Just a quick reply to Mark on peer review. The memoirs would not be anonymous. Any reporter worth his or her salt would try to track down the witness to see if he/she were credible. If the source could not be found, or was found to be less than credible, then the reporter/researcher wouldn't use him/her. This is SOP in all credible journalism, and works the same for all sources, no matter where they come from. Moreover, if a user (such as a reporter) finds that a source is not credible, then this could be added to the metadata (a bit like the discussions on Wikipedia entries).
You are certainly right that controversial events will attract POV accounts, and even falsified accounts. We'll have to trust that users will understand this, and help identify bad actors. But I would say that for the vast majority of memoirs, POV won't really come into play. I saw one of the last Led Zeppelin concerts with the original line up. My POV is that it was great, but I have a lot of other observations that Zep fans and folks interested in the history of Rock and Roll will be interested in. Particularly in 100 years.
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@wikimedia.org on behalf of Delirium Sent: Fri 9/16/2005 3:24 PM To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] New Proposal: WikiMemory
Traroth wrote:
Well... Why not ? Are you people OK with testimonies like "I was there when US army shooted on Hotel Palestine in Bagdad" or "I was in the jails of Abu Graib" ?
I think this sort of thing would be very problematic. When it comes to contentious topics, like Israel-Palestine, people have repeatedly demonstrated that they are willing to completely fabricate eye-witness accounts to make one or the other side look bad.
Published eye-witness accounts can also be fabricated, of course, but have the benefit that since they're in the public sphere of published work, the more questionable oens have often attracted published refutations. Similarly, books on controversial subjects are often reviewed in the 'book review' sections of journals. A purported eyewitness account added directly to a wiki doesn't benefit from any of that sort of peer review.
-Mark
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