On 29 July 2011 10:50, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Thus we end up with blithering insanity like the phrase "reliable sources" being used unironically, as if being listed on WP:RS *actually makes a source humanly reliable*. This is particularly hilarious when applied to newspapers - no-one who has *ever* been quoted by the media would think this way. (For those of you aware of the hip Bayesian way to calculate uncertainty, this is what happens when your network has allowed probabilities of 1 or 0.)
Also, I must note: everything Wikipedia gets right is when it's doing it to be useful to the readers, and everything Wikipedia gets wrong is when it's doing it to appease battling editors. The binary nature of "reliable sources" is largely an attempt to get editors to stop arguing, at the cost of doing increasing disservice to readers.
It gets worse when editors internalise the no-shades-of-grey black-and-white ideal of "reliable sources" and suggest blithering insanity such as that supplying a quote translation is forbidden as "original research".
This is put up with because editors think it's better than editors fighting. While editors fighting is bad (although, as Alex Curran has noted, we drop editors into an arena then we're surprised when they fight), I suggest we really need to consider whether what it's doing to our epistemology is worse.
It's an attempt to solve the problems with people by turning yourself into a robot. Funnily enough, doing this leads to really bad and stupid results.
- d.