Gerard writes: >>The trouble is that attempts to make something that lures experts but keeps idiots out of their faces have so far failed and/or attracted no attention, even from the experts (Citizendium, Scholarpedia). That is, they sound like a good idea; but in practice, Wikipedia has so far been the least worst system.
True. But is there not some way of making Wikipedia just a little more attractive to people who have studied the subject? I used to propose things like credentials based on trust earned on Wikipedia (which would require getting trust from other trusted editors, much like in financial markets). These all naturally got shot down, and silly of me to have tried. But is there not some way of just making it a little easier?
The problem is that until someone sits up and notices the serious errors that are propagated through Wikipedia (and which are now becoming part of the folk wisdom of the internet), no one will be bothered. The problem is that no one *knows* there are problems, and so no one can be bothered. I've started documenting the problem in a small way, e.g. here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/william-of-ockham.html and here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/avicennian-logic.html , but this is only in my own area of expertise.
What is the very smallest thing that could be done, I wonder?
Peter
On Sun, 29 Aug 2010 15:38:34 +0100, "Peter Damian" peter.damian@btinternet.com wrote:
The problem is that until someone sits up and notices the serious errors that are propagated through Wikipedia (and which are now becoming part of the
folk wisdom of the internet), no one will be bothered. The problem is
that
no one *knows* there are problems, and so no one can be bothered. I've started documenting the problem in a small way, e.g. here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/william-of-ockham.html and here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/avicennian-logic.html , but this is only in my own area of expertise.
What is the very smallest thing that could be done, I wonder?
Peter
These issues have been discussed at length at the Strategy wiki and made to the five-how year strategic plan. The question is how they would be implemented now. But it is not really correct that nobody bothers.
Cheers Yaroslav
On 29 August 2010 16:45, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
These issues have been discussed at length at the Strategy wiki and made to the five-how year strategic plan. The question is how they would be implemented now. But it is not really correct that nobody bothers.
Awareness of our systemic problems - the ones that are deeply part of our structure - on the part of the editors on the ground is probably the best thing that springs to mind. I suspect there is no complete solution while humans are imperfect, but we can keep trying. NPOV is a journey. Etc.
- d.
On 29 August 2010 15:38, Peter Damian peter.damian@btinternet.com wrote:
The problem is that until someone sits up and notices the serious errors that are propagated through Wikipedia (and which are now becoming part of the folk wisdom of the internet), no one will be bothered. The problem is that no one *knows* there are problems, and so no one can be bothered. I've started documenting the problem in a small way, e.g. here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/william-of-ockham.html and here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/avicennian-logic.html , but this is only in my own area of expertise. What is the very smallest thing that could be done, I wonder?
Probably just documenting problems, as you note.
It is helpful that on Wikipedia the editorial process is largely transparent, so the question "how did it get like this?" can actually be answered. Wikipedia is not reliable, but it turns out that how paper encyclopedias and newspapers were written was similarly susceptible - with Wikipedia we can see inside the sausage factory rather than pretending that the mass media is a happy unicorn-filled fairyland of scrupulous fact-checking and expert supervision.
- d.
It is helpful that on Wikipedia the editorial process is largely transparent, so the question "how did it get like this?" can actually be answered. Wikipedia is not reliable, but it turns out that how paper encyclopedias and newspapers were written was similarly susceptible
In the case of newspapers probably yes. In the case of encyclopedias, I think not. There are severe problems with the Wikipedia coverage of philosophy which you wouldn't find here, for instance. And so for the humanities generally. When I make this point on Wikipedia, the answer is usually that Wikipedia is for pop culture, whereas encyclopedias are for 'proper culture' or 'high culture' or whatever. I don't really understand this distinction.
Meanwhile, a quick test for line wrap. asdf asdf asdf sadf sadf asdf asdf asdf sadf sadf asdf asdf asdf sadf sadf asdf asdf asdf sadf sadf asdf asdf asdf sadf sadf asdf asdf asdf sadf sadf asdf asdf asdf sadf sadf asdf asdf asdf sadf sadf asdf asdf asdf sadf sadf asdf asdf asdf sadf sadf asdf asdf asdf sadf sadf asdf asdf asdf sadf sadf
Peter
On 29 August 2010 17:18, Peter Damian peter.damian@btinternet.com wrote:
In the case of newspapers probably yes. In the case of encyclopedias, I think not. There are severe problems with the Wikipedia coverage of philosophy which you wouldn't find here, for instance. And so for the humanities generally. When I make this point on Wikipedia, the answer is usually that Wikipedia is for pop culture, whereas encyclopedias are for 'proper culture' or 'high culture' or whatever. I don't really understand this distinction.
The answer is probably that we're not finished yet and need more participation from people interested in writing encyclopedically in the area.
Basically, the answer is interested contributors bothering to put in the effort, same as any other area. Hard work over the course of years, as usual.
There are things that could be done. Professors who set students to editing can help the content along very nicely. Getting the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy released under CC by-sa would increase the quality of the world's phiosophy knowledge nicely (it's not like it's a commercial website).
Think of our successful areas and why they are successful. Our hard science articles are generally excellent, and sometimes almost readable by humans. Why are they good? Why did people with the requisite knowledge bother writing stuff up? How can we duplicate this in other lacking areas?
- d.
----- Original Message ----- From: "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com
The answer is probably that we're not finished yet and need more participation from people interested in writing encyclopedically in the area.
Basically, the answer is interested contributors bothering to put in the effort, same as any other area. Hard work over the course of years, as usual.
I would have bought the 'not finished yet' argument 5 years ago. Perhaps even 3 years ago. But now? Every article in my area of expertise has stagnated. The only changes are vandalism followed by reverts from administrators who sometimes don't understand what they are reverting to, and who let other sorts of vandalism creep in. My benchmark is this article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence
which I rewrote 3 years ago and has since degenerated into a mess. See e.g. the 'Dharmic Middle way view' section towards the end which is incoherent and strange, immediately followed by the 'formal languages' section which clearly belongs in another article. You really need people with some sense of the subject to edit an article like this. Perhaps credentials are not the answer. All I am saying is that there is a serious and growing problem and that someone needs to recognise it for what it is.
Peter
[...] All I am saying is that there is a serious and growing problem and that someone needs to recognise it for what it is.
As you did mention Eco's interview in another thread, you have surely noted all the Q&A related to collaboration and "consensus" in Humanities vs hard sciences.
It seems that Humanities are overall a problematic area for Wikipedia, because less involved in consensus building, and much focused in the stratification of different interpretations. NPOV is probably not so fascinating or useful for humanisties, or at least their inside culture/procedures/habits does not involve collaboration as the Hard Science culture/procedures/habits. I believe that Wikipedia is touching a sensitive point here.
(I know that I used general and broad terms, but the interview is much more clear.)
Aubrey
From: "Andrea Zanni" zanni.andrea84@gmail.com
It seems that Humanities are overall a problematic area for Wikipedia, because less involved in consensus building, and much focused in the stratification of different interpretations.
No quite untrue. My background is analytic philosophy and I have worked on many articles and have made friends with those working in the 'European' tradition of philosophy. We settled our differences (indeed ignored our differences from the beginning) and worked to defend philosophy articles from the endless vandalism. There was never any disagreement. But most of them have given up by now.
From: "Excirial" wp.excirial@gmail.com
The problem you mention is actually the stagnation of edits.
You snipped the bit where I talked about the benchmark article which is gradually eroded into chaos. Unless the articles are well looked after by those that care and understand, they deteriorate and rot away. Do you propose any solutions for this? I'm interesting in solutions.
From: "Fred Bauder" fredbaud@fairpoint.net
We need to set up a regular mechanism which analyzes and searches for errors.
Well I'm working through articles and writing them up and reporting them (I'm not correcting them, obviously). But there are many thousands of errors, and I am one person :(
From: "Andrea Zanni" zanni.andrea84@gmail.com
NPOV is probably not so fascinating or useful for humanisties, or at least their inside culture/procedures/habits
I believe it was in history (or perhaps textual criticism) where the distinction between primary and secondary sources was first made. The idea of NPOV is fundamental to the humanities.
I believe it was in history (or perhaps textual criticism) where the distinction between primary and secondary sources was first made. The idea of NPOV is fundamental to the humanities.
I'm not really a humanist, but I have a little background both in Humanities and STM (if you consider mathematics as STM) and in the interview with Eco I tried to focus on the differences between these two domains and their approach to collaboration.
I'm not saying that Humanities do not struggle for an objectivity/consensus,
but I just wanted to emphasize the difference between STM studies, in which I do think it is easier to understand and comprehend the procedures, ideas and mechanisms of Wikipedia (for many reasons).
From what I've experienced, it is generally more difficult to explain these
things to humanities scholars that stm scholars. And I was wondering if Wikipedia, limiting the article to one, single and neutral version, is enough to some Humanities scholars, who maybe would prefer the possibility of many articles/monographies, one for interpretation.
Aubrey
From: "Andrea Zanni" zanni.andrea84@gmail.com
I do think it is easier to understand and comprehend the procedures, ideas and mechanisms of Wikipedia (for many reasons). From what I've experienced, it is generally more difficult to explain these things to humanities scholars that stm scholars.
I'm very surprised at this. When I started editing Wikipedia in 2003 I immediately read the NPOV rules and was struck by their similarity to the way I was taught to approach writing a paper. Not surprising actually, as I think Larry drafted the original rules, and he has the same background as I. The same would be true for someone with a background in textual criticism or history.
I think the real problem is that a subject like philosophy *appears* easier to learn and to write about than mathematics. I remember from teaching students they would write acres of self-indulgent rubbish and you had to gently explain that there were clear rules and principles, just like the hard sciences. I'll quote this again from a well-known philosopher who left Wikipedia some years ago
"Philosophy: I'm a philosopher; why don't I edit the article on my subject? Because it's hopeless. I've tried at various times, and each time have given up in depressed disgust. Philosophy seems to attract aggressive zealots who know a little (often a very little), who lack understanding of key concepts, terms, etc., and who attempt to take over the article (and its Talk page) with rambling, ground-shifting, often barely comprehensible rants against those who disagree with them. Life's too short. I just tell my students and anyone else I know not to read the Wikipedia article except for a laugh. It's one of those areas where the ochlocratic nature of Wikipedia really comes a cropper".
On 08/29/2010 11:52 PM, Andrea Zanni wrote:
And I was wondering if Wikipedia, limiting the article to one, single and neutral version, is enough to some Humanities scholars, who maybe would prefer the possibility of many articles/monographies, one for interpretation.
There are no policies known to me that would prevent anyone from writing articles about interpretations. In fact, there are dozens of such articles already: http://toolserver.org/~nikola/grep.php?pattern=+view+of+&lang=en&wik...
On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 23:52, Andrea Zanni zanni.andrea84@gmail.com wrote:
From what I've experienced, it is generally more difficult to explain these things to humanities scholars that stm scholars.
As someone with background in humanities, I can say that it is often hard to explain science to humanities scholars.
On 29/08/2010 16:46, David Gerard wrote:
On 29 August 2010 15:38, Peter Damianpeter.damian@btinternet.com wrote:
The problem is that until someone sits up and notices the serious errors that are propagated through Wikipedia (and which are now becoming part of the folk wisdom of the internet), no one will be bothered. The problem is that no one *knows* there are problems, and so no one can be bothered. I've started documenting the problem in a small way, e.g. here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/william-of-ockham.html and here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/avicennian-logic.html , but this is only in my own area of expertise. What is the very smallest thing that could be done, I wonder?
Probably just documenting problems, as you note.
It is helpful that on Wikipedia the editorial process is largely transparent, so the question "how did it get like this?" can actually be answered. Wikipedia is not reliable, but it turns out that how paper encyclopedias and newspapers were written was similarly susceptible - with Wikipedia we can see inside the sausage factory rather than pretending that the mass media is a happy unicorn-filled fairyland of scrupulous fact-checking and expert supervision.
I've mentioned before that this was wrong for almost 2 years, and it went through various edits and reformatting over that time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Non-uniform_rational_B-spline&...
I got three of my coleagues with Phd's in maths to look at it independently and all three said something to the effect of "I'm going to pretend I've never read that because otherwise I'll have to correct it and I'm not prepared to spend the evening argue the toss with a teenager." and they weren't alone, because other geometric modelers had drawn my attention to it in the first place.
Now whether they would have had to or not isn't the point. The point was that all had experience onwiki aguements, and all had independently decided that they're time was better spent in ways other than agueing with a wikieditor.
On 29 August 2010 18:16, wiki-list@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:
Now whether they would have had to or not isn't the point. The point was that all had experience onwiki aguements, and all had independently decided that they're time was better spent in ways other than agueing with a wikieditor.
Yes: the problem with keeping idiots out of experts' faces. Unfortunately, credentialism doesn't work. Embarrassing Wikipedia in blog posts seems to work, one factoid at a time
- d.
Unfortunately, credentialism doesn't work.
And I wasn't suggesting it would.
Embarrassing Wikipedia in blog posts seems to work, one factoid at a time
Well I hope so. However when I wrote this
http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/william-of-ockham.html
The only correction was to remove the plagiarised material and one eccentric section and slap a template on the article. And that was only because I personally knew the guy who made the correction. And the problem I noted in the post here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/07/truth-versus-equality.html 'the puppet Turkish administration' is still there. I expect someone from here will fix it now. But as someone else noted, it's like when a politician publicly helps a needy family for the sake of the newspapers, leaving millions of other needy families in a needy state. That's how I feel about fixing Wikipedia entries.
*I would have bought the 'not finished yet' argument 5 years ago. Perhaps even 3 years ago. But now? Every article in my area of expertise has stagnated.* <SNIP> *All I am saying is that there is a serious and growing problem and that someone needs to recognise it for what it is.*
The problem you mention is actually the stagnation of edits. Any article that has some common public interest will be read and corrected by many people, which will generally be good for its quality. Sure, more interested people will equally mean a larger share of vandals and nonsensical edits, but a fairly small group of productive editors can keep a much larger group of vandals at bay without to much effort; Huggle is a proof of concept for this, since only a handful of editors are required to keep out most of the obvious vandalism.
However, in cases where an article stagnates lower quality edits may go unnoticed for a longer time. Take our article's on faily unimportant secondary schools for example - most people interested in these article's are students and teachers of that institution, which means that the quality of the edits is likely to be fairly low (Students add themselves or attack the school, while teachers try to promote the school). Hence, the existence article was edited about 500 times in 3 years, which means that fairly little people are correcting changes or adding content. As a result it is more prone to degeneration then an article that is edited several thousands of times. More attention is better - even an edit war can be a good thing in this context, since both sides of the issue will try as hard as possible to keep their prefered version, eventually balancing the article into a version which adheres admirably to a neutral point of view.
*But as someone else noted, it's like when a politician publicly helps a needy family for the sake of the newspapers, leaving millions of other needy families in a needy state. That's how I feel about fixing Wikipedia entries.*
That is of course one way to view it - but i would argue that the politician example (hopefully) isn't accurate as it would suggest that people only edit in case they receive a personal benefit. Personally i hope that most people edit and improve for less selfish reasons. Or to phrase it as another comparison: A singular brick cannot build a house, and as of such people may deem carrying one futile, since would have to carry many times many bricks in order to build anything useful (Let alone fight decay). Yet if thousands of people carrying a single brick they can build a castle. There are many problems in the world, but is the amount a reason to say that fixing one of them is futile, just because there are many others?
~Excirial.
On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 7:42 PM, Peter Damian peter.damian@btinternet.comwrote:
Unfortunately, credentialism doesn't work.
And I wasn't suggesting it would.
Embarrassing Wikipedia in blog posts seems to work, one factoid at a
time
Well I hope so. However when I wrote this
http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/william-of-ockham.html
The only correction was to remove the plagiarised material and one eccentric section and slap a template on the article. And that was only because I personally knew the guy who made the correction. And the problem I noted in the post here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/07/truth-versus-equality.html 'the puppet Turkish administration' is still there. I expect someone from here will fix it now. But as someone else noted, it's like when a politician publicly helps a needy family for the sake of the newspapers, leaving millions of other needy families in a needy state. That's how I feel about fixing Wikipedia entries.
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*The problem is that until someone sits up and notices the serious errors that are propagated through Wikipedia (and which are now becoming part of the folk wisdom of the internet), no one will be bothered. * I think my problem with suggestions like this is that the assumption at the heart of all of them--that "experts" with degrees are preferable as information authorities to nonexperts without--is deeply problematic, and I'm not convinced it won't create more problems than it solves. I am not myself an academic, but I've worked in an academic setting for over a decade (I'm in college textbooks), and I work closely with college faculty and ... quite frankly the number of them I would trust to edit an article I wanted to read is very small.
Academic qualifications generally just mean you stayed in school long enough to get them, and little else. I'm not trying to spout anti-intellectual nonsense, I'm just saying that academia churns out an awful lot of people with degrees every year, a really astonishing number actually, and an awful lot of those people are no more deserving of the term "expert" than the guy driving the 2 train that took me to work this morning, or the girl who served me coffee at Dunkin' Donuts. I'm worried we'd give the imprimatur of extra scholarly specialness to the edits of a bunch of people who honestly would not deserve it.
I don't really see this as a problem with Wikipedia anyway. Wikipedia's detractors do, but that's generally because they object to the mission in general, and its democratic nature in particular. Here we value the quality of the work, not the letters on a piece of paper obtained in exchange for $100,000 in tuition.
FMF
On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 10:38 AM, Peter Damian peter.damian@btinternet.comwrote:
Gerard writes: >>The trouble is that attempts to make something that lures experts but keeps idiots out of their faces have so far failed and/or attracted no attention, even from the experts (Citizendium, Scholarpedia). That is, they sound like a good idea; but in practice, Wikipedia has so far been the least worst system.
True. But is there not some way of making Wikipedia just a little more attractive to people who have studied the subject? I used to propose things like credentials based on trust earned on Wikipedia (which would require getting trust from other trusted editors, much like in financial markets). These all naturally got shot down, and silly of me to have tried. But is there not some way of just making it a little easier?
The problem is that until someone sits up and notices the serious errors that are propagated through Wikipedia (and which are now becoming part of the folk wisdom of the internet), no one will be bothered. The problem is that no one *knows* there are problems, and so no one can be bothered. I've started documenting the problem in a small way, e.g. here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/william-of-ockham.html and here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/avicennian-logic.html , but this is only in my own area of expertise.
What is the very smallest thing that could be done, I wonder?
Peter
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On 29 August 2010 17:19, David Moran fordmadoxfraud@gmail.com wrote:
I think my problem with suggestions like this is that the assumption at the heart of all of them--that "experts" with degrees are preferable as information authorities to nonexperts without--is deeply problematic, and I'm not convinced it won't create more problems than it solves. I am not myself an academic, but I've worked in an academic setting for over a decade (I'm in college textbooks), and I work closely with college faculty and ... quite frankly the number of them I would trust to edit an article I wanted to read is very small. Academic qualifications generally just mean you stayed in school long enough to get them, and little else. I'm not trying to spout anti-intellectual nonsense, I'm just saying that academia churns out an awful lot of people with degrees every year, a really astonishing number actually, and an awful lot of those people are no more deserving of the term "expert" than the guy driving the 2 train that took me to work this morning, or the girl who served me coffee at Dunkin' Donuts. I'm worried we'd give the imprimatur of extra scholarly specialness to the edits of a bunch of people who honestly would not deserve it.
Take care not to conflate expertise with credentials. At best, credentials are a shortcut to finding an expert; at worst, they're a union card that people without workable expertise use to get a job anyway.
Clay Shirky noted this important distinction:
http://many.corante.com/archives/2006/11/20/social_facts_expertise_citizendi...
In practice, academics who are really interested in their field will happily listen to the uncredentialed on their topic, even if only for a moment, just in case they have something interesting to say. Academics who are not all that good will be very credentialist. Cranks, having no accepted expertise, will attach especial store to what credentials they can scrape up. This, btw, is how Citizendium became a pseudoscience haven:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Citizendium#The_concept_of_expertise_on_Citizen...
- d.
Well, right. That's kind of what I mean. These things happened to Citizendium because credentialism is the natural outcome of trying to create a system of valuing a certain class of contributors more than others.
DM
On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 12:35 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 29 August 2010 17:19, David Moran fordmadoxfraud@gmail.com wrote:
I think my problem with suggestions like this is that the assumption at
the
heart of all of them--that "experts" with degrees are preferable as information authorities to nonexperts without--is deeply problematic, and I'm not convinced it won't create more problems than it solves. I am not myself an academic, but I've worked in an academic setting for over a
decade
(I'm in college textbooks), and I work closely with college faculty and
...
quite frankly the number of them I would trust to edit an article I
wanted
to read is very small. Academic qualifications generally just mean you stayed in school long
enough
to get them, and little else. I'm not trying to spout anti-intellectual nonsense, I'm just saying that academia churns out an awful lot of people with degrees every year, a really astonishing number actually, and an
awful
lot of those people are no more deserving of the term "expert" than the
guy
driving the 2 train that took me to work this morning, or the girl who served me coffee at Dunkin' Donuts. I'm worried we'd give the imprimatur
of
extra scholarly specialness to the edits of a bunch of people who
honestly
would not deserve it.
Take care not to conflate expertise with credentials. At best, credentials are a shortcut to finding an expert; at worst, they're a union card that people without workable expertise use to get a job anyway.
Clay Shirky noted this important distinction:
http://many.corante.com/archives/2006/11/20/social_facts_expertise_citizendi...
In practice, academics who are really interested in their field will happily listen to the uncredentialed on their topic, even if only for a moment, just in case they have something interesting to say. Academics who are not all that good will be very credentialist. Cranks, having no accepted expertise, will attach especial store to what credentials they can scrape up. This, btw, is how Citizendium became a pseudoscience haven:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Citizendium#The_concept_of_expertise_on_Citizen...
- d.
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On 29 August 2010 17:52, David Moran fordmadoxfraud@gmail.com wrote:
Well, right. That's kind of what I mean. These things happened to Citizendium because credentialism is the natural outcome of trying to create a system of valuing a certain class of contributors more than others.
I was amazed just how actively negative credentialism could be - Shirky posited it as merely putting a dead weight on the project, not actually driving it backwards. Did anyone actually predict it would result in CZ becoming a crank magnet?
If anyone wanted to advocate credentialism on Wikimedia projects, they'd first have to work out how to fix the pseudoscience problem on CZ.
- d.
On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 2:35 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
...This, btw, is how Citizendium became a pseudoscience haven:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Citizendium#The_concept_of_expertise_on_Citizen...
On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 2:57 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 29 August 2010 17:52, David Moran fordmadoxfraud@gmail.com wrote:
Well, right. That's kind of what I mean. These things happened to Citizendium because credentialism is the natural outcome of trying to create a system of valuing a certain class of contributors more than others.
I was amazed just how actively negative credentialism could be - Shirky posited it as merely putting a dead weight on the project, not actually driving it backwards. Did anyone actually predict it would result in CZ becoming a crank magnet?
If anyone wanted to advocate credentialism on Wikimedia projects, they'd first have to work out how to fix the pseudoscience problem on CZ.
Irony. David Gerard disparaging CZ using a rationalwiki page as evidence.
Pseudo-science, pseudo-humanities, etc are no stranger to Wikipedia, and our processes have not always been victorious over it. Simply put, the rubbish on Wikipedia outweights the rubbish on CZ, and I suspect that an academically sound study would indicate that, proportionally speaking, Wikipedia pollutes the interweb more than CZ.
Compare the rationalwiki page for CZ and WP. I wonder how large their WP page would be if a similar level of critical analysis was applied.
-- John Vandenberg
On 31 August 2010 00:21, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
Irony. David Gerard disparaging CZ using a rationalwiki page as evidence.
The links are there if you want to read them.
Pseudo-science, pseudo-humanities, etc are no stranger to Wikipedia, and our processes have not always been victorious over it. Simply put, the rubbish on Wikipedia outweights the rubbish on CZ, and I suspect that an academically sound study would indicate that, proportionally speaking, Wikipedia pollutes the interweb more than CZ.
Wikipedia has the help of LOTS of people to get closer to NPOV. CZ artificially limited its contributor pool in important ways.
Compare the rationalwiki page for CZ and WP. I wonder how large their WP page would be if a similar level of critical analysis was applied.
The WP article is about dealing with an imperfect successful thing, not analysing a failure. Your point is unclear.
- d.
On 31 August 2010 00:55, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 31 August 2010 00:21, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
Irony. David Gerard disparaging CZ using a rationalwiki page as evidence.
The links are there if you want to read them.
Or, if you prefer: of course the wiki is fluff and amusement with a huge helping of rubbish. That article is IMO pretty solid however.
- d.
Hoping I am not straying too far off-topic. I looked at the article on Young Earth Creationism in CZ http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Young_earth_creationism . It comes in from some heavy criticism in the RationalWiki article http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Citizendium for being "heavily (and "expertly") edited by Conservapedia sysop RJJensen".
But when I look at the article it is not so bad. It is actually quite refreshing. It is mercifully short, and tells me the basic facts I need to know about YEC, i.e. what it is, who has defended it and why, and a bit of history. I expect the same article in WP would come with a pack of disclaimers like the health warning on a fag packet, skull and crossbones and all, thousands of citations, statements that practically all scientists say it is complete rubbish, plus a few sentences later on by a rogue YEC that was not spotted by the police, together with other conflicting statements so it all reads like a confusing usenet thread. As I say, the CZ article quietly says what it needs to, and does not attempt advocacy. Indeed it says
"The Biblical story was not a contentious issue until the 19th century, when theologians started reinterpreting the Bible as a historical document (rather than divine revelation), and geologists such as James Hutton and Charles Lyell developed evidence, based on their analysis of geological processes and formations, the earth was not a few thousand years old but, in fact, several millions of years old. The appearance of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859 and the associated Theory of Evolution, provided evidence that life was much older than 6,000 years. Most Protestant theologians by 1900, including those opposed to the theory of evolution, rejected the 4004 BC model and argued the earth was very old. Many evangelical theologians adopted a figurative interpretation of the first two chapters of Genesis."
Quite right. I shall look at the Scientology article next.
Peter
Peter Damian wrote:
Hoping I am not straying too far off-topic.
You are. Are the Citizendium forum and mailing lists so completely dead that issues with its articles cannot be discussed there?
--Michael Snow
From: "Michael Snow" wikipedia@verizon.net
Peter Damian wrote:
Hoping I am not straying too far off-topic.
You are. Are the Citizendium forum and mailing lists so completely dead that issues with its articles cannot be discussed there?
--Michael Snow
Sorry. It began with the David Gerard's assertion that 'credentialism' leads to crank-magnetism, and a link to an article he wrote (with some other RationalWiki editors) comparing Wikipedia with Citizendium. You think this is not relevant? John Vandenberg also questioned whether a serious study comparing the quality of articles between the two projects would not find more problems with Wikipedia (I think he is right).
Peter
----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Snow" wikipedia@verizon.net
You are this Michael Snow, correct? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Michael_Snow
You are currently on the Advisory Board of the Wikimedia Foundation and previously served as chair of the Board of Trustees. You take exception, in a thread which is explicitly about content issues in Wikipedia, with a post that makes unfavourable comparison between Wikipedia and one of its competitors. Why is this?
Peter
Peter Damian wrote:
You take exception, in a thread which is explicitly about content issues in Wikipedia, with a post that makes unfavourable comparison between Wikipedia and one of its competitors. Why is this?
The post I was responding to was nothing but an assessment of a Citizendium article. It made no comparison, favorable or unfavorable, to an equivalent article on Wikipedia. At most it engaged in some speculation about what Wikipedia *might* have. If your intent is to discuss content issues in Wikipedia, then you need to actually explicitly discuss them. (Although I might suggest that you should familiarize yourself with some of our other mailing lists and consider whether another list, like wikien-l, is better suited to have this conversation, since foundation-l exists for issues related to the Wikimedia Foundation and the overall movement surrounding its projects, not just Wikipedia.)
--Michael Snow
----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Snow" wikipedia@verizon.net
The post I was responding to was nothing but an assessment of a Citizendium article. It made no comparison, favorable or unfavorable, to an equivalent article on Wikipedia. At most it engaged in some speculation about what Wikipedia *might* have.
It was explicitly contrasting how Wikipedia actually is, or tends to be like, as compared with the corresponding CZ article. I think the observations were accurate and reflect pretty well what controversial Wikipedia articles are like, namely festooned with supposedly reliable citations, and bearing obvious battlescars from years of edit-warring. The contrast was specifically prompted by a claim by Gerard that Wikipedia's relaxed attitude to 'expertise' leads to better articles. I don't think it does.
If your intent is to discuss content issues in Wikipedia, then you need to actually explicitly discuss them.
I don't want to discuss content as such. I want to discuss generic and systematic problems with the way Wikipedia is organised that lead to poor quality articles. There needs first to be some recognition there is a quality problem and that it is serious - I think there is an element of denial that is evident from some of the replies here, as well as elsewhere. Once the problem is recognised, there needs to be a careful examination of possible causes for this. And then a further examination of how policy and governance could be changed to address some or all of these causes. Does that sound reasonable?
I might suggest that you should familiarize yourself with some of our other mailing lists and consider whether another list, like wikien-l, is better suited to have this conversation, since foundation-l exists for issues related to the Wikimedia Foundation and the overall movement surrounding its projects, not just Wikipedia.)
I consider this is the best mailing list for the purpose. What do people here think?
Peter
Hello,
I generally agree with Peter here. I think that there is a general problem of quality on Wikipedia articles, especially on articles about humanities, social sciences, etc.
I also agree that letting the usual process to care about articles quality is not sufficient. In nearly ten years, there was enough time to fix the issue, if it the current policies would be appropriate for dealing with this problem.
This also does not affect the English Wikipedia alone. For what I know, it also affects the French Wikipedia. So this list is appropriate to discuss this issue.
Regards,
Yann
2010/9/1 Peter Damian peter.damian@btinternet.com:
----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Snow" wikipedia@verizon.net
The post I was responding to was nothing but an assessment of a Citizendium article. It made no comparison, favorable or unfavorable, to an equivalent article on Wikipedia. At most it engaged in some speculation about what Wikipedia *might* have.
It was explicitly contrasting how Wikipedia actually is, or tends to be like, as compared with the corresponding CZ article. I think the observations were accurate and reflect pretty well what controversial Wikipedia articles are like, namely festooned with supposedly reliable citations, and bearing obvious battlescars from years of edit-warring. The contrast was specifically prompted by a claim by Gerard that Wikipedia's relaxed attitude to 'expertise' leads to better articles. I don't think it does.
If your intent is to discuss content issues in Wikipedia, then you need to actually explicitly discuss them.
I don't want to discuss content as such. I want to discuss generic and systematic problems with the way Wikipedia is organised that lead to poor quality articles. There needs first to be some recognition there is a quality problem and that it is serious - I think there is an element of denial that is evident from some of the replies here, as well as elsewhere. Once the problem is recognised, there needs to be a careful examination of possible causes for this. And then a further examination of how policy and governance could be changed to address some or all of these causes. Does that sound reasonable?
I might suggest that you should familiarize yourself with some of our other mailing lists and consider whether another list, like wikien-l, is better suited to have this conversation, since foundation-l exists for issues related to the Wikimedia Foundation and the overall movement surrounding its projects, not just Wikipedia.)
I consider this is the best mailing list for the purpose. What do people here think?
Peter
On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 9:55 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 31 August 2010 00:21, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
.. Pseudo-science, pseudo-humanities, etc are no stranger to Wikipedia, and our processes have not always been victorious over it. Simply put, the rubbish on Wikipedia outweights the rubbish on CZ, and I suspect that an academically sound study would indicate that, proportionally speaking, Wikipedia pollutes the interweb more than CZ.
Wikipedia has the help of LOTS of people to get closer to NPOV. CZ artificially limited its contributor pool in important ways.
Wikipedia has artificially increased its 'editor' base, structuring it so that Randy Boise is on equal footing with the experts, and resulting in lots of help in violating publishing ethics.
Compare the rationalwiki page for CZ and WP. I wonder how large their WP page would be if a similar level of critical analysis was applied.
The WP article is about dealing with an imperfect successful thing, not analysing a failure. Your point is unclear.
You, and the RW article about WP, start from the assertion that Wikipedia is successful. Successful at what? Success at Google rankings/pageviews/popular culture? Is that the only appropriate measure of an encyclopedia; an encyclopedia which is putting other encyclopedia's out of business? What is it unsuccessful at? The RW article about WP does little to demonstrate a rational persons observation of WP. It reads like the writer(s) are drunk on coolaid.
-- John Vandenberg
On 1 September 2010 00:27, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
You, and the RW article about WP, start from the assertion that Wikipedia is successful. Successful at what? Success at Google rankings/pageviews/popular culture? Is that the only appropriate measure of an encyclopedia; an encyclopedia which is putting other encyclopedia's out of business? What is it unsuccessful at? The RW article about WP does little to demonstrate a rational persons observation of WP. It reads like the writer(s) are drunk on coolaid.
This appears to be a very inefficacious way for you to edit the wiki page you're talking about.
- d.
----- Original Message ----- From: "John Vandenberg" jayvdb@gmail.com To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2010 12:21 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontent issues.
Irony. David Gerard disparaging CZ using a rationalwiki page as evidence.
Actually David wrote the page. I thought it was interesting ...
Pseudo-science, pseudo-humanities, etc are no stranger to Wikipedia, and our processes have not always been victorious over it. Simply put, the rubbish on Wikipedia outweights the rubbish on CZ, and I suspect that an academically sound study would indicate that, proportionally speaking, Wikipedia pollutes the interweb more than CZ. Compare the rationalwiki page for CZ and WP. I wonder how large their WP page would be if a similar level of critical analysis was applied.
... but as you say, byte for byte, there may be a similar level of 'pollution'. I wonder if it was 'credentialism' that was the problem, or just the lack of editors. I joined CZ when it was formed, with one other philosophy editor http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/User:Peter_J._King who had defected from Wikipedia. He was a good philosopher but had some kind of stupid row with Larry and left. I found it difficult to edit in a vacuum so I left also. And that was the end of "credentialled" philosophy on CZ. Larry is not a bad philosopher himself and has credentials but he was in a management role. He has this naive faith that academic philosophers would come flocking to CZ and fill the gap but they didn't. So in the end he lowered the entry barrier and the rest is history.
In summary, the evidence as far as my discipline is concerned is that Sanger wrongly expected the project to attract credentialled academics. It didn't. He allowed a number of uncredentialled or 'less credentialled' editors in, and the results are much as David Gerard describes them.
Peter
On 31 August 2010 20:16, Peter Damian peter.damian@btinternet.com wrote:
Actually David wrote the page. I thought it was interesting ...
No, that section was substantially written by Trent Toulouse.
- d.
----- Original Message ----- From: "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2010 8:23 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontentissues.
On 31 August 2010 20:16, Peter Damian peter.damian@btinternet.com wrote:
Actually David wrote the page. I thought it was interesting ...
No, that section was substantially written by Trent Toulouse.
A large number of edits to that article were by you. If not the majority of edits, but I am not going to get out a calculator.
And this chunk of edits, about about expertise, seems to be by you. Is that correct? http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Citizendium&diff=564956&...
From: "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com
Actually David wrote the page. I thought it was interesting ...
No, that section was substantially written by Trent Toulouse.
I did get the calculator out (sorry). There are 608 edits to the article. 252 were by you. I don't know what section you are referring to. I said 'page'. I concede you didn't write all the page, though.
Peter
On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 5:16 AM, Peter Damian peter.damian@btinternet.com wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "John Vandenberg" jayvdb@gmail.com To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2010 12:21 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontent issues.
Irony. David Gerard disparaging CZ using a rationalwiki page as evidence.
Actually David wrote the page. I thought it was interesting ...
I agree it was interesting, and does include some valuable observations which highlight problems facing the CZ project. Credentialism is one of them, but David's assertion that it is a "pseudoscience haven" appears to be selective observation, or maybe selective writing in light of the CZ article about WP, which makes no mentions of the long history of pseudo-<x> problems on Wikipedia.
Pseudo-science, pseudo-humanities, etc are no stranger to Wikipedia, and our processes have not always been victorious over it. Simply put, the rubbish on Wikipedia outweights the rubbish on CZ, and I suspect that an academically sound study would indicate that, proportionally speaking, Wikipedia pollutes the interweb more than CZ. Compare the rationalwiki page for CZ and WP. I wonder how large their WP page would be if a similar level of critical analysis was applied.
... but as you say, byte for byte, there may be a similar level of 'pollution'. I wonder if it was 'credentialism' that was the problem, or just the lack of editors. I joined CZ when it was formed, with one other philosophy editor http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/User:Peter_J._King who had defected from Wikipedia. He was a good philosopher but had some kind of stupid row with Larry and left. I found it difficult to edit in a vacuum so I left also. And that was the end of "credentialled" philosophy on CZ. Larry is not a bad philosopher himself and has credentials but he was in a management role. He has this naive faith that academic philosophers would come flocking to CZ and fill the gap but they didn't. So in the end he lowered the entry barrier and the rest is history.
In summary, the evidence as far as my discipline is concerned is that Sanger wrongly expected the project to attract credentialled academics. It didn't. He allowed a number of uncredentialled or 'less credentialled' editors in, and the results are much as David Gerard describes them.
An important distinction remains. CZ requires real names, and as I understand it, the credentials of the contributors are a known quantity, which adds a dimension in 'patrolling' process. This obviously reduces the quantity of willing contributors, and contributions. I'm surprised you found the quietness of CZ (the vacuum) to be a problem, as your content on MyWikiBiz is usually written solely by yourself, and many of your WP pages have mostly been written by yourself.
-- John Vandenberg
From: "John Vandenberg" jayvdb@gmail.com
Pseudo-science, pseudo-humanities, etc are no stranger to Wikipedia, and our processes have not always been victorious over it. Simply put, the rubbish on Wikipedia outweights the rubbish on CZ, and I suspect that an academically sound study would indicate that, proportionally speaking, Wikipedia pollutes the interweb more than CZ.
I looked at the two following two pages
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Alice_Bailey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Bailey
The first of which (the CZ version) is mentioned in the RationalWiki page as an abomination. The CZ version is better. It is still too long for such a silly subject, but minute in comparison to the Wikipedia page, which is endless. So yes, a serious study comparing the "crank quotient" between the two encyclopedias would be interesting. I suspect WP would win (for crankiness, I mean) hands down. I attempted to document some of it here
http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:The_Wikipedia_Point_of_View/Cranks
but gave up, there is just too much. There are whole categories of it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Theosophical_philosophical_concepts . And don't get me onto the subject of the gurus who are using the project to self-advertise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Wilber . That gets me very close to what got me banned in the first place. (End of rant, sorry).
Peter
----- Original Message ----- From: "David Moran" fordmadoxfraud@gmail.com To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2010 5:19 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontent issues.
I don't really see this as a problem with Wikipedia anyway.
Do you mean the problem of experts being generally discouraged? I was talking about the problem of there being serious errors in articles, particularly in the humanities. I agree with David that when it comes to facts and figures, Wikipedia is pretty good. For many of the hard sciences, also good. But it's a disaster zone in the humanities. That's the problem I am referring to.
On credentials, I agree, but I wasn't talking about credentials. I was talking about people with a reasonably good knowledge of their subject. In philosophy, all the editors who have made good contributions have some background in the subject. I was emailed by one today, complaining how it was descending into complete chaos. I told her not to bother and just to step back from the whole thing. Then the problems would become more obvious and perhaps people would be motivated to improve the way the system works.
I've mentioned before that this was wrong for almost 2 years, and it
went through various edits and reformatting over that time:
yes I documented a similar problem here
http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/08/argumentum-ad-baculum.html
which still haven't been fixed.
all three said something to the effect of "I'm going
to pretend I've never read that because otherwise I'll have to correct it and I'm not prepared to spend the evening argue the toss with a teenager.
Quite. How does Wikipedia improve its rules, or governance, or software to resolve the current problems with the *articles*?
On 08/29/2010 10:25 AM, Peter Damian wrote:
Do you mean the problem of experts being generally discouraged? I was talking about the problem of there being serious errors in articles, particularly in the humanities. I agree with David that when it comes to facts and figures, Wikipedia is pretty good. For many of the hard sciences, also good. But it's a disaster zone in the humanities. That's the problem I am referring to.
Purely my personal take, but I've noticed problems on both the expert and non-expert sides in the humanities more than in science-related articles. On the one hand, people seem to more naturally understand that they need good sources in science, that a newspaper article needs to be used carefully (and weighted relative to better sources), etc. People don't always seem to sufficiently realize that, say, philosophy or sociology should also be treated similarly.
On the other hand, though, I've noticed science and especially math experts to be generally more friendly in working with non-experts, though there are plenty of exceptions. I've *very* rarely seen a math professor resort to credentialism or looking down on inexpert contributors, even though we have some very well-credentialed mathematicians. Some have nearly saintly patience in explaining their edits and why the article should be changed in the manner they propose. But I've noticed depressingly many "ugh, as a PhD in [thing], I can't believe I have to argue with these idiots" elitist huffs from humanities professors and grad students.
-Mark
We need to set up a regular mechanism which analyzes and searches for errors. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Error_management
We need to make a science of it, Wikipedia:Error_management
Fred
Gerard writes: >>The trouble is that attempts to make something that lures experts but keeps idiots out of their faces have so far failed and/or attracted no attention, even from the experts (Citizendium, Scholarpedia). That is, they sound like a good idea; but in practice, Wikipedia has so far been the least worst system.
True. But is there not some way of making Wikipedia just a little more attractive to people who have studied the subject? I used to propose things like credentials based on trust earned on Wikipedia (which would require getting trust from other trusted editors, much like in financial markets). These all naturally got shot down, and silly of me to have tried. But is there not some way of just making it a little easier?
The problem is that until someone sits up and notices the serious errors that are propagated through Wikipedia (and which are now becoming part of the folk wisdom of the internet), no one will be bothered. The problem is that no one *knows* there are problems, and so no one can be bothered. I've started documenting the problem in a small way, e.g. here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/william-of-ockham.html and here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/avicennian-logic.html , but this is only in my own area of expertise.
What is the very smallest thing that could be done, I wonder?
Peter
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From: "Fred Bauder" fredbaud@fairpoint.net To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2010 8:05 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals with content issues.
We need to set up a regular mechanism which analyzes and searches for errors. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Error_management
We need to make a science of it, Wikipedia:Error_management
How would this system correct the obvious error in this article?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro_hominem
Which has been there 3 years.
From: "Fred Bauder" fredbaud@fairpoint.net To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2010 8:05 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals with content issues.
We need to set up a regular mechanism which analyzes and searches for errors. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Error_management
We need to make a science of it, Wikipedia:Error_management
How would this system correct the obvious error in this article?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro_hominem
Which has been there 3 years.
It's a simple error that most proof-readers would find. It looks right at first glance but is not. It is a type of error.
The obvious solution is to proof-read Wikipedia in a systemic way.
Fred Bauder
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pro_hominem&oldid=369721624
----- Original Message ----- From: "Fred Bauder" fredbaud@fairpoint.net
It's a simple error that most proof-readers would find.
Well only if they can read Latin, which is not that usual these days.
It looks right at first glance but is not. It is a type of error.
No: the error is more subtle in that it may be 'dog Latin' i.e. an error in common use rather like 'strictu dictu'*. How would the proof reader know that? The problem is that it has been there for so long that it is difficult to tell whether the Google search is turning up uses that have actually been *caused* by Wikipedia, so that Wikipedia is actually degrading human knowledge by introducing false information, in the manner of an urban myth, or whether the error predates that. Either way the issue would have to be noted in the article. I think it is beyond what simple proof-reading would give you.
The obvious solution is to proof-read Wikipedia in a systemic way.
Who is going to do that? It comes back to my earlier point: there simply aren't enough people with the right knowledge to do this. There needs to be some way of making Wikipedia more 'knowledge friendly', but hard to see how that could be practically achieved.
Peter
*I have just noticed there is no entry on 'strictu dictu'!
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