Splitting this off, Achal, I hope that's OK :)
There's a discussion on at the reliable sources notice board, for instance,
which highlights some of the interpretive problems you raise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/** Noticeboard#Oral_Citationshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Oral_Citations
Thanks for the pointer there; I'll try and place some comments in there later. It is certainly an interesting discussion.
But here are some initial thoughts (please bear in mind I have only scanned that discussion, and whilst I have had an ongoing interest in the oral citations project I never dug into in too much depth). Also remember this is based on my interpretation of our policies, so others may well differ!
Can I ask you how you would analyse the work of the oral citations project (http://meta.wikimedia.org/**wiki/Research:Oral_Citationshttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Oral_Citations) in terms of our policies on original research, and verifiability?
The best way I can address this is to lay out my thoughts on our sourcing policy.
Material on Wikipedia can be divided into "fact" and "opinion". The latter of these is, perhaps confusingly, the simplest to address; because opinion, viewpoints and perception can quite easily be collated and summarised. The only real difficulty exists in figuring out which opinions are noteworthy to record.
The problem is facts; as I am sure everyone can appreciate, facts are very easy to get wrong (maliciously or not). This is especially a problem in History where events can be pieced together via all manner of sources. Even WW2 history can differ dramatically depending on the accounts you read - some overuse oral citation (humans are fallible) and others misuse official records (which can range from faked through to inaccurate).
The problem with primary sourcing of the oral form is that it comes directly from an individual - with all of their perceptions and biases. To make an extreme example out of this; imagine taking an oral citation from Hitler, and a Jew in a concentration camp. Such citations would, I imagine, give radically different viewpoints of the Holocaust. Obviously other accounts, by third parties, show us which account is accurate - but if we had only those two viewpoints I hope it is obvious how difficult separating fact and fiction could be (ignoring that any rational person would see the obvious).
So that brings us to the ideas behind sourcing; which is that we should consider not only the material but author and publisher. This is important because if the author of the source is partisan to the material then you have to consider they may be biased to their viewpoint. As less extreme example might be two citations from a Republican and a Democrat. Both say "My Party is the Best because our policies are..." - you can't use either source to say one party is better, because they are partisan. But you could use it to relate their parties policies; and as partisans they are well positioned to relate those policies!
If the author is a third party, of course, that lends weight to their material.
The publisher is the stumbling block in this case; because it is a non-expert [sic] researcher uploading material to Commons. What could mitigate this is a detailed description of the methodology used to collect the citations, which would allow editors to review it for problems.
One final thing to consider is that WP:V talks about controversial or challenged material. Whilst that might be a risk policy on the face (it would be easy to present something non-controversial but also not true as fact) it's critical to letting us actually write article (otherwise we would be stifled in citations :)). For example; I've sourced material to personal sites before with minimal problems - sometimes it is questioned and what I usually say is "If you can show someone saying the opposite, or make a sensible argument against, then lets remove it". (FWIW, and this is an aside, I think is relaxed form to building articles is a Good Thing, and we should do it more often - worrying about being wrong is stifling).
So now I've picked it apart here is my thinking; Oral citations on Commons could be excellent sources in the right context.
Sure if the material is disputed or otherwise problematic then it is better to look for a source that has peer review. But for simplistic, factual things then I think it is rock solid. One example that comes to mind (and I don't know if the Oral citations covers this sort of thing) is this: I was recently on holiday in New Zealand. They have excellent museums there, fanatically maintained (which is amazing compared to most countries...). One nice feature is that a lot of the Mauri history exhibits have audio from those of Mauri ancestory describing some cultural fact or other. Things like recipes.
Something like that is an excellent oral citation; the author is authoritative (being Mauri) and the content uncontroversial.
Boiled down, I think that oral citations have a distinct place as a source - and we should encourage people to consider them as sources when writing. But they are not something you could, for example, base an entire article around. We should also explore ways to make them more "reliable", and more usable. For example making them obviously available to experts in the field they cover.
It *is* important to get secondary coverage of a topic, because we are tertiary source. This is the core idea of our primary source policy; if we utilise primary material and research something to the extent that we are the main authoritative source that becomes *hugely* problematic!
And further, how these policies might apply to the idea of social media, as
well as more private archives, say, corporate archives, being used as citations? (And on that point, is there a difference between the the Native American folk archive at the Smithsonian and the corporate archives of the Michelin corporation in France, for our purposes?)
Corporate archives I would deal with in the same way as any primary source; use it to cite facts, bear in mind the author/publisher. WP:SPS talks about being wary of unduly self-serving material, and I think that is an excellent way of putting the approach to corporate archives.
In terms of social media, this is tricky. Because social media is vastly more accessible than other mediums - particularly to hacks. Wordpress blogs are trivial to make, for example, and you can sound authoritative or convincing on a subject to a layman with only medium effort. I'd treat these with more caution.
Phew, that was dumped out in a stream of conciousness way - so it might be a bit "buggy". But that's what I figure :)
Tom
(Just as a note; I consider "publisher" quite broadly - i.e. the person who hosts or maintains the material)
On Thursday 23 February 2012 01:10 AM, Thomas Morton wrote:
Splitting this off, Achal, I hope that's OK :)
There's a discussion on at the reliable sources notice board, for instance,
which highlights some of the interpretive problems you raise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/** Noticeboard#Oral_Citationshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Oral_Citations
Thanks for the pointer there; I'll try and place some comments in there later. It is certainly an interesting discussion.
But here are some initial thoughts (please bear in mind I have only scanned that discussion, and whilst I have had an ongoing interest in the oral citations project I never dug into in too much depth). Also remember this is based on my interpretation of our policies, so others may well differ!
Can I ask you how you would analyse the work of the oral citations project (http://meta.wikimedia.org/**wiki/Research:Oral_Citationshttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Oral_Citations) in terms of our policies on original research, and verifiability?
The best way I can address this is to lay out my thoughts on our sourcing policy.
Material on Wikipedia can be divided into "fact" and "opinion". The latter of these is, perhaps confusingly, the simplest to address; because opinion, viewpoints and perception can quite easily be collated and summarised. The only real difficulty exists in figuring out which opinions are noteworthy to record.
The problem is facts; as I am sure everyone can appreciate, facts are very easy to get wrong (maliciously or not). This is especially a problem in History where events can be pieced together via all manner of sources. Even WW2 history can differ dramatically depending on the accounts you read - some overuse oral citation (humans are fallible) and others misuse official records (which can range from faked through to inaccurate).
The problem with primary sourcing of the oral form is that it comes directly from an individual - with all of their perceptions and biases. To make an extreme example out of this; imagine taking an oral citation from Hitler, and a Jew in a concentration camp. Such citations would, I imagine, give radically different viewpoints of the Holocaust. Obviously other accounts, by third parties, show us which account is accurate - but if we had only those two viewpoints I hope it is obvious how difficult separating fact and fiction could be (ignoring that any rational person would see the obvious).
Of course. So, for the oral citations project, we specifically chose topics that are in the present, that are seen and done by thousands of people (i.e. not obscure), and that are also as uncontroversial as possible. Examples: village games, temple rituals, recipes.
So that brings us to the ideas behind sourcing; which is that we should consider not only the material but author and publisher. This is important because if the author of the source is partisan to the material then you have to consider they may be biased to their viewpoint. As less extreme example might be two citations from a Republican and a Democrat. Both say "My Party is the Best because our policies are..." - you can't use either source to say one party is better, because they are partisan. But you could use it to relate their parties policies; and as partisans they are well positioned to relate those policies!
If the author is a third party, of course, that lends weight to their material.
The publisher is the stumbling block in this case; because it is a non-expert [sic] researcher uploading material to Commons. What could mitigate this is a detailed description of the methodology used to collect the citations, which would allow editors to review it for problems.
One final thing to consider is that WP:V talks about controversial or challenged material. Whilst that might be a risk policy on the face (it would be easy to present something non-controversial but also not true as fact) it's critical to letting us actually write article (otherwise we would be stifled in citations :)). For example; I've sourced material to personal sites before with minimal problems - sometimes it is questioned and what I usually say is "If you can show someone saying the opposite, or make a sensible argument against, then lets remove it". (FWIW, and this is an aside, I think is relaxed form to building articles is a Good Thing, and we should do it more often - worrying about being wrong is stifling).
So now I've picked it apart here is my thinking; Oral citations on Commons could be excellent sources in the right context.
:)
Sure if the material is disputed or otherwise problematic then it is better to look for a source that has peer review. But for simplistic, factual things then I think it is rock solid. One example that comes to mind (and I don't know if the Oral citations covers this sort of thing) is this: I was recently on holiday in New Zealand. They have excellent museums there, fanatically maintained (which is amazing compared to most countries...). One nice feature is that a lot of the Mauri history exhibits have audio from those of Mauri ancestory describing some cultural fact or other. Things like recipes.
Yes, we encountered exactly this. When looking for aspects of everyday life that people both widely knew about and did in India and South Africa, but were also undocumented in scholarship or even print, everything we had came back to 'culture'.
Something like that is an excellent oral citation; the author is authoritative (being Mauri) and the content uncontroversial.
Boiled down, I think that oral citations have a distinct place as a source
- and we should encourage people to consider them as sources when writing.
But they are not something you could, for example, base an entire article around. We should also explore ways to make them more "reliable", and more usable. For example making them obviously available to experts in the field they cover.
I agree that an article wholly based on oral citations is less desirable than an article that mixes traditional and non-traditional sources. Two things here though: (a) There are actually a pretty large number of things that are both widely known and done and not documented in print, so this is a real problem; and in these cases, having articles solely based on oral citations could still be useful, akin to a stub, awaiting further refinement. (b) Though this is not directly related to the conversation, it does relate to earlier points made by Sarah and you regarding primary sources. It is sometimes hard to separate fact from opinion within the oral citation - which is to say, X person's fact may be Y person's opinion, etc. - and in my opinion, even the cleanest set of facts gleamed from an oral citation will contain some perspective or opinion. I don't see that as a problem (and this is regardless of how it would parse through the OR policy) as long as the perspective is attributed as just that, or even challenged. We encountered this, and recorded it - in articles on village games in Limpopo in South Africa. The older ladies we spoke to said young people didn't play the games they had just shown us, and the young people we spoke to said they did, but with a slightly different template, and we recorded and reported it exactly as said, as two conflicting perspectives. (Would that be a responsible use of primary sources? I think so.)
It *is* important to get secondary coverage of a topic, because we are tertiary source. This is the core idea of our primary source policy; if we utilise primary material and research something to the extent that we are the main authoritative source that becomes *hugely* problematic!
And further, how these policies might apply to the idea of social media, as
well as more private archives, say, corporate archives, being used as citations? (And on that point, is there a difference between the the Native American folk archive at the Smithsonian and the corporate archives of the Michelin corporation in France, for our purposes?)
Corporate archives I would deal with in the same way as any primary source; use it to cite facts, bear in mind the author/publisher. WP:SPS talks about being wary of unduly self-serving material, and I think that is an excellent way of putting the approach to corporate archives.
I had an interesting discussion on this with Florence and Christophe, so I'll share this with them if they miss it here. My own first instinct is to trust a self-avowedly 'neutral' source (like the Smithsonian) more than a corporation (like Michelin) but for our purposes, it doesn't seem to make much sense to treat them any differently.
In terms of social media, this is tricky. Because social media is vastly more accessible than other mediums - particularly to hacks. Wordpress blogs are trivial to make, for example, and you can sound authoritative or convincing on a subject to a layman with only medium effort. I'd treat these with more caution.
Phew, that was dumped out in a stream of conciousness way - so it might be a bit "buggy". But that's what I figure :)
Tom
(Just as a note; I consider "publisher" quite broadly - i.e. the person who hosts or maintains the material) _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 2/23/12 7:29 PM, Achal Prabhala wrote:
On Thursday 23 February 2012 01:10 AM, Thomas Morton wrote:
Splitting this off, Achal, I hope that's OK :)
There's a discussion on at the reliable sources notice board, for instance,
which highlights some of the interpretive problems you raise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/** Noticeboard#Oral_Citationshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Oral_Citations
Thanks for the pointer there; I'll try and place some comments in there later. It is certainly an interesting discussion.
But here are some initial thoughts (please bear in mind I have only scanned that discussion, and whilst I have had an ongoing interest in the oral citations project I never dug into in too much depth). Also remember this is based on my interpretation of our policies, so others may well differ!
Can I ask you how you would analyse the work of the oral citations project (http://meta.wikimedia.org/**wiki/Research:Oral_Citationshttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Oral_Citations)
in terms of our policies on original research, and verifiability?
The best way I can address this is to lay out my thoughts on our sourcing policy.
Material on Wikipedia can be divided into "fact" and "opinion". The latter of these is, perhaps confusingly, the simplest to address; because opinion, viewpoints and perception can quite easily be collated and summarised. The only real difficulty exists in figuring out which opinions are noteworthy to record.
The problem is facts; as I am sure everyone can appreciate, facts are very easy to get wrong (maliciously or not). This is especially a problem in History where events can be pieced together via all manner of sources. Even WW2 history can differ dramatically depending on the accounts you read - some overuse oral citation (humans are fallible) and others misuse official records (which can range from faked through to inaccurate).
The problem with primary sourcing of the oral form is that it comes directly from an individual - with all of their perceptions and biases. To make an extreme example out of this; imagine taking an oral citation from Hitler, and a Jew in a concentration camp. Such citations would, I imagine, give radically different viewpoints of the Holocaust. Obviously other accounts, by third parties, show us which account is accurate - but if we had only those two viewpoints I hope it is obvious how difficult separating fact and fiction could be (ignoring that any rational person would see the obvious).
Of course. So, for the oral citations project, we specifically chose topics that are in the present, that are seen and done by thousands of people (i.e. not obscure), and that are also as uncontroversial as possible. Examples: village games, temple rituals, recipes.
So that brings us to the ideas behind sourcing; which is that we should consider not only the material but author and publisher. This is important because if the author of the source is partisan to the material then you have to consider they may be biased to their viewpoint. As less extreme example might be two citations from a Republican and a Democrat. Both say "My Party is the Best because our policies are..." - you can't use either source to say one party is better, because they are partisan. But you could use it to relate their parties policies; and as partisans they are well positioned to relate those policies!
If the author is a third party, of course, that lends weight to their material.
The publisher is the stumbling block in this case; because it is a non-expert [sic] researcher uploading material to Commons. What could mitigate this is a detailed description of the methodology used to collect the citations, which would allow editors to review it for problems.
One final thing to consider is that WP:V talks about controversial or challenged material. Whilst that might be a risk policy on the face (it would be easy to present something non-controversial but also not true as fact) it's critical to letting us actually write article (otherwise we would be stifled in citations :)). For example; I've sourced material to personal sites before with minimal problems - sometimes it is questioned and what I usually say is "If you can show someone saying the opposite, or make a sensible argument against, then lets remove it". (FWIW, and this is an aside, I think is relaxed form to building articles is a Good Thing, and we should do it more often - worrying about being wrong is stifling).
So now I've picked it apart here is my thinking; Oral citations on Commons could be excellent sources in the right context.
:)
Sure if the material is disputed or otherwise problematic then it is better to look for a source that has peer review. But for simplistic, factual things then I think it is rock solid. One example that comes to mind (and I don't know if the Oral citations covers this sort of thing) is this: I was recently on holiday in New Zealand. They have excellent museums there, fanatically maintained (which is amazing compared to most countries...). One nice feature is that a lot of the Mauri history exhibits have audio from those of Mauri ancestory describing some cultural fact or other. Things like recipes.
Yes, we encountered exactly this. When looking for aspects of everyday life that people both widely knew about and did in India and South Africa, but were also undocumented in scholarship or even print, everything we had came back to 'culture'.
Something like that is an excellent oral citation; the author is authoritative (being Mauri) and the content uncontroversial.
Boiled down, I think that oral citations have a distinct place as a source
- and we should encourage people to consider them as sources when
writing. But they are not something you could, for example, base an entire article around. We should also explore ways to make them more "reliable", and more usable. For example making them obviously available to experts in the field they cover.
I agree that an article wholly based on oral citations is less desirable than an article that mixes traditional and non-traditional sources. Two things here though: (a) There are actually a pretty large number of things that are both widely known and done and not documented in print, so this is a real problem; and in these cases, having articles solely based on oral citations could still be useful, akin to a stub, awaiting further refinement. (b) Though this is not directly related to the conversation, it does relate to earlier points made by Sarah and you regarding primary sources. It is sometimes hard to separate fact from opinion within the oral citation - which is to say, X person's fact may be Y person's opinion, etc. - and in my opinion, even the cleanest set of facts gleamed from an oral citation will contain some perspective or opinion. I don't see that as a problem (and this is regardless of how it would parse through the OR policy) as long as the perspective is attributed as just that, or even challenged. We encountered this, and recorded it - in articles on village games in Limpopo in South Africa. The older ladies we spoke to said young people didn't play the games they had just shown us, and the young people we spoke to said they did, but with a slightly different template, and we recorded and reported it exactly as said, as two conflicting perspectives. (Would that be a responsible use of primary sources? I think so.)
It *is* important to get secondary coverage of a topic, because we are tertiary source. This is the core idea of our primary source policy; if we utilise primary material and research something to the extent that we are the main authoritative source that becomes *hugely* problematic!
And further, how these policies might apply to the idea of social media, as
well as more private archives, say, corporate archives, being used as citations? (And on that point, is there a difference between the the Native American folk archive at the Smithsonian and the corporate archives of the Michelin corporation in France, for our purposes?)
Corporate archives I would deal with in the same way as any primary source; use it to cite facts, bear in mind the author/publisher. WP:SPS talks about being wary of unduly self-serving material, and I think that is an excellent way of putting the approach to corporate archives.
I had an interesting discussion on this with Florence and Christophe, so I'll share this with them if they miss it here. My own first instinct is to trust a self-avowedly 'neutral' source (like the Smithsonian) more than a corporation (like Michelin) but for our purposes, it doesn't seem to make much sense to treat them any differently.
Bear with me, I'd love it if the Michelin Corp was opening its archives :) But having worked for them and living in the city of their headquarters, their discretion and love of confidentiality is such that I doubt it will happen :(
The situation is complex. Should corp archives be somehow trusted or not much or not at all. I would say "it depends". It depends on the company (reputation). It depends largely of which department produced the archives. Docs produced by marketing departments should be taken with a HUGE pinch of salt. The language is non neutral, they conveniently drop the embarassing facts, and they tend to forget to put basic stuff such as dates ("ok, it is written you produce 10 millions yoghurt, but when was that ?") or references to countries ("ok, you write that you sell 10 millions of yoghurt in Global South, but can you better define which Global South you are talking about ?") (yeah, true stories even if figures are invented).
Docs produced by departments of research or finances, I would put a lot of trust in them. There is always the bad luck to stumble on a cheating company just as it also happens that Museum Staff host a black sheep from time to time. But generally, I consider information out of these departments quite safe.
But the most difficult ennoying point is simply that most corp archives appear to be a mess. Because companies are bought and sold, information is lost on the way. Because of poor communication between departments. Because staff come and go. And because the acceleration of business processes unfortunately make it so that in the past dozen of years, less and less time and money has been spent (invested) on a proper archive system, on good procedures and efficient implementation. So when you ask "can you retrieve the past 20 years of sales regarding this yoghurt", you'll get a blank stare. Truth is, no one knows the date and no one knows where to find the info.
Some companies sometimes hire external services (private historians) to "clean up" their archives and some good stuff can get out of this, such as a book or a museum (Michelin did that. Do visit the museum http://www.aventure-michelin.com/ if you happen to come. It is very nicely done).
Usually, I recommand good sense. If the information does not appear "weird" or "controversial" at all, I use the corp information as "trusted source". If it is clearly misleading or potentially illegal info, I trash it. But in between there is room to accept the data as long as there is another source, that may not be so great but that appears independant. For large companies, there are usually independant sources. But for most medium size companies, not. I give the situation a certain degree of tolerance.
Difficult to put that into any sort of policy except for "good sense".
Florence
In terms of social media, this is tricky. Because social media is vastly more accessible than other mediums - particularly to hacks. Wordpress blogs are trivial to make, for example, and you can sound authoritative or convincing on a subject to a layman with only medium effort. I'd treat these with more caution.
Phew, that was dumped out in a stream of conciousness way - so it might be a bit "buggy". But that's what I figure :)
Tom
(Just as a note; I consider "publisher" quite broadly - i.e. the person who hosts or maintains the material) _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Leave the use of historical sources to historians, and then cite from their books. That's what historians are for. Kind regards Ziko
2012/2/24 Florence Devouard anthere9@yahoo.com:
On 2/23/12 7:29 PM, Achal Prabhala wrote:
On Thursday 23 February 2012 01:10 AM, Thomas Morton wrote:
Splitting this off, Achal, I hope that's OK :)
There's a discussion on at the reliable sources notice board, for instance,
which highlights some of the interpretive problems you raise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/**
Noticeboard#Oral_Citationshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Oral_Citations
Thanks for the pointer there; I'll try and place some comments in there later. It is certainly an interesting discussion.
But here are some initial thoughts (please bear in mind I have only scanned that discussion, and whilst I have had an ongoing interest in the oral citations project I never dug into in too much depth). Also remember this is based on my interpretation of our policies, so others may well differ!
Can I ask you how you would analyse the work of the oral citations project
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/**wiki/Research:Oral_Citationshttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Oral_Citations)
in terms of our policies on original research, and verifiability?
The best way I can address this is to lay out my thoughts on our sourcing policy.
Material on Wikipedia can be divided into "fact" and "opinion". The latter of these is, perhaps confusingly, the simplest to address; because opinion, viewpoints and perception can quite easily be collated and summarised. The only real difficulty exists in figuring out which opinions are noteworthy to record.
The problem is facts; as I am sure everyone can appreciate, facts are very easy to get wrong (maliciously or not). This is especially a problem in History where events can be pieced together via all manner of sources. Even WW2 history can differ dramatically depending on the accounts you read - some overuse oral citation (humans are fallible) and others misuse official records (which can range from faked through to inaccurate).
The problem with primary sourcing of the oral form is that it comes directly from an individual - with all of their perceptions and biases. To make an extreme example out of this; imagine taking an oral citation from Hitler, and a Jew in a concentration camp. Such citations would, I imagine, give radically different viewpoints of the Holocaust. Obviously other accounts, by third parties, show us which account is accurate - but if we had only those two viewpoints I hope it is obvious how difficult separating fact and fiction could be (ignoring that any rational person would see the obvious).
Of course. So, for the oral citations project, we specifically chose topics that are in the present, that are seen and done by thousands of people (i.e. not obscure), and that are also as uncontroversial as possible. Examples: village games, temple rituals, recipes.
So that brings us to the ideas behind sourcing; which is that we should consider not only the material but author and publisher. This is important because if the author of the source is partisan to the material then you have to consider they may be biased to their viewpoint. As less extreme example might be two citations from a Republican and a Democrat. Both say "My Party is the Best because our policies are..." - you can't use either source to say one party is better, because they are partisan. But you could use it to relate their parties policies; and as partisans they are well positioned to relate those policies!
If the author is a third party, of course, that lends weight to their material.
The publisher is the stumbling block in this case; because it is a non-expert [sic] researcher uploading material to Commons. What could mitigate this is a detailed description of the methodology used to collect the citations, which would allow editors to review it for problems.
One final thing to consider is that WP:V talks about controversial or challenged material. Whilst that might be a risk policy on the face (it would be easy to present something non-controversial but also not true as fact) it's critical to letting us actually write article (otherwise we would be stifled in citations :)). For example; I've sourced material to personal sites before with minimal problems - sometimes it is questioned and what I usually say is "If you can show someone saying the opposite, or make a sensible argument against, then lets remove it". (FWIW, and this is an aside, I think is relaxed form to building articles is a Good Thing, and we should do it more often - worrying about being wrong is stifling).
So now I've picked it apart here is my thinking; Oral citations on Commons could be excellent sources in the right context.
:)
Sure if the material is disputed or otherwise problematic then it is better to look for a source that has peer review. But for simplistic, factual things then I think it is rock solid. One example that comes to mind (and I don't know if the Oral citations covers this sort of thing) is this: I was recently on holiday in New Zealand. They have excellent museums there, fanatically maintained (which is amazing compared to most countries...). One nice feature is that a lot of the Mauri history exhibits have audio from those of Mauri ancestory describing some cultural fact or other. Things like recipes.
Yes, we encountered exactly this. When looking for aspects of everyday life that people both widely knew about and did in India and South Africa, but were also undocumented in scholarship or even print, everything we had came back to 'culture'.
Something like that is an excellent oral citation; the author is authoritative (being Mauri) and the content uncontroversial.
Boiled down, I think that oral citations have a distinct place as a source
- and we should encourage people to consider them as sources when
writing. But they are not something you could, for example, base an entire article around. We should also explore ways to make them more "reliable", and more usable. For example making them obviously available to experts in the field they cover.
I agree that an article wholly based on oral citations is less desirable than an article that mixes traditional and non-traditional sources. Two things here though: (a) There are actually a pretty large number of things that are both widely known and done and not documented in print, so this is a real problem; and in these cases, having articles solely based on oral citations could still be useful, akin to a stub, awaiting further refinement. (b) Though this is not directly related to the conversation, it does relate to earlier points made by Sarah and you regarding primary sources. It is sometimes hard to separate fact from opinion within the oral citation - which is to say, X person's fact may be Y person's opinion, etc. - and in my opinion, even the cleanest set of facts gleamed from an oral citation will contain some perspective or opinion. I don't see that as a problem (and this is regardless of how it would parse through the OR policy) as long as the perspective is attributed as just that, or even challenged. We encountered this, and recorded it - in articles on village games in Limpopo in South Africa. The older ladies we spoke to said young people didn't play the games they had just shown us, and the young people we spoke to said they did, but with a slightly different template, and we recorded and reported it exactly as said, as two conflicting perspectives. (Would that be a responsible use of primary sources? I think so.)
It *is* important to get secondary coverage of a topic, because we are tertiary source. This is the core idea of our primary source policy; if we utilise primary material and research something to the extent that we are the main authoritative source that becomes *hugely* problematic!
And further, how these policies might apply to the idea of social media, as
well as more private archives, say, corporate archives, being used as citations? (And on that point, is there a difference between the the Native American folk archive at the Smithsonian and the corporate archives of the Michelin corporation in France, for our purposes?)
Corporate archives I would deal with in the same way as any primary source; use it to cite facts, bear in mind the author/publisher. WP:SPS talks about being wary of unduly self-serving material, and I think that is an excellent way of putting the approach to corporate archives.
I had an interesting discussion on this with Florence and Christophe, so I'll share this with them if they miss it here. My own first instinct is to trust a self-avowedly 'neutral' source (like the Smithsonian) more than a corporation (like Michelin) but for our purposes, it doesn't seem to make much sense to treat them any differently.
Bear with me, I'd love it if the Michelin Corp was opening its archives :) But having worked for them and living in the city of their headquarters, their discretion and love of confidentiality is such that I doubt it will happen :(
The situation is complex. Should corp archives be somehow trusted or not much or not at all. I would say "it depends". It depends on the company (reputation). It depends largely of which department produced the archives. Docs produced by marketing departments should be taken with a HUGE pinch of salt. The language is non neutral, they conveniently drop the embarassing facts, and they tend to forget to put basic stuff such as dates ("ok, it is written you produce 10 millions yoghurt, but when was that ?") or references to countries ("ok, you write that you sell 10 millions of yoghurt in Global South, but can you better define which Global South you are talking about ?") (yeah, true stories even if figures are invented).
Docs produced by departments of research or finances, I would put a lot of trust in them. There is always the bad luck to stumble on a cheating company just as it also happens that Museum Staff host a black sheep from time to time. But generally, I consider information out of these departments quite safe.
But the most difficult ennoying point is simply that most corp archives appear to be a mess. Because companies are bought and sold, information is lost on the way. Because of poor communication between departments. Because staff come and go. And because the acceleration of business processes unfortunately make it so that in the past dozen of years, less and less time and money has been spent (invested) on a proper archive system, on good procedures and efficient implementation. So when you ask "can you retrieve the past 20 years of sales regarding this yoghurt", you'll get a blank stare. Truth is, no one knows the date and no one knows where to find the info.
Some companies sometimes hire external services (private historians) to "clean up" their archives and some good stuff can get out of this, such as a book or a museum (Michelin did that. Do visit the museum http://www.aventure-michelin.com/ if you happen to come. It is very nicely done).
Usually, I recommand good sense. If the information does not appear "weird" or "controversial" at all, I use the corp information as "trusted source". If it is clearly misleading or potentially illegal info, I trash it. But in between there is room to accept the data as long as there is another source, that may not be so great but that appears independant. For large companies, there are usually independant sources. But for most medium size companies, not. I give the situation a certain degree of tolerance.
Difficult to put that into any sort of policy except for "good sense".
Florence
In terms of social media, this is tricky. Because social media is vastly more accessible than other mediums - particularly to hacks. Wordpress blogs are trivial to make, for example, and you can sound authoritative or convincing on a subject to a layman with only medium effort. I'd treat these with more caution.
Phew, that was dumped out in a stream of conciousness way - so it might be a bit "buggy". But that's what I figure :)
Tom
(Just as a note; I consider "publisher" quite broadly - i.e. the person who hosts or maintains the material) _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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On 24-02-2012 07:48, Ziko van Dijk wrote:
Leave the use of historical sources to historians, and then cite from their books. That's what historians are for. Kind regards Ziko
Ziko,
there's a lack of historians writing books outside Europe/US, specially on some traditional oral history. They love to write about what other historians like, and the unpublished content remains unpublished.
If i understood correctly, Oral Citations Project doesn't intend to replace books. Its focus is on what is not covered by books.
Amike,
Castelo
Those people who would like to write on Wikipedia about any subject can write a book or pdf about it. It does not have to be a scholarly work in every aspect. And then, the Wikipedia in language X can decide that it accepts this kind of literature as reliable. (Those various standards are not uncommon in the different Wikipedias.) Not everything has to happen *in* Wikipedia. Kind regards Ziko
2012/2/25 Castelo michelcastelobranco@gmail.com:
On 24-02-2012 07:48, Ziko van Dijk wrote:
Leave the use of historical sources to historians, and then cite from their books. That's what historians are for. Kind regards Ziko
Ziko,
there's a lack of historians writing books outside Europe/US, specially on some traditional oral history. They love to write about what other historians like, and the unpublished content remains unpublished.
If i understood correctly, Oral Citations Project doesn't intend to replace books. Its focus is on what is not covered by books.
Amike,
Castelo
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On 24-02-2012 23:18, Ziko van Dijk wrote:
Those people who would like to write on Wikipedia about any subject can write a book or pdf about it. It does not have to be a scholarly work in every aspect. And then, the Wikipedia in language X can decide that it accepts this kind of literature as reliable. (Those various standards are not uncommon in the different Wikipedias.) Not everything has to happen*in* Wikipedia. Kind regards Ziko
In the case of Oral Citations, the people who tells the facts are not the same people who want to write on Wikipedia, and definitively, not people willing to write a book or pdf. Editors are recording them for using this material in Wikipedia.
We are willing to apply this in Brazil, with indigenous traditions. Some of the indians cannot write a book, a pdf or a Wikipedia article and those are exactly who have more expertise on their traditions. This can give them authority when describing their rituals, clothings, artefacts, fights, cuisine, etc., much more than a wikipedian can. And we still have a huge lack on articles about them, because for certains indigenous nations, there are almost no published material (some have no written material at all, as far as i know). I live in the capital city, where some of them usually come for present their culture in a national museum, and go back to their territories. In moments like these, we wikimedians can go there, take photos and record an interview (most speak a bit Portuguese, as well as their own languages), for publishing in Commons and Commons/Wikinews, respectively, for using in Wikipedia articles.
I'm not thinking only on Wikipedia, we have also other projects not mentioned here, that can work together on it. Each project for a kind of content. In Wikinews, original reporting is fine, in Wikiversity, even original research is fine. They can be more reliable than a book, in some cases. It depends on how we do that, by reviewing, approval, etc, there's a lot of extensions that can be used on it.
Castelo
I think it is important to remember that anyone trying to suppress the truth, will lose in the long run.
Hi Castelo,
just to make the discussion clearer: could you just give say 5 or 10 examples of topics where you believe oral citations are unavoidable? Then I hope that Ziko in his turn can explain how we can write about those examples without using them.
Best regards, Lodewijk
No dia 25 de Fevereiro de 2012 05:17, Castelo <michelcastelobranco@gmail.com
escreveu:
On 24-02-2012 23:18, Ziko van Dijk wrote:
Those people who would like to write on Wikipedia about any subject can write a book or pdf about it. It does not have to be a scholarly work in every aspect. And then, the Wikipedia in language X can decide that it accepts this kind of literature as reliable. (Those various standards are not uncommon in the different Wikipedias.) Not everything has to happen*in* Wikipedia. Kind regards Ziko
In the case of Oral Citations, the people who tells the facts are not the same people who want to write on Wikipedia, and definitively, not people willing to write a book or pdf. Editors are recording them for using this material in Wikipedia.
We are willing to apply this in Brazil, with indigenous traditions. Some of the indians cannot write a book, a pdf or a Wikipedia article and those are exactly who have more expertise on their traditions. This can give them authority when describing their rituals, clothings, artefacts, fights, cuisine, etc., much more than a wikipedian can. And we still have a huge lack on articles about them, because for certains indigenous nations, there are almost no published material (some have no written material at all, as far as i know). I live in the capital city, where some of them usually come for present their culture in a national museum, and go back to their territories. In moments like these, we wikimedians can go there, take photos and record an interview (most speak a bit Portuguese, as well as their own languages), for publishing in Commons and Commons/Wikinews, respectively, for using in Wikipedia articles.
I'm not thinking only on Wikipedia, we have also other projects not mentioned here, that can work together on it. Each project for a kind of content. In Wikinews, original reporting is fine, in Wikiversity, even original research is fine. They can be more reliable than a book, in some cases. It depends on how we do that, by reviewing, approval, etc, there's a lot of extensions that can be used on it.
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Mountain, the first ever editor on zh-wp, and still active until today, told me the following story one day (it was before the Oral Citation project but I remembered the story very well):
He came from the coast of Shandong, and his father told him that earlier there was a local tradition where people went early morning to the coast to catch crabs or mollusks (one of them). They used to use a special technique to catch the animals. But meanwhile no one is using this technique anymore, not only because there are now plenty of crabs or mollusks on the market from the hydroculture, but also because the coast which was wild earlier are now all urbanized, with oil terminals and harbors and those. When Mountain told me that story he felt he would like to write down those stories because in maybe 10 or 20 years, latest in 50 years, no one would ever know that there was such a thing on the world. And that tradition would be lost for ever. But he also felt he could not write them on Wikipedia because he had no resources, because until now no of the ethmologists ever had interested on such traditions and no academic resources ever mentioned it. With the Oral Citations Sourcing it would be possible to interview the old people or even let them show how the techniques worked.
Greetings Ting
On 25.02.2012 09:02, wrote Lodewijk:
Hi Castelo,
just to make the discussion clearer: could you just give say 5 or 10 examples of topics where you believe oral citations are unavoidable? Then I hope that Ziko in his turn can explain how we can write about those examples without using them.
Best regards, Lodewijk
Yes Ting, and for these cases there is the method of [[oral history]]. This is a means to create what the Anglosaxons call "primary sources". It is recorded and can later be used by a scholar (historian, ethnologist etc.) for his research, for his "secondary sources". These, with their scholar reflections, can be used by an encyclopedia.
There are good reasons for this way. One is, that it is not very practical to cite from audiotapes/audiofiles. Another, that what this individual is describing may be true for his personal environment but cannot be generalized to others. For that, one needs the scholar. Remember: witnesses are the most unreliable source ever. People tell you plain nonsense - not because they want to ly or are stupid but because the human brain is simply not created to be a historian. It has the greatest difficulties to store information truthfully. So you need to record, and compare the different assertions from different people.
It is a possibility to record oral and visual expressions from illiterates, and only later to do something with it scholarly. But all this has nothing to do with Wikipedia.
Kind regards Ziko
2012/2/25 Ting Chen wing.philopp@gmx.de:
Mountain, the first ever editor on zh-wp, and still active until today, told me the following story one day (it was before the Oral Citation project but I remembered the story very well):
He came from the coast of Shandong, and his father told him that earlier there was a local tradition where people went early morning to the coast to catch crabs or mollusks (one of them). They used to use a special technique to catch the animals. But meanwhile no one is using this technique anymore, not only because there are now plenty of crabs or mollusks on the market from the hydroculture, but also because the coast which was wild earlier are now all urbanized, with oil terminals and harbors and those. When Mountain told me that story he felt he would like to write down those stories because in maybe 10 or 20 years, latest in 50 years, no one would ever know that there was such a thing on the world. And that tradition would be lost for ever. But he also felt he could not write them on Wikipedia because he had no resources, because until now no of the ethmologists ever had interested on such traditions and no academic resources ever mentioned it. With the Oral Citations Sourcing it would be possible to interview the old people or even let them show how the techniques worked.
Greetings Ting
On 25.02.2012 09:02, wrote Lodewijk:
Hi Castelo,
just to make the discussion clearer: could you just give say 5 or 10 examples of topics where you believe oral citations are unavoidable? Then I hope that Ziko in his turn can explain how we can write about those examples without using them.
Best regards, Lodewijk
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Hello Ziko,
I disagree :-)
Yes, it is the way how classic encyclopedia worked. But Wikipedia is not a classic encyclopedia, and I don't see the sense to bound ourselves possibilities just to please some old traditional rules.
Classic encyclopedias were written by scholars, Wikipedia is not. Wikipedia say, everyone can work on an encyclopedia, and because of this, the content included in Wikipedia is far more richer and broader than in a classic encyclopedia.
Scholars have limited capacities. A lot of things scholars cannot pay attention to everything. In give everyone the possibility to pay attention to what they think is interesting and important in their life, we can free a lot of potentials that the scholars cannot.
Scholars have their own point of view. Over eons scholars thought only what kings and knights did are important for the history. We know today this is wrong, and the scholars of today are happy if they can find a garbage dump from a village of thousands of years ago, so that they can catch a glimps about how people lived then. Suppose the people in those villages could have recorded their lives with the oral citations.
In the history of science it is proven many times that also amateurs can provide breakthroughs and insights that scholars neglected. Done in an orderly way oral citations on Wikimedia projects can provide a lot of sources and informations that the scholarship are not able to because of the lack of capacity, interest, ideology.
And Ziko, you didn't answer Lodewijk's question. Lodewijk asked examples where Castelo (in this case me) think oral citation is inavoidable. And he asked you to say how this can be solved without oral citation. The method you come upon is not a solution, because maybe no scholar will probably ever write anything about the crab catchers when the coast of Shandong was still rural. Which means, you think this would be lost for ever. And you take it is (probably as sad), but given. But I think there are possibilities where we can save such knowledges. And that is engage and enpower volunteers to gather these informations, as I said, in an orderly way.
Greetings Ting
Am 25.02.2012 11:47, schrieb Ziko van Dijk:
Yes Ting, and for these cases there is the method of [[oral history]]. This is a means to create what the Anglosaxons call "primary sources". It is recorded and can later be used by a scholar (historian, ethnologist etc.) for his research, for his "secondary sources". These, with their scholar reflections, can be used by an encyclopedia.
There are good reasons for this way. One is, that it is not very practical to cite from audiotapes/audiofiles. Another, that what this individual is describing may be true for his personal environment but cannot be generalized to others. For that, one needs the scholar. Remember: witnesses are the most unreliable source ever. People tell you plain nonsense - not because they want to ly or are stupid but because the human brain is simply not created to be a historian. It has the greatest difficulties to store information truthfully. So you need to record, and compare the different assertions from different people.
It is a possibility to record oral and visual expressions from illiterates, and only later to do something with it scholarly. But all this has nothing to do with Wikipedia.
Kind regards Ziko
2012/2/25 Ting Chenwing.philopp@gmx.de:
Mountain, the first ever editor on zh-wp, and still active until today, told me the following story one day (it was before the Oral Citation project but I remembered the story very well):
He came from the coast of Shandong, and his father told him that earlier there was a local tradition where people went early morning to the coast to catch crabs or mollusks (one of them). They used to use a special technique to catch the animals. But meanwhile no one is using this technique anymore, not only because there are now plenty of crabs or mollusks on the market from the hydroculture, but also because the coast which was wild earlier are now all urbanized, with oil terminals and harbors and those. When Mountain told me that story he felt he would like to write down those stories because in maybe 10 or 20 years, latest in 50 years, no one would ever know that there was such a thing on the world. And that tradition would be lost for ever. But he also felt he could not write them on Wikipedia because he had no resources, because until now no of the ethmologists ever had interested on such traditions and no academic resources ever mentioned it. With the Oral Citations Sourcing it would be possible to interview the old people or even let them show how the techniques worked.
Greetings Ting
On 25.02.2012 09:02, wrote Lodewijk:
Hi Castelo,
just to make the discussion clearer: could you just give say 5 or 10 examples of topics where you believe oral citations are unavoidable? Then I hope that Ziko in his turn can explain how we can write about those examples without using them.
Best regards, Lodewijk
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Ziko, you raise the subject of "illiterates"... I feel that it is blatant discrimination to assert that the only way illiterates can create sources worthy of citation on Wikipedia is either by becoming literate, or by being interviewed by a literate person. This to me indicates a value judgement, that literate people are inherently "worth more" than illiterate people.
2012/2/25 Ziko van Dijk vandijk@wmnederland.nl
Yes Ting, and for these cases there is the method of [[oral history]]. This is a means to create what the Anglosaxons call "primary sources". It is recorded and can later be used by a scholar (historian, ethnologist etc.) for his research, for his "secondary sources". These, with their scholar reflections, can be used by an encyclopedia.
There are good reasons for this way. One is, that it is not very practical to cite from audiotapes/audiofiles. Another, that what this individual is describing may be true for his personal environment but cannot be generalized to others. For that, one needs the scholar. Remember: witnesses are the most unreliable source ever. People tell you plain nonsense - not because they want to ly or are stupid but because the human brain is simply not created to be a historian. It has the greatest difficulties to store information truthfully. So you need to record, and compare the different assertions from different people.
It is a possibility to record oral and visual expressions from illiterates, and only later to do something with it scholarly. But all this has nothing to do with Wikipedia.
Kind regards Ziko
2012/2/25 Ting Chen wing.philopp@gmx.de:
Mountain, the first ever editor on zh-wp, and still active until today,
told
me the following story one day (it was before the Oral Citation project
but
I remembered the story very well):
He came from the coast of Shandong, and his father told him that earlier there was a local tradition where people went early morning to the coast
to
catch crabs or mollusks (one of them). They used to use a special
technique
to catch the animals. But meanwhile no one is using this technique
anymore,
not only because there are now plenty of crabs or mollusks on the market from the hydroculture, but also because the coast which was wild earlier
are
now all urbanized, with oil terminals and harbors and those. When
Mountain
told me that story he felt he would like to write down those stories
because
in maybe 10 or 20 years, latest in 50 years, no one would ever know that there was such a thing on the world. And that tradition would be lost for ever. But he also felt he could not write them on Wikipedia because he
had
no resources, because until now no of the ethmologists ever had
interested
on such traditions and no academic resources ever mentioned it. With the Oral Citations Sourcing it would be possible to interview the old people
or
even let them show how the techniques worked.
Greetings Ting
On 25.02.2012 09:02, wrote Lodewijk:
Hi Castelo,
just to make the discussion clearer: could you just give say 5 or 10 examples of topics where you believe oral citations are unavoidable?
Then
I hope that Ziko in his turn can explain how we can write about those examples without using them.
Best regards, Lodewijk
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--
Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/
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On 02/26/12 2:58 PM, M. Williamson wrote:
Ziko, you raise the subject of "illiterates"... I feel that it is blatant discrimination to assert that the only way illiterates can create sources worthy of citation on Wikipedia is either by becoming literate, or by being interviewed by a literate person. This to me indicates a value judgement, that literate people are inherently "worth more" than illiterate people.
Indeed, I noticed that. "Members of a pre-literate society" might be better, but we still damage the narrative when we insist that they become literate in the relevant colonial language. Where the information is gathered by an interviewer in the colonial language that too distorts a narrative that is closely tied to the native language. All translations are opinions.
Ray
On 25-02-2012 06:02, Lodewijk wrote:
Hi Castelo,
just to make the discussion clearer: could you just give say 5 or 10 examples of topics where you believe oral citations are unavoidable? Then I hope that Ziko in his turn can explain how we can write about those examples without using them.
Best regards, Lodewijk
Hi, Lodewijk
I don't believe oral citations are unavoidable, i believe they can help in sourcing informations not yet covered by printed materials. Yes, it's possibile to avoid them, but "possible" doesn't means "feasible", in practical terms. All information that we can have by oral citations surely can be inserted in a book, someday. But for centuries, this wasn't made, and there's no evidence to think they will be now. I will then rather give you one example on oral citations can be more feasible than classical sources:
In Brazil, there are ~230 indigenous peoples, each one with their own traditions, clothing, cuisine, rituals, beliefs, and languages. Some of them are well covered by anthropologists, while others aren't. We can say a lot in an article on Yanomami people [1], but on the Aikanã[2], all the info published in books or in internet are already in the article, and there are still a huge lack about their traditions, and their differences to the others. That solution of "wait for a book to be published by someone" is been used, with minor results, in this case. By oral citations, we don't want to replace the info already inserted, but we can complement the article, by inserting info about what is missing, and we can easily check by ourselves, as i told before (attending a presentation of the people itself at indigenous national museum and recording an interview for collect those specific informations that are not covered by the sources we found).
In my opinion, and i already pointed that in Meta discussion, Wikipedia is not the place for original content, but Wikinews can publish the interviews and the content can be uploaded to Commons so others volunteers can check the material. We can create an editing process that fits the criteria for reliable sources in Wikipedia. I don't see any diference between this and using a newspaper that would make exactly the same thing (well, a bit less transparently) and would be undoubtly considered a reliable source. The only reason for this is that are no newspapers or books covering this issues now (and in the last 5 centuries). How long we must wait for them to start covering those topics, before we can edit well-known (and undisputed) informations about that?
Regards,
Castelo
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanomami [2] http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aican%C3%A3s
On 25 Feb 2012, at 17:15, Castelo wrote:
In my opinion, and i already pointed that in Meta discussion, Wikipedia is not the place for original content, but Wikinews can publish the interviews and the content can be uploaded to Commons so others volunteers can check the material.
Actually, Wikipedia sort of is the place for original content - when it comes to illustrations in articles. It's possible to envisage audio recordings being used in appropriate Wikipedia articles along the lines of 'listen to a fisherman from the coast of Shandong talk about his work', more in the current role of pictures/photographs rather than as references.
Just a thought.
Thanks, Mike
On 25-02-2012 15:58, Michael Peel wrote:
Actually, Wikipedia sort of is the place for original content - when it comes to illustrations in articles.
Those illustrations are mainly in Commons, with exception of the images in fair use, but linked in the articles. That kind of original content also plays a minor role, only "illustrating" the article, but we cannot reference a sentence as "vide image", for instance.
It's possible to envisage audio recordings being used in appropriate Wikipedia articles along the lines of 'listen to a fisherman from the coast of Shandong talk about his work', more in the current role of pictures/photographs rather than as references.
In this case, the audio files will be in Commons, too, and as you pointed, won't be used for referencing a specific assertation in the text. It will be, just like images, illustrating the written content, as we do now with music samples in musicians biography[1]. I suggest transcribe the interview for Wikinews and use it in inline citations, as in {{cite news}}, for i) easier checking than by {{cite video}} and ii) facilitate translating.
Castelo
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Dickinson#Singing_style
As said, all the great things Oral history can be done - outside of Wikipedia. And what local Wikipedians like to do with it, will be decided in the community. Kind regards Ziko
2012/2/25 Castelo michelcastelobranco@gmail.com:
On 25-02-2012 15:58, Michael Peel wrote:
Actually, Wikipedia sort of is the place for original content - when it comes to illustrations in articles.
Those illustrations are mainly in Commons, with exception of the images in fair use, but linked in the articles. That kind of original content also plays a minor role, only "illustrating" the article, but we cannot reference a sentence as "vide image", for instance.
It's possible to envisage audio recordings being used in appropriate Wikipedia articles along the lines of 'listen to a fisherman from the coast of Shandong talk about his work', more in the current role of pictures/photographs rather than as references.
In this case, the audio files will be in Commons, too, and as you pointed, won't be used for referencing a specific assertation in the text. It will be, just like images, illustrating the written content, as we do now with music samples in musicians biography[1]. I suggest transcribe the interview for Wikinews and use it in inline citations, as in {{cite news}}, for i) easier checking than by {{cite video}} and ii) facilitate translating.
Castelo
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Dickinson#Singing_style
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On 25-02-2012 23:02, Ziko van Dijk wrote:
As said, all the great things Oral history can be done - outside of Wikipedia.
Yes, it "can be done" but it's not "been made". The information is there for decades or centuries, and it was never registered outside of Wikipedia, and now we have interested people, available time and enough resources to make it happen.
We already did a lot of things that could be made (less efficiently, indeed) outside Wikipedia. Let's begin with Wikipedia itself. And what about Wikimedia Commons?
This is knowledge, and our commitment is to freely share the knowledge with every human being, so change the question from "Why?" to "Why not?".
Castelo
Dear Castelo,
We are in danger to repeat ourselves. :-) Short and simply, my statement: * WP is an encyclopedia, with all what that means; * the difference between primary sources and secondary sources is of vital importance (at least in the perspective of most historians).
Kind regards Ziko
2012/2/26 Castelo michelcastelobranco@gmail.com:
On 25-02-2012 23:02, Ziko van Dijk wrote:
As said, all the great things Oral history can be done - outside of Wikipedia.
Yes, it "can be done" but it's not "been made". The information is there for decades or centuries, and it was never registered outside of Wikipedia, and now we have interested people, available time and enough resources to make it happen.
We already did a lot of things that could be made (less efficiently, indeed) outside Wikipedia. Let's begin with Wikipedia itself. And what about Wikimedia Commons?
This is knowledge, and our commitment is to freely share the knowledge with every human being, so change the question from "Why?" to "Why not?".
Castelo
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On 26-02-2012 11:34, Ziko van Dijk wrote:
Dear Castelo,
We are in danger to repeat ourselves.
Right, friend, let's not say same things again. xD I'll only add, and not repeat, because i agree with you in what you pointed below. I just think your list require some adittional items (as my list can probably be improved, too).
- WP is an encyclopedia, with all what that means;
* Wikipedia is a very important WMF project, but not the only one. * WP rules only apply inside WP. The others can create their own rules, that can differ significantly from the WP ones. * WN is a news source, with all what that means (which includes original reports); * WV is a source for learning resources, as well as for conducting original research;
- the difference between primary sources and secondary sources is of
vital importance (at least in the perspective of most historians).
* With our different projects working together, each one with each kind of content, it's possible to cover many topics not yet covered, including the Shandong's crab-catching technique, corporate info and the Brazilian indigenous traditions. The primary sources can also be used and secondary sources can be produced by WN and WV, and provided for referencing Wikipedia as reliable sources, by fitting the criteria for that.
Kind regards Ziko
Amike kaj samideane,
Castelo
On 02/25/12 10:30 AM, Castelo wrote:
On 25-02-2012 15:58, Michael Peel wrote:
Actually, Wikipedia sort of is the place for original content - when it comes to illustrations in articles.
Those illustrations are mainly in Commons, with exception of the images in fair use, but linked in the articles. That kind of original content also plays a minor role, only "illustrating" the article, but we cannot reference a sentence as "vide image", for instance.
It's possible to envisage audio recordings being used in appropriate Wikipedia articles along the lines of 'listen to a fisherman from the coast of Shandong talk about his work', more in the current role of pictures/photographs rather than as references.
In this case, the audio files will be in Commons, too, and as you pointed, won't be used for referencing a specific assertation in the text. It will be, just like images, illustrating the written content, as we do now with music samples in musicians biography[1]. I suggest transcribe the interview for Wikinews and use it in inline citations, as in {{cite news}}, for i) easier checking than by {{cite video}} and ii) facilitate translating.
This is just a question of where to file the data, and the mechanical question of how to use it and reference it. The key question is about having it in the first place. A positive answer to that gives us the luxury of deciding where to put it.
Ray
On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 10:02 AM, Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
Hi Castelo,
just to make the discussion clearer: could you just give say 5 or 10 examples of topics where you believe oral citations are unavoidable? Then I hope that Ziko in his turn can explain how we can write about those examples without using them.
Best example is blueberry wine. It got merged in with fruit wine. Truth is blueberry wine is not fruit wine, but pectine enzymatic over the 16 % limit fermentation...Much stronger.
On 2/25/12 2:12 AM, Castelo wrote:
On 24-02-2012 07:48, Ziko van Dijk wrote:
Leave the use of historical sources to historians, and then cite from their books. That's what historians are for. Kind regards Ziko
Ziko,
there's a lack of historians writing books outside Europe/US, specially on some traditional oral history. They love to write about what other historians like, and the unpublished content remains unpublished.
If i understood correctly, Oral Citations Project doesn't intend to replace books. Its focus is on what is not covered by books.
Amike,
Castelo
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Most companies do not get a dedicated historian to deal with their own archives. Few historian do that as volunteers, and many companies just do not spend money on this type of activity.
Florence
On 02/23/12 5:48 PM, Florence Devouard wrote:
But the most difficult ennoying point is simply that most corp archives appear to be a mess. Because companies are bought and sold, information is lost on the way. Because of poor communication between departments. Because staff come and go. And because the acceleration of business processes unfortunately make it so that in the past dozen of years, less and less time and money has been spent (invested) on a proper archive system, on good procedures and efficient implementation. So when you ask "can you retrieve the past 20 years of sales regarding this yoghurt", you'll get a blank stare. Truth is, no one knows the date and no one knows where to find the info.
Some companies sometimes hire external services (private historians) to "clean up" their archives and some good stuff can get out of this, such as a book or a museum (Michelin did that. Do visit the museum http://www.aventure-michelin.com/ if you happen to come. It is very nicely done).
Usually, I recommand good sense. If the information does not appear "weird" or "controversial" at all, I use the corp information as "trusted source". If it is clearly misleading or potentially illegal info, I trash it. But in between there is room to accept the data as long as there is another source, that may not be so great but that appears independant. For large companies, there are usually independant sources. But for most medium size companies, not. I give the situation a certain degree of tolerance.
Difficult to put that into any sort of policy except for "good sense".
I'm not familiar with what might be available from Michelin, but there are others (like the Hudson's Bay Company) who have made archives more available.
For other companies hiring an external service can be a green light to throw out the "garbage" so as to leave room to store more recent stuff. Libraries do this too. The BBC's toss-out of Dr. Who episodes is legendary. So many things that I buy have come from libraries looking for the scrap value of material with an ex-libris label showing it was the gift from some donor who thought it would stay with the library forever. The pages are often uncut.
Corporate archives will frequently include reports to headquarters from agents in the field in far-flung places. (The Wikileaks diplomatic correspondence came from a huge network of such agents.) Many give a unique perspective on events, and other sources to corroborate the information don't exist. If they do exist they can either be too recent to release without embarrassing someone, or too old to be easily found.
The amount of material that exists in various archives is beyond most of our capacities to imagine, and perhaps even beyond the capacity of our collective imagination. That's the biggest challenge to documenting the sum of human knowledge. Waiting for historians or other "experts" to provide reliable secondary sources simply won't work. What these experts choose to write about is just as much a matter of whim as a volunteer's choice of what to add to Wikipedia.
Oral citations are only one facet of the challenge. Wikipedia is only one facet of the solution. Restructuring the epistemology requires a larger vision than the one that gave us Wikipedia.
Ray
On 02/22/12 11:40 AM, Thomas Morton wrote:
Material on Wikipedia can be divided into "fact" and "opinion". The latter of these is, perhaps confusingly, the simplest to address; because opinion, viewpoints and perception can quite easily be collated and summarised. The only real difficulty exists in figuring out which opinions are noteworthy to record.
It's much more than a mere notability question
The problem is facts; as I am sure everyone can appreciate, facts are very easy to get wrong (maliciously or not). This is especially a problem in History where events can be pieced together via all manner of sources. Even WW2 history can differ dramatically depending on the accounts you read - some overuse oral citation (humans are fallible) and others misuse official records (which can range from faked through to inaccurate).
Authors of secondary sources are particularly adept at this. It's not uncommon for a historian to build his evidence around a thesis, and be blind to most information that would disprove that thesis.
The problem with primary sourcing of the oral form is that it comes directly from an individual - with all of their perceptions and biases. To make an extreme example out of this; imagine taking an oral citation from Hitler, and a Jew in a concentration camp. Such citations would, I imagine, give radically different viewpoints of the Holocaust. Obviously other accounts, by third parties, show us which account is accurate - but if we had only those two viewpoints I hope it is obvious how difficult separating fact and fiction could be (ignoring that any rational person would see the obvious).
Of course, and it's that difference that is important for achieving NPOV. We need to fairly show both viewpoints. It's up to the reader to draw his own viewpoints, and not for us to provide pat answers.
So that brings us to the ideas behind sourcing; which is that we should consider not only the material but author and publisher. This is important because if the author of the source is partisan to the material then you have to consider they may be biased to their viewpoint. As less extreme example might be two citations from a Republican and a Democrat. Both say "My Party is the Best because our policies are..." - you can't use either source to say one party is better, because they are partisan. But you could use it to relate their parties policies; and as partisans they are well positioned to relate those policies!
Maybe. Tea party members may not be the best narrators of Republican policy, nor union leaders of the Democratic policy. Both parties may generate a policy document at the convention. Are we to believe that a party member's secondary reading of the platform is more reliable than the platform document itself?
If the author is a third party, of course, that lends weight to their material.
Sometimes.
The publisher is the stumbling block in this case; because it is a non-expert [sic] researcher uploading material to Commons. What could mitigate this is a detailed description of the methodology used to collect the citations, which would allow editors to review it for problems.
For most situations it's unrealistic to expect rigorous methodologies in historical material generated many years ago, and it may be all we have.
One final thing to consider is that WP:V talks about controversial or challenged material. Whilst that might be a risk policy on the face (it would be easy to present something non-controversial but also not true as fact) it's critical to letting us actually write article (otherwise we would be stifled in citations :)). For example; I've sourced material to personal sites before with minimal problems - sometimes it is questioned and what I usually say is "If you can show someone saying the opposite, or make a sensible argument against, then lets remove it".
It's that last statement that worries me. By removing the previous unverified material we are choosing which version the reader should believe. Should we not be looking for the most fair and efficient way to keep both versions?
Boiled down, I think that oral citations have a distinct place as a source
- and we should encourage people to consider them as sources when writing.
But they are not something you could, for example, base an entire article around. We should also explore ways to make them more "reliable", and more usable. For example making them obviously available to experts in the field they cover.
Making oral citations "more reliable" seems a contradiction in terms. They are what they are. In some cases they may indeed be the basis for an entire article. Usability and availability of the material are significant problems. These are often unique items that are too easily the victims of life as it goes on around them. They are also fraught with copyright problems even when the person being interviewed had no clue that he had such rights.
It *is* important to get secondary coverage of a topic, because we are tertiary source. This is the core idea of our primary source policy; if we utilise primary material and research something to the extent that we are the main authoritative source that becomes *hugely* problematic!
It can be, but not necessarily so. We make too much of the distinction between primary and secondary source, and a person can too easily use the original source argument as a cudgel for beating back material that he opposes. If we insist that Joseph instead of Josef is the correct given name for Stalin because it appears more often in a Google search we become the authority.
In terms of social media, this is tricky. Because social media is vastly more accessible than other mediums - particularly to hacks. Wordpress blogs are trivial to make, for example, and you can sound authoritative or convincing on a subject to a layman with only medium effort. I'd treat these with more caution.
I would be extremely wary of anything from the blogoshere, though I'm sure reasonable arguments for it can be made on a case by case basis.
Ray
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