On Wednesday 22 February 2012 03:45 PM, Thomas Morton wrote:
Jokes aside :) the problem here is exemplary of what Wikipedia *doesn't* do well, which is to find ways to assess the legitimacy of not-yet-legitimised knowledge
I'm not seeing a good argument that we *should* assess the legitimacy. This seems to be being cast in the light of "verifiability not truth" (a really silly maxim) but, in reality, it goes more back to our idea of "we use reliable sources because they are *peer reviewed*".
Well actually, we use newspaper sources very frequently, as well as non-scholarly (and therefore non-peer-reviewed) books, so in fact, we rely on *printing* (or to put it more kindly, publishing) as a signal for peer-review, not peer-review itself. In my opinion, this is a poor signal.
The implicit suggestion here is that Wikipedia could/should act as that form of peer review for so called "not-yet-legitimised knowledge".
Although it would be nice to have that role it isn't actually all that practical for several reasons:
- We already have enough disagreement over sourcing as it is
- Very few of us are truly subject matter experts
- Even fewer of us have experience of peer review and critical examination
of work (this is especially critical in the sciences)
- Taking on the role of peer review puts us at odds with our main aim; of
providing a summary resource.
The main thing it would do is open up Wikipedia as an avenue to push (and legitimise) fringe material.
I completely agree that we need a system that doesn't throw a spanner in the works - but if you're suggesting that the only workable signal for legitimacy is printing, then that seems odd; and it is odder that while we ourselves rely on a range of filtered non-printed sources for our own information (social media, conversations) that we shouldn't attempt to find a way to bring Wikipedia into these very old and very new systems of legitimate knowledge that we've fundamentally accepted ourselves.
whether the 'truth' is new analysis backed up by serious scholarship (as in this case), or things that have not yet made it to reliable print scholarship (knowledge that's circulated orally, whether in conversations or social media). The core of the problem would appear to be our insistence on the narrowest and smallest possible definition of 'legitimate knowledge'.
Is it? Lets look at what happened here.
- Someone posted information apparently based on their own analysis - it's
not unreasonable to remove this
- He began to defend his additions on the talk page and some were
incorporated
- He gave up further attempts
- The next day a lot of those comments were incorporated (if you read
through the detail very carefully, to as much of an extent as the published literature allowed) based on the inconsistencies he raised
- He went away and wrote a book which forwards a number of new theories and
updates our understanding of the topic.
Has anyone actually read through the points raised? The problem is not a case of "well this factual thing disproves what is in the article". It is much more a case of disagreement over the established *interpretation* of events and over the *extent* to which views expressed by the previously top level source were recorded (for example; "no evidence" was a mistaken summary of the view raised by the source, a point which was then corrected).
And I'd imagine that the solution is to find a workable, sensible and cross-culturally translatable version of legitimacy that is a lot better, bigger and more generous than what we have.
No it isn't.
We have a good sourcing policy; one which does cover a very wide range of sources and can be relaxed and restricted as required to fit the topic based on good editorial judgement.
Consider these two points:
1) Bad behaviour needs a back-up, and inadequately updated/ incompletely thought out policies serve as a bulwark against weeding out bad behaviour.
2) If, for instance, 'no original research' was to keep physics cranks out, as seems the case, then it's succeeded - the physics cranks are out. Given that it was put in place ten years ago though, and given that it may have been very useful circa 2001, in a Wikipedia with limited geographical contribution and use, things are very different now. Might we not benefit from assessing the cost of policies that guard against enemies who no longer exist?
However, for the topic of *history* (in which I have an interest, and where I work on articles at the moment) we definitely should stick to well reviewed, published material.
What *was* at issue here is how we treat new users; the discussion was approached (on the part of our editors) either as a battleground/fight, or in a quite patronising way. The issue here was that someone was put off from raising the issues.
I do know of academics who are frustrated by what they see as inaccuracies in Wikipedia articles; and when they try to correct them from their own knowledge get reverted. That, coupled with a lack of understanding of how Wikipedia works from a technical perspective, can make the experience very frustrating - and the opportunity to explain the rational viewpoint (i.e. peer reviewed sourcing) is lost.
If you read the article this is what he is saying; that academics should follow the peer review route before trying to get their material included. He also notes that even when he had taken this route he was put off because of his treatment the last time.
The failure here is *not* our content policy. But the behavioural.
I respect where you're coming from and it's very helpful in furthering my own understanding of the situation. But: I think the 'behavioural' is distinctly affected by 'policy' - especially when the policy is malleable, loose and archaic enough to interpreted (usually hawkishly) at will by those already in the know.
Tom _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l