--- Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:

Having references at the end of every article may give the apperance of being more credible.

However, many sources I might quote might have incorrect information, or could be fabricated.

That is true, this issue was brought up and discussed in our project a while back so I have the benefit of knowing the answer :). Hopefully after the first step of acutally getting the intelligent foot/end notes working (intelligent meaning it autonumbers, autoquotes, autobrings you to the passage when clicked etc) we can go onto the second step of a verification system for the actual references.

One way to prevent people from citing phony facts is to have people being able to verify a fact by signing it. Multiple people would be able to look up a fact, say in a book, and sign to the fact that it exists. You'd then have a system that looks like this:

Fact 1 - Reference from source 1 - Person A says it exists Fact 1 - Reference from source 1 - Person B says it exists Fact 1 - Reference from source 2 - Person A says it exists Fact 1 - Reference from source 2 - Person C says it exists

Obvisally if someone says the reference exists, and someone else says the reference does not that is a large issue, but one easily solved (i.e. a committe will go and look for the book / article / etc. to verify it). Conflicts of references can be arbitrated on by this committe, with fakers being quickly weeded out.

Shaun MacPherson

Many people seem to feel more comfortable with print media and seem to think that if it's in print, it must be true, but in reality you shouldn't trust print articles and books anymore than you trust their Internet counterparts.

Mark

On Mon, 3 Jan 2005 23:43:45 -0500 (EST), Shaun MacPherson shaun_macpherson2001@yahoo.ca wrote:

...

Sorry I forgot to invite you all to use

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Fact_and_Reference_C...)

...

as an area for us to discuss this issue. The Wikitechs will beat you there now ;).

Shaun MacPherson

--- Shaun MacPherson

shaun_macpherson2001@yahoo.ca

...

wrote:

...

Larry Sanger believes that the solution to make Wikipedia more credible are with experts. You

can

...

...

see a good article descriping his criticisms here (

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/03/144207&tid=95&tid=1

...

...

) posted on Jan 3, 2004.

I think the easiest way to make Wikipedia more credible is with a Fact and Reference Project,

which

...

...

the community has been developing over a period

of

...

...

more than a few months now: (

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Fact_and_Reference_Check

...

...

).

The thing holding this project back, and

ultimately

...

...

Wikipedia from sheading the skin of being 'noncredible' is the lack of intelligent

foot/end

...

...

notes. A way to format an article with autonumbering endnotes for crossreferencing is lacking. I am

sure

...

...

with this feature programmed in this project can

be

...

...

on its way to cross referencing all facts on

Wikipedia.

...

...

You can see some examples offoot/endnote

formatting

...

...

template here. JesseW has put much effort into trying to create a formating guide here ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Footnotes

)

...

...

and another guide here (

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cite_sources

...

...

). Examples are here (

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Fact_and_Reference_Check/...

...

...

).

How credible will Wikipedia be if each fact is crossreferenced with 5, 10, 20 external sources

like

...

...

academic journals, encyclopedias, books? Very.

______________________________________________________________________

...

...

Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org

http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

...

...

______________________________________________________________________

...

Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org

http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

...

---

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Maybe a simple link at the bottom of a page saying "Authors of this Article" with their contributions next to their names, somewhat like the differences function we have already? And in the user page, user contributions with percentage of articles contributed by that person (say an article on "Middle English" contributed 78% by UserAlpha, and 10% by UserBeta, and other percentages for other users). Just an idea.

James

-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of NSK Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2005 12:50 PM To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] A Solution to Larry Sanger's Criticisms - ProjectHas Been Around For A While

On Tuesday 04 January 2005 06:40, Shaun MacPherson wrote:

I think the easiest way to make Wikipedia more credible is with a Fact and Reference Project

It sounds like a good idea.

But it's not enough: You should also limit somehow the anon contributions and employ maintainers for each article (this is what I do on most of my projects). The names (full names) of the authors and maintainers must be visible in the article, together with 1 or 2-line short bios demonstrating their expertise (degrees or work experience), as well as a References section (which should be long - very long).

See my policy here:

http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/Help:Editing_process

Fred Bauder (fredbaud@ctelco.net) [050104 23:32]:

No way, an anonymous editor can cite references as well as anyone else and it is not his bona fides that makes the reference good but the reputation and authoritativeness of the reference. Anyone who has attended institutions of higher learning is fully aware that formal qualifications mean next to nothing and has probably learned that those who cite their degrees and position as authority in the course of an argument rather than focusing on evidence which might support their position do so because they are unable to prevail using the evidence available to them.

I would agree on the point that references are the thing. The Internet is a land of unreliable crap probably good to the pub-quiz level of reliability. Wikipedia makes it that far on average. But supply good references, and suddenly an article's standing is a lot higher at a glance. Because references are checkable.

(The next problem becomes garbage references - like all the "Israeli News Network" items on [[Current events]] - and reference wars. But I think it'd be less worse having editors vociferously disparaging each other's references than each other's selves or ancestry. Perhaps I'm just overly hopeful there.)

- d.

--- Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@xigenics.net wrote:

References and a reference engine would be a tremendous help, both for readability, and for writing. I would like to suggest a project: wikicite which would list all available books and create a simple tag mechanism for citing them.

Thus something like {{wikicite:Wealth of Nations}} would expand out to a canonical Smith, Adam etc.

Wikicite is a very good idea. Especially so since I believe the time will come when people will disagree what constitutes a good reference, people disagreeing on the reference formatting, trouuble in keeping track of the different editions and page numbers for a quotation, or different printing runs for books.

As well, if we are citing a public domain work there is no reason why the cite cannot bring us to the actual document and quotation on wikisource or wikicommons.

Getting journal articles would be next, and harder, but could be worked out over time. This would make entering sources and bibliography easy, standardised, and current. It would also keep the burden of generating citation lists down, and would be a generally useful resource everywhere.

Wikicite might be able to keep track of all things published. It would also be useful to keep track of books and their printing date to know when things enter the public domain to know when to put them on Wikisource/Wikicommons.

I don't mean to steal your idea, I just agree with it a lot and added some suggestions :). If you are around you can mention Wikicite at (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Fact_and_Reference_C...) the talk page here, I think many people would be interested.

Bye,

ShaunMacPherson

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On Jan 5, 2005, at 3:23 AM, Josh Gerdes wrote:

Shaun McPherson wrote:

...

--- Stirling Newberry

...

Wikicite might be able to keep track of all things published. It would also be useful to keep track of books and their printing date to know when things enter the public domain to know when to put them on Wikisource/Wikicommons. I don't mean to steal your idea, I just agree with it a lot and added some suggestions :). If you are around you can mention Wikicite at (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk: WikiProject_Fact_and_Reference_Check) the talk page here, I think many people would be interested. Bye, ShaunMacPherson

Steal? Not at all, you are just taking it and running, which is the joy of being in a community.

I will have something written up by later today.

Shaun MacPherson wrote:

--- Stirling Newberry

...

References and a reference engine would be a tremendous help, both for readability, and for writing. I would like to suggest a project: wikicite which would list all available books and create a simple tag mechanism for citing them.

Thus something like {{wikicite:Wealth of Nations}} would expand out to a canonical Smith, Adam etc.

Wikicite is a very good idea. Especially so since I believe the time will come when people will disagree what constitutes a good reference, people disagreeing on the reference formatting, trouuble in keeping track of the different editions and page numbers for a quotation, or different printing runs for books.

The fundamental idea is solid, but there should be no need for a separate project. It is really just a matter of good research practice. Defining a "good" reference is not always a productive exercise. We can end up with NPOV disputes and edit wars just as much over the validity of references as over content.

As well, if we are citing a public domain work there is no reason why the cite cannot bring us to the actual document and quotation on wikisource or wikicommons.

Ideally yes, but we have a long way to go before we get there. Importing material from Project Gutenberg may be easy enough, but what needs to be done is a mass digitization and OCR proofreading of a huge body of works. That's a _lot_ of tedious work. After a little more the year Wikisource is still working out a lot of its fundamental procedures, but what you propose is certainly consistent with the long-term vision that I have had of Wikisource since the day it started.

...

Getting journal articles would be next, and harder, but could be worked out over time. This would make entering sources and bibliography easy, standardised, and current. It would also keep the burden of generating citation lists down, and would be a generally useful resource everywhere.

At the risk of stating the obvious, journal articles are shorter than books. One Wikisource contributor has recently begun work on a 1917 National Geographic issue. That should be an opportunity for getting some of the bugs out of that approach, and developping standards for the way we enter journal articles. Some journal articles may be more important than others to include. but the simple fact that they are each individually shorter may be an encouragement.

Wikicite might be able to keep track of all things published. It would also be useful to keep track of books and their printing date to know when things enter the public domain to know when to put them on Wikisource/Wikicommons.

There is already a considerable overlap between Wikisource and Wikipedia over the matter of bibliography. For now I see it as fair game for both. I believe that Wikisource should be carrying the fundamental information that helps in determining the copyright status, but that's only going to be there if people put it there. Whatever one might think of long copyright terms it is still much easier to calculate expiry based on the year of death than on the year of publication. It's going to be another 40 years before that becomes the norm for US publications.. For them we still need to consider such issues as copyright renewals. A 1923 US publication whose copyright was not properly renewed in 1951 is now in the public domain. There is no need for a new wedge project somewhere between Wikisource and Wikipedia.

Ec

Stirling Newberry wrote:

...

...

The fundamental idea is solid, but there should be no need for a separate project. It is really just a matter of good research practice. Defining a "good" reference is not always a productive exercise. We can end up with NPOV disputes and edit wars just as much over the validity of references as over content.

It should be a separate project, it has its own technical challenges and it is clearly a separate database, since its content is more restricted, and its format different. More over, there is a need for lineages of sources in a way which there is not among wikipedia articles. It might well be piggybacked on wikisource - but the concerns are different. The major technical challenge for wikicite would be creating cards, creating descent for editions of the same book, and for then annotating those cards. As for administrative divisions, that I am not clear on the relative merits of creating a separate people structure for it, so will defer to others who know more than I, which on this point is almost everyone.

It would be integrated in with wiktionary, wikipedia, wikiquote and wikisource - each one having citation needs - and therefore a community of users who would want to have access to a catalog, and to annotate the reliability of sources in it.

I've been designing something similar off-and-on, but waffled on whether it should be a separate project. I was thinking of making special pages in their own namespace, a la image files, which would allow for better integration with articles, categorization, backrefs ("who references this work?"), plus links to authors, publishers, and an article on the work itself, since a number of significant sources have articles in their own right.

In theory bibliography could go into commons, since most biblio info is language-independent, and quite a few articles already list foreign-language works in their references.

If WP is supposed to be a compendium of the world's knowledge, then it seems reasonable to expect that every published book and article will be cited somewhere eventually, which is a lot to manage. To look at it another way, if a half-million WP articles do nothing more than make two citations apiece, that's a million-entry bibliography to manage; we need support infrastructure equal to the task.

Stan

Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com writes:

In theory bibliography could go into commons, since most biblio info is language-independent, and quite a few articles already list foreign-language works in their references.

Make sure to use proper technology for bibliographical records; http://www.indexdata.dk offers good tools under GPL or other free licenses. For storage id-zebra (zebra) and for retrival over Z39.50 the YAZ toolkit is available.

Hi all,

Don't get me wrong but why would there be a need for a tool to create a bibliography ? It's all quite simple: Surname, NAME, Title in italic, Edited by..., City, Year.

Or did I misunderstand the whole "technology for bibliographical records"-thing ?

Cheers from LB

Caroline aka Briséis.

-----Message d'origine----- De : wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] De la part de Joseph Reagle Envoyé : jeudi 6 janvier 2005 23:34 À : Karl Eichwalder Cc : wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org Objet : Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Bibliography

On Thursday 06 January 2005 14:46, Karl Eichwalder wrote:

Make sure to use proper technology for bibliographical records; http://www.indexdata.dk offers good tools under GPL or other free licenses. For storage id-zebra (zebra) and for retrival over Z39.50 the YAZ toolkit is available.

A bibtex format would be nice too...

Two things: 1. "different styles": I did realise that this depends a LOT on the country. Of course there's a slight change when you have an article of a newspaper than when you're citing a book. And I do agree that it would be simple just typing "[[Biblio:Wealth of Nations]]". The thing with the different styles is, how to you get them all under one style ? I do study in France actually, and I noticed that some of the german Erasmus-students I met here looked at my bibliography once and where astonished by the way it was written. I told them that that's just the french style of writing it. They do have some minor differences when writing theirs. As for the multiple editions: in France, you tend to state the most recent edition (because revised, mistakes have been corrected etc). Do you want to "impose" one style for all ? :-)

2. "just reuse them instead of typing all in ourselves": I do object to that. I don't know about other Wikipedians but when I write articles, I usually have some of my books on my desk, I don't know all that stuff by heart (would be nice though :-) ) And I NEVER put any books in my own bibliography I haven't used. The reason is simple: by only adding the books I used, because I know what's IN the books. I could easily say "oh the english Wiki has some more books than we do, let's just add them too". Not saying that the books in the english wiki article aren't good, but how can I know ? I haven't read them, maybe never heard of them. You could say that maybe I WILL know them since they're stated there and out of curiosity, if I'm interested in the subject of the article, I will look into them, but I still dislike the fact to simply use what's there :-)

Caroline, the innocent :-)

-----Message d'origine----- De : wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] De la part de Stan Shebs Envoyé : vendredi 7 janvier 2005 01:19 À : wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Objet : Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Bibliography

Caroline Ewen wrote:

Hi all,

Don't get me wrong but why would there be a need for a tool to create a bibliography ? It's all quite simple: Surname, NAME, Title in italic, Edited by..., City, Year.

Or did I misunderstand the whole "technology for bibliographical records"-thing ?

Ah, an innocent wandering into the brambly briers of bibliography... :-)

Think of different styles (some do first name first), different names for the same person (middle initial vs spelled-out), journal articles, book chapters in a multi-author book, translations, multiple editions with different content, annotated works, uppercase/lowercase, and so on.

Even though only a minority of our articles have references now, there is a remarkable randomness among them. Wouldn't you rather be able to type in "[[Biblio:Wealth of Nations]]" and have it expand into a correctly-formatted reference to Adam Smith's book, mentioning original publication date, ISBN for a good recent reprint, and URL for an online text at the most reliable website?

Even better, some dedicated bibtexers and others have built giant bibliographies online, and we would like to just reuse them instead of typing all in ourselves.

Stan

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On Jan 8, 2005, at 1:22 AM, Karl Eichwalder wrote:

"Caroline Ewen" caroline@web.lu writes:

...

Don't get me wrong but why would there be a need for a tool to create a bibliography ? It's all quite simple: Surname, NAME, Title in italic, Edited by..., City, Year.

Or did I misunderstand the whole "technology for bibliographical records"-thing ?

I won't repeat the entirety here, but I will instead summarize merely the obvious reasons.

1. Value of editors time. Just because you aren't paying for it, doesn't mean it is either unlimited in quantity or valueless. 2. Assured canonical format. No mistakes, if the link shows up blue, you got it right. 3. Value of editors time part II: poves have access to precompiled bibliographies, we are asking editors to compete with organizations backed with money. 4. Value gained. It is wikipedians and wikimedia that is leading the drive to compete with other data sources for reputability. It, not the individual editors, gains the advantages, to pass on the costs and take the gains - while moralizing about how lazy and stupid the editors are verges on unethical behavior. 5. Citation resource has a value in and of itself. It allows annotation of sources, trees of editions, cross referencing (what articles link to a particular source) flexible categorization of sources. 6. There are paid versions of such tools, most of which do no more than provide an interface and a database to free information. It is clearly part of wikimedia's mission to provide free and open versions of tools for knowledge work to the public where such exist in proprietary forms.

Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net writes:

From the beginning one of the purposes of the "Author" pages in Wikisource has been bibliographic.

I consider Wikisource as superfluous. We should join forces with the "Project Gutenberg" (that's what I do).

Please, re-read this thread. Author pages are not good enough. We need a database system that you can query with well define protocols like [[de:Z39.50]]

Gerard Meijssen gerardm@myrealbox.com writes:

Obviously if you want to make a project for a Bibliography system you need people to work on this.

Sure. It looks as if soem hackers are interested in a biblio system and I want to prevent them from re-inventing the wheel. Once a propers system is in place, I will add my data to it, as I do with commons.

But I usually do no coding :)

Jens Ropers ropers@ropersonline.com writes:

In theory I'd be inclined to agree. Yet Project Gutenberg does not anywhere near have the "instant editability" that Wikisource has.

That's agood thing - sources do not change ;) Of course, sticking comments to sources is another issue and that's an area where the wiki way comes in.

So, yes, maybe we should merge.

I forgot to mention, we already merged - I know more than one person who contributes to both projects.

Of course they are established, have "brand recognition" and have already completed lots of work, so "us *joining* them" would maybe be the better (more polite and palatable to them) way of putting it.

Yes, thanks for getting these things right.

But if were to merge/join, we should bring the wiki concept along.

Yes, from time to time annoting systems are discussed on the PG mailinglist and, of course, someone mentions WP resp. wiki*.

Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net writes:

I think there would be even more than that to merging the two cultures. They take the idea of the plain vanilla text to an extreme to the point where their English site does not allow for accented characters, italics, etc.

Up to some degree this was right in the past. Things have changed, there is a European dependence devoted to prepare books with "foreign" characters:

http://dp.rastko.net/

Books with illustration are also possible, as an example search for "Wilhelm Busch" at http://www.gutenberg.org .

On Jan 9, 2005, at 6:48 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:

Karl Eichwalder wrote:

...

Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net writes:

...

From the beginning one of the purposes of the "Author" pages in Wikisource has been bibliographic.

I consider Wikisource as superfluous. We should join forces with the "Project Gutenberg" (that's what I do).

That can wait until Project Gutenberg includes Wiki links.

...

Please, re-read this thread. Author pages are not good enough. We need a database system that you can query with well define protocols like [[de:Z39.50]]

And what does [[de:Z39.50]] mean? Users, will be most comfortable with plain language categories. Although formal classification systems have their place, they are best in conjunction with plain language references.

Ec

It is a protocol for querying catalog information, it returns MARC records. Wiki should set up a system for querying this information, and placing it into wikicite cards, which can then be annotated by our editors.

Remember, it isn't just the source, it is the reliability of the source that is important - just as Amazon and most other commercial outlets have rating systems to let you know what other people think - and even try to match you to people who share your tastes - wiki needs a credibility mechanism which is "live" rather than "dead".

On Tuesday 04 January 2005 17:55, Traroth wrote:

Does your proposition mean that only experts will be authorized to contribute ? That's a major change in the Wikipedia spirit, and I desagree totally.

Non-experts contribute text, provided they give their full legal name and contact details. Experts contribute text and check the non-experts' contributions.

On Tuesday 04 January 2005 19:43, David Gerard wrote:

How long have you been running it

I started the Wikinerds.org website in August 2004.

and how are the results so far?

I have received positive comments from many people. However the project is still too new, so it is too early to talk about results.

Wikinerds is a meta-project for the management of a federation of wikis and other projects related to sciences.

You can check these websites to see some of our content: - Wikinerds Portal at http://portal.wikinerds.org - NerdyPC at http://www.nerdypc.org - JnanaBase at http://jnana.wikinerds.org

I just wanted to note that the project's progress is slowed down right now due to a software migration from MediaWiki to TikiWiki, which will serve most projects of Wikinerds until I finish my own wiki software in August 2005.

If you are interested in Wikinerds you can keep contact with me through email or use our forum at http://forum.wikinerds.org

Agreed... that seems anti-wiki to me.

Mark

On Tue, 04 Jan 2005 10:04:17 -0800, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:

NSK wrote:

...

On Tuesday 04 January 2005 17:55, Traroth wrote:

...

Does your proposition mean that only experts will be authorized to contribute ? That's a major change in the Wikipedia spirit, and I desagree totally.

Non-experts contribute text, provided they give their full legal name and contact details. Experts contribute text and check the non-experts' contributions.

Let's hope not!

Ec

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On Tuesday 04 January 2005 20:36, Sean Barrett wrote:

The trivial matter of whether those fully-exposed non-experts survive the resulting attacks by the loons, trolls, and death-threat-issuing POV warriors is of no concern, of course.

An environment where the full legal name and the biography of the participants is known is hostile to trolls.

This seems to be exactly the problem Larry Sanger talks about - We don't care whether somebody is a renowned expert on a subject or has just read a few lines related to a subject in the past. If they can write it down, we consider them equal.

A second fallacy I see in this message is that it equates factual correctness with credibility. There's more than just factual correctness to make a good article, there is also balance. Getting experts is not what helps here (although it helps a bit, because they are supposed to know about the subject, and thus notice missing portions), but we should recognize the problem as being one.

Andre Engels

Sounds like an interesting idea, but why do we need 'experts' for? Anyone can fact and reference check, and after facts have been verified with multiple sources they are then as 'credible' as credible can be in my thinking.

It is time to apply the Wiki philosophy to not just providing the content, but to verifying it with reference checks from multiple sources. It worked for content, I am sure it will work for verification if the community are given the tools (tools such as intelligent foot/end notes, autonumbering of citations, etc.).

On Jan 5, 2005, at 6:40 AM, Ronald Chmara wrote:

My older brother despises some wikipedia sections that are written in his field (cultural anthropology, with specific emphasis on the paiute people), as he is an expert in that specific area, and finds the articles "shallow", "without depth and nuance", and "lacking in a deeper explanation". They are written by "non-experts", and thus make "factual and comprehension errors".

The articles are also written for *use* by non-experts.... So, I asked my brother how many pages it would take to correct the errors, and he pointed me towards his latest body of work, over 500 pages, and that's just the historical *sites* of the paiute.

So, what is wikipedia? Is it *meant* to be the equivalent of an encyclopedia, with terse explanations? Is it meant to be a vast repository of all that is known, without omissions of fact, or omissions of a given POV?

-Bop

The solution is to get your brother to contribute. And one of my activities is to encourage academics to contribute to wikipedia.

The emergent nature of wiki text is that it is very sensitive to initial conditions, a given article will converge on an acceptable form, very much based on the quality of the large inputs of expertise. This is what is wonderful about Wikipedia - it is an active audience for writing, constantly checking errors, pushing for readability, asking questions, making demands. The more experts we can get to contribute the large initial drafts of articles, the more that process can go to work to turn them into linked and smoothly written material. Given a good starting point the process produces higher and higher quality over time, in no small part because the bar is upped constantly, and the wiki community is there to make the changes needed.

I, too, have noticed that articles on the Paiute people, their language, etc. are very lacking, however I don't know a lot about them.

If I were you, I would tell my brother "The GREAT thing about Wikipedia is that YOU are allowed to fix that, and are invited to do so. That's how the good articles became good articles - they started out short and lacking, and then somebody like YOU found them and added to them." ... sort of like Frankenstein's Monster...

Mark

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 04:40:22 -0700, Ronald Chmara ron@opus1.com wrote:

On Jan 5, 2005, at 2:28 AM, Andre Engels wrote:

...

This seems to be exactly the problem Larry Sanger talks about - We don't care whether somebody is a renowned expert on a subject or has just read a few lines related to a subject in the past. If they can write it down, we consider them equal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_%28bureaucratic%29

Certainly, a lack of expertise is a problem in managing fine details, but it does not require an expert in aviation to add to a wikipedia article that 'Air Force One is a plane'. The problem I think, is not the insertion of facts by non-experts, but the use of (or omission of) facts by POV folks to drive a given agenda.

...

A second fallacy I see in this message is that it equates factual correctness with credibility. There's more than just factual correctness to make a good article, there is also balance. Getting experts is not what helps here (although it helps a bit, because they are supposed to know about the subject, and thus notice missing portions), but we should recognize the problem as being one.

My older brother despises some wikipedia sections that are written in his field (cultural anthropology, with specific emphasis on the paiute people), as he is an expert in that specific area, and finds the articles "shallow", "without depth and nuance", and "lacking in a deeper explanation". They are written by "non-experts", and thus make "factual and comprehension errors".

The articles are also written for *use* by non-experts.... So, I asked my brother how many pages it would take to correct the errors, and he pointed me towards his latest body of work, over 500 pages, and that's just the historical *sites* of the paiute.

So, what is wikipedia? Is it *meant* to be the equivalent of an encyclopedia, with terse explanations? Is it meant to be a vast repository of all that is known, without omissions of fact, or omissions of a given POV?

-Bop

---

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On Thu, Jan 06, 2005 at 04:16:05AM +0200, NSK wrote:

On Thursday 06 January 2005 04:02, Mark Williamson wrote:

...

If I were you, I would tell my brother "The GREAT thing about Wikipedia is that YOU are allowed to fix that, and are invited to do

Many people expect an encyclopedia to include all the information they are demanding and not just invite them to write it. This type of persons (and they are many) will never submit anything even if they are experts on it.

Actually there are two kinds of experts (in my experience):

* the first kind knows a lot but does not want to (or cannot) explain it to unexperienced people without the required background. the results are articles which are more useless than not since only 1% of the readers' population can understand it. repeated requests result the expert being offended (or denying to "lower the level") and leaving Wikipedia.

* the other kind knows a lot but able to rephrase it for the masses, and willing to. it requires a very open minded approach since s/he have to write _unexact_ and _unprofessional_ things to fill the gaps in the reader's background, or not to assume that something is common knowledge. these experts are my faviourite contributors because they're a vast source of real facts to learn, and they are able to make it understandable. I welcome these experts, and would like to have them in unlimited numbers.

What I do not expect that we have the strength (or the right to demand) contributors changing their attitude, lower their level of professional writing style and talk on the level of the masses.

Those experts who are in the first group will criticise Wikipedia for the articles, but it is often useless to ask them to contribute because they cannot. Either they go away, or transform an article to a professional, legthy and uncomprehensible stuff that editors start to revert because they don't get it, and it's unfit for a general encyclopedia.

The experts in the second group usually have the brains to fix the problems without making the noise. That's their personality. (Sometimes they ask about it the first time, very politely.)

I tend to prejudice experts who criticise without doing about it and list them in my first mental group, and try to prepare for what happens after, and I tend to avoid reminding them about the possibility of contribution instead of whining.

My 2 'cents. [[:en:user:grin]]

ps: interesting effect I just observed was that a POV [[:en:Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Antifinnugor|problem user]] started a widespread war and demanded experts. miraculously an expert arrived (on huwiki, where this originated) and started to explain reality. after a short while he felt that Wikipedia is a bunch of stupid morons who ignore facts and write unscientific articles. since he is in the second group he was relieved to know - after some explanation - that he debated with one user with lots of (questionable) contributions, and not with "Wikipedia" itself. But this could be a problem: an expert experiencing trolls and POV users without preparation, and leaving in believing that Wikipedia is a bunch of POV users... And they do not have the time to debate/prove their knowledge with John Does who state that the Earth is flat on the back of 4 elephants. Tough.

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

Andre Engels wrote:

...

This seems to be exactly the problem Larry Sanger talks about - We don't care whether somebody is a renowned expert on a subject or has just read a few lines related to a subject in the past. If they can write it down, we consider them equal.

Some in the community surely do feel this way. But I don't, and my impression from talking to and meeting tons of wikipedia volunteers is a very profound respect for learning, and a keen desire that we *get it right*.

I haven't seen this either---especially in areas that would benefit from (or even, arguably, require) strong expertise to do well, like technical articles on mathematics, there is a tendency to defer to those who have demonstrated they know what they're doing. If [[User:Michael Hardy]] says something about mathematics that is contrary to my understanding, I won't change it unless I'm *very* certain and discuss it first, while if it's a random user, I may well assume I'm probably right and go ahead and change it.

Perhaps what some experts dislike is that being an expert is only one criterion the community uses to evaluate people. Not all experts are good at writing articles for a general-audience encyclopedia, or working with others on a collaborative project, and those are also criteria we use. Which is as it should be---we're writing an encyclopedia, so we need good encyclopedia writers, which is a different sort of work than writing journal articles is.

I think you will find, though, that there will be a lot of deference given to people who: have expertise in a field, write readably for people outside their field, don't try to push particular controversial viewpoints, and work well with others.

I do agree that better review systems are needed, but frankly, I'm not sure how much we should pay attention to Larry Sanger on this matter. He has, to my knowledge, not edited Wikipedia at all except for those times when he was paid a salary to do so. When he stopped being paid, he immediately left and seems to have spent most of his time since attacking Wikipedia. If I recall correctly, he wrote his first "what Wikipedia needs to do" manifesto approximately the day after he stopped being paid.

Perhaps more importantly, (some of) his articles are a good case in point for why we shouldn't give undue weight to experts in a field. Take a look at [[en:Physicalism/Larry's text]], for example. This is a philosophy article, a field in which Dr. Sanger has a PhD. By contrast, I've taken a grand total of six undergraduate courses in the field, but I could already write a better article than this in about an hour off the top of my head.

The most severe problem is that it mis-defines physicalism within the first paragraph, which is a rather inauspicious start. Dr. Sanger defines physicalism as the position that the mental is reducible to the physical, which is actually known as "reductive physicalism". There are other physicalist positions, collectively known as non-reductive physicalism, which happen to be among the more active areas of research in recent years. (These positions claim supervenience of the mental on the physical, but not reduction.) Dr. Sanger was either completely unaware of this large body of work, and so wrote an inaccurate article, or deliberately ignored it, and so wrote a biased article.

By comparison, the replacement article at [[physicalism]], which does not appear to have been written by PhDs in philosophy, is a sparse but accurate summary of the various strains of physicalism (which ought to clear up the above paragraph for those left befuddled by my summary).

-Mark

Technical issues aside, this has to do with systemic bias, not so much in Wikipedia as in the society in general. It is natural that as society members we would bring our biases with us into Wikipedia. A bias perhaps becomes systemic when no-one recognizes it as a bias; it takes some dumb little kid to yell out that the emperor has no clothes.

Objective truth has nothing to do with who is saying it. Many of us who would write here have been around academic "experts" in the past, and it is inevitable that some would have carried away a little of the idolatry that comes from that association. One of the most frequent idolatrous statements that I see is "IANAL". One should have surmised that something was wrong 400 years ago when Shakespeare commented, "First we'll kill the lawyers." Society abounds with stories of lawyers and politicians (many of whom are lawyers) as thieves and scoundrels, but incredibly we continue to defer to their expertise with that short disclaimer.

Ec

Citation problem: the statement first we kill all the lawyers is made by the leader of the brigands trying to spread chaos. It is usually cited exactly reverse of the way intended.

As for appeals to authority, certainly a problem, but the solution is to provide people with the ability to authenticate the information they use.

On Wednesday 05 January 2005 07:07, Anthere wrote:

Pas d'inquiétude Traroth. NSK est un gentil SDF couchant sous les ponts.

Les murs ont des oreilles...

--- Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com a écrit :

Pas d'inquiétude Traroth. NSK est un gentil SDF couchant sous les ponts.

Ant

Il ferait mieux d'acheter à manger plutôt que de glander dans les cybercafés, dans ce cas... :)

Traroth

Découvrez le nouveau Yahoo! Mail : 250 Mo d'espace de stockage pour vos mails ! Créez votre Yahoo! Mail sur http://fr.mail.yahoo.com/

Snowspinner wrote:

I think the two most telling things about Larry Sanger's criticisms are his unwillingness to contribute volunteer time to Wikipedia, and his seeming belief that Nupedia was the way to go, despite obvious factual evidence to the contrary.

Which is to say, if he was right, I suspect it would have manifested in some actual success for Nupedia.

I think there's no question that you're right about both points, however I also think that it is very important for us to think really carefully about how we can be more expertise-friendly. The thing that annoyed me the most about Larry's essay was that he accused me of a form of anti-expertise that I have always quite strongly denied. He should have known better.

Even so, I think it is fairly clear that we have in the past been too "co-dependent" with trolls. We don't want or need a brutal and random crackdown, and I think we are already strongly drifting in the right direction. The recent arbcom elections suggested to me a community desire for stricter standards of behavior.

--Jimbo

Well the thing is that wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Would'nt it be best for experts to set up their own wikis full of boring informations and crappy details ?

I am not that sure that encycopedia should be written by experts. It must give state-of-the-art information but I know plenty of people able to write very good articles about subject they are not experts in... and that the work journalist do everyday.

Plus, second argument, who will choose experts and on what basis ? Just as you said, a PhD means nothing when it comes to your knowledge level. So, how will you choose experts ? Who ? etc.

For all these reasons, it's quite clear that wikipedia should not be a "public fora" for experts. If they want one, it's much better to install their own mediawiki on some server to build a knowledge base on any subject they want to talk about.

Jean-Baptiste Soufron, Doctorant CERSA - CNRS, Paris 2 http://soufron.free.fr

Le 6 janv. 05, à 11:02, Andre Engels a écrit :

Daniel Mayer:

...

I respect Larry and what he did to help Wikipedia along in its first year. But I will never just assume that somebody with a PhD is right since many PhDs all too often are not; I've come across and know of a good many PhDs who have axes to grind and who have pet theories to push.

NPOV is a much better guarantee of accuracy than trusting a supposed expert (although I do highly value feedback from field experts - I just don't take their ideas as the last word).

I disagree. NPOV does not in any way guarantee accuracy. At best it stops the most extreme cases of theory-pushing, at worst it leads to a ridiculous degree of relativism.

And even where NPOV is concerned, an expert is much more useful than just someone off the street. A non-expert POV-warrior will easily blow away a non-expert NPOV-fighter, simply because he is the one who has read at least something about the subject. An expert POV-warrior will have a much harder time fighting an expert NPOV-fighter.

I think there's a large area between "valuing feedback" and "giving the last word". It would be worthwhile to explore it. And it would be worthwhile to make a decision whom we DO give the last word.

...

Many in academia are used to being the gatekeepers and stewards of information. Wiki opens those gates to anybody with an Internet connection. So many in academia will always recoil in horror at the mere concept - that is their problem, their failing, not ours.

Maybe it should be our problem. Maybe we should be listening to what others see as problems with our methods, rather than closing our ears and shouting how great it is. Wikipedia is great, but that should not stop us from trying to find ways to make it even better.

Andre Engels _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

On Jan 6, 2005, at 1:41 PM, Daniel Mayer wrote:

--- Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:

...

And even where NPOV is concerned, an expert is much more useful than just someone off the street. A non-expert POV-warrior will easily blow away a non-expert NPOV-fighter, simply because he is the one who has read at least something about the subject. An expert POV-warrior will have a much harder time fighting an expert NPOV-fighter.

And that is why we have a dispute resolution process. RfC is used to expose a conflict to a wider audience. That increases the chance that other NPOV-minded and at least semi-knowledgeable people get to voice their view and add their contribution. If that gets the attention of an expert in the field, then all the better (so long as that person adheres to NPOV). And you incorrectly assume that the non-expert POV warrior knows more than the non-expert NPOV-minded person or group (if the later are really in the right, then they will garner more support in the end and win).

Most academics are poves, that is why they became academics in the first place. The POV problem isn't going to go away any time soon, because it is a feature of the society we live in. In a micro broadcasting world of scarcity, there is a very large economic niche for being an expert Pove, recruiting lesser poves, and producing*confirmation* rather than *information*. NPOV is a more revolutionary concept than most people realize, because it is precisely not how academia operates.

What is happening on wikipedia is fundamentally different from the old knowledge system, and one which is systematically addressing many of the problems of that old system - such as the high rent to participate in it. However, it means that what you see, is what you get for a very long time in terms of social dynamics. Academic and expert Poves are merely trolls who have been taught how to do it without upsetting the other pove trolls that they have coffee with, and have been given permission to Povetroll so long as they do some level of useful work to earn their keep. (see Thomas Kuhn).

Fundamentally expertise means something very different in the wikipedia verse - it means not being able to frame competing ideas out, but being able to draw a large enough frame so that readers can reasonably weigh the competing ideas available.

This is why tools are needed that will make creating a wide frame possible, and why I propose we have a system for making citations easy, clear, annotable, and in their own namespace with macros.

Sj stated for the record:

On Thu, 6 Jan 2005 14:03:42 -0500, Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@xigenics.net wrote:

...

[micro essay on 'poves']

That slithy word will haunt my dreams.

Gyring and gimballing until you wabe up?

On Thursday 06 January 2005 21:03, Stirling Newberry wrote:

Most academics are poves, that is why they became academics in the first place.

Anti-Intellectualism at its best.

I once saw a professor visiting a Wikipedia article on maths found from a Google search, but he abandoned it just after a few seconds. Another professor has advised us never to cite material not hosted on .edu or .ac.uk or other educational domains.

If Wikipedia does not change its attitudes, it will eventually die from brain drain: New, more expertise-friendly and intellectual wikis will emerge and WP's knowledgeable users will just immigrate there.

Jean-Baptiste Soufron stated for the record:

...

If Wikipedia does not change its attitudes, it will eventually die from brain drain: New, more expertise-friendly and intellectual wikis will emerge and WP's knowledgeable users will just immigrate there.

Why would it die from brain drain when every facts are showing that wikipedia is currently ATTRACTING more and more brains ?

Wishful thinking on NSK's part -- he has decided that Wikipedia should die, because he doesn't like it.

On Jan 8, 2005, at 9:52 PM, Jens Ropers wrote:

<slagging> No, no. It's not that he doesn't like it ''in principle''. He loves ''the idea'' so much, he wishes he'd had it ''first'' -- and he'd do anything to make his own MediaWiki install catch up with and overtake Wikipedia. (Am I right not, NSK? ;-) Could take some time though, I reckon. </slagging>

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]] www.ropersonline.com

First in the field isn't always last on the field. There are cogent criticisms from Sanger and NSK which should be incorporated into future work. Articles like Flood geology are going to be a credibility problem until they are dealt with, and the vulnerability of wikipedia to being capsized by organized groups of poves is a security flaw for which there are not sufficient safeguards.

Wikipedia is a unique place and a unique project, but the bleeding edge keeps moving forward. While NSK's POV may not be welcome or popular, and I certainly don't endorse his solutions, he is expressing useful information that will be required to win over sceptics. The argument is very similar to the Linux/NetBSD arguments. NetBSD wanted more verification on contributors, and probably produced a slightly better OS, Linux won the mindshare war, simply because it could capture talent early.

NSK stated for the record:

I once saw a professor visiting a Wikipedia article on maths found from a Google search, but he abandoned it just after a few seconds. Another professor has advised us never to cite material not hosted on .edu or .ac.uk or other educational domains.

If Wikipedia does not change its attitudes, it will eventually die from brain drain: New, more expertise-friendly and intellectual wikis will emerge and WP's knowledgeable users will just immigrate there.

For someone so contemptuous of Wikipedia, you sure do like our mailing list a lot.

Stirling Newberry wrote:

But to get back to seriousness: Wikipedia does need to get more friendly to a higher level of information integrity, and it does need to get to a higher level of citation, and it does need to recruit many more people from academia to contribute articles - more specifically, it needs more people who write in their area of profession to contribute. One need not be a professor to write a good explanation of a star scheme, but actually having implemented one a few times will generally be a huge help in writing about them.

Very well said.

There's something interesting about all of this discussion: no serious person in the wikipedia community, no matter where they may fall on the spectrum of "respect/deference to professors" holds the anti-elitist view that Sanger ascribed to us.

If anything, I think we're more elitist than that: we look at academia and say "Yes, pretty good, but we should do better."

This means finding and retaining and supporting the best elements of academia, while ignoring critics who think this means that credentialism is the answer to everything.

--Jimbo

Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) [050205 09:24]:

I think there is a good deal of substance in Larry Sanger's and Robert McHenry's criticism. They are correct as long as they describe the problem they see. However, the outsider's perceived anti-elitism doesn't necessarily originate from an intentional anti-elitism in the community. And since it isn't intentional, it is quite impossible to "abandon" this anti-elitism, so Larry fails provide a solution. He suggests a fork of the project. Yes, maybe he should try this.

He specifically didn't suggest a fork, as far as I can see - he wanted to change *this* project's working methods.

The thing is, it's blindingly obvious that Wikipedia is going to be THE encyclopedia. Wikipedia, not some other open-content web-based encyclopedia, will have the brand identification Britannica had in the 20th century. We are it. We are the one. Anyone else catching up is as unlikely as FreeBSD taking over market share from Linux, even as its fans swear by it.

The annoying aspect of this is that (a) the POV warriors have a point: this is the popular one they need to hit to push their POV as NPOV; (b) people annoyed at Wikipedia don't form a fork with different policies, they're going to try to change this project instead. So Larry Sanger doesn't talk about forming another project with policies to his liking - he talks about how to put a spanner in the works of this one before it's too late.

- d.

On Feb 5, 2005, at 7:24 AM, David Gerard wrote:

Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) [050205 09:24]:

...

I think there is a good deal of substance in Larry Sanger's and Robert McHenry's criticism. They are correct as long as they describe the problem they see. However, the outsider's perceived anti-elitism doesn't necessarily originate from an intentional anti-elitism in the community. And since it isn't intentional, it is quite impossible to "abandon" this anti-elitism, so Larry fails provide a solution. He suggests a fork of the project. Yes, maybe he should try this.

He specifically didn't suggest a fork, as far as I can see - he wanted to change *this* project's working methods.

Given how wikipedia is structured, anyone with the server power can fork anytime they are willing to sponge down the material. And as for anti-elitism, it is has POVs too, often notable and documentable, and which should be present.

A great deal of the thrash on this issue is because in Wikipedia one can "look inside the sausage factory" and see the infighting and arguing that goes on. One can't see this in academia. Imagine if every academic journal had a section after each article of all of the drama processing that went into the paper - academia wouldn't quite look as shiny. Or do we need to bring up Charles Van Doren's role in the 21 scandal back in the 20th century?

The truth of much of Larry's criticism is that it is annoying for someone who knows the material to have to fight with people who don't, and wikipedia's rules are not currently structured for the impatient academic, who views the world as he glides into class, dumps his POV, and obliterates poor dissenting undergraduates with withering objections and a few points off on class participation. In fact, even fairly patient people have levels of "wikistress" which are probably higher than is sustainable.

Improvements do need to be made, many of our mechanisms are not well implemented and are frustrating to deal with. We still need to integrate citations into our text in a more thoroughly wiki manner (and here I will insert a crass plug for getting more people involved with wikicite which would do just that), we do need to improve how we handle disputes, and we do need to improve a host of other details.

Sanger's points do have merit, however, before taking measures of the kind he proposes, we should continue to place faith in the mechanism of participatory dialectic that has produced more than most people would have thought possible in a very short time.

Hi Lars,

It should also be noted that in addition to lacking the types of important articles you mention, we have some fairly fluffy articles not usually found in encyclopedias.

Most of our "list" pages, of which there must be some thousands on en:, are not to be found in an encyclopedia and can be somehow merged with a relevant page.

Having articles for each separate Pokemon, or each separate character on every popular situational comedy, or separate articles for "Demography of Sweden" (as opposed to the sub-articles where they really should be) but with all the information there just ripped directly from the CIA factbook and relatively uninformative (a link to the CIA factbook would probably be better), are what inflates our article count to such an incredible number when we still lack important articles on important historical, literary, cultural, and scientific topics.

Why is it that we have [[Blastoise]] but not [[Abdominal muscles]]?

Mark

On Sat, 5 Feb 2005 21:28:11 +0100 (CET), Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:

Stirling Newberry wrote:

...

Sanger's points do have merit, however, before taking measures of the kind he proposes, we should continue to place faith in the mechanism of participatory dialectic that has produced more than most people would have thought possible in a very short time.

Suppose Wikipedia were to introduce some restrictions, for example that you would have to register a name before you could edit, or that you would have to have your uploaded images "approved" by an administrator before they can be displayed in articles. How could we measure (in numbers) the effects of such a policy change? How much is creativity reduced and how much is vandalism reduced by the restriction? Can we measure this? If we can, wouldn't it be interesting to try such a restriction for a limited time (say, a week), while doing the measurement? Do we have any numbers of the amount of vandalism or quality of contributions today?

Two and a half years ago, I introduced the "Biggest Wiki" page on Meatball and pushed the "comma count" (number of articles) as the ultimate ranking of wikis, but I guess we are past that stage now, at least for the Wikipedias with more than 100,000 articles. In July 2002, the English Wikipedia had 35,324 articles. Today it has 467,237 articles, more than any printed encyclopedia, and still none of them gives a decent overview of "Czech literature" from Jan Hus to Karel Capek, Vaclav Havel and today. Instead of wish-listing for individual articles, how can we measure the overall article quality? Just looking for stubs is not good enough, since [[Czech literature]] is more than a stub, but less than expected from an encyclopedia.

In 1919, this Swedish encyclopedia used two and a half pages of fine print to cover Czech literature, http://runeberg.org/nfci/0108.html The supplement in 1926 adds half a page that mentions Karel Capek, http://runeberg.org/nfcr/0476.html -- for a total of 3,000 words. But Vaclav Havel has of course been added after that. The Swedish encyclopedia's division of Czech literature history into three coarse periods 900-1400, 1400-1770 and 1770-1919 is probably obsolete. The Czech Wikipedia's article on Czech literature has a more modern chronological division into sections and separate articles.

-- Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

I agree.

The "approved content" idea seems much better to me than asking experts to write everything - just have experts in the field check over the article to see if there are any inaccuracies or if there's something missing they would like to add, and then place it on Neo-Nupedia in a semi-static form (ie, so it's not directly editable, but corrections could still be submitted).

Please note that I do not intend this to replace Wikipedia, but to accompany it as an experiment.

Mark

On Sat, 5 Feb 2005 20:49:58 +0100, Paweł 'Ausir' Dembowski fallout@lexx.eu.org wrote:

Maybe a new Nupedia made of approved Wikipedia content wouldn't be that bad of an idea?

-- Ausir Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia http://pl.wikipedia.org

---

Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1

Once upon a time :-) I wrote a wikipedia mode that would display wiki pages (no edit), and when hitting a non-existing link as a logged-in user, one would get a framed (evil!) page with the matching wikipedia page, a small header showing an "import" button. "Import" would copy the wikipedia text to that wiki. It even did automatic image imports.

I don't know what happened to that script, but it should be easy enough to set up again (only the image import was a bitch).

We should run this for some time in parallel with an in-wikipedia validation feature test. That way, we see the pros and cons of each system right away.

Magnus

Mark Williamson schrieb: | I agree. | | The "approved content" idea seems much better to me than asking | experts to write everything - just have experts in the field check | over the article to see if there are any inaccuracies or if there's | something missing they would like to add, and then place it on | Neo-Nupedia in a semi-static form (ie, so it's not directly editable, | but corrections could still be submitted). | | Please note that I do not intend this to replace Wikipedia, but to | accompany it as an experiment. | | Mark | | On Sat, 5 Feb 2005 20:49:58 +0100, Pawe? 'Ausir' Dembowski | fallout@lexx.eu.org wrote: | |>Maybe a new Nupedia made of approved Wikipedia content wouldn't be |>that bad of an idea? |> |>-- |>Ausir |>Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia |>http://pl.wikipedia.org |> |>_______________________________________________ |>Wikipedia-l mailing list |>Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org |>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l |> | | _______________________________________________ | Wikipedia-l mailing list | Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org | http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" jwales@wikia.com wrote:

If anything, I think we're more elitist than that: we look at academia and say "Yes, pretty good, but we should do better."

Yep. In addition, the tendency of some to blindly defer to individual experts is a dangerous thing. Expects are humans too, and thus have their own bias and shortcomings.

For example, my intro to college chemistry instructor was a bit miffed that his doctoral work on molecular structure modeling was not accepted by the scientific community. So he taught us that part of the class (Valence Shell Electron Pair Repulsion model) with a clear bias against it.

He also thought that chlorine radicals were not responsible for the ozone hole (in opposition to scientific consensus on the issue). I was smart enough to see past his bias, but I'm sure many of my classmates bought what he said and the contempt for what he had to teach, as gospel.

I could also easily see this guy as a POV-pusher on Wikipedia who would try to use his PhD credentials as an argument stopper (don't get me wrong, he is a nice guy, but very opinionated).

I've had several other PhD professors like this as well. So blindly showing deference to people with impressive-sounding credentials is not a panacea (as Larry seems to imply). In fact, it could be a recipe for disaster.

We must instead look beyond the individual and try to fairly and accurately present the topic at hand. That can and should be done by mixing the best aspects of academia with the best aspects of enthusiastic armatures.

-- mav

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Daniel Mayer stated for the record:

--- Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:

...

We must instead look beyond the individual and try to fairly and accurately present the topic at hand. That can and should be done by mixing the best aspects of academia with the best aspects of enthusiastic armatures.

Argh. That should be 'amateurs'. :)

I thought it was a good metaphor. Wikipedia is a generator, and we're all whirling around inside it....

Daniel Mayer (maveric149@yahoo.com) [050106 19:22]:

NPOV is a much better guarantee of accuracy than trusting a supposed expert (although I do highly value feedback from field experts - I just don't take their ideas as the last word).

Absolutely.

Many in academia are used to being the gatekeepers and stewards of information. Wiki opens those gates to anybody with an Internet connection. So many in academia will always recoil in horror at the mere concept - that is their problem, their failing, not ours.

I particularly favour Clay Shirky's description of the process, in http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2005/01/03/k5_article_on_wikipedia_anti... :

It's been fascinating to watch the Kubler-Ross stages of people committed to Wikipedia's failure: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Denial was simple; people who didn't think it was possible simply dis-believed. But the numbers kept going up. Then they got angry, perhaps most famously in the likening of the Wikipedia to a public toilet by a former editor for Encyclopedia Brittanica. Sanger's post marks the bargaining phase; "OK, fine, the Wikipedia is interesting, but whatever we do, lets definitely make sure that we change it into something else rather than letting the current experiment run unchecked."

Next up will be a glum realization that there is nothing that can stop people from contributing to the Wikipedia if they want to, or to stop people from using it if they think it's useful. Freedom's funny like that.

Finally, acceptance will come about when people realize that head-to-head comparions with things like Brittanica are as stupid as comparing horseful and horseless carriages -- the automobile was a different kind of thing than a surrey. Likewise, though the Wikipedia took the -pedia suffix to make the project comprehensible, it is valuable as a site of argumentation and as a near-real-time reference, functions a traditional encyclopedia isn't even capable of. (Where, for example, is Brittanica's reference to the Indian Ocean tsunami?)

That said, we can and should continue to find ways to make our articles better. Milestone snapshots (aka Wikipedia 1.0) selected via a credible process would help a great deal toward that (as the FAC/featured article process already has for the best articles we have).

Absolutely. Is Magnus Manske's experimental rating software (active on test:) any closer to going into the running build?

As Jimbo has said a couple of times (to me at the last London meet, and reported at a previous meet), the best thing to do with a rating system at the moment is ... nothing. Run the rating system for a time period, gather the data, *don't reveal it yet* for fear of affecting the rating experiment, *then* release the data for scrutiny and ideas. how people rate things given a simple system, see if the results of that rating accord with common sense, see if they approximate the desired Rating System That Scales (the way FAC doesn't quite).

I assume the devs would prefer we shake the worst bugs out of 1.4b3 first and get a handle on the hardware situation (since the charitable would presently be tapped out by tsunami donations ;-), but is there anything stopping it then?

- d.

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales (jwales@wikia.com) [050201 07:13]:

David Gerard wrote:

...

As Jimbo has said a couple of times (to me at the last London meet, and reported at a previous meet), the best thing to do with a rating system at the moment is ... nothing. Run the rating system for a time period, gather the data, *don't reveal it yet* for fear of affecting the rating experiment, *then* release the data for scrutiny and ideas. how people rate things given a simple system, see if the results of that rating accord with common sense, see if they approximate the desired Rating System That Scales (the way FAC doesn't quite).

Yes, perfect.

I asked on wikitech-l, and Magnus said his rating code is not (in his opinion) ready for prime time yet. Anyone want to beat it into shape in short order?

- d.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1

Stirling Newberry schrieb: | | On Jan 31, 2005, at 6:46 PM, David Gerard wrote: |> I asked on wikitech-l, and Magnus said his rating code is not (in his |> opinion) ready for prime time yet. Anyone want to beat it into shape in |> short order? |> |> | | Link to code?

Main stuff is in

~ phase3/includes/SpecialValidate.php

though there are small parts elsewhere, e.g. display of the additional "validation" tab.

I remember that, in addition to turning it on with some global variable, one needs to create a SQL table. Damn if I remember where I stored it (wasn't too complex, though, I can probably reverse-engineer it from the PHP).

Note that this will probably break with the 1.5 extensions, as the whole version counting is redone.

Magnus

Daniel Mayer a écrit:

--- Shaun MacPherson shaun_macpherson2001@yahoo.ca wrote:

...

Larry Sanger believes that the solution to make Wikipedia more credible are with experts. You can see a good article descriping his criticisms here ( http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/03/144207&tid=95&tid=1 ) posted on Jan 3, 2004.

I respect Larry and what he did to help Wikipedia along in its first year. But I will never just assume that somebody with a PhD is right since many PhDs all too often are not; I've come across and know of a good many PhDs who have axes to grind and who have pet theories to push.

NPOV is a much better guarantee of accuracy than trusting a supposed expert (although I do highly value feedback from field experts - I just don't take their ideas as the last word).

Many in academia are used to being the gatekeepers and stewards of information. Wiki opens those gates to anybody with an Internet connection. So many in academia will always recoil in horror at the mere concept - that is their problem, their failing, not ours.

I totally agree here. Wikipedia relies on this concept that no one knows everything but everyone knows something he can teach others. It recognises that knowledge and rightfullness is not only due when you made upper studies. It wonderfully succeed to give power to the lay man, to turn him from being a passive reader of news to someone involved. It is SO empowering.

Tim Starling (t.starling@physics.unimelb.edu.au) [050107 17:56]:

Academics, as well as other non-insane people, must fight with various kinds of looneys if they want the Wikipedia article in question to be accurate and neutral. Dispute resolution only works where the POV-pushers also break rules of behaviour, otherwise the only solution is to fight forever. Put the article on your watchlist, revert and argue for as long as you both shall live. In the case of popular articles, there's a constant stream of new POV-pushers, so you have to keep arguing and fighting even after the original warriors have gotten bored and left.

*shudder* Yes, that's appallingly accurate. The only solutions I've found that work (when they work) are requesting decent-quality checkable references and (when necessary) trying to explain NPOV.

Having to explain NPOV to people is ridiculous, or should be. I'd never say we should do it, but the idea of requiring people to pass a short test on NPOV before editing is appallingly tempting. (Particularly on anything relating to Israel, open source software or pop divas.)

But then, as Stirling Newberry points out, NPOV as it's applied in Wikipedia is actually quite a radical concept. It'll take time to percolate out into the wider world.

Larry Sanger wants a shortcut out of this process for experts. I would prefer having a shortcut even for non-experts. Various models have been proposed in the past, "content arbitration" is a particularly neat term for it.

I don't have a detailed answer as to why off the top of my head, but this smells like a really bad idea. Requiring references as to the prominence of a given POV, to justify its inclusion, should be enough in all cases that spring to mind.

- d.

On Jan 7, 2005, at 5:49 AM, Fred Bauder wrote:

Dispute resolution with respect to POV pushers may work if you focus on What Wikipedia is not, the clause about propaganda and advocacy. For evidence you need to show repeated removal of well referenced information which the POV pusher is trying to remove and repeated insertions of poorly or unreferenced information the POV pusher is trying to add

In articles of current interest, there are many poves who are not well informed but have very strongly held opinions, and will fit this profile. The other pove profile however, is that of a person advocating the viewpoint of a particularly group or point of view. It may be the orthodox academic view, or it can range all the way out into the far fringes of fruit loopery. But one can be sure he's got documentation. Lots of it. It's his holy book, and he can quote chapter and verse why you aren't right, and he has websites that repeat, over and over again, basic dogma. They compile references and create arguments for their evangelists.

On Jan 7, 2005, at 8:23 AM, Fred Bauder wrote:

In cases of expert academic POV pushing their efforts remain obvious, but definitely the ante is upped, perhaps beyond our current ability to deal with. However we must develop this capacity or accept a mediocre product.

I am in absolute agreement that we must expand the number of "experts" contributing to wikipedia - even one or two can make a huge difference in an section of articles, particularly if they create a project, and serve as a contact point. We also must develop resources to encourage it - and citations are big part of getting experts "into the loop".

Indeed - while experts should not be allowed a monopoly on articles, they should certainly be allowed some measure of control: ie, they cannot remove information, or turn it into POV, but...

Well, unfortunately it would seem we have academics with one POV vs. loonies with another. Rarely do we have Academics with one POV vs Academics with another POV, which is what we need if Wikipedia is to be reliable: sensible neutrality, rather than insane neutrality. We don't want people like Edo Nyland or Antifinnugror able to insert their POVs as if they were academic opinions on the level of those of, say, Oswald Szemerenyi or even Joseph Greenburg.

Mark

On Fri, 07 Jan 2005 17:55:58 +1100, Tim Starling t.starling@physics.unimelb.edu.au wrote:

I think the experience of academics on Wikipedia is much the same as the experience of non-specialists on Wikipedia, or of academics acting as non-specialists. Academics, as well as other non-insane people, must fight with various kinds of looneys if they want the Wikipedia article in question to be accurate and neutral. Dispute resolution only works where the POV-pushers also break rules of behaviour, otherwise the only solution is to fight forever. Put the article on your watchlist, revert and argue for as long as you both shall live. In the case of popular articles, there's a constant stream of new POV-pushers, so you have to keep arguing and fighting even after the original warriors have gotten bored and left.

Larry Sanger wants a shortcut out of this process for experts. I would prefer having a shortcut even for non-experts. Various models have been proposed in the past, "content arbitration" is a particularly neat term for it.

-- Tim Starling

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