On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 9:16 PM, whothis whothith@gmail.com wrote:
Looks like an excellent waste of effort.
Maybe the problem of publishing non-publishable oral sources occurred to someone on the team. Anyway the english wikipedia seems to be the appropriate place for your original research. I can't wait to read all about it.
I still think a research project in emesis in the global south or something would have suited english wikipedia better but that's just me.
Your fan
Elizabeth
This was obviously just a puerile troll posting, and doesn't deserve a response on its own merit, but I still think it's worthwhile to give an ordinary Wikipedian's view of the general uncertainty about oral sources in terms of notability and original research.
One of the most frequent complaints about Wikipedia, which I have seen in contexts such as the Wikipedia overview of World History and on websites that are critical of Wikipedia, is that it has an endemic bias towards Western, English-language information. As long as Wikipedia is completely reliant on paper sources, this is unlikely to change. The Oral Citations project is a brave attempt to light a candle instead of just cursing the darkness.
Lots of ethnographic work is very strongly based on interviews with people who have an oral tradition. This is then published and, quite correctly, cited in Wikipedia: the view is that it is then a secondary source, and hence appropriate. When we directly source oral interviews and host them on a sister project, the complaint is that this is a primary source: prone to small sample sizes, unscientific data gathering, and hidden biases on the part of the interviewers.
The key response to this objection in my opinion is that we have to be clear about the kind of claim that can be supported by these interviews, and the strength of the evidence.
Where there is no written discussion of a specific cultural practice, endemic knowledge, minor language or whatever, an oral citation is better than nothing. As long as it's given in context, I don't see the problem. Something like "Interviews with members of the Sk8r tribe in 2011 indicated that they have a deep animosity towards the neighbouring Emos,<ref name=Interview36 /> <ref name=interview38 /> and have several tribal songs in this regard <ref name=Interview44>."
When the oral citations disagree with written sources, the authority of the interviewee becomes relevant. If a recognized elder of a specific cultural group (whose identity can be verified) is on video making a specific claim, that's notable and verifiable in itself, and can be discussed as such in a Wikipedia article.
An example of such a claim might be "Although Ringo's Ethnography of Eastern River-dwellers mentions their ritual use of torpedoes<ref name="Ringo83" />, Chief Tom of the Wilbury tribe has claimed in an interview that none of the tribes ever had access to such weapons, and believes this belief to be due to a confusion with the local militia.<ref name="Petty2011" />"
This way, no reader can be misled about the source and weight of the claim.
Of course, that's just, like, my opinion, man.{{cn}}