt
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com
___________________________________________________________ What kind of emailer are you? Find out today - get a free analysis of your email personality. Take the quiz at the Yahoo! Mail Championship. http://uk.rd.yahoo.com/evt=44106/*http://mail.yahoo.net/uk
On 1/25/07, Matt R matt_crypto@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
The same holds for RS and CITE: they don't magically guarantee quality by themselves, but they are great tools for doing so if not abused.
But they are only used for abuse. A simple sentence or two in WP:V and a dose of consensus is sufficient.
On Thu, 2007-01-25 at 08:09 -0500, Omegatron wrote:
On 1/25/07, Matt R matt_crypto@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
The same holds for RS and CITE: they don't magically guarantee quality by themselves, but they are great tools for doing so if not abused.
But they are only used for abuse. A simple sentence or two in WP:V and a dose of consensus is sufficient.
Only used for abuse?? How do you find that? I know that demanding decent reliable sources for an /encyclopaedia/ is _controversial_ (sadly), but its one of the things that (supposedly) makes us different from other non-encyclopaedic volunteer run collections of information.
Fran
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
If people cited their sources in the first place, there wouldn't be any abuse by people using that fact to get it deleted. Any abuse with these policies can be prevented if people just made the effort. I think I'm going to reread those pages and think about rewriting them.
Mgm
On 1/25/07, Francis Tyers spectre@ivixor.net wrote:
On Thu, 2007-01-25 at 08:09 -0500, Omegatron wrote:
On 1/25/07, Matt R matt_crypto@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
The same holds for RS and CITE: they don't magically guarantee quality
by
themselves, but they are great tools for doing so if not abused.
But they are only used for abuse. A simple sentence or two in WP:V and
a
dose of consensus is sufficient.
Only used for abuse?? How do you find that? I know that demanding decent reliable sources for an /encyclopaedia/ is _controversial_ (sadly), but its one of the things that (supposedly) makes us different from other non-encyclopaedic volunteer run collections of information.
Fran
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
If people cited their sources in the first place, there wouldn't be any abuse by people using that fact to get it deleted. Any abuse with these policies can be prevented if people just made the effort. I think I'm going to reread those pages and think about rewriting them.
Please do. While you're there, take a look at the talk page. An easy way to make WP:RS more useful would be to break down the sourcing by subject as opposed to thinking that the same style of sources for historical figures is needed for an internet meme. Not surprisingly, there's some vocal opposition to it, and the problem persists.
-Jeff
On Thu, 2007-01-25 at 14:16 +0100, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
If people cited their sources in the first place, there wouldn't be any abuse by people using that fact to get it deleted. Any abuse with these policies can be prevented if people just made the effort. I think I'm going to reread those pages and think about rewriting them.
Mgm
Agree. If there is a problem with things being deleted, it isn't a problem with policy, but with the people writing them without specifying a source.
Fran
On 1/25/07, Francis Tyers spectre@ivixor.net wrote:
On Thu, 2007-01-25 at 08:09 -0500, Omegatron wrote:
On 1/25/07, Matt R matt_crypto@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
The same holds for RS and CITE: they don't magically guarantee quality
by
themselves, but they are great tools for doing so if not abused.
But they are only used for abuse. A simple sentence or two in WP:V and
a
dose of consensus is sufficient.
Only used for abuse?? How do you find that? I know that demanding decent reliable sources for an /encyclopaedia/ is _controversial_ (sadly), but its one of the things that (supposedly) makes us different from other non-encyclopaedic volunteer run collections of information.
Fran
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Francis Tyers wrote:
On Thu, 2007-01-25 at 14:16 +0100, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
If people cited their sources in the first place, there wouldn't be any abuse by people using that fact to get it deleted. Any abuse with these policies can be prevented if people just made the effort. I think I'm going to reread those pages and think about rewriting them.
Mgm
Agree. If there is a problem with things being deleted, it isn't a problem with policy, but with the people writing them without specifying a source.
It's more a little bit of both.
-Jeff
On Thu, 2007-01-25 at 08:21 -0500, Jeff Raymond wrote:
Francis Tyers wrote:
On Thu, 2007-01-25 at 14:16 +0100, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
If people cited their sources in the first place, there wouldn't be any abuse by people using that fact to get it deleted. Any abuse with these policies can be prevented if people just made the effort. I think I'm going to reread those pages and think about rewriting them.
Mgm
Agree. If there is a problem with things being deleted, it isn't a problem with policy, but with the people writing them without specifying a source.
It's more a little bit of both.
:)
Fran
Francis Tyers wrote:
On Thu, 2007-01-25 at 14:16 +0100, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
If people cited their sources in the first place, there wouldn't be any abuse by people using that fact to get it deleted. Any abuse with these policies can be prevented if people just made the effort. I think I'm going to reread those pages and think about rewriting them.
Mgm
Agree. If there is a problem with things being deleted, it isn't a problem with policy, but with the people writing them without specifying a source.
This is oversimplified, though. I first started editing Wikipedia back in mid 2001 and for a long time there was no "standard" approach to citing sources, or any formal guideline suggesting that everything had to be cited (as far as I can recall it was enough that things could be verified in principle). Whenever I made major additions to an article I'd try to remember to cite the source in the edit summary, or if the source had more information in it than could be put into the article itself I'd add an external link at the bottom ("external links" and "references" are still often blended together willy-nilly to this day, which can result in references getting removed because external link standards get applied to them instead), but that was just me and I wasn't rigorous about it. There's a lot of perfectly good content out there on Wikipedia that lacks references for legacy reasons. There is also a lot of stuff that doesn't get cited nowadays because the editors that added them consider them too trivial or too obvious to be worth citing, and a good case can be made that there's nothing wrong with doing this. It's not perfect, but "not perfect" can still be better than "bad".
Personally, I'm hoping for the day when version flagging arrives to transport us all to a utopia where Eventualist, Immediatist, Deletionist and Inclusionist can all see only their own preferred aspect of Wikipedia and work together in harmony. :)
On Jan 25, 2007, at 8:16 AM, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
If people cited their sources in the first place, there wouldn't be any abuse by people using that fact to get it deleted. Any abuse with these policies can be prevented if people just made the effort. I think I'm going to reread those pages and think about rewriting them.
But this is one of the problems. The burden of citing everything is larger than our editors, especially our casual editors, are willing to undertake. We will never reach a point where people will cite their sources in the first place. Hence the prospect of eternally playing catch-up.
-Phil
On 1/26/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
But this is one of the problems. The burden of citing everything is larger than our editors, especially our casual editors, are willing to undertake. We will never reach a point where people will cite their sources in the first place. Hence the prospect of eternally playing catch-up.
It's more than just that. I recently wrote a stub on [[Wingan Inlet]]. I know the place exists: I went there. Do I have a source? No. Am I confident that a source exists? Yes. Would I rather create an unsourced stub, or leave a hole in our encyclopaedia? Unsourced stub, with fries.
Steve
Steve Bennett schreef:
It's more than just that. I recently wrote a stub on [[Wingan Inlet]]. I know the place exists: I went there. Do I have a source? No. Am I confident that a source exists? Yes. Would I rather create an unsourced stub, or leave a hole in our encyclopaedia? Unsourced stub, with fries.
I recently wrote a stub on [[Heliophorus]], a genus of butterflies. It links the existing article on its subfamily with the existing articles of the species. As the subfamily article only lists genera, my new article is the only way to go from the subfamily article to the individual species. It is therefore useful, even though it contains nothing more than a partial list of species.
I created this list from wikipedia: it just contains all species that have an article. If I had to list my source, it would have been "Wikipedia", which is Not Acceptable, and would have been removed (I guess). So I left it unsourced.
Does this make it a worse article than, say, [[Heliophorus brahma]], which has 6 sources (5 books, 1 journal article)? Note that that article is 1 sentence long. What do you think is more likely; that this one sentence is the only information found about the species by someone who has checked those 5 books; or that the references section has been copied from some other article, and is therefore more or less worthless?
I hope that someone will some day add useful information to my stub, and with a bit of luck, he'll add his sources too. But the extra info is woth much more than the sources, IMHO.
Adding unsourced information is a good thing.
Eugene
I recently wrote a stub on [[Heliophorus]], a genus of butterflies. It links the existing article on its subfamily with the existing articles of the species. As the subfamily article only lists genera, my new article is the only way to go from the subfamily article to the individual species. It is therefore useful, even though it contains nothing more than a partial list of species.
I created this list from wikipedia: it just contains all species that have an article. If I had to list my source, it would have been "Wikipedia", which is Not Acceptable, and would have been removed (I guess). So I left it unsourced.
Your article is basically a list - using Wikipedia as the source for a list is generally accepted. As long as the articles you link to have sources, then the sources don't need to be stated on the list.
Thomas Dalton schreef:
I recently wrote a stub on [[Heliophorus]] ... it contains nothing more than a partial list of species.
Your article is basically a list - using Wikipedia as the source for a list is generally accepted. As long as the articles you link to have sources, then the sources don't need to be stated on the list.
In theory: yes. In practice: would everyone recognize it as such? (Hint: it now has a {{unreferenced}} box, for those viewers that have not disabled them in their personal Monobook.css.)
Eugene
In theory: yes. In practice: would everyone recognize it as such? (Hint: it now has a {{unreferenced}} box, for those viewers that have not disabled them in their personal Monobook.css.)
Remove the {{unreferenced}} box and explain in the edit summary that it's a list and the sources are on the individual articles.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
I recently wrote a stub on [[Heliophorus]], a genus of butterflies. It links the existing article on its subfamily with the existing articles of the species. As the subfamily article only lists genera, my new article is the only way to go from the subfamily article to the individual species. It is therefore useful, even though it contains nothing more than a partial list of species.
I created this list from wikipedia: it just contains all species that have an article. If I had to list my source, it would have been "Wikipedia", which is Not Acceptable, and would have been removed (I guess). So I left it unsourced.
Your article is basically a list - using Wikipedia as the source for a list is generally accepted. As long as the articles you link to have sources, then the sources don't need to be stated on the list.
This seems contrary to a recent thread about a list of people responsible for the death of someone else. O:-) I made the same argument at the time. Accepting that such criteria may be valid in some circumstances should not imply that the requirement should be there for all circumstnaces.
Ec
Steve Bennett wrote:
It's more than just that. I recently wrote a stub on [[Wingan Inlet]]. I know the place exists: I went there. Do I have a source? No. Am I confident that a source exists? Yes. Would I rather create an unsourced stub, or leave a hole in our encyclopaedia? Unsourced stub, with fries.
I think this says it well - if you have no reason to believe something is false, and believe that it is verifiable (insert whatever definition of verifiable/reliable source here), don't remove it. The second part is to keep people from doing certain kinds of original research, generally things that might be worth mentioning but are unlikely to have been reported by other sources. This is probably a pretty thin line, and maybe general editorial discretion would cover it, but it's always nice to have something to cite for why you're removing someone's work. Something like which station a transit company installed a new type of turnstile at might fall in this area; it might be useful on the article about that station (or even the fare collection section of the system's article), but might be minor enough that it hadn't been mentioned in the media.
On 1/25/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 25, 2007, at 8:16 AM, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
If people cited their sources in the first place, there wouldn't be any abuse by people using that fact to get it deleted. Any abuse with these policies can be prevented if people just made the effort. I think I'm going to reread those pages and think about rewriting them.
But this is one of the problems. The burden of citing everything is larger than our editors, especially our casual editors, are willing to undertake. We will never reach a point where people will cite their sources in the first place. Hence the prospect of eternally playing catch-up.
I disagree. Citing is not as difficult as you seem to think it is; if you're in the middle of writing an article based on sources that are sitting in front of you, it really isn't that hard to note down where the facts came from as you write them down (lately I've become a fan of the <ref>Unless otherwise noted, all details regarding [Subtopic X] are drawn from [Source Y], pp. A-Z.</ref> style for citing basic facts with relative ease). It's true that casual editors tend not to cite their contributions, but nobody does at first, and I think that the reason for this has less to do with unwillingness to do so than with the idea simply not occuring to people. Obviously, any statements about this are going to be speculative, but I can say that in my case I started out just writing stuff down from memory and then, after someone told me to cite sources, moved to doing that. It will be very difficult to get Wikipedia into a condition where passerby editors feel that citing one's sources is an integral part of adding information to an article, but I don't think that's a reason to give up the fight.
I think that what tends to get lost in these discussions is the incredibly good effect that citing as you go has on the accuracy of writing. I don't know how many times I've flipped open a book to find a quick confirmation of some (seemingly very obvious) fact that I was about to add to an article, only to find the opposite in print and then, after checking a couple more books, to realize that my memory had deceived me. No matter how well people know their subjects, they will make mistakes, and a writing practice that asks you to flip open a book and check what you're saying before you write it down is a good one.
On Jan 25, 2007, at 2:15 PM, Robth wrote:
I disagree. Citing is not as difficult as you seem to think it is; if you're in the middle of writing an article based on sources that are sitting in front of you, it really isn't that hard to note down where the facts came from as you write them down (lately I've become a fan of the <ref>Unless otherwise noted, all details regarding [Subtopic X] are drawn from [Source Y], pp. A-Z.</ref> style for citing basic facts with relative ease). It's true that casual editors tend not to cite their contributions, but nobody does at first, and I think that the reason for this has less to do with unwillingness to do so than with the idea simply not occuring to people.
It's not unwillingness as such. In an earlier post I used the hypothetical example of Susan. I like this example, so I'll use it again here.
Susan is a 40-year-old stay at home mother who majored in English. While idly browsing, she has found an error in the article on [[Pride and Prejudice]] and wants to fix it. Her son gets off the school bus in five minutes.
Now my claim is that every policy and process on Wikipedia should be usable by Susan. That is to say that there should not be any rules that Susan cannot remember off the top of her head, there should not be any code or processes that Susan would have to look up, there should be no pages that Susan must check before she hits "Edit." Susan should be able to complete the task of fixing an error and still meet her son at the bus stop.
If Susan can make the edit from memory, we're good. But if Susan has to go Google the fact to find it somewhere else, we're already losing precious seconds of Susan's time. (And beyond that, as I said elsewhere, if we depend on the low-hanging fruit of sources, which is what we do if we demand sourcing of people who don't have the time to do it right, we get crap sourcing. Constant crap sourcing is lower quality than we get if we trust people's memories some of the time.) If she has to go dig up her undergrad English textbook, it's a lost cause.
This is the problem. We conceived of [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:CITE]] without thinking of usability problems. And so we have policies that can't be used by anyone other than us, the Wikipedia hardcore. Which is a tiny minority of our userbase.
-Phil
If Susan can make the edit from memory, we're good.
No, we're not good. That's the whole point. People's memories were reliable enough when Wikipedia first started and nobody actually used it for anything. That's no longer the case. If we want to be a credible encyclopedia, we need our facts to come from reliable sources (citing them isn't the important part, that's just a way to prove the important bit - that the fact came from a reliable source).
There seems to be a serious misunderstanding of what "source" means. A source isn't somewhere people can go to verify the fact, it is where the fact came from. Citing sources is easy, because you will always have the source with you when you write the article (if you think you don't, then it means the source is your memory, in which case you aren't using a reliable source and shouldn't add the fact). The problem isn't that people aren't citing reliable sources, the problem is that they aren't *using* reliable sources.
On Jan 25, 2007, at 2:42 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
If Susan can make the edit from memory, we're good.
No, we're not good. That's the whole point. People's memories were reliable enough when Wikipedia first started and nobody actually used it for anything. That's no longer the case. If we want to be a credible encyclopedia, we need our facts to come from reliable sources (citing them isn't the important part, that's just a way to prove the important bit - that the fact came from a reliable source).
There seems to be a serious misunderstanding of what "source" means. A source isn't somewhere people can go to verify the fact, it is where the fact came from. Citing sources is easy, because you will always have the source with you when you write the article (if you think you don't, then it means the source is your memory, in which case you aren't using a reliable source and shouldn't add the fact). The problem isn't that people aren't citing reliable sources, the problem is that they aren't *using* reliable sources.
You are advocating the complete abandonment of the principles that underly Wikipedia.
"You can edit this page right now." That's the mantra. That's the key. That's what got us where we are. It's foolish to give up on the thing that made us succeed where other things (Nupedia) failed.
-Phil
You are advocating the complete abandonment of the principles that underly Wikipedia.
"You can edit this page right now." That's the mantra. That's the key. That's what got us where we are. It's foolish to give up on the thing that made us succeed where other things (Nupedia) failed.
The key underlying principle is making a free encyclopedia available to everyone. "Anyone can edit" is simply a means to an end - it is secondary to the goal of making an encyclopedia.
We should be working to make things better for the readers, not the contributors. Relaxing our rules on using reliable sources would be great for the contributors, but makes the website pretty much useless for the readers.
On 1/25/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
You are advocating the complete abandonment of the principles that underly Wikipedia.
"You can edit this page right now." That's the mantra. That's the key. That's what got us where we are. It's foolish to give up on the thing that made us succeed where other things (Nupedia) failed.
The key underlying principle is making a free encyclopedia available to everyone. "Anyone can edit" is simply a means to an end - it is secondary to the goal of making an encyclopedia.
We should be working to make things better for the readers, not the contributors. Relaxing our rules on using reliable sources would be great for the contributors, but makes the website pretty much useless for the readers.
Not having any articles on subjects is not doing the readers any good service at all.
Having unsourced but generally accurate articles is better.
Having sourced articles is better. Having sourced articles which have been fact checked is still better.
Having sourced articles which have been fact checked and written by good writers with a feel for the field is best.
Wikipedia is an evolution along that series of steps.
Nupedia is an attempt to go straight to the last one, and has 20-ish articles last I heard (not that recently).
Thomas Dalton wrote:
You are advocating the complete abandonment of the principles that underly Wikipedia.
"You can edit this page right now." That's the mantra. That's the key. That's what got us where we are. It's foolish to give up on the thing that made us succeed where other things (Nupedia) failed.
The key underlying principle is making a free encyclopedia available to everyone. "Anyone can edit" is simply a means to an end - it is secondary to the goal of making an encyclopedia.
We should be working to make things better for the readers, not the contributors. Relaxing our rules on using reliable sources would be great for the contributors, but makes the website pretty much useless for the readers.
Whether this makes sense depends on how you envision the reader. The endgame of "Anyone can edit" is "Everyone can edit". At that point the reader and the contributor are synonymous. In our goal of making an encyclopedia we are also revolutionizing the notion of an encyclopedia. Our encyclopedia is not just the passive paper encyclopedia of old where the reader could look through a chosen article, and be sated with what he took in. We want readers who will think critically and will leave with questions instead of answers.
I would question the consumerist model of an encyclopedia. We need to remember that that model was based on a circumstance where the means of production were not readily available to the users. A simple reversal of that circumstance is having far reaching effects. We can now consider options that the technology did not allow us to consider before. No "fact" is beyond question, and we cannot allow ourselves to be lulled into the false security that having a source means that all's well with the 'pedia. The editors who will do best are those with the skill to thrive in uncertainty, and who perhaps have come to terms with the theology of the trickster.
Ec
On 1/25/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
You are advocating the complete abandonment of the principles that underly Wikipedia.
"You can edit this page right now." That's the mantra. That's the key. That's what got us where we are. It's foolish to give up on the thing that made us succeed where other things (Nupedia) failed.
Principles are different from methods, and this is a critical distinction. Accepting just about anything people are give us has been a method of ours for a long time, and has worked its way deep into our culture, but it isn't our principle--that's writing a great free encyclopedia. Today's tasks are different from the tasks of a few years ago, and we shouldn't be afraid to reevaluate our methods if necessary.
What we see here is a bit of a clash between two forms of quality; we are proverbially good at one, and proverbially bad at the other. The first is size; we can tell you something about more topics than anyone else. We got here through the work of casual contributors (although the five minute thing is nonsense--this model of articles improving in tiny partial edits doesn't gibe with a reality in which, while the bulk of our content is written by casual contributors, the casual contributors in question are people who sit down and spend half an hour or so adding a serious chunk of text). The second form of quality, the one we're proverbially bad at, is reliability. When we started out, we needed size, and our policies were designed accordingly. Now, we got size, but we still need reliability. If we can alter the system that's already made us big to focus on improving the stuff we have, we should do it.
Nor do I think the change is that radical. As I said above, I don't put much stock by the five minute figure. Articles don't grow in smooth little increments; they balloon out of nowhere, then wait a year, then expand rapidly again, as people come in, sit down, and spend serious time writing something up; it's punctuated equilibrium, not gradualism. An encyclopedia is not written in five minute bursts, no matter how many of them there are. And for people who do sit down to spend serious time on an article, grabbing a book, checking the facts, and noting that they have done so isn't so great an additional burden.
The image of "Susan" or someone like her has been a powerful one in Wikipedia culture; there's this belief that we got to where we are through countless tiny doses of effort and time, rather than a more finite number of larger doses. I have seen no evidence to support this view, and plenty to suggest otherwise. I think its time to recognize this and do what we can to maximize the improvement that occurs as a result of those larger doses.
On 1/25/07, Bogdan Giusca liste@dapyx.com wrote:
Wikipedia's purpose is not to be a wiki
Ummm...
On 1/25/07, Robth robth1@gmail.com wrote:
When we started out, we needed size, and our policies were designed accordingly. Now, we got size, but we still need reliability. If we can alter the system that's already made us big to focus on improving the stuff we have, we should do it.
If you want to fundamentally change the whole concept and policies of the project, why not just start a fork? Isn't that what Citizendium, Wikinfo, Digital Universe, and so on are trying to do?
If you want to fundamentally change the whole concept and policies of the project, why not just start a fork? Isn't that what Citizendium, Wikinfo, Digital Universe, and so on are trying to do?
He isn't trying to change the policies. WP:CITE and WP:RS are current policies - it's the people that want to relax those policies that are trying the change policies. Perhaps they should fork?
On 1/25/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
He isn't trying to change the policies. WP:CITE and WP:RS are current policies - it's the people that want to relax those policies that are trying the change policies. Perhaps they should fork?
Ahem... WP:CITE and WP:RS are guidelines. But Robth puts it exactly right. There is pretty much a consensus that citations and the use of reliable sources are good things that make Wikipedia better, ceteris paribus. It's an issue of emphasis. No doubt CITE and RS, in some cases, either turn potential contributors off of Wikipedia or inspire the removal of valid information. But they also inspire the addition of sourcing (and perhaps the participation of editors who wouldn't edit in project where sources carried less weight). The goal in writing or re-writing those guidelines should be to strike the optimal balance between the positive effects and the negative effects. But both guidelines are central to the shift in Wikipedia culture over the past year or so, in which we've seen drastic sourcing improvements to the point where most editors realize that sources are expected, not just encouraged.
-ragesoss
On 1/25/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
If you want to fundamentally change the whole concept and policies of the project, why not just start a fork? Isn't that what Citizendium, Wikinfo, Digital Universe, and so on are trying to do?
He isn't trying to change the policies. WP:CITE and WP:RS are current policies - it's the people that want to relax those policies that are trying the change policies. Perhaps they should fork?
There is a world of difference between "Citing things is good" and "Good articles should have citations and references" on the one hand, and "Citing things is mandatory" and "Articles without citations and references will be deleted" on the other.
Making an emphasis on it as a best practice is fine.
On 1/25/07, Robth robth1@gmail.com wrote:
What we see here is a bit of a clash between two forms of quality; we are proverbially good at one, and proverbially bad at the other. The first is size; we can tell you something about more topics than anyone else. We got here through the work of casual contributors (although the five minute thing is nonsense--this model of articles improving in tiny partial edits doesn't gibe with a reality in which, while the bulk of our content is written by casual contributors, the casual contributors in question are people who sit down and spend half an hour or so adding a serious chunk of text). The second form of quality, the one we're proverbially bad at, is reliability. When we started out, we needed size, and our policies were designed accordingly. Now, we got size, but we still need reliability. If we can alter the system that's already made us big to focus on improving the stuff we have, we should do it.
I think that this is oversimplifying and polarizing the reality, though it does have a lot of value as a model to explain a change that WP is starting in to.
The level of completeness varys wildly from field to field, as does the quality level of articles.
I disagree that we don't still need size; as I said earlier, there are whole classes of topics for which articles are missing or sketchy. Beyond poorly covered topic areas, we have whole fields full of stubs for which content needs infilling.
I almost want to suggest a graduation system for articles; once it reaches a "good enough" level, then a different set of rules kick in, and changes are required to go through a more rigorous check system, citations become required, etc. This might make a good fork, or could possibly be a change in how WP works. Both reducing the vandalism and raising the expectations for rigorousness in edits, if and only if an article is at an appropriate level to start with.
What I very strongly don't want to see is cutting off the informal editing ability which allows articles to reach that level to begin with. That's cutting off our roots and nourishment to spite ourselves.
On 1/25/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
I almost want to suggest a graduation system for articles; once it reaches a "good enough" level, then a different set of rules kick in, and changes are required to go through a more rigorous check system, citations become required, etc. This might make a good fork, or could possibly be a change in how WP works. Both reducing the vandalism and raising the expectations for rigorousness in edits, if and only if an article is at an appropriate level to start with.
Sort of like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:1.0/I, perhaps? ;-)
Kirill
Phil Sandifer wrote:
On Jan 25, 2007, at 2:42 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
If Susan can make the edit from memory, we're good.
No, we're not good. That's the whole point. People's memories were reliable enough when Wikipedia first started and nobody actually used it for anything. That's no longer the case. If we want to be a credible encyclopedia, we need our facts to come from reliable sources (citing them isn't the important part, that's just a way to prove the important bit - that the fact came from a reliable source).
There seems to be a serious misunderstanding of what "source" means. A source isn't somewhere people can go to verify the fact, it is where the fact came from. Citing sources is easy, because you will always have the source with you when you write the article (if you think you don't, then it means the source is your memory, in which case you aren't using a reliable source and shouldn't add the fact). The problem isn't that people aren't citing reliable sources, the problem is that they aren't *using* reliable sources.
You are advocating the complete abandonment of the principles that underly Wikipedia.
"You can edit this page right now." That's the mantra. That's the key. That's what got us where we are. It's foolish to give up on the thing that made us succeed where other things (Nupedia) failed.
This is a fundamental problem with volunteer based organizations, particularly ones that are highly democratized. The first wave comes with the visionaries who see what needs to be done to produce a great product. The later wavefills in the blanks, it tries to protect what the first wave produced, but in doing so destroys the vision. The mass of Elvis personators cannot be combined to create a new Elvis.
Ec
On 1/25/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
If Susan can make the edit from memory, we're good.
No, we're not good. That's the whole point. People's memories were reliable enough when Wikipedia first started and nobody actually used it for anything. That's no longer the case. If we want to be a credible encyclopedia, we need our facts to come from reliable sources (citing them isn't the important part, that's just a way to prove the important bit - that the fact came from a reliable source).
There seems to be a serious misunderstanding of what "source" means. A source isn't somewhere people can go to verify the fact, it is where the fact came from. Citing sources is easy, because you will always have the source with you when you write the article (if you think you don't, then it means the source is your memory, in which case you aren't using a reliable source and shouldn't add the fact). The problem isn't that people aren't citing reliable sources, the problem is that they aren't *using* reliable sources.
If an expert can't write an accurate, if perhaps not precise, survey artice on any notable topic in their field of study pretty much off the top of their head from memory, they're not an expert.
Citations, fact checking, and minor corrections are EXCELLENT things to leave for others, or for later review by yourself.
Wikipedia is not the fact-based encyclopedia project you're demanding. It can never be, because it's not structured that way in a semantic or knowledge flow manner. Attempting to force Wikipedia into that model will blow up your mind and our project. Please stop.
If you want to do a fact-based encyclopedia project, that's fine; I've thought about that as a project. I think it's possible to create a knowledge database with cited/referenced facts, and semantic context, such that one can then derive sets of facts for specific articles and write an article which is 100% referenced and verifyable by nature, and allows for easy context access. Such a project is an interesting computer knowledge theory project.
I predict that it will not see critical mass of crontributors within the next decade, however.
Wikipedia is what it is, because of what it is - something that you don't have to be an academic with a reference library right in front of you as you type. That we'd like to nail down all the important stuff with such references over time doesn't mean that it's possible to write an encyclopedia from scratch with all that information and volunteer labor. It probably isn't, here and now, and trying to force that project model into the existing Wikipedia model is wrong, foolish, and destructive to Wikipedia's success model.
Killing our project here and now by turning it into Nupedia makes no sense. If their model works, then perhaps we should all go work over there. If it doesn't then leave the WP model alone...
Citations, fact checking, and minor corrections are EXCELLENT things to leave for others, or for later review by yourself.
Leaving citations for someone else is complete nonsense. It shows that you didn't understand the paragraph of mine you quoted. A citation says where you got the source from. If you write and article, and then I come along, I have no idea where you got the source from, it is impossible for me to add the citation. I can add a link to somewhere that says the same thing, but that's not citing sources, because whatever I link to probably wasn't actually the source. Me adding sources to your article is basically me rewriting the article - your work becomes nothing more than copyediting that happened to be done before I wrote the article (and yes, that doesn't make sense - that's the point I'm trying to make).
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Leaving citations for someone else is complete nonsense. It shows that you didn't understand the paragraph of mine you quoted. A citation says where you got the source from. If you write and article, and then I come along, I have no idea where you got the source from, it is impossible for me to add the citation. I can add a link to somewhere that says the same thing, but that's not citing sources, because whatever I link to probably wasn't actually the source. Me adding sources to your article is basically me rewriting the article - your work becomes nothing more than copyediting that happened to be done before I wrote the article (and yes, that doesn't make sense - that's the point I'm trying to make).
That's nonsense that smacks of rules lawyering. You're putting too much stock into the behind-the-scenes process and not enough into the tangible product, which is equivalent no matter who adds a source that backs up the statement.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Citations, fact checking, and minor corrections are EXCELLENT things to leave for others, or for later review by yourself.
Leaving citations for someone else is complete nonsense. It shows that you didn't understand the paragraph of mine you quoted. A citation says where you got the source from. If you write and article, and then I come along, I have no idea where you got the source from, it is impossible for me to add the citation. I can add a link to somewhere that says the same thing, but that's not citing sources, because whatever I link to probably wasn't actually the source. Me adding sources to your article is basically me rewriting the article - your work becomes nothing more than copyediting that happened to be done before I wrote the article (and yes, that doesn't make sense - that's the point I'm trying to make).
We are a tertiary resource. If two Wikipedians used different sources to arrive at the same place it makes no difference in the way that it would for a secondary source. Your argument is just strange. It seems to make the specific source more important than the information itself.
Ec
We are a tertiary resource. If two Wikipedians used different sources to arrive at the same place it makes no difference in the way that it would for a secondary source. Your argument is just strange. It seems to make the specific source more important than the information itself.
I'm not making my point very well, sorry. I'll try again:
*Citing* reliable sources isn't very important. What is important is *using* reliable sources. When someone writes something from memory and doesn't cite a source, the problem isn't that they haven't cited a source, the problem is that they didn't use one.
Citing sources is just the easiest way to confirm that reliable sources were used, it's not the important factor, it's just the way we confirm the important factor.
Someone writing an article and expecting someone else to find the sources is wasting their time, as the person finding the sources will be doing all the work. The actual writing of an article is generally the easy part, it's finding the information with is difficult. The wiki concept is great at copyediting and making things easier to read, and that's the only bit a writer that doesn't cite sources does.
Perhaps we should encourage people to start articles with just bullet point facts and let the people that don't like research take over from there. (Obviously, if someone wants to write the whole thing, no-one will stop them, but we should make it clear that just doing the research is useful work that can be done independently of the writing.)
On 1/27/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
We are a tertiary resource. If two Wikipedians used different sources to arrive at the same place it makes no difference in the way that it would for a secondary source. Your argument is just strange. It seems to make the specific source more important than the information itself.
I'm not making my point very well, sorry. I'll try again:
*Citing* reliable sources isn't very important. What is important is *using* reliable sources. When someone writes something from memory and doesn't cite a source, the problem isn't that they haven't cited a source, the problem is that they didn't use one.
Citing sources is just the easiest way to confirm that reliable sources were used, it's not the important factor, it's just the way we confirm the important factor.
Someone writing an article and expecting someone else to find the sources is wasting their time, as the person finding the sources will be doing all the work. The actual writing of an article is generally the easy part, it's finding the information with is difficult. The wiki concept is great at copyediting and making things easier to read, and that's the only bit a writer that doesn't cite sources does.
Perhaps we should encourage people to start articles with just bullet point facts and let the people that don't like research take over from there. (Obviously, if someone wants to write the whole thing, no-one will stop them, but we should make it clear that just doing the research is useful work that can be done independently of the writing.)
I've talked before, about the possibility of an alternate free encyclopedia, starting with the facts (a database, of fact + reference + context / connections), with full tracability of all data in the encyclopedia.
Would be very useful to AI researchers, some of whom have done similar things in training AI programs and the like, in addition to a useful public project.
As I keep saying: Wikipedia is not, has not been, and should not become that project. If you want to fork off and do it, I'd contribute, but I will fight / argue to the last breath to keep you from turning Wikipedia into that project. Even if it's a good idea to do it, it's not the same as WP, and it's necessary to have a WP type project in the world.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Someone writing an article and expecting someone else to find the sources is wasting their time, as the person finding the sources will be doing all the work. The actual writing of an article is generally the easy part, it's finding the information with is difficult. The wiki concept is great at copyediting and making things easier to read, and that's the only bit a writer that doesn't cite sources does.
Not true at all. If I write "Route 24 opened in January 1963", but don't have a source, someone else with newspaper archive access has a much easier time finding a source knowing what month to look in.
Thursday, January 25, 2007, 10:00:34 PM, George wrote:
Wikipedia is not the fact-based encyclopedia project you're demanding. It can never be, because it's not structured that way in a semantic or knowledge flow manner. Attempting to force Wikipedia into that model will blow up your mind and our project. Please stop.
What's wrong with adding a reference after each sentence?
Hoping that your mind won't blow, here's a very well-sourced example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_general_election%2C_1946
Wikipedia's purpose, as said by Jimbo, is not to be a wiki, not to be a community, but to simply create an encyclopedia. The rest are simply means towards a goal.
Killing our project here and now by turning it into Nupedia makes no sense. If their model works, then perhaps we should all go work over there. If it doesn't then leave the WP model alone...
Maybe you are the one on the wrong encyclopedia: Wikipedia requires verifiability as an official policy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability
And it's not Nupedia, everyone still can edit it, but one should add the *source* of the addition.
On 1/25/07, Bogdan Giusca liste@dapyx.com wrote:
Thursday, January 25, 2007, 10:00:34 PM, George wrote:
Wikipedia is not the fact-based encyclopedia project you're demanding. It can never be, because it's not structured that way in a semantic or knowledge flow manner. Attempting to force Wikipedia into that model will blow up your mind and our project. Please stop.
What's wrong with adding a reference after each sentence?
Hoping that your mind won't blow, here's a very well-sourced example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_general_election%2C_1946
Wikipedia's purpose, as said by Jimbo, is not to be a wiki, not to be a community, but to simply create an encyclopedia. The rest are simply means towards a goal.
That's a terrible article. It's not an encyclopedia article, it's a scholarly paper on the topic.
It's not a bad scholarly paper, on first look, but it's not a good encyclopedia article.
Killing our project here and now by turning it into Nupedia makes no sense. If their model works, then perhaps we should all go work over there. If it doesn't then leave the WP model alone...
Maybe you are the one on the wrong encyclopedia: Wikipedia requires verifiability as an official policy.
The third sentence is: "Editors should provide a reliable source for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, or it may be removed."
That is not "cite every single fact", that is "provide a reliable source for anything that people aren't likely to believe by themselves". Providing good references and citations for the rest of it is covered elsewhere but less forcefully.
Thursday, January 25, 2007, 10:21:27 PM, George wrote:
Hoping that your mind won't blow, here's a very well-sourced example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_general_election%2C_1946
That's a terrible article. It's not an encyclopedia article, it's a scholarly paper on the topic.
It's not a bad scholarly paper, on first look, but it's not a good encyclopedia article.
Do you have any reasons you think so? I don't think there's any policy claiming that Wikipedia articles should be dumbed down. For that, there's simple English Wikipedia. :-)
On 1/25/07, Bogdan Giusca liste@dapyx.com wrote:
Thursday, January 25, 2007, 10:21:27 PM, George wrote:
Hoping that your mind won't blow, here's a very well-sourced example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_general_election%2C_1946
That's a terrible article. It's not an encyclopedia article, it's a scholarly paper on the topic.
It's not a bad scholarly paper, on first look, but it's not a good encyclopedia article.
Do you have any reasons you think so? I don't think there's any policy claiming that Wikipedia articles should be dumbed down. For that, there's simple English Wikipedia. :-)
The point of the encyclopedia is to make an overview available and accessible to non-experts.
The intro is fine, but there's an excess of detail that follows, and the citations are overwhelming for normal readers.
I don't say that because I object personally ... in terms of quality level and citations and such, it is good, the sort of work I'd expect from grad students or academics doing an overview, including what looks like good citations... It's not my topic area of interest, but it's a good article from that perspective.
My concern is that "the average reader" will be overwhelmed by it. There's a reason that there's a spectrum of writing, from informal blogs, to popular magazines and newspapers, more formal magazines, expert magazines, professional journals, and then things like PhD thesies and the like. Most normal people stop reading a paragraph or less into the type of article that you see in professional journals. The style and info density is not something they want to deal with. Compare and contrast "Popular Science", "Scientific American" and "Nature" (or worse, a less-overview specialist journal in any field).
Somewhere between PopSci and Scientific American tends to be at what I suspect "the right level" is for Wikipedia, though the articles in the latter are generally longer than ours should be.
This will vary wildly from field to field and topic to topic. All generalizations are false. 8-)
George Herbert wrote:
My concern is that "the average reader" will be overwhelmed by it. There's a reason that there's a spectrum of writing, from informal blogs, to popular magazines and newspapers, more formal magazines, expert magazines, professional journals, and then things like PhD thesies and the like. Most normal people stop reading a paragraph or less into the type of article that you see in professional journals. The style and info density is not something they want to deal with. Compare and contrast "Popular Science", "Scientific American" and "Nature" (or worse, a less-overview specialist journal in any field).
Somewhere between PopSci and Scientific American tends to be at what I suspect "the right level" is for Wikipedia, though the articles in the latter are generally longer than ours should be.
This will vary wildly from field to field and topic to topic. All generalizations are false. 8-)
It is ironic to observe that the relative roles of "Popular Science" and "Scientific American" are reversed from what they were in the 19th century. At that time "Scientific American" was emphasizing newsy reports on new inventions that were going through the US Patent Office; "Popular Science" was producing long thoughtful articles about significant questions in science. The 1873-4 series of articles by [[John Stallo]], "The Priimary Concepts of Modern Physical Science" is only one example in a magazine that is far diffeent from what we know today.
Ec
Thomas Dalton wrote:
If Susan can make the edit from memory, we're good.
No, we're not good. That's the whole point. People's memories were reliable enough when Wikipedia first started and nobody actually used it for anything. That's no longer the case.
So what's changed about people's memories? Have people become so much more stupid in six years' time? If you want a simple answer for why people use Wikipedia you only need compare the size then and now. People looking for information will go where they can most easily find it.
If we want to be a credible encyclopedia, we need our facts to come from reliable sources (citing them isn't the important part, that's just a way to prove the important bit - that the fact came from a reliable source).
We can have a credible encyclopedia without obsessing about it. Your distinction the source and the citation of that source strikes me as more semantic than substantial.
There seems to be a serious misunderstanding of what "source" means. A source isn't somewhere people can go to verify the fact, it is where the fact came from.
Sounds like a good definition for original research.
Citing sources is easy, because you will always have the source with you when you write the article (if you think you don't, then it means the source is your memory, in which case you aren't using a reliable source and shouldn't add the fact). The problem isn't that people aren't citing reliable sources, the problem is that they aren't *using* reliable sources.
Sometimes a memory can be a reliable source; it just can't be verified. What can be more frustrating than to have been at an event 35 years and know that the citations are dead wrong because they relied on contemporary newspaper clippings from publications that were openly hostile to the event when it happened. This often leaves us with sterile articles that ignore the zeitgeiss of the event. There is a level beyond which the demand for sources becomes counterproductive.
Ec
So what's changed about people's memories? Have people become so much more stupid in six years' time? If you want a simple answer for why people use Wikipedia you only need compare the size then and now. People looking for information will go where they can most easily find it.
Nothing has changed about people's memories, what's changed is what people expect from Wikipedia. When we were a new site used only by a handful of geeks, most of which were contributors, nobody cared how reliable we were. That is no longer the case.
We can have a credible encyclopedia without obsessing about it. Your distinction the source and the citation of that source strikes me as more semantic than substantial.
It's necessary to make that distinction in order to point out the flaws in the "let someone else add the sources" arguement.
There seems to be a serious misunderstanding of what "source" means. A source isn't somewhere people can go to verify the fact, it is where the fact came from.
Sounds like a good definition for original research.
What are you talking about? Are you one of these people that doesn't know the difference between "original research" and "research"?
Sometimes a memory can be a reliable source; it just can't be verified.
Only if we know who's memory it is. When it comes to Wikipedia contributors, we rarely know who is doing the editing.
What can be more frustrating than to have been at an event 35 years and know that the citations are dead wrong because they relied on contemporary newspaper clippings from publications that were openly hostile to the event when it happened. This often leaves us with sterile articles that ignore the zeitgeiss of the event. There is a level beyond which the demand for sources becomes counterproductive.
That's frustrating, yes, but if you're allowed to add true details from your memory, what's to stop me adding made up details? Nothing at all. Sources are a requirement for verifiability.
Phil Sandifer wrote:
If Susan can make the edit from memory, we're good. But if Susan has to go Google the fact to find it somewhere else, we're already losing precious seconds of Susan's time.
But how does that work out overall, when you save seconds of Susan's time, and cost me a half-hour of research to figure out why an article is inconsistent with all the ones it links with? Scholarship is tricky enough on its own, we don't need to make it harder by mixing in a bunch of random half-remembered bits.
Stan
On Jan 25, 2007, at 2:51 PM, Stan Shebs wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
If Susan can make the edit from memory, we're good. But if Susan has to go Google the fact to find it somewhere else, we're already losing precious seconds of Susan's time.
But how does that work out overall, when you save seconds of Susan's time, and cost me a half-hour of research to figure out why an article is inconsistent with all the ones it links with? Scholarship is tricky enough on its own, we don't need to make it harder by mixing in a bunch of random half-remembered bits.
Simple. You're a different kind of editor than Susan. You're willing to put long hours into Wikipedia. You care enough to join a mailing list about Wikipedia. Accordingly, it's not the end of the world for you to spend half an hour on a task like this. Because (and this is important) most of the time it won't be wrong. Susan may not be 100% reliable, but she's pretty good. How do we know this? Because she wrote most of Wikipedia, and Wikipedia is pretty good.
The model is this: we have thousands of Susans. They do a lot of the heavy lifting on Wikipedia. Then we have a few hundred hardcore users who fix the problems left by the thousands of Susans - they check odd facts that don't seem to jibe, they deal with malicious users, they get involved with edit wars, they delete, they debate policy.
Susan does 90% of the work. The hardcore do about 10% of the work, a lot of which is cleaning up after Susan. But that's still a massive net amount of work being done by Susan. Who does not show up on this mailing list to offer her viewpoint, which is why we need to take care to stop and think about Susan (and, of course, the other thousands of casual editors.)
-Phil
Phil Sandifer wrote:
On Jan 25, 2007, at 2:51 PM, Stan Shebs wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
If Susan can make the edit from memory, we're good. But if Susan has to go Google the fact to find it somewhere else, we're already losing precious seconds of Susan's time.
But how does that work out overall, when you save seconds of Susan's time, and cost me a half-hour of research to figure out why an article is inconsistent with all the ones it links with? Scholarship is tricky enough on its own, we don't need to make it harder by mixing in a bunch of random half-remembered bits.
Simple. You're a different kind of editor than Susan. You're willing to put long hours into Wikipedia. You care enough to join a mailing list about Wikipedia. Accordingly, it's not the end of the world for you to spend half an hour on a task like this. Because (and this is important) most of the time it won't be wrong. Susan may not be 100% reliable, but she's pretty good. How do we know this? Because she wrote most of Wikipedia, and Wikipedia is pretty good.
The model is this: we have thousands of Susans. They do a lot of the heavy lifting on Wikipedia. Then we have a few hundred hardcore users who fix the problems left by the thousands of Susans - they check odd facts that don't seem to jibe, they deal with malicious users, they get involved with edit wars, they delete, they debate policy.
Susan does 90% of the work. The hardcore do about 10% of the work, a lot of which is cleaning up after Susan. But that's still a massive net amount of work being done by Susan. Who does not show up on this mailing list to offer her viewpoint, which is why we need to take care to stop and think about Susan (and, of course, the other thousands of casual editors.)
It is probably time we recognized that the very concept of Wikipedia -- "An encyclopedia that anyone can edit, that will become the best encyclopedia in the world" is utterly self-contradictory and therefore impossible to achieve.
To exclude "Susan" would defeat the purpose of Wikipedia. To NOT exclude "Susan" would ALSO defeat the purpose of Wikipedia.
There is no way to use a rational means to achieve an irrational goal.
On 1/25/07, Michael Hopcroft michael@mphpress.com wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
On Jan 25, 2007, at 2:51 PM, Stan Shebs wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
If Susan can make the edit from memory, we're good. But if Susan has to go Google the fact to find it somewhere else, we're already losing precious seconds of Susan's time.
But how does that work out overall, when you save seconds of Susan's time, and cost me a half-hour of research to figure out why an article is inconsistent with all the ones it links with? Scholarship is tricky enough on its own, we don't need to make it harder by mixing in a bunch of random half-remembered bits.
Simple. You're a different kind of editor than Susan. You're willing to put long hours into Wikipedia. You care enough to join a mailing list about Wikipedia. Accordingly, it's not the end of the world for you to spend half an hour on a task like this. Because (and this is important) most of the time it won't be wrong. Susan may not be 100% reliable, but she's pretty good. How do we know this? Because she wrote most of Wikipedia, and Wikipedia is pretty good.
The model is this: we have thousands of Susans. They do a lot of the heavy lifting on Wikipedia. Then we have a few hundred hardcore users who fix the problems left by the thousands of Susans - they check odd facts that don't seem to jibe, they deal with malicious users, they get involved with edit wars, they delete, they debate policy.
Susan does 90% of the work. The hardcore do about 10% of the work, a lot of which is cleaning up after Susan. But that's still a massive net amount of work being done by Susan. Who does not show up on this mailing list to offer her viewpoint, which is why we need to take care to stop and think about Susan (and, of course, the other thousands of casual editors.)
It is probably time we recognized that the very concept of Wikipedia -- "An encyclopedia that anyone can edit, that will become the best encyclopedia in the world" is utterly self-contradictory and therefore impossible to achieve.
To exclude "Susan" would defeat the purpose of Wikipedia. To NOT exclude "Susan" would ALSO defeat the purpose of Wikipedia.
There is no way to use a rational means to achieve an irrational goal.
It's not an irrational goal; we have goals that, under some circumstances, conflict.
Adding things like stable article versions and the like will help de-conflict those goals. I don't recall any serious objections to doing them, just objections that Mediawiki is far from being able to support them.
At some point, an encyclopedia project might fork off Wikipedia, enforcing some stricter editing and editor standards, and move more efficiently towards the ultimate goal. But so far, nobody seems interested in doing that, without going as far as Nupedia, who I believe are too far out in that direction.
Michael Hopcroft wrote:
It is probably time we recognized that the very concept of Wikipedia -- "An encyclopedia that anyone can edit, that will become the best encyclopedia in the world" is utterly self-contradictory and therefore impossible to achieve.
It's probably a good thing we didn't recognize this was impossible before we went ahead and actually achieved it.
Seriously, by a number of quite reasonable standards Wikipedia already _has_ become the best encyclopedia in the world. It's got more breadth, it's cheaper, its IP rights are more flexible, and it's probably more widely used than the old standbys like Britannica or World Book. It even has comparable levels of accuracy. I'm very, very happy with what Wikipedia has made of itself and have no desire to throw out any bits of baby on account of the bathwater that's still mixed in with it.
On 1/25/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Michael Hopcroft wrote:
It is probably time we recognized that the very concept of Wikipedia -- "An encyclopedia that anyone can edit, that will become the best encyclopedia in the world" is utterly self-contradictory and therefore impossible to achieve.
It's probably a good thing we didn't recognize this was impossible before we went ahead and actually achieved it.
Seriously, by a number of quite reasonable standards Wikipedia already _has_ become the best encyclopedia in the world. It's got more breadth, it's cheaper, its IP rights are more flexible, and it's probably more widely used than the old standbys like Britannica or World Book. It even has comparable levels of accuracy. I'm very, very happy with what Wikipedia has made of itself and have no desire to throw out any bits of baby on account of the bathwater that's still mixed in with it.
Yeah, "Just" having created what's arguably the world's best, and at least competitively good encyclopedia in a few years, from scratch, with essentially no budget other than operations, is good enough for me.
On 1/26/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Seriously, by a number of quite reasonable standards Wikipedia already _has_ become the best encyclopedia in the world. It's got more breadth, it's cheaper, its IP rights are more flexible, and it's probably more widely used than the old standbys like Britannica or World Book. It even has comparable levels of accuracy. I'm very, very happy with what Wikipedia has made of itself and have no desire to throw out any bits of baby on account of the bathwater that's still mixed in with it.
I bought EB on CD. Dunno if I didn't get the full edition or something, but it doesn't come close to WP. I never use it, except for idle speculation about where they get their ego from.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 1/26/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Seriously, by a number of quite reasonable standards Wikipedia already _has_ become the best encyclopedia in the world. It's got more breadth, it's cheaper, its IP rights are more flexible, and it's probably more widely used than the old standbys like Britannica or World Book. It even has comparable levels of accuracy. I'm very, very happy with what Wikipedia has made of itself and have no desire to throw out any bits of baby on account of the bathwater that's still mixed in with it.
I bought EB on CD. Dunno if I didn't get the full edition or something, but it doesn't come close to WP. I never use it, except for idle speculation about where they get their ego from.
I bought it too, and it's the full thing - compared sample articles with old and new print editions. I think they only have the resources to update articles that need changing to reflect current events, and no money left over to expand or improve coverage in other areas. They'll get to coast on the name for a while longer.
Stan
Michael Hopcroft wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
Susan does 90% of the work. The hardcore do about 10% of the work, a lot of which is cleaning up after Susan. But that's still a massive net amount of work being done by Susan. Who does not show up on this mailing list to offer her viewpoint, which is why we need to take care to stop and think about Susan (and, of course, the other thousands of casual editors.)
It is probably time we recognized that the very concept of Wikipedia -- "An encyclopedia that anyone can edit, that will become the best encyclopedia in the world" is utterly self-contradictory and therefore impossible to achieve.
To exclude "Susan" would defeat the purpose of Wikipedia. To NOT exclude "Susan" would ALSO defeat the purpose of Wikipedia.
There is no way to use a rational means to achieve an irrational goal.
I'm happy to see that you get it. There's no rule in life that says that everything must be rational. Let's keep looking for the best way to live with this paradox.
Ec
Phil Sandifer wrote:
On Jan 25, 2007, at 2:51 PM, Stan Shebs wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
If Susan can make the edit from memory, we're good. But if Susan has to go Google the fact to find it somewhere else, we're already losing precious seconds of Susan's time.
But how does that work out overall, when you save seconds of Susan's time, and cost me a half-hour of research to figure out why an article is inconsistent with all the ones it links with? Scholarship is tricky enough on its own, we don't need to make it harder by mixing in a bunch of random half-remembered bits.
Simple. You're a different kind of editor than Susan. You're willing to put long hours into Wikipedia. You care enough to join a mailing list about Wikipedia. Accordingly, it's not the end of the world for you to spend half an hour on a task like this. Because (and this is important) most of the time it won't be wrong. Susan may not be 100% reliable, but she's pretty good. How do we know this? Because she wrote most of Wikipedia, and Wikipedia is pretty good.
In the areas I'm familiar with, that's not really how the numbers work. There are lots of articles that I pass across, say "hmm, whole section is probably bogus", but I don't have the time or energy to do anything about it. In fact, it gets so tiresome I rarely even bother to note down the need for factchecking anymore. My time isn't so worthless that I'm willing to spend all of it perpetually cleaning up after the drivebys.
Stan
Stan Shebs wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
If Susan can make the edit from memory, we're good. But if Susan has to go Google the fact to find it somewhere else, we're already losing precious seconds of Susan's time.
But how does that work out overall, when you save seconds of Susan's time, and cost me a half-hour of research to figure out why an article is inconsistent with all the ones it links with? Scholarship is tricky enough on its own, we don't need to make it harder by mixing in a bunch of random half-remembered bits.
This is one of those half-empty or half-full kinds of arguments. Without Susan's edit her idea might never have been raised. What she sees as half-full you see as half-empty. You evidently enjoyed your half-hour of research, or you would not have done it. The point that she made was worth that much of your time. At least you researched it. The one who simply dismisses her comments out of hand and without comment is really committing the same error that she did.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Stan Shebs wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
If Susan can make the edit from memory, we're good. But if Susan has to go Google the fact to find it somewhere else, we're already losing precious seconds of Susan's time.
But how does that work out overall, when you save seconds of Susan's time, and cost me a half-hour of research to figure out why an article is inconsistent with all the ones it links with? Scholarship is tricky enough on its own, we don't need to make it harder by mixing in a bunch of random half-remembered bits.
This is one of those half-empty or half-full kinds of arguments. Without Susan's edit her idea might never have been raised. What she sees as half-full you see as half-empty. You evidently enjoyed your half-hour of research, or you would not have done it. The point that she made was worth that much of your time. At least you researched it. The one who simply dismisses her comments out of hand and without comment is really committing the same error that she did.
That's not a very good line of reasoning - vandalism sprees must also be good things, because we spend a lot of time cleaning up after them, so we must be enjoying doing so? I don't think so. No, when I clean up after someone who didn't take the trouble to find out if a statement is actually true, that person has just wasted my time. I used to watch a lot of articles (19,000 at the high point), and it was multiple hours of drudgery each day; eventually I cleared the list. Casual editors adding bad material from memory is actually a worse problem for good articles than vandalism, because it's good-faith and often looks plausible; it can get by you and mislead readers for months, and worse, start seeping into connected articles as others "correct" them to be consistent. So even the what-does-it-hurt edit to an already-unsourced stub can have consequences. Driveby editing was a great way to build up WP, but now that we have the vast structure, we also need to think about how to maintain its integrity.
Stan
On Jan 26, 2007, at 9:44 AM, Stan Shebs wrote:
Driveby editing was a great way to build up WP, but now that we have the vast structure, we also need to think about how to maintain its integrity.
If maintenance is the goal, lock all existing articles and go to an expert system.
Of course, maintenance isn't the goal. Improvement is. Which is different.
-Phil
Phil Sandifer wrote:
On Jan 26, 2007, at 9:44 AM, Stan Shebs wrote:
Driveby editing was a great way to build up WP, but now that we have the vast structure, we also need to think about how to maintain its integrity.
If maintenance is the goal, lock all existing articles and go to an expert system.
Of course, maintenance isn't the goal. Improvement is. Which is different.
Exactly, we want edits that make improvements. There's almost no chance that a driveby's unsourced addition to a featured article will improve it, for instance. In fact, FA watchers have already adopted an informal practice of reverting many of those on sight, they're simply not willing to spend all their time trying to salvage the marginal. Since we don't have statistics on sourced vs unsourced additions, it's impossible to say whether there are huge numbers of unsourced additions worth salvaging. Anecdotally, I think the crackdown combined with availability <ref> is having the desired effect; I'm noticing that even trivia sections are getting citations now, when such a thing was unheard-of a year ago.
Stan
Stan Shebs wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Stan Shebs wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
If Susan can make the edit from memory, we're good. But if Susan has to go Google the fact to find it somewhere else, we're already losing precious seconds of Susan's time.
But how does that work out overall, when you save seconds of Susan's time, and cost me a half-hour of research to figure out why an article is inconsistent with all the ones it links with? Scholarship is tricky enough on its own, we don't need to make it harder by mixing in a bunch of random half-remembered bits.
This is one of those half-empty or half-full kinds of arguments. Without Susan's edit her idea might never have been raised. What she sees as half-full you see as half-empty. You evidently enjoyed your half-hour of research, or you would not have done it. The point that she made was worth that much of your time. At least you researched it. The one who simply dismisses her comments out of hand and without comment is really committing the same error that she did.
That's not a very good line of reasoning - vandalism sprees must also be good things, because we spend a lot of time cleaning up after them, so we must be enjoying doing so? I don't think so.
Vandalism sprees, which are need to spread the same kind of stupidity across a number of articles to be efficient, are quite different in character from a newbie's efforts. A simple review of Susan's edit history should reveal that.
No, when I clean up after someone who didn't take the trouble to find out if a statement is actually true, that person has just wasted my time.
You have the choice between cleaning up, advising someone else, or doing nothing.
I used to watch a lot of articles (19,000 at the high point), and it was multiple hours of drudgery each day; eventually I cleared the list.
It seems that by doing so you made a great contribution to your own personal well-being. :-)
Casual editors adding bad material from memory is actually a worse problem for good articles than vandalism, because it's good-faith and often looks plausible; it can get by you and mislead readers for months, and worse, start seeping into connected articles as others "correct" them to be consistent.
That risk is definitely there. By the same token the editor who takes unsourced material from one Wikipedia article, and injects it into another article as "corrections" is just as guilty of adding unsourced material as the original editor.
Ec
On 1/25/07, Robth robth1@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/25/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 25, 2007, at 8:16 AM, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
If people cited their sources in the first place, there wouldn't be any abuse by people using that fact to get it deleted. Any abuse with these policies can be prevented if people just made the effort. I think I'm going to reread those pages and think about rewriting them.
But this is one of the problems. The burden of citing everything is larger than our editors, especially our casual editors, are willing to undertake. We will never reach a point where people will cite their sources in the first place. Hence the prospect of eternally playing catch-up.
I disagree. Citing is not as difficult as you seem to think it is; if you're in the middle of writing an article based on sources that are sitting in front of you, it really isn't that hard to note down where the facts came from as you write them down (lately I've become a fan of the <ref>Unless otherwise noted, all details regarding [Subtopic X] are drawn from [Source Y], pp. A-Z.</ref> style for citing basic facts with relative ease).
You're assuming here that most of us sit down with our references in front of us when we start writing an article. I mostly don't, though there are exceptions - I come across a gap or a misstatement in an article, or a missing article, where I know what the right content is to answer the question, and I start inserting the right content right there. If I can quickly google up a reliable source while doing so I'll cite it then. If not, I try and find something in the library at home, or at work, but I don't worry about it much.
It's true that casual editors tend not to cite their contributions, but nobody does at first, and I think that the reason for this has less to do with unwillingness to do so than with the idea simply not occuring to people. Obviously, any statements about this are going to be speculative, but I can say that in my case I started out just writing stuff down from memory and then, after someone told me to cite sources, moved to doing that. It will be very difficult to get Wikipedia into a condition where passerby editors feel that citing one's sources is an integral part of adding information to an article, but I don't think that's a reason to give up the fight.
I think that what tends to get lost in these discussions is the incredibly good effect that citing as you go has on the accuracy of writing. I don't know how many times I've flipped open a book to find a quick confirmation of some (seemingly very obvious) fact that I was about to add to an article, only to find the opposite in print and then, after checking a couple more books, to realize that my memory had deceived me. No matter how well people know their subjects, they will make mistakes, and a writing practice that asks you to flip open a book and check what you're saying before you write it down is a good one.
Here's the problem. Academic rigor - which I understand, having done refereed papers for conferences and such - is all fine and good for scholarly original research papers.
For an encyclopedia, the vast bulk of what we're trying to do is to simply convey the top level survey of a field to the general public. Textbooks are cited, but not nearly as well as research papers. Encyclopedias are generally cited much worse than that, if at all.
It's also in conflict with the idea of a Wiki - that allowing rapid, open growth will move in a focused random walk towards better and more accurate articles over time.
I have no problem with people who want to write WP articles as rigorously as they would an article for Nature or any professional journal or conference. But if you do that, you work much more slowly than people willing to let it hang out a little.
If we look at Wikipedia as the process of getting to really good articles on all the subjects which are notable in the world, rather than the finished product, we need to be encouraging people who know what they're talking about to fill in all the gaps first, and then polish everything off with citations, extra fact checking, corrections of minor goofs etc later.
Thursday, January 25, 2007, 9:38:50 PM, George wrote:
Here's the problem. Academic rigor - which I understand, having done refereed papers for conferences and such - is all fine and good for scholarly original research papers.
For an encyclopedia, the vast bulk of what we're trying to do is to simply convey the top level survey of a field to the general public.
You are arguing that for an encyclopedia, unlike for the academia, reliability and fact-checking are not important.
The academic rigor exists not just due to their elitism: that's how the Academia mentains their high standards of its publications.
From my experience on Wikipedia, unsourced articles are very unreliable and may have plenty of wrong facts. Most of thse wrong facts are not added due to malice (though that is not uncommon), but they were added by people either from their (inevitable unreliable) memories, from blogs and forums, which, on average have an awful lack of accuracy or they are simply misinterpretations.
On 1/25/07, Bogdan Giusca liste@dapyx.com wrote:
Thursday, January 25, 2007, 9:38:50 PM, George wrote:
Here's the problem. Academic rigor - which I understand, having done refereed papers for conferences and such - is all fine and good for scholarly original research papers.
For an encyclopedia, the vast bulk of what we're trying to do is to simply convey the top level survey of a field to the general public.
You are arguing that for an encyclopedia, unlike for the academia, reliability and fact-checking are not important.
No, please. That's not what I said at all.
The academic rigor exists not just due to their elitism: that's how the Academia mentains their high standards of its publications.
From my experience on Wikipedia, unsourced articles are very unreliable and may have plenty of wrong facts. Most of thse wrong facts are not added due to malice (though that is not uncommon), but they were added by people either from their (inevitable unreliable) memories, from blogs and forums, which, on average have an awful lack of accuracy or they are simply misinterpretations.
From my experience with Wikipedia, unsourced articles are generally
very accurate and moderately precise. When I find them in areas for which I'm familiar with the body of knowledge and reliable sources, I will spend time to go find the appropriate citations and sources as time allows, to "back up" the already existing content with appropriate references.
The current thread is grossly insulting to the accuracy of the average Wikipedia article and contributor.
From my experience on Wikipedia, unsourced articles are very unreliable and may have plenty of wrong facts. Most of thse wrong facts are not added due to malice (though that is not uncommon), but they were added by people either from their (inevitable unreliable) memories, from blogs and forums, which, on average have an awful lack of accuracy or they are simply misinterpretations.
From my experience with Wikipedia, unsourced articles are generally very accurate and moderately precise. When I find them in areas for which I'm familiar with the body of knowledge and reliable sources, I will spend time to go find the appropriate citations and sources as time allows, to "back up" the already existing content with appropriate references.
"Accurate" and "reliable" are not synonymous. Just because the article happens to have everything right does not make it reliable, because there is no way for you to know that it has everything right.
On 1/25/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
From my experience on Wikipedia, unsourced articles are very unreliable and may have plenty of wrong facts. Most of thse wrong facts are not added due to malice (though that is not uncommon), but they were added by people either from their (inevitable unreliable) memories, from blogs and forums, which, on average have an awful lack of accuracy or they are simply misinterpretations.
From my experience with Wikipedia, unsourced articles are generally very accurate and moderately precise. When I find them in areas for which I'm familiar with the body of knowledge and reliable sources, I will spend time to go find the appropriate citations and sources as time allows, to "back up" the already existing content with appropriate references.
"Accurate" and "reliable" are not synonymous. Just because the article happens to have everything right does not make it reliable, because there is no way for you to know that it has everything right.
There are more citations per article in Wikipedia than in Brittanica. Is Brittanica an unreliable source?
I already know that Wikipedia is not completely reliable. Insisting on source citations isn't going to fix that - someone could put in a citation that's bogus, or put one in that says something other than what they say, or put one in that they misinterpret, because they aren't an expert on the field. All three of these things have happened to articles I have edited at one time or another. I can't trust the citations, because I can't trust the identity and accuracy of the contributors who added them. I'd have to go fact-check every source for an article to be really sure, and that scales pretty horribly.
There are more citations per article in Wikipedia than in Brittanica. Is Brittanica an unreliable source?
We know who wrote Britannica. We can (or at least, should be able to - let's not get into a discussion about the actual reliability of Britannica) trust that their authors really do know what they're talking about, and even if they are writing from memory, their memory is more reliable than that of a random Wikipedia user we know nothing about. (Not necessarily more accurate, but it is more reliable.)
Thomas Dalton wrote:
There are more citations per article in Wikipedia than in Brittanica. Is Brittanica an unreliable source?
We know who wrote Britannica. We can (or at least, should be able to - let's not get into a discussion about the actual reliability of Britannica) trust that their authors really do know what they're talking about, and even if they are writing from memory, their memory is more reliable than that of a random Wikipedia user we know nothing about. (Not necessarily more accurate, but it is more reliable.)
I think the term for what you say is "double standard". Are Wikipedia editors really that much more prone to Alzheimer's?
Ec
On 1/26/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
There are more citations per article in Wikipedia than in Brittanica. Is Brittanica an unreliable source?
We know who wrote Britannica. We can (or at least, should be able to - let's not get into a discussion about the actual reliability of Britannica) trust that their authors really do know what they're talking about, and even if they are writing from memory, their memory is more reliable than that of a random Wikipedia user we know nothing about. (Not necessarily more accurate, but it is more reliable.)
I think the term for what you say is "double standard". Are Wikipedia editors really that much more prone to Alzheimer's?
It's fair to point out that WP editors aren't vetted experts.
Even vetted experts make mistakes, as the accuracy research indicates with Britannica.
That is actually the one thing that I'd say pretty much answers the ultimate question here - WP's existing methods, and existing editors, produced content which was independently measured to be comparably accurate to the work of selected, vetted experts.
All of the complaints about our process fundamentally don't change that the result has been a success.
I think the term for what you say is "double standard". Are Wikipedia editors really that much more prone to Alzheimer's?
It doesn't take Alzheimer's for someone to make a mistake... Britannica is made by employees that went through an interview process and had their CVs examined, etc. Wikipedia is made by anyone and everyone. Britannica may not be any more accurate, but it is more reliable.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
I think the term for what you say is "double standard". Are Wikipedia editors really that much more prone to Alzheimer's?
It doesn't take Alzheimer's for someone to make a mistake... Britannica is made by employees that went through an interview process and had their CVs examined, etc. Wikipedia is made by anyone and everyone. Britannica may not be any more accurate, but it is more reliable.
IOW Britannica is more professional at making mistakes. :-)
Ec
On 1/25/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/25/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
From my experience on Wikipedia, unsourced articles are very
unreliable
and may have plenty of wrong facts. Most of thse wrong facts are not added due to malice (though that is not uncommon), but they were added by people either from their (inevitable unreliable) memories, from blogs and forums, which, on average have an awful lack of accuracy or they are simply misinterpretations.
From my experience with Wikipedia, unsourced articles are generally very accurate and moderately precise. When I find them in areas for which I'm familiar with the body of knowledge and reliable sources, I will spend time to go find the appropriate citations and sources as time allows, to "back up" the already existing content with appropriate references.
"Accurate" and "reliable" are not synonymous. Just because the article happens to have everything right does not make it reliable, because there is no way for you to know that it has everything right.
There are more citations per article in Wikipedia than in Brittanica. Is Brittanica an unreliable source?
Yes, it is an unreliable source. I would never cite Brittanica in an academic paper, nor would I know how to find a reliable source for something I read in Brittanica. On the other hand, there are lots of Wikipedia articles which can point me towards a source I would use in a paper.
That's what really matters - can an encyclopaedia article give you a good introduction to a subject and point you towards a truly useful source? If it can't, it's just a toy.
I already know that Wikipedia is not completely reliable. Insisting
on source citations isn't going to fix that - someone could put in a citation that's bogus, or put one in that says something other than what they say, or put one in that they misinterpret, because they aren't an expert on the field. All three of these things have happened to articles I have edited at one time or another. I can't trust the citations, because I can't trust the identity and accuracy of the contributors who added them. I'd have to go fact-check every source for an article to be really sure, and that scales pretty horribly.
-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
George Herbert wrote:
On 1/25/07, Bogdan Giusca liste@dapyx.com wrote:
From my experience on Wikipedia, unsourced articles are very unreliable and may have plenty of wrong facts. Most of thse wrong facts are not added due to malice (though that is not uncommon), but they were added by people either from their (inevitable unreliable) memories, from blogs and forums, which, on average have an awful lack of accuracy or they are simply misinterpretations.
From my experience with Wikipedia, unsourced articles are generally very accurate and moderately precise. When I find them in areas for which I'm familiar with the body of knowledge and reliable sources, I will spend time to go find the appropriate citations and sources as time allows, to "back up" the already existing content with appropriate references.
Time spent doing this is far more productive than time spent complaining about what others don't do.
Ec
Bogdan Giusca wrote:
Thursday, January 25, 2007, 9:38:50 PM, George wrote:
Here's the problem. Academic rigor - which I understand, having done refereed papers for conferences and such - is all fine and good for scholarly original research papers.
For an encyclopedia, the vast bulk of what we're trying to do is to simply convey the top level survey of a field to the general public.
You are arguing that for an encyclopedia, unlike for the academia, reliability and fact-checking are not important.
You are overstating his case.
The academic rigor exists not just due to their elitism: that's how the Academia mentains their high standards of its publications.
Academic rigor is a learned skill. For some students it may take the better part of their freshman year to grasp the idea. Demanding this rigor on one's very first article attempt is akin to asking the its full extent on the first day of a freshman class. New editors need to be sympathetically guided through the process rather than punished for not getting it right on the first try.
From my experience on Wikipedia, unsourced articles are very unreliable and may have plenty of wrong facts.
Some do; some don't. Your anecdotal observation does nothing to establish how extensive this problem is. If we are to adopt rigid rules about sourcing information should we not be equally rigid about applying scientific methods to measure accuracy? Of course some articles have wrong facts; that's inevitable in a project this size, but don't delude yourself into believing that just because an article is sourced it will magically cease to include wrong facts.
Most of thse wrong facts are not added due to malice (though that is not uncommon), but they were added by people either from their (inevitable unreliable) memories, from blogs and forums, which, on average have an awful lack of accuracy or they are simply misinterpretations.
Cited sources are just as susceptible to misinterpretation.
Ec
Phil Sandifer wrote:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
If people cited their sources in the first place, there wouldn't be any abuse by people using that fact to get it deleted. Any abuse with these policies can be prevented if people just made the effort. I think I'm going to reread those pages and think about rewriting them.
But this is one of the problems. The burden of citing everything is larger than our editors, especially our casual editors, are willing to undertake. We will never reach a point where people will cite their sources in the first place. Hence the prospect of eternally playing catch-up.
The situation is a fact of life that I'm prepared to live with. This does not change the ideal of having well sourced articles. It only accepts natural limitationsd.
Ec
On 1/25/07, Omegatron omegatron+wikienl@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/25/07, Matt R matt_crypto@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
The same holds for RS and CITE: they don't magically guarantee quality
by
themselves, but they are great tools for doing so if not abused.
But they are only used for abuse. A simple sentence or two in WP:V and a dose of consensus is sufficient.
That's simply not true. I use them to show people how sources are important to show information is accurate. Citing reliable sources is the only way to show readers the content of an article is accurate and accuracy should be our primary concern. If you know of other ways to verify content, I'm all ears.
Mgm
On Thu, 25 Jan 2007, Matt R wrote:
[[WP:FAC]]. Sourcing disputes are a more or less constant din - both with articles that are accurate being taken to task for not being well-sourced enough (This has become a pernicous flavor of deletionism in the past year or so) and with articles that are complete shit getting a pass because they have sources, even if the sources are bollocks.
Even for the best policies and guidelines, there'll always be some people who try to abuse, wikilawyer, or generally twist them to their own ends. NPOV disputes are more or less a constant din, too, but that's no reason to nuke NPOV.
While all policies can be abused, some are easier to abuse than others. Some are even attractive nuisances.
WP:CITE and WP:RS are unreasonably easy to abuse, and should be fixed so they are less so. Just because they cannot be perfect doesn't mean we should leave gaping flaws in them.
Of course, we don't really need to nuke them, just fix them.
While all policies can be abused, some are easier to abuse than others. Some are even attractive nuisances.
The only people who think that having to cite and verify articles with reliable sources is "abuse" are the kind of people who think "oh no my pokemans character studies are at risk again!"
Fran.
On Jan 25, 2007, at 11:53 AM, Francis Tyers wrote:
While all policies can be abused, some are easier to abuse than others. Some are even attractive nuisances.
The only people who think that having to cite and verify articles with reliable sources is "abuse" are the kind of people who think "oh no my pokemans character studies are at risk again!"
This comment (which I will note is offensive, wrongheaded, and appalling) is emblematic of the exact problem with [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:CITE]]. Nobody sane ever thought that the problem with Pokecruft was that it wasn't verifiable. We only started using [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:CITE]] to deal with that problem because we were desperate to come up with something that seemed sturdy that we could use to tell people to go away.
But this was fundamentally an act of desperation, and it shows, because the justifications for using [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:CITE]] in this way are so obviously flimsy. The deletions still go through because we have a well-sized cult of people who will faithfully vote delete, but anybody with an ounce of sense and knowledge about the subject knows full well that this is a flimsy justification and that the sources are reliable.
Deleting cruft articles with [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:CITE]] is an ugly kludge. If it's so vitally important that we do it, we need to come up with a justification that isn't a joke.
-Phil
Thursday, January 25, 2007, 6:25:38 PM, Ken wrote:
WP:CITE and WP:RS are unreasonably easy to abuse
What you call "abuse", others call improval of the sourcing and of the verifiability, and of therefore the credibility of Wikipedia.
From my experience on Wikipedia, almost all the criticism on the Reliable Sources requirements comes from people who edit mostly articles on anime, webcomics, furry subculture, internet memes and the like.
Those areas are not the core of an encyclopedia and protecting those areas should should not result in the compromising the rest of Wikipedia.
We can't have two sets of rules: one for cruft and one for the rest.
There are plenty of wikis for obscure stuff which fail our current policies on verifiability.
Bogdan Giusca wrote:
We can't have two sets of rules: one for cruft and one for the rest.
This is hardly true. There's no reason why an article on an independent rock band should be held to the same sourcing standard as a European king from the 1700s. What's reliable in the humanities is stricter than what's reliable in the entertainment world, and our reliable source guideline fails to understand that.
-Jeff
On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 12:02:01 -0500 (EST), "Jeff Raymond" jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
This is hardly true. There's no reason why an article on an independent rock band should be held to the same sourcing standard as a European king from the 1700s.
No indeed. The independent rock band should be deleted unless it has reliable sources, because most articles on independent rock bands are vanity spam; the king will have reliable sources somewhere even if they are not cited yet. A different standard indeed.
Guy (JzG)
On Jan 25, 2007, at 11:58 AM, Bogdan Giusca wrote:
Thursday, January 25, 2007, 6:25:38 PM, Ken wrote:
WP:CITE and WP:RS are unreasonably easy to abuse
What you call "abuse", others call improval of the sourcing and of the verifiability, and of therefore the credibility of Wikipedia.
From my experience on Wikipedia, almost all the criticism on the Reliable Sources requirements comes from people who edit mostly articles on anime, webcomics, furry subculture, internet memes and the like.
This just isn't true. There are plenty of reliable sources issues to be found about academic topics, particularly in the humanities. For example, it is mind-wrenchingly difficult to write a sourced article about [[Jacques Derrida]]. Why? Because one either has to frame his thought in terms of mediocre primers on his work like _Derrida for Beginners_, or one has to try to use the academic debate surrounding Derrida, in which case all of one's sources are aimed at an expert audience and there's no good foothold to explain the basics of Derrida's thought. Furthermore, one is left in a position where clueless political attacks on Derrida get disproportionate time, because lots of people can understand Ann Coulter and thus can add citations to her, but a lot fewer people can understand Julian Wolfreys and add citations to him.
There's not a good solution to this from within a source-paranoid culture, because the way to write a decent article on Derrida is to have three or four people who work with Derridean thought write it up, bash out compromises on wording among themselves, write brief bits that explain major debates about Derrida's thought where they can't agree on a generally applicable way of presenting something, and then to have a references section that points to some major work on Derrida. And if someone comes along and says "Dude, this article is crap. Here's a bunch of citations that show that this article totally misrepresents Derrida," we work from there.
But there is no good way to write an article on Jacques Derrida that is both a good introduction for a layperson and sourced at every turn.
I'd be similarly shocked if one could write a good article on high temperature physics or group theory while being totally dependent on published reliable sources, because those sources were never written for the purpose of being used to explain the concept to novices.
Those areas are not the core of an encyclopedia and protecting those areas should should not result in the compromising the rest of Wikipedia.
We can't have two sets of rules: one for cruft and one for the rest.
Nobody is proposing two sets of rules. What people have frequently proposed is that the rule should be "everything must be sourced to the recognized standards of reliability for that subject," and understanding that the standards are somewhat less rigorous in popular culture.
I'll also note that, contrary to popular rhetoric, [[WP:RS]] does very little to help fix pokecruft, because nobody can make a serious argument that Pokemon episodes are not reliable sources for information about what happens in Pokemon episodes. (At least not one that has ever gained any traction, and thank God for that, because it's a damn silly argument that has nothing to do with reliability and everything to do with frantically trying to build an idiot-proof wall against pokecruft by any means necessary, without regard for whether the wall makes sense.)
In fact, I suspect we'd have an easier time getting historical out-of- universe information if we let people who knew stuff about the history of Pokemon write articles without demanding they go back and figure out where exactly they read every single fact they're trying to include.
Put another way, the demand that every piece of information has a source means that we get a preponderance of information that's low- hanging fruit - that is, information that is easily found online and easily understood by anybody. That does not coincide well with information that is good.
Again, this is essentially a design problem. [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:CITE]] fail to consider that they need to be implemented by casual volunteers who are working out of good will. They'd be great policy if Wikipedia were written by paid experts and people who devote huge amounts of time to the project. (Which is who they were written by) But they're crap for someone who finds a problem on a page they're looking at and wants to fix it. Which is the vast majority of our editors.
This is the key problem. [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:CITE]] were not written with our actual userbase in mind. They are useful only to people like us - that is, people who are obsessed enough with Wikipedia to join a mailing list for discussion of it. That's not most of our editors.
Here's what we need. Picture Susan. Susan is a 40-year-old stay at home mother who majored in English, and still has a fondness for Jane Austen. Susan, one day, is browsing the Internet and reads our article on [[Pride and Prejudice]]. She sees an error. In five minutes, her kid is getting off the school bus.
We need a policy that lets Susan fix the problem and then go meet her kid at the bus without having her change reverted.
-Phil
Phil Sandifer wrote:
I'd be similarly shocked if one could write a good article on high temperature physics or group theory while being totally dependent on published reliable sources, because those sources were never written for the purpose of being used to explain the concept to novices.
The best sources for general topics are textbooks actually; reliable, and written to explain concepts. I find the introductions to monographs and papers as useful for WP as the bodies; at least the more articulate writers manage to get in a few words intelligible to the nonspecialist. :-)
Although I think the formal policies may be overdoing it, we do need to make some effort to change the culture. Can Susan be so certain of her twenty-years-ago memory that she can just starting typing away with confidence? I would rather she make a library visit first, or simply leave a note on the talk page - several times I've been able to use somebody else's talk page note as a starting point for doing a bit of research of my own, or triggered somebody else's further research by asking questions. We would also have a lot fewer edit wars if people didn't just wade in and start adding/deleting based on their faulty memory or understanding.
Stan
On Jan 25, 2007, at 2:36 PM, Stan Shebs wrote:
Although I think the formal policies may be overdoing it, we do need to make some effort to change the culture. Can Susan be so certain of her twenty-years-ago memory that she can just starting typing away with confidence? I would rather she make a library visit first, or simply leave a note on the talk page - several times I've been able to use somebody else's talk page note as a starting point for doing a bit of research of my own, or triggered somebody else's further research by asking questions. We would also have a lot fewer edit wars if people didn't just wade in and start adding/deleting based on their faulty memory or understanding.
That's the thing, though - Wikipedia was built by Susan. She did the heavy lifting to get Wikipedia to where it is today. We depend on Susan.
Now, we also depend on hardcore editors who deal with policy issues and edit wars and get long-term involved - admins and future admins, basically. These people clean up if Susan misremembers. As well as doing a thousand other bigger tasks that Susan isn't interested in.
But we need to adamantly resist letting this second pool of users set the rules in such a way that Susan gets squeezed out. Susan should be able to do any small task on Wikipedia.
-Phil
Umm, am I missign somthing here? Who is "Susan"?
On 1/25/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 25, 2007, at 2:36 PM, Stan Shebs wrote:
Although I think the formal policies may be overdoing it, we do need to make some effort to change the culture. Can Susan be so certain of her twenty-years-ago memory that she can just starting typing away with confidence? I would rather she make a library visit first, or simply leave a note on the talk page - several times I've been able to use somebody else's talk page note as a starting point for doing a bit of research of my own, or triggered somebody else's further research by asking questions. We would also have a lot fewer edit wars if people didn't just wade in and start adding/deleting based on their faulty memory or understanding.
That's the thing, though - Wikipedia was built by Susan. She did the heavy lifting to get Wikipedia to where it is today. We depend on Susan.
Now, we also depend on hardcore editors who deal with policy issues and edit wars and get long-term involved - admins and future admins, basically. These people clean up if Susan misremembers. As well as doing a thousand other bigger tasks that Susan isn't interested in.
But we need to adamantly resist letting this second pool of users set the rules in such a way that Susan gets squeezed out. Susan should be able to do any small task on Wikipedia.
-Phil _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Jan 25, 2007, at 2:53 PM, · Firefoxman wrote:
Umm, am I missign somthing here? Who is "Susan"?
Scroll up - she's a hypothetical stay-at-home mother with five minutes to spend on a Wikipedia article. My contention is that we need to avoid policies that prevent Susan from editing.
-Phil
Stan Shebs wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
I'd be similarly shocked if one could write a good article on high temperature physics or group theory while being totally dependent on published reliable sources, because those sources were never written for the purpose of being used to explain the concept to novices.
The best sources for general topics are textbooks actually; reliable, and written to explain concepts. I find the introductions to monographs and papers as useful for WP as the bodies; at least the more articulate writers manage to get in a few words intelligible to the nonspecialist. :-)
That's a significant obseration.
Although I think the formal policies may be overdoing it, we do need to make some effort to change the culture. Can Susan be so certain of her twenty-years-ago memory that she can just starting typing away with confidence? I would rather she make a library visit first, or simply leave a note on the talk page - several times I've been able to use somebody else's talk page note as a starting point for doing a bit of research of my own, or triggered somebody else's further research by asking questions. We would also have a lot fewer edit wars if people didn't just wade in and start adding/deleting based on their faulty memory or understanding.
If you would rather that Susan make a visit to the library discuss it with her. Also take time to discuss the function of the talk page with her. It could very well end up that spending a half-hour doing this is more productive than a half-hour spent cleaning up the article. Either way there's no getting around spending the half-hour. Robotically starting the deletion process or putting a canned statement on her talk page may be quicker, but it does not achieve the same results. The edit wars are slightly different because those articles are probably ones that have passed the tests that keep them from being deleted; the article talk page adds another opportunity for discussion.
I acknowledge that it can be frustrating to go over the same arguments with a hundred different people, and I can see where the urge to find a quick fix can be very inviting. Nevertheless it still the first time for the newbie.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
If you would rather that Susan make a visit to the library discuss it with her. Also take time to discuss the function of the talk page with her. It could very well end up that spending a half-hour doing this is more productive than a half-hour spent cleaning up the article. Either way there's no getting around spending the half-hour. [...]
I don't think it has to work that way. The half-hour comes from "wha? where did that come from"; studying article history, looking at editor contribs, comparing to other articles, etc - basically coming up to speed on a suspicious change. The editor making the original edit already knows what and why, so it would take much less of everybody's time to start from a cited reliable source. Fixing mistakes is part of the process, not entirely avoidable, but we don't actually have the capacity to fix up after a "bring it on, do whatever you want" policy (as witness the school articles).
Stan
On Jan 25, 2007, at 2:36 PM, Stan Shebs wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
I'd be similarly shocked if one could write a good article on high temperature physics or group theory while being totally dependent on published reliable sources, because those sources were never written for the purpose of being used to explain the concept to novices.
The best sources for general topics are textbooks actually; reliable, and written to explain concepts. I find the introductions to monographs and papers as useful for WP as the bodies; at least the more articulate writers manage to get in a few words intelligible to the nonspecialist. :-)
I picked those examples precisely because there weren't good or usable textbooks for them. (Or, at least, I asked a random chemistry grad student I had nearby for two topics that would fit that bill and that's what she gave me. Damned if I know what the hell group theory is.)
-Phil
Phil Sandifer wrote:
I picked those examples precisely because there weren't good or usable textbooks for them. (Or, at least, I asked a random chemistry grad student I had nearby for two topics that would fit that bill and that's what she gave me. Damned if I know what the hell group theory is.)
Group theory is math, and I personally have three textbooks left over from my younger days, any of which would be quite suitable. Perhaps the grad student was wishing for one that tied into crystallography applications better. :-)
Stan
On Jan 26, 2007, at 2:14 PM, Stan Shebs wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
I picked those examples precisely because there weren't good or usable textbooks for them. (Or, at least, I asked a random chemistry grad student I had nearby for two topics that would fit that bill and that's what she gave me. Damned if I know what the hell group theory is.)
Group theory is math, and I personally have three textbooks left over from my younger days, any of which would be quite suitable. Perhaps the grad student was wishing for one that tied into crystallography applications better. :-)
Knowing the grad student well enough to be marrying her in the fall, yes, I would assume that she was looking for an article on that aspect of group theory. :)
-Phil
On Fri, Jan 26, 2007 at 01:58:32PM -0500, Phil Sandifer wrote:
On Jan 25, 2007, at 2:36 PM, Stan Shebs wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
I'd be similarly shocked if one could write a good article on high temperature physics or group theory while being totally dependent on published reliable sources, because those sources were never written for the purpose of being used to explain the concept to novices.
The best sources for general topics are textbooks actually; reliable, and written to explain concepts. I find the introductions to monographs and papers as useful for WP as the bodies; at least the more articulate writers manage to get in a few words intelligible to the nonspecialist. :-)
I picked those examples precisely because there weren't good or usable textbooks for them. (Or, at least, I asked a random chemistry grad student I had nearby for two topics that would fit that bill and that's what she gave me. Damned if I know what the hell group theory is.)
[[Group theory]] is a branch of mathematics. That article has a rather poor paragraph that points to how chemists us it. To a chemist, Group Theory is a study of the symmetry of molecules or of crystals. The latter is used in X-ray crystallography. The former is used in quantum chemistry and molecular spectroscopy. We do not have an article on it and we should. There are plenty of fairly simple (2nd year chemistry undergrad level) books. The most famous is probably "Chemical applications of Group Theory" by F. Albert Cotton (1963) which lead to it being taught to undergrads. Plenty of people have tried to improve on it since but most failed. I may have a go at an article.
Brian.
-Phil
Phil Sandifer wrote:
In fact, I suspect we'd have an easier time getting historical out-of- universe information if we let people who knew stuff about the history of Pokemon write articles without demanding they go back and figure out where exactly they read every single fact they're trying to include.
I would have no issue with that except that it borders dangerously the issue of OR. How do I tell whether this stuff is real or made up? Is Wikipedia striving to be a reliable source of information or a buyer beware one. We already are a buyer beware one, with the existence of WP:CITE and WP:RS, so abolishing them won't get us anywhere different. Some people hope it will make us more reliable. I wish someone would sort this out, though, so that I could ignore my watchlist and go back to creating articles.
On 25/01/07, Bogdan Giusca liste@dapyx.com wrote:
Thursday, January 25, 2007, 6:25:38 PM, Ken wrote:
WP:CITE and WP:RS are unreasonably easy to abuse
What you call "abuse", others call improval of the sourcing and of the verifiability, and of therefore the credibility of Wikipedia.
No. Guidelines on sourcing and citing are good. The actual present content of WP:RS is completely counterproductive shite.
- d.
Bogdan Giusca wrote:
Thursday, January 25, 2007, 6:25:38 PM, Ken wrote:
WP:CITE and WP:RS are unreasonably easy to abuse
What you call "abuse", others call improval of the sourcing and of the verifiability, and of therefore the credibility of Wikipedia.
What you are supporting is a what-do-the-neighbors-think kind of credibility.
From my experience on Wikipedia, almost all the criticism on the Reliable Sources requirements comes from people who edit mostly articles on anime, webcomics, furry subculture, internet memes and the like.
I am critical of them but do not write about any of the subjects you note.
Those areas are not the core of an encyclopedia and protecting those areas should should not result in the compromising the rest of Wikipedia.
We can't have two sets of rules: one for cruft and one for the rest.
Your use of the word "cruft" suggests that your opinion is not unbiased
There are plenty of wikis for obscure stuff which fail our current policies on verifiability.
When was obscurity ever a criterion?
Ec
Phil Sandifer wrote:
Pop onto AfD for a bit. Or to articles on popular culture. Or [[WP:FAC]].
There are issue within the featured article process, I'll grant you that. Apparently one of the issues with the Superman article is that some citations are Harvard style and some are Wikipedia style. I'm of the opinion that the time spent discussing that would be better served ignoring it or fixing it. But hey, it's just one more hoop. Like I say, some people jopin Wikipedia just to find new hoops. I suppose it's a logical progression. You get all your featured articles to one state, so then you look at how to move them on. I'd say you're looking at the wrong end of the telescope though. You should get all your other articles to FA state and then improve the standards. What a hobby we have, ladies and gentlemen.
On Wed, 24 Jan 2007, bbatsell wrote:
Those are *goals*. Of course it's not feasible that every single sentence in every single article across every localized Wikipedia be sourced from reliable sources. That's ridiculous.
Instead we have "every single sentence in a random subset of articles must be sourced from reliable sources." It sucks if a topic you're interested in is in one of that random subset.
You also get subgroups of editors who absolutely refuse to accept some kinds of source. [[Wikipedia:Attribution]] has stalled because it's impossible to tell some people that popular culture can't be sourced like science and history.
Ken Arromdee wrote:
On Wed, 24 Jan 2007, bbatsell wrote:
Those are *goals*. Of course it's not feasible that every single sentence in every single article across every localized Wikipedia be sourced from reliable sources. That's ridiculous.
Instead we have "every single sentence in a random subset of articles must be sourced from reliable sources." It sucks if a topic you're interested in is in one of that random subset.
You also get subgroups of editors who absolutely refuse to accept some kinds of source. [[Wikipedia:Attribution]] has stalled because it's impossible to tell some people that popular culture can't be sourced like science and history.
Is that still stalled? That's getting silly. When I tried to make it a policy a while back I believe it was removed because someone wanted to satisfy the concerns of one editor. Now I may have that wrong, but I'm worried if we've reached the point on Wikipedia where one editor can prevent something happening. Do we really allow the filibuster? ~~~~
On 1/24/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
We should nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]. They are not working.
I have seen [[WP:RS]] used a lot lately. I have yet to see it actually improve anything. It's predominantly used to remove information that the remover knows is true but personally dislikes.
And we should shoot people who continue to add dubious information over the objections of other editors.
And then there are the overzealous ones who remove encyclopedic information that they agree with and know to be true, simply because it isn't sourced.
This is not how you improve quality.
Phil Sandifer wrote:
Consider this another entry in that time-tested genre of "obviously futile suggestions to nuke things that nobody is ever going to nuke, but probably should anyway" posts. (The classic, of course, being Nuke AfD. Which we should still do.)
We should nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]. They are not working. They have never worked. It is not a feasible project to go and add sources to everything, and new contributors who are editing casually are never going to be willing to do the extra work of having sources. The result is a rule where we are always going to be playing catch-up.
Nor do the pages prevent incidents like Siegenthaler, which was a problem with exactly one cause, which is that nobody had ever actually looked at that page after it was created. No policy in the world will fix a page that nobody is editing.
Yes, we need to ensure that people do not add crap information. This can be covered easily with "Information that people doubt the validity of should be sourced." And we can then leave the community to deal with issues on a case by case basis with the direction that they should be careful to make sure that information is accurate. And we should shoot people who continue to add dubious information over the objections of other editors. Which is basically how we wrote an encyclopedia that has proven pretty trustworthy, and, more to the point, is how we actually operate now on the vast majority of our articles, since [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]] are not actually useful pages.
But to have a pair of policies that cannot be honestly implemented serves only one purpose: causing debates among editors that waste time and good faith.
Nuke them.
You know, having read this through, I do believe I agree.
Mind you, we do need _something_ to fill the policy vacuum that nuking them would leave. I think your "Information that people doubt the validity of should be sourced" is a good starting point. Add to it "Information that could be libelous if false must be sourced", to cover the BLP angle, and we're starting to get somewhere.
Of course, this current drive towards sourcing everything to the hilt does have some positive aspects; we really _could_ use a lot more sources in a lot of articles. It's just the common sense "the color of the sky on a clear day does not need sourcing" aspect that is missing. Of course, reasonably interpreting the current policies also achieves this goal quite well -- at least until a non-reasonable person shows up.
As for the Seigenthaler incident, I still believe it was and is fundamentally a technical problem. We simply shouldn't have live articles that at least two or three established users haven't checked. Some combination of patrolling and stable versions might do it, although over time I've started to think more and more that it really needs some other, truly out-of-the-box solution.
Ilmari is quite right. Nuking policy is not going to help if you have nothing to replace it with. If you think it's badly worded, you should attempt to reword it rather than nuking. It's rather like RS being used to delete material an editor dislikes.
"Our policies should not be goals - they should be policies. If we cannot meaningfully implement the policy across all of our pages then it's a bad policy. This isn't actually a problem for most of our policies. [[WP:NPOV]] is actually basically understandable by any reasonably intelligent person, can be kept in mind, doesn't really require extra work. As a result, most of our pages do make a passing effort on NPOV. That is not true for sourcing."
I disagree with this. Reliable Sources is also basically understandable to a reasonably intelligent person (if they bother to read it) and really doesn't require all that much extra work. Typing in the URL or title for the book you used to create something should only take about 1 or 2 minutes for a short entry. If we enforce the policy better, we can actually catch up. How are we supposed to know if something is accurate when there's nothing to check against? I often tell people who question the accuracy of Wikipedia to check the sources of an article like you should do with any source of info; it doesn't reflect well on Wikipedia if it turns out there's nothing there to check. Should we really kill off a core policy to accomodate the lazy editors among us?
No, Jimbo himself said we should focus more on quality than quantity at Wikimania. The only way we are going to know something is of high quality is when we can check it.
Mgm
On 1/25/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Consider this another entry in that time-tested genre of "obviously futile suggestions to nuke things that nobody is ever going to nuke, but probably should anyway" posts. (The classic, of course, being Nuke AfD. Which we should still do.)
IMHO a tiny little "disputed" template would be more valuable than a "citation needed" template. Theoretically *every* sentence needs a citation. Most sentences are not disputed.
So I would rather see:
Seigenthaler shot JFK ^disputed^.
than:
Seigenthaler shot JFK ^citation needed^. Seigenthaler was born in Houston ^citation needed^. Houston is in the USA ^citation needed^.
Steve
Phil Sandifer wrote:
We should nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]. They are not working. They have never worked. It is not a feasible project to go and add sources to everything, and new contributors who are editing casually are never going to be willing to do the extra work of having sources. The result is a rule where we are always going to be playing catch-up.
In all honesty if that happens I will probably walk. As someone who edits in an arena of pop culture, comics, I don't think I could stand it if these crutches were taken away. Comics have been published for over 70 years and I would seriously have no other stick with which to beat the people who think Wikipedia can readily summarise the plot of every single character and adventure depicted. Why does that matter? People need to ponder how maintainable six billion articles on comics would be. Think I made that article up? People quite reasonably believe the batarang deserves an article. Extend that to Moon Knight's throwing arrows, which I could quite happily add an article on the basis of West Coast Avengers #18-24 or thereabouts. The best stick we've got at the moment to cut away at this is reliable sources. Now I know that there's a split in what Wikipedia is, and I know there are a lot of grey areas. I will defend any article I believe is well written regardless of source issues, and if there are such articles at afd please give me a call, but I will more readily defend the ideal Wikipedia was founded on. We need to focus on the general reader and focus on getting those books into the hands of those African kids that Jimmy often mentions. What value are those books going to be if they contain facts sourced from my webpage? And if you abandon reliable sources and citing, why on earth do you think we'll have quality articles? How are you going to do it. Sorry, but I'm battling POV pushers on too many fronts to even entertain this idea humourously.
Nor do the pages prevent incidents like Siegenthaler, which was a problem with exactly one cause, which is that nobody had ever actually looked at that page after it was created. No policy in the world will fix a page that nobody is editing.
Actually, that's a flawed argument. We don't know if they haven't prevented more examples like Siegenthaler.
Yes, we need to ensure that people do not add crap information. This can be covered easily with "Information that people doubt the validity of should be sourced."
Ugh, no. People doubt the validity of? What on earth is validity? Well, it's stuff that people of note have said, or, well it's stuff that is of importance to the subject. It's just more looseness, and it's too loose. Wikipedia either has to have standards or throw of the pretence of being an encyclopedia and allow original research. Hey, want your stuff in Wikipedia? Chuck up a web page and then source it. This applies to popular culture as much as it does any other field. Want to posit the idea that reading comics makes you gay? Chuck up a website and then cite it in Wikipedia. Well no, don't even cite it, just put it in and stick to your guns, because hey, it has validity.
And we can then leave the community
to deal with issues on a case by case basis with the direction that they should be careful to make sure that information is accurate. And we should shoot people who continue to add dubious information over the objections of other editors. Which is basically how we wrote an encyclopedia that has proven pretty trustworthy, and, more to the point, is how we actually operate now on the vast majority of our articles, since [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]] are not actually useful pages.
Okay, I realise here I'm going to get shot at, but it is my understanding that it is not enough for information to be accurate. It has to be relevant and it needs to be . Wikipedia is simply too big now to be built like it was in the old days. America doesn't operate the way it did in the Wild West, Wikipedia can't operate the way it did back then. Enforce mob rule and then watch as we lose the battle to the mob. We're walking a tight line as it is, at the outer edges like Siegenthaler. I'd hate to see the centre go.
But to have a pair of policies that cannot be honestly implemented serves only one purpose: causing debates among editors that waste time and good faith.
Look, I agree that there are issues, but those issues aren't with the policies. They are with the editors who can't seem to apply, what for better words I'll call common sense to the policies. They can't seem to grasp that there is a need to compromise, a need to facilitate other opinions and a need to deal. They can't grasp the concept of collaboration, they can't grasp the idea that life is not black and white. They can't see the future is reached by groping about in the dark as much as it is reached by walking clear lit corridors. Too many times an obvious decision is delayed due to one person in a far off field crying out "Process". What we need is a way of enforcing the idea that it is the spirit of the rules that are observed, not the words. Too many people are invested in the fight, not the book in the hands of that African kid.
What we need is perhaps better management. Kelly used to talk of an elected chamber which would debate issues. I'm starting to see the value. But that's a whole nother can of worms.
On Jan 25, 2007, at 9:42 AM, Steve Block wrote:
In all honesty if that happens I will probably walk. As someone who edits in an arena of pop culture, comics, I don't think I could stand it if these crutches were taken away. Comics have been published for over 70 years and I would seriously have no other stick with which to beat the people who think Wikipedia can readily summarise the plot of every single character and adventure depicted. Why does that matter? People need to ponder how maintainable six billion articles on comics would be. Think I made that article up? People quite reasonably believe the batarang deserves an article. Extend that to Moon Knight's throwing arrows, which I could quite happily add an article on the basis of West Coast Avengers #18-24 or thereabouts. The best stick we've got at the moment to cut away at this is reliable sources.
No. That's a crappy stick, because quite frankly, West Coast Avengers #18-24 is a reliable source, and should remain a reliable source. (Because otherwise we get into a whole host of other problems. Primary source research like this is important.) The thing to tell someone who wants an article on Moon Knight's throwing arrows is "No, and stop being stupid." But we're doing a bad job of that, and so we've contorted our sourcing policies to try to cover this, which is a problem, because they do a very bad job of it.
Now I know that there's a split in what Wikipedia is, and I know there are a lot of grey areas. I will defend any article I believe is well written regardless of source issues, and if there are such articles at afd please give me a call, but I will more readily defend the ideal Wikipedia was founded on. We need to focus on the general reader and focus on getting those books into the hands of those African kids that Jimmy often mentions. What value are those books going to be if they contain facts sourced from my webpage? And if you abandon reliable sources and citing, why on earth do you think we'll have quality articles? How are you going to do it. Sorry, but I'm battling POV pushers on too many fronts to even entertain this idea humourously.
POV pushers are often insidiously good at sources - have a look at [[2004 U.S. Presidential election controversy]] for why sourcing doesn't really fix the problem (and if anything makes it worse because POV pushers can resort to "But it's sourced!")
Actually, that's a flawed argument. We don't know if they haven't prevented more examples like Siegenthaler.
Nonsense. Siegenthaler would have been fixed without recourse to sourcing had anybody looked at it. To try to solve a problem with a solution irrelevant to the problem is silly.
Ugh, no. People doubt the validity of? What on earth is validity? Well, it's stuff that people of note have said, or, well it's stuff that is of importance to the subject. It's just more looseness, and it's too loose. Wikipedia either has to have standards or throw of the pretence of being an encyclopedia and allow original research. Hey, want your stuff in Wikipedia? Chuck up a web page and then source it. This applies to popular culture as much as it does any other field. Want to posit the idea that reading comics makes you gay? Chuck up a website and then cite it in Wikipedia. Well no, don't even cite it, just put it in and stick to your guns, because hey, it has validity.
You seem to be operating under the curious idea that [[WP:RS]] is the source of common sense and judgment in the world, and should it ever vanish everybody editing Wikipedia will become a dithering idiot. If someone puts a claim that reading comics makes you gay into [[comics]] we do not need any policy beyond "editors should exercise good judgment" to go "Ummm, that's an interesting claim you've got there, mate. I'm not so sure I believe it - you mind explaining where you're coming from?" And when the editor points to their website, we do not need a policy to say that they're being an idiot and that's not going in the encyclopedia. Policy is not the source of our ability to remove crap. Policy is an instruction manual for well- meaning editors who don't really understand what we're doing. But [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:CITE]] don't work as that - they're dense, painfully confused texts that try to oversimplify sourcing and research, which are both very complex topics. And they enshrine rigidity where flexibility, discussion, common sense, and consensus are necessary.
Okay, I realise here I'm going to get shot at, but it is my understanding that it is not enough for information to be accurate. It has to be relevant and it needs to be . Wikipedia is simply too big now to be built like it was in the old days. America doesn't operate the way it did in the Wild West, Wikipedia can't operate the way it did back then. Enforce mob rule and then watch as we lose the battle to the mob. We're walking a tight line as it is, at the outer edges like Siegenthaler. I'd hate to see the centre go.
One of the most common misconceptions and false attacks on Wikipedia has always been equating the consensus model with mob rule.
Look, I agree that there are issues, but those issues aren't with the policies. They are with the editors who can't seem to apply, what for better words I'll call common sense to the policies. They can't seem to grasp that there is a need to compromise, a need to facilitate other opinions and a need to deal. They can't grasp the concept of collaboration, they can't grasp the idea that life is not black and white. They can't see the future is reached by groping about in the dark as much as it is reached by walking clear lit corridors. Too many times an obvious decision is delayed due to one person in a far off field crying out "Process". What we need is a way of enforcing the idea that it is the spirit of the rules that are observed, not the words. Too many people are invested in the fight, not the book in the hands of that African kid.
The solution is, in part, to get away from a system of rules and towards a system of principles. [[WP:V]] is a good page. [[WP:NOR]] is a good page. That's because they enshrine principles and goals. [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:CITE]] enshrine a hopeless bureaucracy that we can never hope to actually get working. If you want a model where people look at the goal instead of the method, you need policies that are principles and goals, not processes. [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:CITE]] are the ugly processes we wrote to try to support [[WP:V]] and [[WP:NOR]]. Cut out the process, leave the goal.
-Phil
Phil Sandifer wrote:
No. That's a crappy stick, because quite frankly, West Coast Avengers #18-24 is a reliable source, and should remain a reliable source. (Because otherwise we get into a whole host of other problems. Primary source research like this is important.) The thing to tell someone who wants an article on Moon Knight's throwing arrows is "No, and stop being stupid." But we're doing a bad job of that, and so we've contorted our sourcing policies to try to cover this, which is a problem, because they do a very bad job of it.
No and stop being stupid is sadly unworkable, because you get told not to be stupid back. And I don't see why we can't have an article on Moon Knight's throwing arrows if you throw WP:CITE and WP:RS out. I don't see why we can't have an article on anything then. You need to come up with something better than telling people not to be stupid.
Now I know that there's a split in what Wikipedia is, and I know there are a lot of grey areas. I will defend any article I believe is well written regardless of source issues, and if there are such articles at afd please give me a call, but I will more readily defend the ideal Wikipedia was founded on. We need to focus on the general reader and focus on getting those books into the hands of those African kids that Jimmy often mentions. What value are those books going to be if they contain facts sourced from my webpage? And if you abandon reliable sources and citing, why on earth do you think we'll have quality articles? How are you going to do it. Sorry, but I'm battling POV pushers on too many fronts to even entertain this idea humourously.
POV pushers are often insidiously good at sources - have a look at [[2004 U.S. Presidential election controversy]] for why sourcing doesn't really fix the problem (and if anything makes it worse because POV pushers can resort to "But it's sourced!")
I'm well aware of what POV pushers do with sources, but imagine how much worse it would be if there was no rquirement to source. But look, I can just add what I want and you can't stop me. WP:3RR used to be enough to stop that, but it won't anymore. Wikipedia has simply gotten too big.
Nonsense. Siegenthaler would have been fixed without recourse to sourcing had anybody looked at it. To try to solve a problem with a solution irrelevant to the problem is silly.
That's not my point but it's a side issue, I'll hope you will agree. Sourcing has nothing to do with Siegenthaler but Siegenthaler also has nothing to do with the argument that WP:CITE and WP:RS should go.
You seem to be operating under the curious idea that [[WP:RS]] is the source of common sense and judgment in the world, and should it ever vanish everybody editing Wikipedia will become a dithering idiot.
No Phil, I'm just aware that a lot of people currently attempting to edit Wikipedia are, to borrow your phrase, dithering idiots. I make no assertion that WP:RS is the source of common sense and judgement. It is simply somethin that can be pointed to. I'm already having issues over whether a fansite is a reliable source or not because RS doesn't mention fansites. There is an indication of what the problem will be if we do away with this. Look, I honestly don't care what the rules say, I'm hopeful I'm pragmatic to make the right call in different circumstances, but I see too many people who seem unable to work out how to best compromise. Good articles get deleted, bad articles get kept, people get tied up in process when they should be editing, Wikipedia has become a game.
If
someone puts a claim that reading comics makes you gay into [[comics]] we do not need any policy beyond "editors should exercise good judgment" to go "Ummm, that's an interesting claim you've got there, mate. I'm not so sure I believe it - you mind explaining where you're coming from?" And when the editor points to their website, we do not need a policy to say that they're being an idiot and that's not going in the encyclopedia. Policy is not the source of our ability to remove crap. Policy is an instruction manual for well- meaning editors who don't really understand what we're doing. But [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:CITE]] don't work as that - they're dense, painfully confused texts that try to oversimplify sourcing and research, which are both very complex topics. And they enshrine rigidity where flexibility, discussion, common sense, and consensus are necessary.
No Phil, it won't work. I've been in, and still am in arguments where it is me against one other person, and every cry for help goes ignored. There are too many rules now for this to work. POV pushers can enlist advocates to run rings around uneducated people like me, push each and every button, accuse you of bad faith and god knows what, misrepresent you, troll you, stalk you and make you feel like crap, and all you've got at the end of the day is the idea that WP:CITE and WP:RS mean something. We do need something that written down that let's us work out what works from what doesn't, because otherwise it's you against me, and the mob rules. And trust me Phil, the mob is a lot bigger now. I can't see this as working one jot. I won't deny WP:CITE and WP:RS aren't broken, but I can't work out what the hell we're supposed to be doing here. It seems like we just muddle through and hope to hit gold somewhere along the way. Whatever floats your boat I guess. Policy has become the source of how to remove stuff, because we're spread too thin.
One of the most common misconceptions and false attacks on Wikipedia has always been equating the consensus model with mob rule.
Phil, if you get 50 people pushing on one side and five on the other, who calls the consensus. Consensus may not equal mob rule, but mob rule can override consensus. Look at every fractious issue we've had recently; the userboxes, the admin channel, they all occur because nobody is interested in discussing to reach a consensus, they have too much invested in their own opinion to budge one jot. Consensus demands that all sides discuss with the aim of reaching a consensus, not with the aim of winning the day. Mob rule can easily sweep aside consensus.
The solution is, in part, to get away from a system of rules and towards a system of principles. [[WP:V]] is a good page. [[WP:NOR]] is a good page. That's because they enshrine principles and goals. [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:CITE]] enshrine a hopeless bureaucracy that we can never hope to actually get working. If you want a model where people look at the goal instead of the method, you need policies that are principles and goals, not processes. [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:CITE]] are the ugly processes we wrote to try to support [[WP:V]] and [[WP:NOR]]. Cut out the process, leave the goal.
Look, I've written my fair share of crap process, and got my fingers burnt when I tried to take it back, but WP:RS and WP:CITE don't enshrine a bureaucracy. That bureaucracy is everywhere. Look at the hoops one has to jump through to do anything now. You can't speedy delete anything anymore because it ends up at DRV, you can't speedy close a DRV anymore because it ends up at WP:ANI, you can't write an article anymore without it being prodded, hell you can't clean up an article without it going to afd. Christ, you can't do anything without working out what all these acronyms are. Wikipedia is a bureaucracy, and ironically, you can't make it one because of the bureaucracy involved in changing WP:NOT. First you would have to discuss, it, then get a consensus, then make the change, then engage in a revert war, then have the page protected and god knows what.
WP:RS and WP:CITE are valuable. Remove WP:RS and WP:V loses half its meaning. What you are railing against is not two pages, but the cluelessness of many wikipedians. Sadly, we can't say that on Wikipedia because we have civility policies. The people who invest time gardening at the process pages or using them as deletion tools are the problem, not the people using them to create and improve articles.
On Jan 25, 2007, at 6:13 PM, Steve Block wrote:
No and stop being stupid is sadly unworkable, because you get told not to be stupid back. And I don't see why we can't have an article on Moon Knight's throwing arrows if you throw WP:CITE and WP:RS out. I don't see why we can't have an article on anything then. You need to come up with something better than telling people not to be stupid.
Yes. But we have over and over again seen that policy can never cure stupidity. The stupid will break things with or without policy. And policy has usually been largely ineffectual in fixing the stupid. What fixes the stupid is having multiple people going "No, that's stupid" and reverting the changes. That's always been our main line of defense. And the thing is, it works just as well if there's a policy that says "revert the changes" as if there's not.
No Phil, I'm just aware that a lot of people currently attempting to edit Wikipedia are, to borrow your phrase, dithering idiots. I make no assertion that WP:RS is the source of common sense and judgement. It is simply somethin that can be pointed to. I'm already having issues over whether a fansite is a reliable source or not because RS doesn't mention fansites. There is an indication of what the problem will be if we do away with this. Look, I honestly don't care what the rules say, I'm hopeful I'm pragmatic to make the right call in different circumstances, but I see too many people who seem unable to work out how to best compromise. Good articles get deleted, bad articles get kept, people get tied up in process when they should be editing, Wikipedia has become a game.
And the best way to stop the idiotic Wikinomic is to take away the process. The main thing that process does is it makes it so that only process wonks get involved. Take away the process, take away the stupid junk.
WP:RS and WP:CITE are valuable. Remove WP:RS and WP:V loses half its meaning. What you are railing against is not two pages, but the cluelessness of many wikipedians. Sadly, we can't say that on Wikipedia because we have civility policies. The people who invest time gardening at the process pages or using them as deletion tools are the problem, not the people using them to create and improve articles.
Exactly. And the problem is that the people take the process pages and bite the newbies. Elsewhere in this thread I used the hypothetical example of Susan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ User:Phil_Sandifer/Susan
That's the question here. How can we take away the ability of the clueless to bite the newbies.
I suspect the easiest answer would be an arbcom with the balls to give a complete pass to a rogue admin who went and nuked about there dozen pages in a two minute time period, and to pass a finding "Admin's actions were completely right, and none of these pages should be recreated." Make the place hostile to the process junkies and get them to fork.
Actually, that would be a good policy page. [[Wikipedia:Bite the process junkies]]
-Phil
On 1/25/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Exactly. And the problem is that the people take the process pages and bite the newbies. Elsewhere in this thread I used the hypothetical example of Susan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ User:Phil_Sandifer/Susan
Problem is most of the stuff our general corwd can do in that way has already been done.
That's the question here. How can we take away the ability of the clueless to bite the newbies.
I suspect the easiest answer would be an arbcom with the balls to give a complete pass to a rogue admin who went and nuked about there dozen pages in a two minute time period, and to pass a finding "Admin's actions were completely right, and none of these pages should be recreated." Make the place hostile to the process junkies and get them to fork.
Wouldn't work. You see process junkies would take that as a new process and use it to make your life misserable. In any case the odds of arbcom getting to the case before the admin has been indef blocked and all the pages undeleted are um nill.
It also makes adminship a seriously big deal.
Actually, that would be a good policy page. [[Wikipedia:Bite the process junkies]]
[[Wikipedia:Just try and get along]]
geni wrote:
On 1/25/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
Actually, that would be a good policy page. [[Wikipedia:Bite the process junkies]]
[[Wikipedia:Just try and get along]]
[[Wikipedia:Ban them all]]
On Thu, 25 Jan 2007, Phil Sandifer wrote:
Think I made that article up? People quite reasonably believe the batarang deserves an article. Extend that to Moon Knight's throwing arrows, which I could quite happily add an article on the basis of West Coast Avengers #18-24 or thereabouts. The best stick we've got at the moment to cut away at this is reliable sources.
No. That's a crappy stick, because quite frankly, West Coast Avengers #18-24 is a reliable source, and should remain a reliable source. (Because otherwise we get into a whole host of other problems. Primary source research like this is important.) The thing to tell someone who wants an article on Moon Knight's throwing arrows is "No, and stop being stupid." But we're doing a bad job of that, and so we've contorted our sourcing policies to try to cover this, which is a problem, because they do a very bad job of it.
I think you're otherwise right, but the correct thing to tell someone who wants an article on Moon Knight's arrows is "that isn't notable."
Stretching WP:RS to encompass something that really should be under notability is a bad idea.
Steve Block wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
We should nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]. They are not working. They have never worked. It is not a feasible project to go and add sources to everything, and new contributors who are editing casually are never going to be willing to do the extra work of having sources. The result is a rule where we are always going to be playing catch-up.
In all honesty if that happens I will probably walk.
The problem with this kind of argument as the very first one in a series of comments is that it makes me feel blackmailed by whatever follows. I am disinclined to read further because because I feel that the motivation for what follows will not be based on the objective issue, but on finding reasons to keep you here.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Steve Block wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
We should nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]. They are not working. They have never worked. It is not a feasible project to go and add sources to everything, and new contributors who are editing casually are never going to be willing to do the extra work of having sources. The result is a rule where we are always going to be playing catch-up.
In all honesty if that happens I will probably walk.
The problem with this kind of argument as the very first one in a series of comments is that it makes me feel blackmailed by whatever follows.
The problem with this line of argument is that it doesn't develop the debate in a fruitful manner. My suggestion would be to either ignore the comment or to consider it in the context of the posted subject header. However, I am terribly sorry for the offence it caused, and for reacting emotively to Phil's suggestion and conveying the level of my reaction. Maybe I'll move to a list where people don't make me feel like a retard simply for posting my opinion.
Steve Block wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Steve Block wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
We should nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]. They are not working. They have never worked. It is not a feasible project to go and add sources to everything, and new contributors who are editing casually are never going to be willing to do the extra work of having sources. The result is a rule where we are always going to be playing catch-up.
In all honesty if that happens I will probably walk.
The problem with this kind of argument as the very first one in a series of comments is that it makes me feel blackmailed by whatever follows.
The problem with this line of argument is that it doesn't develop the debate in a fruitful manner. My suggestion would be to either ignore the comment or to consider it in the context of the posted subject header. However, I am terribly sorry for the offence it caused, and for reacting emotively to Phil's suggestion and conveying the level of my reaction. Maybe I'll move to a list where people don't make me feel like a retard simply for posting my opinion.
I don't know if offence was the right word for the way I reacted, but I certainly accept your apology in the spirit in which it was intended. Ignoring the rest of that message was as much as could reasonably be done in the circumstances. I would not have applied this to later messages.
Ec