Greetings –
I hope this is a good place to send a weighty message to Wikipedia. You’ll want to read all through.
I am a scientist who has always liked the Wikipedia idea, and I like your implementation. Lately I’ve started making contributions. Although I’m a cognitive scientist who taught biological psychology at degree level for several years and have done AI research since the ‘80’s, I’ve diverted for a decade or more to resolve a set of major evolutionary puzzles.
Fairly peripheral but within the overall project was an investigation of bird breathing, and I decided to piece together the research into it, and deliver it properly to the public. Trust me, the finer details were obscure. On the way I discovered why penguins’ lungs don’t collapse even at 500m when whales’ lungs collapse by 100m; I found out what the neopulmo did (though not why) and why penguins don’t have it, and I changed our understanding of flow within it; I also resolved the old chestnut of whether birds had counter-current exchange in their lungs. That is, completely discovered, not just for myself. By careful editing and addition including the long overdue diagram the subject needed, I converted the two Wikipedia pages dealing with bird breathing from an incomplete mire to a place of revelation (though the German version needs starting afresh, and Duncker agrees). But it was an honour do so.
More central to my overall project was cladogenesis, the heart of palaeontology and just the thing that I, as an MSc in info. sys. engineering would be expected to get into. I’ve written my own clad. software, invented and implemented my own heuristic version, proved the theorem in graph theory that resolves an issue in checking evolutionary trees by time and rooting them, and highlighted a serious statistical fallacy invalidating another major current of work in the time-checking of trees.
In these activities I was almost entirely alone as regards other workers in the overall field, since that field, dinobird palaeontology, is notorious for its abuse of the lack of scientific and indeed academic constraint that all historical disciplines are prey to. Applicants for research positions into that biological science, which relies heavily on computer science and statistics, are usually accepted with just a geology first degree. Put succinctly but honestly, the standard of science amongst professional dinobird palaeontologists is crap, so much so that I’ve never taken the idea of publishing formally in the field very seriously. I do from time to time in AI, but any scientist with something sensible to say in dinobird palaeo will always be violating sacred errors and be blocked. Although useless, the field is very proud and stubborn.
But there is a layer of humanity too stupid even to become professional palaeontologists – and guess what? They’ve established a self-aggrandising population in the basement of Wikipedia, grooming their egos by becoming gatekeepers. I’m sick of the sight of their pathetic award stars.
I wasn’t surprised; in fact I’d been surprised by the ease with which my bird-lung editing had been accepted, which is why I’d turned my attention to another problem page that was actually even more of a mess.
Most people, even those interested in the subject, have no idea why dromaeosaurs had such strange claws, teeth and tails. Many even doubt that the special foot claw was a weapon. And because they have no understanding of the vital importance of backtracking in knowledge engineering, they can’t escape the rut of believing dromaeosaurs were “pre” flight (“pre” of course being a very dodgy evolutionary concept). But solving this kind of thing was easy compared to related subjects, and other visionaries such as Paul and Osmolska had made their contributions and published some of the basics. The four-winged flight of volant dromaeosaurs was harder but I found a solution to that too (...though you’re not going to like it; even I didn’t).
I know what you’re thinking – Original Work. But of course that was taken account of: much of the problem with the Velociraptor page was balance – some theories had been simply ignored, even though works mentioning them were already in the citation list. Other problems were solved by pointing out glaring illogicalities: ensuring the explanation of a difference between two things must be based on some other difference applying to them. Things like that don’t need citations, things that needed them were given them, and when necessary I cited my own book. That after all is very common in Wikipedia, and there’s no point frowning on the basic principle (especially when it’s a good book!).
As you may have guessed or already knew, anyone bringing much-needed but unfamiliar and unwelcome science (i.e. any science) to dinobird palaeontology is automatically put on the hate list and from then on it’s just sociology. Pointing out that modern science knows better than to talk of “facts”, is the kind of thing that sets the idiots off, but is one essential principle Wikipedia needs to take on board. Luckily the pseudo-scientists usually give themselves away, as they did on the Velociraptor page most bizarrely. First, they insisted the tail couldn’t bend vertically, alongside a picture showing the last two-thirds bending up through 60º. Then they insisted its prey only had one leg whereas two could be seen even in the thumbnail. No accusations of original work at risk there. Nonetheless they kept on reversing EVERYTHING I’d written – the illogicality-busting, the theory-balance restoration, and even corrections to their crap which was contradicted by the images in front of their eyes.
The result? Someone’s stopped the repeated reversals, and of course, they chose to stop it on the lunatic side. Irrespective of the “Protection is not an endorsement of the current text” message, this “temporary” status is a massive insult to science, which is why it’s important, and a massive insult to me which has ensured my action.
I’m going to find the 100 most influential loud-mouthed Wiki-haters on the net, show them the crucial photos, and the illogicalities, and I hope I’m going to be able to say: “Look – some tiny-minded pseudo-scientists started to infect Wikipedia filling even science pages with blatant rubbish, but see how good it is? It put them in their place!”
I know an organisation of your size won’t bother with anything that can’t affect it, and I haven’t time to dissolve you with charm. I’m considering removing all the good work I’ve done in the bird breathing pages, and their talk pages that explain it, as a token of what you’ll lose if you reward my kind of work with insults. I was happy to give it free but people can always buy the book. Put it back if you want, but if you don’t, the pages will lose a lot and if you do you’ll underline my value. And of course there’s the stuff above that could go one way or another depending on you. Much will be done before the election and as much as is necessary when it’s over. Don’t just hand this over to another of the dinosaur Wiki-wankers, and don’t let them keep spuriously using the word “source” to justify feeding the world crap.
John V. Jackson. http://sciencepolice2010.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/sciencepolice2010-launches... http://sciencepolice2010.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/sciencepolice-14-latest...
TL;DR (Too long; didn't read.)
Please provide a summary that makes clear what point you are trying to make...
On 26 October 2012 11:55, John Jackson strangetruther@gmail.com wrote:
Greetings –
I hope this is a good place to send a weighty message to Wikipedia. You’ll want to read all through.
I am a scientist who has always liked the Wikipedia idea, and I like your implementation. Lately I’ve started making contributions. Although I’m a cognitive scientist who taught biological psychology at degree level for several years and have done AI research since the ‘80’s, I’ve diverted for a decade or more to resolve a set of major evolutionary puzzles.
Fairly peripheral but within the overall project was an investigation of bird breathing, and I decided to piece together the research into it, and deliver it properly to the public. Trust me, the finer details were obscure. On the way I discovered why penguins’ lungs don’t collapse even at 500m when whales’ lungs collapse by 100m; I found out what the neopulmo did (though not why) and why penguins don’t have it, and I changed our understanding of flow within it; I also resolved the old chestnut of whether birds had counter-current exchange in their lungs. That is, completely discovered, not just for myself. By careful editing and addition including the long overdue diagram the subject needed, I converted the two Wikipedia pages dealing with bird breathing from an incomplete mire to a place of revelation (though the German version needs starting afresh, and Duncker agrees). But it was an honour do so.
More central to my overall project was cladogenesis, the heart of palaeontology and just the thing that I, as an MSc in info. sys. engineering would be expected to get into. I’ve written my own clad. software, invented and implemented my own heuristic version, proved the theorem in graph theory that resolves an issue in checking evolutionary trees by time and rooting them, and highlighted a serious statistical fallacy invalidating another major current of work in the time-checking of trees.
In these activities I was almost entirely alone as regards other workers in the overall field, since that field, dinobird palaeontology, is notorious for its abuse of the lack of scientific and indeed academic constraint that all historical disciplines are prey to. Applicants for research positions into that biological science, which relies heavily on computer science and statistics, are usually accepted with just a geology first degree. Put succinctly but honestly, the standard of science amongst professional dinobird palaeontologists is crap, so much so that I’ve never taken the idea of publishing formally in the field very seriously. I do from time to time in AI, but any scientist with something sensible to say in dinobird palaeo will always be violating sacred errors and be blocked. Although useless, the field is very proud and stubborn.
But there is a layer of humanity too stupid even to become professional palaeontologists – and guess what? They’ve established a self-aggrandising population in the basement of Wikipedia, grooming their egos by becoming gatekeepers. I’m sick of the sight of their pathetic award stars.
I wasn’t surprised; in fact I’d been surprised by the ease with which my bird-lung editing had been accepted, which is why I’d turned my attention to another problem page that was actually even more of a mess.
Most people, even those interested in the subject, have no idea why dromaeosaurs had such strange claws, teeth and tails. Many even doubt that the special foot claw was a weapon. And because they have no understanding of the vital importance of backtracking in knowledge engineering, they can’t escape the rut of believing dromaeosaurs were “pre” flight (“pre” of course being a very dodgy evolutionary concept). But solving this kind of thing was easy compared to related subjects, and other visionaries such as Paul and Osmolska had made their contributions and published some of the basics. The four-winged flight of volant dromaeosaurs was harder but I found a solution to that too (...though you’re not going to like it; even I didn’t).
I know what you’re thinking – Original Work. But of course that was taken account of: much of the problem with the Velociraptor page was balance – some theories had been simply ignored, even though works mentioning them were already in the citation list. Other problems were solved by pointing out glaring illogicalities: ensuring the explanation of a difference between two things must be based on some other difference applying to them. Things like that don’t need citations, things that needed them were given them, and when necessary I cited my own book. That after all is very common in Wikipedia, and there’s no point frowning on the basic principle (especially when it’s a good book!).
As you may have guessed or already knew, anyone bringing much-needed but unfamiliar and unwelcome science (i.e. any science) to dinobird palaeontology is automatically put on the hate list and from then on it’s just sociology. Pointing out that modern science knows better than to talk of “facts”, is the kind of thing that sets the idiots off, but is one essential principle Wikipedia needs to take on board. Luckily the pseudo-scientists usually give themselves away, as they did on the Velociraptor page most bizarrely. First, they insisted the tail couldn’t bend vertically, alongside a picture showing the last two-thirds bending up through 60º. Then they insisted its prey only had one leg whereas two could be seen even in the thumbnail. No accusations of original work at risk there. Nonetheless they kept on reversing EVERYTHING I’d written – the illogicality-busting, the theory-balance restoration, and even corrections to their crap which was contradicted by the images in front of their eyes.
The result? Someone’s stopped the repeated reversals, and of course, they chose to stop it on the lunatic side. Irrespective of the “Protection is not an endorsement of the current text” message, this “temporary” status is a massive insult to science, which is why it’s important, and a massive insult to me which has ensured my action.
I’m going to find the 100 most influential loud-mouthed Wiki-haters on the net, show them the crucial photos, and the illogicalities, and I hope I’m going to be able to say: “Look – some tiny-minded pseudo-scientists started to infect Wikipedia filling even science pages with blatant rubbish, but see how good it is? It put them in their place!”
I know an organisation of your size won’t bother with anything that can’t affect it, and I haven’t time to dissolve you with charm. I’m considering removing all the good work I’ve done in the bird breathing pages, and their talk pages that explain it, as a token of what you’ll lose if you reward my kind of work with insults. I was happy to give it free but people can always buy the book. Put it back if you want, but if you don’t, the pages will lose a lot and if you do you’ll underline my value. And of course there’s the stuff above that could go one way or another depending on you. Much will be done before the election and as much as is necessary when it’s over. Don’t just hand this over to another of the dinosaur Wiki-wankers, and don’t let them keep spuriously using the word “source” to justify feeding the world crap.
John V. Jackson. http://sciencepolice2010.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/sciencepolice2010-launches... http://sciencepolice2010.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/sciencepolice-14-latest...
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Shortened, and grossly over-simplified: A biologist wrote some things about biology and they were not challenged. Then he wrote some things about dinosaurs, and they were reverted. If I understood correctly, the reason for the reverts was that it appeared to be original research (WP:NOR). And now the biologist is pissed off, possibly for a good reason, and wants his previous contributions removed, too.
This is a story that repeats itself quite often, with surprisingly similar details: an expert does some acceptable things, then doing some things that turn out to rouse controversy, then wanting to retire with a storm. I'm not implying that the expert is bad, absolutely not; I'm just noting a pattern.
Whatever the details of the story are, it's not good and it may justify discussion.
But as a meta-comment, it should be done on wikien-l or on wikimedia-l, and not on this list, which is called "wikipedia-l", but is not active in practice.
-- Amir
2012/10/26 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com
TL;DR (Too long; didn't read.)
Please provide a summary that makes clear what point you are trying to make...
On 26 October 2012 11:55, John Jackson strangetruther@gmail.com wrote:
Greetings –
I hope this is a good place to send a weighty message to Wikipedia. You’ll want to read all through.
I am a scientist who has always liked the Wikipedia idea, and I like your implementation. Lately I’ve started making contributions. Although I’m a cognitive scientist who taught biological psychology at degree level for several years and have done AI research since the ‘80’s, I’ve diverted for a decade or more to resolve a set of major evolutionary puzzles.
Fairly peripheral but within the overall project was an investigation of bird breathing, and I decided to piece together the research into it, and deliver it properly to the public. Trust me, the finer details were obscure. On the way I discovered why penguins’ lungs don’t collapse even at 500m when whales’ lungs collapse by 100m; I found out what the neopulmo did (though not why) and why penguins don’t have it, and I changed our understanding of flow within it; I also resolved the old chestnut of whether birds had counter-current exchange in their lungs. That is, completely discovered, not just for myself. By careful editing and addition including the long overdue diagram the subject needed, I converted the two Wikipedia pages dealing with bird breathing from an incomplete mire to a place of revelation (though the German version needs starting afresh, and Duncker agrees). But it was an honour do so.
More central to my overall project was cladogenesis, the heart of palaeontology and just the thing that I, as an MSc in info. sys. engineering would be expected to get into. I’ve written my own clad. software, invented and implemented my own heuristic version, proved the theorem in graph theory that resolves an issue in checking evolutionary trees by time and rooting them, and highlighted a serious statistical fallacy invalidating another major current of work in the time-checking of trees.
In these activities I was almost entirely alone as regards other workers in the overall field, since that field, dinobird palaeontology, is notorious for its abuse of the lack of scientific and indeed academic constraint that all historical disciplines are prey to. Applicants for research positions into that biological science, which relies heavily on computer science and statistics, are usually accepted with just a geology first degree. Put succinctly but honestly, the standard of science amongst professional dinobird palaeontologists is crap, so much so that I’ve never taken the idea of publishing formally in the field very seriously. I do from time to time in AI, but any scientist with something sensible to say in dinobird palaeo will always be violating sacred errors and be blocked. Although useless, the field is very proud and stubborn.
But there is a layer of humanity too stupid even to become professional palaeontologists – and guess what? They’ve established a self-aggrandising population in the basement of Wikipedia, grooming their egos by becoming gatekeepers. I’m sick of the sight of their pathetic award stars.
I wasn’t surprised; in fact I’d been surprised by the ease with which my bird-lung editing had been accepted, which is why I’d turned my attention to another problem page that was actually even more of a mess.
Most people, even those interested in the subject, have no idea why dromaeosaurs had such strange claws, teeth and tails. Many even doubt that the special foot claw was a weapon. And because they have no understanding of the vital importance of backtracking in knowledge engineering, they can’t escape the rut of believing dromaeosaurs were “pre” flight (“pre” of course being a very dodgy evolutionary concept). But solving this kind of thing was easy compared to related subjects, and other visionaries such as Paul and Osmolska had made their contributions and published some of the basics. The four-winged flight of volant dromaeosaurs was harder but I found a solution to that too (...though you’re not going to like it; even I didn’t).
I know what you’re thinking – Original Work. But of course that was taken account of: much of the problem with the Velociraptor page was balance – some theories had been simply ignored, even though works mentioning them were already in the citation list. Other problems were solved by pointing out glaring illogicalities: ensuring the explanation of a difference between two things must be based on some other difference applying to them. Things like that don’t need citations, things that needed them were given them, and when necessary I cited my own book. That after all is very common in Wikipedia, and there’s no point frowning on the basic principle (especially when it’s a good book!).
As you may have guessed or already knew, anyone bringing much-needed but unfamiliar and unwelcome science (i.e. any science) to dinobird palaeontology is automatically put on the hate list and from then on it’s just sociology. Pointing out that modern science knows better than to talk of “facts”, is the kind of thing that sets the idiots off, but is one essential principle Wikipedia needs to take on board. Luckily the pseudo-scientists usually give themselves away, as they did on the Velociraptor page most bizarrely. First, they insisted the tail couldn’t bend vertically, alongside a picture showing the last two-thirds bending up through 60º. Then they insisted its prey only had one leg whereas two could be seen even in the thumbnail. No accusations of original work at risk there. Nonetheless they kept on reversing EVERYTHING I’d written – the illogicality-busting, the theory-balance restoration, and even corrections to their crap which was contradicted by the images in front of their eyes.
The result? Someone’s stopped the repeated reversals, and of course, they chose to stop it on the lunatic side. Irrespective of the “Protection is not an endorsement of the current text” message, this “temporary” status is a massive insult to science, which is why it’s important, and a massive insult to me which has ensured my action.
I’m going to find the 100 most influential loud-mouthed Wiki-haters on the net, show them the crucial photos, and the illogicalities, and I hope I’m going to be able to say: “Look – some tiny-minded pseudo-scientists started to infect Wikipedia filling even science pages with blatant rubbish, but see how good it is? It put them in their place!”
I know an organisation of your size won’t bother with anything that can’t affect it, and I haven’t time to dissolve you with charm. I’m considering removing all the good work I’ve done in the bird breathing pages, and their talk pages that explain it, as a token of what you’ll lose if you reward my kind of work with insults. I was happy to give it free but people can always buy the book. Put it back if you want, but if you don’t, the pages will lose a lot and if you do you’ll underline my value. And of course there’s the stuff above that could go one way or another depending on you. Much will be done before the election and as much as is necessary when it’s over. Don’t just hand this over to another of the dinosaur Wiki-wankers, and don’t let them keep spuriously using the word “source” to justify feeding the world crap.
John V. Jackson. http://sciencepolice2010.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/sciencepolice2010-launches... http://sciencepolice2010.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/sciencepolice-14-latest...
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Amir is right, without judging this specific case, the pattern describe here is a problem.
Especially the massive revert attitude , it's really a challenge for retaining new specialist editor.
Charles
___________________________________________________________ Charles ANDRES, Chairman "Wikimedia CH" – Association for the advancement of free knowledge – www.wikimedia.ch Skype: charles.andres.wmch IRC://irc.freenode.net/wikimedia-ch
Le 26 oct. 2012 à 13:43, "Amir E. Aharoni" amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il a écrit :
Shortened, and grossly over-simplified: A biologist wrote some things about biology and they were not challenged. Then he wrote some things about dinosaurs, and they were reverted. If I understood correctly, the reason for the reverts was that it appeared to be original research (WP:NOR). And now the biologist is pissed off, possibly for a good reason, and wants his previous contributions removed, too.
This is a story that repeats itself quite often, with surprisingly similar details: an expert does some acceptable things, then doing some things that turn out to rouse controversy, then wanting to retire with a storm. I'm not implying that the expert is bad, absolutely not; I'm just noting a pattern.
Whatever the details of the story are, it's not good and it may justify discussion.
But as a meta-comment, it should be done on wikien-l or on wikimedia-l, and not on this list, which is called "wikipedia-l", but is not active in practice.
-- Amir
2012/10/26 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com
TL;DR (Too long; didn't read.)
Please provide a summary that makes clear what point you are trying to make...
On 26 October 2012 11:55, John Jackson strangetruther@gmail.com wrote:
Greetings –
I hope this is a good place to send a weighty message to Wikipedia. You’ll want to read all through.
I am a scientist who has always liked the Wikipedia idea, and I like your implementation. Lately I’ve started making contributions. Although I’m a cognitive scientist who taught biological psychology at degree level for several years and have done AI research since the ‘80’s, I’ve diverted for a decade or more to resolve a set of major evolutionary puzzles.
Fairly peripheral but within the overall project was an investigation of bird breathing, and I decided to piece together the research into it, and deliver it properly to the public. Trust me, the finer details were obscure. On the way I discovered why penguins’ lungs don’t collapse even at 500m when whales’ lungs collapse by 100m; I found out what the neopulmo did (though not why) and why penguins don’t have it, and I changed our understanding of flow within it; I also resolved the old chestnut of whether birds had counter-current exchange in their lungs. That is, completely discovered, not just for myself. By careful editing and addition including the long overdue diagram the subject needed, I converted the two Wikipedia pages dealing with bird breathing from an incomplete mire to a place of revelation (though the German version needs starting afresh, and Duncker agrees). But it was an honour do so.
More central to my overall project was cladogenesis, the heart of palaeontology and just the thing that I, as an MSc in info. sys. engineering would be expected to get into. I’ve written my own clad. software, invented and implemented my own heuristic version, proved the theorem in graph theory that resolves an issue in checking evolutionary trees by time and rooting them, and highlighted a serious statistical fallacy invalidating another major current of work in the time-checking of trees.
In these activities I was almost entirely alone as regards other workers in the overall field, since that field, dinobird palaeontology, is notorious for its abuse of the lack of scientific and indeed academic constraint that all historical disciplines are prey to. Applicants for research positions into that biological science, which relies heavily on computer science and statistics, are usually accepted with just a geology first degree. Put succinctly but honestly, the standard of science amongst professional dinobird palaeontologists is crap, so much so that I’ve never taken the idea of publishing formally in the field very seriously. I do from time to time in AI, but any scientist with something sensible to say in dinobird palaeo will always be violating sacred errors and be blocked. Although useless, the field is very proud and stubborn.
But there is a layer of humanity too stupid even to become professional palaeontologists – and guess what? They’ve established a self-aggrandising population in the basement of Wikipedia, grooming their egos by becoming gatekeepers. I’m sick of the sight of their pathetic award stars.
I wasn’t surprised; in fact I’d been surprised by the ease with which my bird-lung editing had been accepted, which is why I’d turned my attention to another problem page that was actually even more of a mess.
Most people, even those interested in the subject, have no idea why dromaeosaurs had such strange claws, teeth and tails. Many even doubt that the special foot claw was a weapon. And because they have no understanding of the vital importance of backtracking in knowledge engineering, they can’t escape the rut of believing dromaeosaurs were “pre” flight (“pre” of course being a very dodgy evolutionary concept). But solving this kind of thing was easy compared to related subjects, and other visionaries such as Paul and Osmolska had made their contributions and published some of the basics. The four-winged flight of volant dromaeosaurs was harder but I found a solution to that too (...though you’re not going to like it; even I didn’t).
I know what you’re thinking – Original Work. But of course that was taken account of: much of the problem with the Velociraptor page was balance – some theories had been simply ignored, even though works mentioning them were already in the citation list. Other problems were solved by pointing out glaring illogicalities: ensuring the explanation of a difference between two things must be based on some other difference applying to them. Things like that don’t need citations, things that needed them were given them, and when necessary I cited my own book. That after all is very common in Wikipedia, and there’s no point frowning on the basic principle (especially when it’s a good book!).
As you may have guessed or already knew, anyone bringing much-needed but unfamiliar and unwelcome science (i.e. any science) to dinobird palaeontology is automatically put on the hate list and from then on it’s just sociology. Pointing out that modern science knows better than to talk of “facts”, is the kind of thing that sets the idiots off, but is one essential principle Wikipedia needs to take on board. Luckily the pseudo-scientists usually give themselves away, as they did on the Velociraptor page most bizarrely. First, they insisted the tail couldn’t bend vertically, alongside a picture showing the last two-thirds bending up through 60º. Then they insisted its prey only had one leg whereas two could be seen even in the thumbnail. No accusations of original work at risk there. Nonetheless they kept on reversing EVERYTHING I’d written – the illogicality-busting, the theory-balance restoration, and even corrections to their crap which was contradicted by the images in front of their eyes.
The result? Someone’s stopped the repeated reversals, and of course, they chose to stop it on the lunatic side. Irrespective of the “Protection is not an endorsement of the current text” message, this “temporary” status is a massive insult to science, which is why it’s important, and a massive insult to me which has ensured my action.
I’m going to find the 100 most influential loud-mouthed Wiki-haters on the net, show them the crucial photos, and the illogicalities, and I hope I’m going to be able to say: “Look – some tiny-minded pseudo-scientists started to infect Wikipedia filling even science pages with blatant rubbish, but see how good it is? It put them in their place!”
I know an organisation of your size won’t bother with anything that can’t affect it, and I haven’t time to dissolve you with charm. I’m considering removing all the good work I’ve done in the bird breathing pages, and their talk pages that explain it, as a token of what you’ll lose if you reward my kind of work with insults. I was happy to give it free but people can always buy the book. Put it back if you want, but if you don’t, the pages will lose a lot and if you do you’ll underline my value. And of course there’s the stuff above that could go one way or another depending on you. Much will be done before the election and as much as is necessary when it’s over. Don’t just hand this over to another of the dinosaur Wiki-wankers, and don’t let them keep spuriously using the word “source” to justify feeding the world crap.
John V. Jackson. http://sciencepolice2010.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/sciencepolice2010-launches... http://sciencepolice2010.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/sciencepolice-14-latest...
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
It's pretty simple, publish original work elsewhere first.
Fred
Greetings
I hope this is a good place to send a weighty message to Wikipedia. Youll want to read all through.
I am a scientist who has always liked the Wikipedia idea, and I like your implementation. Lately Ive started making contributions. Although Im a cognitive scientist who taught biological psychology at degree level for several years and have done AI research since the 80s, Ive diverted for a decade or more to resolve a set of major evolutionary puzzles.
John V. Jackson. http://sciencepolice2010.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/sciencepolice2010-launches... http://sciencepolice2010.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/sciencepolice-14-latest...
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Right. We (Wikipedia) are not qualified to judge if these original claims are accurate, reasonable, worthy of consideration, unlikely, incorrect, or batshit insane.
Attempting to publish novel theories via Wikipedia - no matter how well supported - is completely the wrong approach. Scientific inquiry is not a single-handed enterprise. It depends on peer review of theories and evidence and conclusions. That peer review must be by qualified peers in the field.
-george william herbert
On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 9:40 AM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
It's pretty simple, publish original work elsewhere first.
Fred
Greetings –
I hope this is a good place to send a weighty message to Wikipedia. You’ll want to read all through.
I am a scientist who has always liked the Wikipedia idea, and I like your implementation. Lately I’ve started making contributions. Although I’m a cognitive scientist who taught biological psychology at degree level for several years and have done AI research since the ‘80’s, I’ve diverted for a decade or more to resolve a set of major evolutionary puzzles.
John V. Jackson. http://sciencepolice2010.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/sciencepolice2010-launches... http://sciencepolice2010.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/sciencepolice-14-latest...
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
For subjects that aren't controversial, the peer reviewing structure of a university or journal might work.
In general though, a peer review is as good as the credibility of the peer reviewer. A reference is as good as the credibility of the referencer,etc... That is the essence of the pagerank algorithm that is used by google to compute the credibility of an internet page.
The solution to this problem is really easy IMO. Let all articles be forked and provide a personalized reputation system that will only fetch only one page per article for every user.
2012/10/27 George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
Right. We (Wikipedia) are not qualified to judge if these original claims are accurate, reasonable, worthy of consideration, unlikely, incorrect, or batshit insane.
Attempting to publish novel theories via Wikipedia - no matter how well supported - is completely the wrong approach. Scientific inquiry is not a single-handed enterprise. It depends on peer review of theories and evidence and conclusions. That peer review must be by qualified peers in the field.
-george william herbert
On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 9:40 AM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
It's pretty simple, publish original work elsewhere first.
Fred
Greetings –
I hope this is a good place to send a weighty message to Wikipedia. You’ll want to read all through.
I am a scientist who has always liked the Wikipedia idea, and I like your implementation. Lately I’ve started making contributions. Although I’m a cognitive scientist who taught biological psychology at degree level for several years and have done AI research since the ‘80’s, I’ve diverted for a decade or more to resolve a set of major evolutionary puzzles.
John V. Jackson.
http://sciencepolice2010.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/sciencepolice2010-launches...
http://sciencepolice2010.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/sciencepolice-14-latest...
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 11:06 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis xekoukou@gmail.com wrote:
The solution to this problem is really easy IMO. Let all articles be forked and provide a personalized reputation system that will only fetch only one page per article for every user.
Yes! Let's build our own [[Filter bubble]] right into Wikipedia!
Magnus (who was there when Stallman talked about GNUpedia, aiming for that very concept. Still aiming, though.)
Progress only occurs when there are different views that can coexist. When you force the less popular views to disapear into a talk page, ie into obscurity, then the stronger view becomes the only view. So wikipedia is not solving the filter buble problem as it is now. It simply has one filter buble created by the most enduring, by the strongest.
In my proposal, all different opinions could and should be easiliy accessible.
2012/10/27 Magnus Manske magnusmanske@googlemail.com
On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 11:06 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis xekoukou@gmail.com wrote:
The solution to this problem is really easy IMO. Let all articles be
forked
and provide a personalized reputation system that will only fetch only
one
page per article for every user.
Yes! Let's build our own [[Filter bubble]] right into Wikipedia!
Magnus (who was there when Stallman talked about GNUpedia, aiming for that very concept. Still aiming, though.)
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
This is the place for talking about how we can make the software better, however. One way would be to have some means of making it easier for people to read, in situ, excerpts from texts cited, so that people can look directly at the cited work. We have more that a few dead citations, perhaps a page on writing a bot to keep citations and links up to date?
As for the long standing problem of integrating expertise, while it is very real and of intense interest, this is not the best forum for the discussion. Wikipedia is not peer review, it is public review.
On Oct 26, 2012, at 6:49 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis wrote:
Progress only occurs when there are different views that can coexist. When you force the less popular views to disapear into a talk page, ie into obscurity, then the stronger view becomes the only view. So wikipedia is not solving the filter buble problem as it is now. It simply has one filter buble created by the most enduring, by the strongest.
In my proposal, all different opinions could and should be easiliy accessible.
2012/10/27 Magnus Manske magnusmanske@googlemail.com
On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 11:06 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis xekoukou@gmail.com wrote:
The solution to this problem is really easy IMO. Let all articles be
forked
and provide a personalized reputation system that will only fetch only
one
page per article for every user.
Yes! Let's build our own [[Filter bubble]] right into Wikipedia!
Magnus (who was there when Stallman talked about GNUpedia, aiming for that very concept. Still aiming, though.)
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
--
Sincerely yours,
Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hi again – I'm just throwing in comments now, The Business has... forked... as I think you would say :-/
"It's pretty simple, publish original work elsewhere first."
Good – so you do, then people who know nothing about anything announce another requirement. Usually, it's that you ask them or some other self-serving gatekeeper all over again.
It's useful that "peer review" is so commonly mentioned. It helps warn the real people quickly of those who think it's more than a political game, so we can avoid them/make plans for them. It might be less ludicrous if PR supporters expected a Phi. of Sci expert on each review board. Without that it's an obvious farce.
There is only this in some form or another: http://sciencepolice2010.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/sciencepolice-14-latest...
...and politics in some form or another, usually Wizard of Oz'd to the full.
Fact: Popper never even MENTIONED peer review in either of his most notable Phi. of Sci. books. Don't expect others to assume Popper's view is automatically wrong; don't assume either that those with a good handle on how to make robots think scientifically, would expect those robots to need multi-stage publication reviews before they accept any useful new belief.
Peer review is a method of preventing thorough consideration of a theory, not of ensuring it. ...AS I EXPLAIN THOROUGHLY IN MY BOOK WHICH I HAVE BEEN TOLD A HUNDRED TIMES THIS WEEK BY PEOPLE WHO WILL NEVER KNOW WHAT IT MEANS TO ALTER THE FABRIC OF SCIENCE, NEEDS TO PASSED BY OTHERS LIKE THEM BEFORE IT COUNTS AS SCIENCE.
Thanks to those who are also expressing doubts about PR!
I realise most people are talking about what Wiki is or should be, and that is more of a live topic for me at the moment.
I'm most struck though, by the way my situation always seems to be projected into what others expect it to be. People are desperate to believe that I can't verify/confirm (whatever the ridiculous word is) what I'm saying. I guessed within a minute of first investigating Wiki that people would be obsessing about this, which is why I made sure I could satisfy the rules no matter what I thought of them. But it's just another "but this goes up to eleven" thing, with them keeping on saying "you haven't verified it".
Cordially,
JJ
On Sat, Oct 27, 2012 at 12:10 AM, Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@xigenics.net wrote:
This is the place for talking about how we can make the software better, however. One way would be to have some means of making it easier for people to read, in situ, excerpts from texts cited, so that people can look directly at the cited work. We have more that a few dead citations, perhaps a page on writing a bot to keep citations and links up to date?
As for the long standing problem of integrating expertise, while it is very real and of intense interest, this is not the best forum for the discussion. Wikipedia is not peer review, it is public review.
On Oct 26, 2012, at 6:49 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis wrote:
Progress only occurs when there are different views that can coexist. When you force the less popular views to disapear into a talk page, ie into obscurity, then the stronger view becomes the only view. So wikipedia is not solving the filter buble problem as it is now. It simply has one filter buble created by the most enduring, by the strongest.
In my proposal, all different opinions could and should be easiliy accessible.
2012/10/27 Magnus Manske magnusmanske@googlemail.com
On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 11:06 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis xekoukou@gmail.com wrote:
The solution to this problem is really easy IMO. Let all articles be
forked
and provide a personalized reputation system that will only fetch only
one
page per article for every user.
Yes! Let's build our own [[Filter bubble]] right into Wikipedia!
Magnus (who was there when Stallman talked about GNUpedia, aiming for that very concept. Still aiming, though.)
On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 5:25 PM, John Jackson strangetruther@gmail.com wrote:
Hi again – I'm just throwing in comments now, The Business has... forked... as I think you would say :-/
"It's pretty simple, publish original work elsewhere first."
Good – so you do, then people who know nothing about anything announce another requirement. Usually, it's that you ask them or some other self-serving gatekeeper all over again.
It's useful that "peer review" is so commonly mentioned. It helps warn the real people quickly of those who think it's more than a political game, so we can avoid them/make plans for them. It might be less ludicrous if PR supporters expected a Phi. of Sci expert on each review board. Without that it's an obvious farce.
There is only this in some form or another: http://sciencepolice2010.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/sciencepolice-14-latest...
...and politics in some form or another, usually Wizard of Oz'd to the full.
Fact: Popper never even MENTIONED peer review in either of his most notable Phi. of Sci. books. Don't expect others to assume Popper's view is automatically wrong; don't assume either that those with a good handle on how to make robots think scientifically, would expect those robots to need multi-stage publication reviews before they accept any useful new belief.
Peer review is a method of preventing thorough consideration of a theory, not of ensuring it. ...AS I EXPLAIN THOROUGHLY IN MY BOOK WHICH I HAVE BEEN TOLD A HUNDRED TIMES THIS WEEK BY PEOPLE WHO WILL NEVER KNOW WHAT IT MEANS TO ALTER THE FABRIC OF SCIENCE, NEEDS TO PASSED BY OTHERS LIKE THEM BEFORE IT COUNTS AS SCIENCE.
Thanks to those who are also expressing doubts about PR!
I realise most people are talking about what Wiki is or should be, and that is more of a live topic for me at the moment.
I'm most struck though, by the way my situation always seems to be projected into what others expect it to be. People are desperate to believe that I can't verify/confirm (whatever the ridiculous word is) what I'm saying. I guessed within a minute of first investigating Wiki that people would be obsessing about this, which is why I made sure I could satisfy the rules no matter what I thought of them. But it's just another "but this goes up to eleven" thing, with them keeping on saying "you haven't verified it".
Cordially,
JJ
I understand where you're coming from, but this is a philosophical dispute.
Wikipedia is, *in this particular*, a conservative collection of information, where we assert no special judgement over the accuracy of other sources, and rely on yet other sources (peer review, of some sort, or editorial review by publishers, or some equivalent) to establish that, and then we report what others claim or report.
What you're asking for is not what Wikipedia is here to do. You can object to that, but this is one of our core functional values, that we will not attempt to do that and that it's wrong for us to attempt it in this case.
This is very clearly stated up-front in the core values (5 pillars, and connected policy documents and philosophy essays). You're free to disagree that it's right for us to do, but it's the only practically maintainable philosophical foundation we've found we're able to establish and work with and defend as consistent and maintainable.
If you have a better suggestion for how we can, in a real and tangible project, do things differently, I think we'd all like to hear it. But we're not dumb, and nothing that works has emerged from prior philosophical discussions. It's wrong to assert that nothing will emerge from new discussions just because nothing came out of previous ones, but it's not like we haven't tried and considered alternatives.
On 26 October 2012 23:49, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis xekoukou@gmail.com wrote:
Progress only occurs when there are different views that can coexist. When you force the less popular views to disapear into a talk page, ie into obscurity, then the stronger view becomes the only view. So wikipedia is not solving the filter buble problem as it is now. It simply has one filter buble created by the most enduring, by the strongest. In my proposal, all different opinions could and should be easiliy accessible.
POV forked articles are a perennial proposal. They have in fact been implemented on other wikis, such as WikInfo. However, it seems in practice that readers want one place to go, not several.
- d.
There is no general solution to this problem, by way of background:
http://tech.mit.edu/V123/N8/8voting.8n.html http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/arrows-impossibility-theorem.asp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem http://cowles.econ.yale.edu/~gean/art/p1116.pdf
There is no general solution that allows all preferences in all orders, selects all group preferences in order, and forbids dictators – that is individuals that break ties. Wikipedia as with anywhere else. What can happen is that layers can be put in place, and a priori choices made. Wikipedia picked non-dictatorship very highly. The structure of wikipedia is meant to reduce the roll of dictators, and particularly ones that have a stake in the matter. It is imperfect at this, and two common problems are paid editors, and people who want to violate transitivity. On wikipedia, dictatorship is delayed as much as possible, and it is unlinked to some extent from preference.
While wikipedia is very direct democracy most of the time. Academia has chosen feudalism. PIs (Primary Investigators) are dictators in their own area, and owe fealty to some larger institution. They accept a system of mediation, which includes peer review, as part of the grant of power. This system is wildly imperfect, and going through convulsions, convulsions brought on by the same realities that created Wikipedia: the high cost of gatekeepers and the reduction in the value they add. In Wikipedia's case, standard encyclopedias don't spend enough on writing, and a great deal on maintaining their position, the case of academia, the high cost of academic journals, who spend all of their money on staying important – articles are written for free, and peer reviewers work for free.
There are forums for gather pre-consensus, including talks, conferences, starting ones own journal, open source journals, and ArchiveX. Wikipedia is not one of these. It is not a community for the vetting of utterly new ideas. It can alter consensus, because often the public discourse is dominated by money and network effects, which involve themselves in suppression of other ideas, that is violating transitivity and admissibility. By balanced and neutral coverage, it gives general intelligent readers access to a source of information, which is directed as explanation. Read the links. One is a short bastardized example, for investopedia, one is a kind of coffee hour discourse, from hit, one a moderately technical exercise without enough context. I will submit that the best introduction to the theorem, and its context, is wikipedia, because it is not meant to advance a specific career or to be narrowly tailored to a small audience. The system as it is can be painful, but it does work better that various forms of dictatorship or limited admissibility. The purpose of Wikipedia is to move information from early adopters to the early majority and from there to the late majority. It is not for creating early adopters, and is, in fact, intended to be moderately hostile to people trying to do this.
Experts can, and should upgrade articles to include accepted though not preferred ideas in their field, move from basic to advanced content, and clarify explanations. But to expect that editing article A in the standard form gives you the permission to insert original research in B is to violate transitivity.
On Oct 27, 2012, at 4:41 AM, David Gerard wrote:
On 26 October 2012 23:49, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis xekoukou@gmail.com wrote:
Progress only occurs when there are different views that can coexist. When you force the less popular views to disapear into a talk page, ie into obscurity, then the stronger view becomes the only view. So wikipedia is not solving the filter buble problem as it is now. It simply has one filter buble created by the most enduring, by the strongest. In my proposal, all different opinions could and should be easiliy accessible.
POV forked articles are a perennial proposal. They have in fact been implemented on other wikis, such as WikInfo. However, it seems in practice that readers want one place to go, not several.
- d.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
POV forked articles are a perennial proposal. They have in fact been implemented on other wikis, such as WikInfo. However, it seems in practice that readers want one place to go, not several.
It has been proposed before, certainly. The most important feature though is the use of the web of trust between peer reviewers/users/authors to rate each article, the decentralization and thus democratization of the peer reviewing system, ie the creation of a personalized attack resistant trust metric.
The fact that there is only one article per topic that is obtained through consencus is the reason why wikipedia cannot guarantee the credibility of the created information. Content created through collaboration should be able to be referenced by academic papers, should contain new research topics and should be able to be a medium for the creation of new ideas and not simply the writing down of previous ideas.
@Stirling
I think we can avoid the arrows impossibility theorem by not striving for consensus at all.
When someone likes an idea from a different article, he will simply "merge" it with his.
@all
I know that this is very different from what wikipedia has been known to be and it is understandable that this huge change can only happen from outside of wikipedia.
2012/10/27 Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@xigenics.net
There is no general solution to this problem, by way of background:
http://tech.mit.edu/V123/N8/8voting.8n.html http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/arrows-impossibility-theorem.asp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem http://cowles.econ.yale.edu/~gean/art/p1116.pdf
There is no general solution that allows all preferences in all orders, selects all group preferences in order, and forbids dictators – that is individuals that break ties. Wikipedia as with anywhere else. What can happen is that layers can be put in place, and a priori choices made. Wikipedia picked non-dictatorship very highly. The structure of wikipedia is meant to reduce the roll of dictators, and particularly ones that have a stake in the matter. It is imperfect at this, and two common problems are paid editors, and people who want to violate transitivity. On wikipedia, dictatorship is delayed as much as possible, and it is unlinked to some extent from preference.
While wikipedia is very direct democracy most of the time. Academia has chosen feudalism. PIs (Primary Investigators) are dictators in their own area, and owe fealty to some larger institution. They accept a system of mediation, which includes peer review, as part of the grant of power. This system is wildly imperfect, and going through convulsions, convulsions brought on by the same realities that created Wikipedia: the high cost of gatekeepers and the reduction in the value they add. In Wikipedia's case, standard encyclopedias don't spend enough on writing, and a great deal on maintaining their position, the case of academia, the high cost of academic journals, who spend all of their money on staying important – articles are written for free, and peer reviewers work for free.
There are forums for gather pre-consensus, including talks, conferences, starting ones own journal, open source journals, and ArchiveX. Wikipedia is not one of these. It is not a community for the vetting of utterly new ideas. It can alter consensus, because often the public discourse is dominated by money and network effects, which involve themselves in suppression of other ideas, that is violating transitivity and admissibility. By balanced and neutral coverage, it gives general intelligent readers access to a source of information, which is directed as explanation. Read the links. One is a short bastardized example, for investopedia, one is a kind of coffee hour discourse, from hit, one a moderately technical exercise without enough context. I will submit that the best introduction to the theorem, and its context, is wikipedia, because it is not meant to advance a specific career or to be narrowly tailored to a small audience. The system as it is can be painful, but it does work better that various forms of dictatorship or limited admissibility. The purpose of Wikipedia is to move information from early adopters to the early majority and from there to the late majority. It is not for creating early adopters, and is, in fact, intended to be moderately hostile to people trying to do this.
Experts can, and should upgrade articles to include accepted though not preferred ideas in their field, move from basic to advanced content, and clarify explanations. But to expect that editing article A in the standard form gives you the permission to insert original research in B is to violate transitivity.
On Oct 27, 2012, at 4:41 AM, David Gerard wrote:
On 26 October 2012 23:49, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis xekoukou@gmail.com
wrote:
Progress only occurs when there are different views that can coexist.
When
you force the less popular views to disapear into a talk page, ie into obscurity, then the stronger view becomes the only view. So wikipedia is not solving the filter buble problem as it is now. It simply has one filter buble created by the most enduring, by the
strongest.
In my proposal, all different opinions could and should be easiliy accessible.
POV forked articles are a perennial proposal. They have in fact been implemented on other wikis, such as WikInfo. However, it seems in practice that readers want one place to go, not several.
- d.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On Oct 27, 2012, at 6:33 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis wrote:
POV forked articles are a perennial proposal. They have in fact been implemented on other wikis, such as WikInfo. However, it seems in practice that readers want one place to go, not several.
@Stirling
I think we can avoid the arrows impossibility theorem by not striving for consensus at all.
That's categorically incorrect. Consensus is a rational preference, you would ban it, there for violating admissibility. It will also run into transitivity issues quickly, as people will set up link farms to point to their version.
Consensus is core to what credibility wikipedia has, because it is much harder to get a bot net to generate it than to generate links. It means that anyone who writes has at least consented to have others check their work.
@all
I know that this is very different from what wikipedia has been known to be and it is understandable that this huge change can only happen from outside of wikipedia.
This project has been started, it is called "the world wide web."
On 28 October 2012 00:12, Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@xigenics.net wrote:
On Oct 27, 2012, at 6:33 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis wrote:
I know that this is very different from what wikipedia has been known to be and it is understandable that this huge change can only happen from outside of wikipedia.
This project has been started, it is called "the world wide web."
Indeed. If Wikipedia were not an improvement over the first ten Google hits, it wouldn't exist.
- d.
1)I don't think that google results have any credibility at all. 2)The basis of a wiki is the open source license of its contents. That is why it is a collaboration.
Consensus is core to what credibility wikipedia has, because it is much
harder to get a bot net to generate it than to generate links. It means that anyone who writes has at least consented to have others check their work.
That is incorrect. It is much more difficult because each page is checked by users. In the same way, rating an article will be done by users and the network of trust will be dynamic. If a user is providing bad information, he will be discarded manually from users.
That's categorically incorrect. Consensus is a rational preference, you
would ban it, there for violating admissibility. It will also run into transitivity issues quickly, as people will set up link farms to point to their version.
Care to explain that?
Whose preference is rational? rational preference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_(economics)#Applications_to_theories_of_utility Admissibity of what? Admissible_rulehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admissible_rule
Again transitivity of whose preferences?
I guess that you are trying to say that through consensus , we end up in some sort of parreto efficient state, ie that the consensus "game" forces articles to be good enough.
I dont propose to ban consensus, only to allow users to have many consensus. I think that people will continue to strive for acceptance and consensus, especially since each user will have some sort of ranking. I admit that I havent really thought of this from a game theoretic point of view. Stackoverflow, mathoverflow 's ranking system seems to have given a good incentice to authors, though. It all depends on the trust metric.
It is though universally understood that this consensus "game" doesnt provide good enough results for academic research.
2012/10/28 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com
On 28 October 2012 00:12, Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@xigenics.net wrote:
On Oct 27, 2012, at 6:33 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis wrote:
I know that this is very different from what wikipedia has been known
to be
and it is understandable that this huge change can only happen from
outside
of wikipedia.
This project has been started, it is called "the world wide web."
Indeed. If Wikipedia were not an improvement over the first ten Google hits, it wouldn't exist.
- d.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Your post is self-contradictory.
On Oct 27, 2012, at 8:04 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis wrote:
1)I don't think that google results have any credibility at all. 2)The basis of a wiki is the open source license of its contents. That is why it is a collaboration.
Consensus is core to what credibility wikipedia has, because it is much
harder to get a bot net to generate it than to generate links. It means that anyone who writes has at least consented to have others check their work.
That is incorrect. It is much more difficult because each page is checked by users. In the same way, rating an article will be done by users and the network of trust will be dynamic. If a user is providing bad information, he will be discarded manually from users.
That's categorically incorrect. Consensus is a rational preference, you
would ban it, there for violating admissibility. It will also run into transitivity issues quickly, as people will set up link farms to point to their version.
Care to explain that?
Whose preference is rational? rational preference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_(economics)#Applications_to_theories_of_utility Admissibity of what? Admissible_rulehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admissible_rule
Again transitivity of whose preferences?
I guess that you are trying to say that through consensus , we end up in some sort of parreto efficient state, ie that the consensus "game" forces articles to be good enough.
I dont propose to ban consensus, only to allow users to have many consensus. I think that people will continue to strive for acceptance and consensus, especially since each user will have some sort of ranking. I admit that I havent really thought of this from a game theoretic point of view. Stackoverflow, mathoverflow 's ranking system seems to have given a good incentice to authors, though. It all depends on the trust metric.
It is though universally understood that this consensus "game" doesnt provide good enough results for academic research.
2012/10/28 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com
On 28 October 2012 00:12, Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@xigenics.net wrote:
On Oct 27, 2012, at 6:33 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis wrote:
I know that this is very different from what wikipedia has been known
to be
and it is understandable that this huge change can only happen from
outside
of wikipedia.
This project has been started, it is called "the world wide web."
Indeed. If Wikipedia were not an improvement over the first ten Google hits, it wouldn't exist.
- d.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
--
Sincerely yours,
Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Please, enlighten me.
2012/10/28 Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@xigenics.net
Your post is self-contradictory.
On Oct 27, 2012, at 8:04 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis wrote:
1)I don't think that google results have any credibility at all. 2)The basis of a wiki is the open source license of its contents. That is why it is a collaboration.
Consensus is core to what credibility wikipedia has, because it is much
harder to get a bot net to generate it than to generate links. It means that anyone who writes has at least consented to have others check their work.
That is incorrect. It is much more difficult because each page is checked by users. In the same way, rating an article will be done by users and
the
network of trust will be dynamic. If a user is providing bad information, he will be discarded manually from users.
That's categorically incorrect. Consensus is a rational preference, you
would ban it, there for violating admissibility. It will also run into transitivity issues quickly, as people will set up link farms to point to their version.
Care to explain that?
Whose preference is rational? rational preference <
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_(economics)#Applications_to_theories...
Admissibity of what? Admissible_rulehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admissible_rule
Again transitivity of whose preferences?
I guess that you are trying to say that through consensus , we end up in some sort of parreto efficient state, ie that the consensus "game" forces articles to be good enough.
I dont propose to ban consensus, only to allow users to have many consensus. I think that people will continue to strive for acceptance and consensus, especially since each user will have some sort of ranking. I admit that I havent really thought of this from a game theoretic point
of
view. Stackoverflow, mathoverflow 's ranking system seems to have given a good incentice to authors, though. It all depends on the trust metric.
It is though universally understood that this consensus "game" doesnt provide good enough results for academic research.
2012/10/28 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com
On 28 October 2012 00:12, Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@xigenics.net wrote:
On Oct 27, 2012, at 6:33 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis wrote:
I know that this is very different from what wikipedia has been known
to be
and it is understandable that this huge change can only happen from
outside
of wikipedia.
This project has been started, it is called "the world wide web."
Indeed. If Wikipedia were not an improvement over the first ten Google hits, it wouldn't exist.
- d.
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--
Sincerely yours,
Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis
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I am mostly talking about a f2fhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend-to-friend network. Users can be discarded locally, ie again no need for consesus. I hope this is my self-contradiction. The only close thing that exists right now that is used for things other than file sharing is ripplehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_monetary_system .
2012/10/28 Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis xekoukou@gmail.com
Please, enlighten me.
2012/10/28 Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@xigenics.net
Your post is self-contradictory.
On Oct 27, 2012, at 8:04 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis wrote:
1)I don't think that google results have any credibility at all. 2)The basis of a wiki is the open source license of its contents. That
is
why it is a collaboration.
Consensus is core to what credibility wikipedia has, because it is much
harder to get a bot net to generate it than to generate links. It means that anyone who writes has at least consented to have others check their work.
That is incorrect. It is much more difficult because each page is
checked
by users. In the same way, rating an article will be done by users and
the
network of trust will be dynamic. If a user is providing bad
information,
he will be discarded manually from users.
That's categorically incorrect. Consensus is a rational preference, you
would ban it, there for violating admissibility. It will also run into transitivity issues quickly, as people will set up link farms to point
to
their version.
Care to explain that?
Whose preference is rational? rational preference <
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_(economics)#Applications_to_theories...
Admissibity of what? Admissible_rulehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admissible_rule
Again transitivity of whose preferences?
I guess that you are trying to say that through consensus , we end up in some sort of parreto efficient state, ie that the consensus "game"
forces
articles to be good enough.
I dont propose to ban consensus, only to allow users to have many consensus. I think that people will continue to strive for acceptance
and
consensus, especially since each user will have some sort of ranking. I admit that I havent really thought of this from a game theoretic
point of
view. Stackoverflow, mathoverflow 's ranking system seems to have given a good incentice to authors, though. It all depends on the trust metric.
It is though universally understood that this consensus "game" doesnt provide good enough results for academic research.
2012/10/28 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com
On 28 October 2012 00:12, Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@xigenics.net wrote:
On Oct 27, 2012, at 6:33 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis wrote:
I know that this is very different from what wikipedia has been known
to be
and it is understandable that this huge change can only happen from
outside
of wikipedia.
This project has been started, it is called "the world wide web."
Indeed. If Wikipedia were not an improvement over the first ten Google hits, it wouldn't exist.
- d.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
--
Sincerely yours,
Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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Empirically, that does not have a high probability of success.
On Oct 27, 2012, at 8:25 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis wrote:
Please, enlighten me.
2012/10/28 Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@xigenics.net
Your post is self-contradictory.
On Oct 27, 2012, at 8:04 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis wrote:
1)I don't think that google results have any credibility at all. 2)The basis of a wiki is the open source license of its contents. That is why it is a collaboration.
Consensus is core to what credibility wikipedia has, because it is much
harder to get a bot net to generate it than to generate links. It means that anyone who writes has at least consented to have others check their work.
That is incorrect. It is much more difficult because each page is checked by users. In the same way, rating an article will be done by users and
the
network of trust will be dynamic. If a user is providing bad information, he will be discarded manually from users.
That's categorically incorrect. Consensus is a rational preference, you
would ban it, there for violating admissibility. It will also run into transitivity issues quickly, as people will set up link farms to point to their version.
Care to explain that?
Whose preference is rational? rational preference <
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_(economics)#Applications_to_theories...
Admissibity of what? Admissible_rulehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admissible_rule
Again transitivity of whose preferences?
I guess that you are trying to say that through consensus , we end up in some sort of parreto efficient state, ie that the consensus "game" forces articles to be good enough.
I dont propose to ban consensus, only to allow users to have many consensus. I think that people will continue to strive for acceptance and consensus, especially since each user will have some sort of ranking. I admit that I havent really thought of this from a game theoretic point
of
view. Stackoverflow, mathoverflow 's ranking system seems to have given a good incentice to authors, though. It all depends on the trust metric.
It is though universally understood that this consensus "game" doesnt provide good enough results for academic research.
2012/10/28 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com
On 28 October 2012 00:12, Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@xigenics.net wrote:
On Oct 27, 2012, at 6:33 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis wrote:
I know that this is very different from what wikipedia has been known
to be
and it is understandable that this huge change can only happen from
outside
of wikipedia.
This project has been started, it is called "the world wide web."
Indeed. If Wikipedia were not an improvement over the first ten Google hits, it wouldn't exist.
- d.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
--
Sincerely yours,
Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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--
Sincerely yours,
Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis
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I dont think it has been done before. What we need is an open source decentralized system of certification where each certificate will be a wiki page, will have a version, and will be able to be assigned by everyone to anyone. That will make any journal or university degree obsolete. (We'd just have professors,not the university, certifying their students.)
I also dont think that there is an easier alternative that solves the long lasting battle between experts and the rest.
2012/10/28 Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@xigenics.net
Empirically, that does not have a high probability of success.
On Oct 27, 2012, at 8:25 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis wrote:
Please, enlighten me.
2012/10/28 Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@xigenics.net
Your post is self-contradictory.
On Oct 27, 2012, at 8:04 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis wrote:
1)I don't think that google results have any credibility at all. 2)The basis of a wiki is the open source license of its contents. That
is
why it is a collaboration.
Consensus is core to what credibility wikipedia has, because it is
much
harder to get a bot net to generate it than to generate links. It means that anyone who writes has at least consented to have others check
their
work.
That is incorrect. It is much more difficult because each page is
checked
by users. In the same way, rating an article will be done by users and
the
network of trust will be dynamic. If a user is providing bad
information,
he will be discarded manually from users.
That's categorically incorrect. Consensus is a rational preference,
you
would ban it, there for violating admissibility. It will also run into transitivity issues quickly, as people will set up link farms to point
to
their version.
Care to explain that?
Whose preference is rational? rational preference <
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_(economics)#Applications_to_theories...
Admissibity of what? Admissible_rulehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admissible_rule
Again transitivity of whose preferences?
I guess that you are trying to say that through consensus , we end up
in
some sort of parreto efficient state, ie that the consensus "game"
forces
articles to be good enough.
I dont propose to ban consensus, only to allow users to have many consensus. I think that people will continue to strive for acceptance
and
consensus, especially since each user will have some sort of ranking. I admit that I havent really thought of this from a game theoretic
point
of
view. Stackoverflow, mathoverflow 's ranking system seems to have given a
good
incentice to authors, though. It all depends on the trust metric.
It is though universally understood that this consensus "game" doesnt provide good enough results for academic research.
2012/10/28 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com
On 28 October 2012 00:12, Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@xigenics.net wrote:
On Oct 27, 2012, at 6:33 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis wrote:
> I know that this is very different from what wikipedia has been
known
to be
> and it is understandable that this huge change can only happen from
outside
> of wikipedia.
This project has been started, it is called "the world wide web."
Indeed. If Wikipedia were not an improvement over the first ten Google hits, it wouldn't exist.
- d.
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--
Sincerely yours,
Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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--
Sincerely yours,
Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis
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On 28 October 2012 16:48, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis xekoukou@gmail.com wrote:
I also dont think that there is an easier alternative that solves the long lasting battle between experts and the rest.
This "battle" is overblown. Apart from there being many experts who contribute quite effectively to Wikipedia, it turns out the actual answer is that disciplines are realising they have to come to the mountain, e.g. http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/members/aps-wikipedia-initiati...
- d.
On 28 October 2012 16:48, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis xekoukou@gmail.com wrote:
I also dont think that there is an easier alternative that solves the long lasting battle between experts and the rest.
There are reasons for creating firewalls between credible knowledge and popular belief. A small sample:
http://www.astrology.co.uk/news/astrostats.htm http://www.examiner.com/article/new-pew-poll-finds-many-american-christians-... http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6300 http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringourmatrix/2010/12/gallup-poll-on-young... http://www.haaretz.com/news/poll-40-of-israeli-arabs-believe-holocaust-never...
On 28 October 2012 16:48, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis xekoukou@gmail.com wrote:
I also dont think that there is an easier alternative that solves the long lasting battle between experts and the rest.
on 10/28/12 1:15 PM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
This "battle" is overblown. Apart from there being many experts who contribute quite effectively to Wikipedia, it turns out the actual answer is that disciplines are realising they have to come to the mountain, e.g. http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/members/aps-wikipedia-initiati...
This is an excellent project. I'm onboard with it.
Marc Riddell, Ph.D. Clinical Psychology/Psychotherapy
This "battle" is overblown. Apart from there being many experts who contribute quite effectively to Wikipedia, it turns out the actual answer is that disciplines are realising they have to come to the mountain, e.g.
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/members/aps-wikipedia-initiati...
Nice.
@stirling
I can understand your distaste towards those beliefs. what i propose will allow those beliefs to circulate side by side with scientific ones.
But isnt human not scientific by Nature? Every day, we experience things, we verify that our experiences are not contradicting our beliefs or we update them so as to fit our experiences. We are thus evolving through time. People with no scientific background will make false theories but if new theories make more sense there is no reason for those old theories to endure.
Why is then a theory that has no evidence at all to prove it, like creationism is able to endure?
Since people are scientific by nature, the only conclusion that we can get is that the flow of experiences and new theories is tampered. Experiences/experiments are blocked from reaching certain people and other theories are promoted.
Since Science is by definition the creation of rigorous theories that better explain the world, if the flow of new theories are democratically distributed, then pseudoscience will simply vanish.
2012/10/28 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net
On 28 October 2012 16:48, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis xekoukou@gmail.com wrote:
I also dont think that there is an easier alternative that solves the
long
lasting battle between experts and the rest.
on 10/28/12 1:15 PM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
This "battle" is overblown. Apart from there being many experts who contribute quite effectively to Wikipedia, it turns out the actual answer is that disciplines are realising they have to come to the mountain, e.g.
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/members/aps-wikipedia-initiati...
This is an excellent project. I'm onboard with it.
Marc Riddell, Ph.D. Clinical Psychology/Psychotherapy
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On Oct 28, 2012, at 4:36 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis xekoukou@gmail.com wrote:
Since Science is by definition the creation of rigorous theories that better explain the world, if the flow of new theories are democratically distributed, then pseudoscience will simply vanish.
No. Science creates testable theory from observation, tests, and discards false theory based on the testing. There is no shortage now of theory; there is a shortage of understanding of the process, importance of falsifiability, and understanding how to test and analyze.
The method is taught in school and yet lost by adulthood in nearly everyone. Democratizing science to include people in the process who do not currently understand the method does no good.
You also are conflating primary sources ( research ) and secondary sources ( analysis and criticism ) and tertiary sources ( compenda, such as encyclopedias and Wikipedia ).
George William Herbert Sent from my iPhone
Theories are not proved by the process. They are proved by their predictability, ie through experiment/experience. Even though people dont understand the process, they can understand the results. Thus the process is learned because it provides better results. Thus anyone is a potential scientist.
2012/10/29 George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
On Oct 28, 2012, at 4:36 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis xekoukou@gmail.com wrote:
Since Science is by definition the creation of rigorous theories that better explain the world, if the flow of new theories are democratically distributed, then pseudoscience will simply vanish.
No. Science creates testable theory from observation, tests, and discards false theory based on the testing. There is no shortage now of theory; there is a shortage of understanding of the process, importance of falsifiability, and understanding how to test and analyze.
The method is taught in school and yet lost by adulthood in nearly everyone. Democratizing science to include people in the process who do not currently understand the method does no good.
You also are conflating primary sources ( research ) and secondary sources ( analysis and criticism ) and tertiary sources ( compenda, such as encyclopedias and Wikipedia ).
George William Herbert Sent from my iPhone _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On 29 October 2012 00:45, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis xekoukou@gmail.com wrote:
Theories are not proved by the process. They are proved by their predictability, ie through experiment/experience. Even though people dont understand the process, they can understand the results. Thus the process is learned because it provides better results. Thus anyone is a potential scientist.
This is pretty much irrelevant to Wikipedia as it exists; you've basically derailed this thread. Well done.
- d.
Yea, you are right. As far as the original question is concerned, georges answers are more than enough.
2012/10/29 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com
On 29 October 2012 00:45, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis xekoukou@gmail.com wrote:
Theories are not proved by the process. They are proved by their predictability, ie through experiment/experience. Even though people dont understand the process, they can understand the results. Thus the process is learned because it provides better results. Thus anyone is a potential scientist.
This is pretty much irrelevant to Wikipedia as it exists; you've basically derailed this thread. Well done.
- d.
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We are not trying to solve the greater peer review problem. Society and the world at large are not fraud or mistake proof; they happen, they're corrected over time. The world moves on.
Our standard is not to try and attain a perfect level of only totally truthful information. Nobody could realistically do that. Our standard is to aim for and have quality controls to not be worse than the world at large in a given field. I.e., we accept on first assertion that external fields' internal peer review is "good enough", though we will usually at least listen to counterarguments that some sources may in fact be better or worse than that.
We are absolutely not the first determiner of truth / first peer review instance. We aren't, we can't be with this type of volunteer structure, and we should not be asked to be.
We reflect the consensus of others as published in works we can reliably cite. We're a tertiary source preferably.
On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 3:06 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis xekoukou@gmail.com wrote:
For subjects that aren't controversial, the peer reviewing structure of a university or journal might work.
In general though, a peer review is as good as the credibility of the peer reviewer. A reference is as good as the credibility of the referencer,etc... That is the essence of the pagerank algorithm that is used by google to compute the credibility of an internet page.
The solution to this problem is really easy IMO. Let all articles be forked and provide a personalized reputation system that will only fetch only one page per article for every user.
2012/10/27 George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
Right. We (Wikipedia) are not qualified to judge if these original claims are accurate, reasonable, worthy of consideration, unlikely, incorrect, or batshit insane.
Attempting to publish novel theories via Wikipedia - no matter how well supported - is completely the wrong approach. Scientific inquiry is not a single-handed enterprise. It depends on peer review of theories and evidence and conclusions. That peer review must be by qualified peers in the field.
-george william herbert
On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 9:40 AM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
It's pretty simple, publish original work elsewhere first.
Fred
Greetings –
I hope this is a good place to send a weighty message to Wikipedia. You’ll want to read all through.
I am a scientist who has always liked the Wikipedia idea, and I like your implementation. Lately I’ve started making contributions. Although I’m a cognitive scientist who taught biological psychology at degree level for several years and have done AI research since the ‘80’s, I’ve diverted for a decade or more to resolve a set of major evolutionary puzzles.
John V. Jackson.
http://sciencepolice2010.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/sciencepolice2010-launches...
http://sciencepolice2010.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/sciencepolice-14-latest...
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-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
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I think George pretty well nailed it -- these issues come down to what should be expected, and also what can reasonably be expected, of a project with Wikipedia's structure. In general, there's nothing inherently wrong with pushing for a certain point of view; it's a great thing to do, and should be encouraged. It's just that Wikipedia isn't a good place to do it. It's not designed to adjudicate that kind of thing, and efforts to push it in that direction will predictably and understandably be resisted by those who care about what the site *is* designed to do, and capable of doing.
John, I want to say -- and I suspect many others here agree -- this is absolutely an appropriate list to bring this up on, and I'm glad you did. Interacting in an open community like Wikipedia takes some getting used to. I think in a discussion like this, you'll almost always get somebody musing about whether or not you've chosen the right forum. Sometimes that's useful feedback; other times it's noise best ignored. I encourage you to go with your own judgment; an argument about the proper forum probably doesn't benefit anybody, but even if a couple folks don't feel this is the right place, the discussion can still go on (as you can see).
Have a good weekend, -Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Oct 26, 2012, at 5:28 PM, George Herbert wrote:
We are not trying to solve the greater peer review problem. Society and the world at large are not fraud or mistake proof; they happen, they're corrected over time. The world moves on.
Our standard is not to try and attain a perfect level of only totally truthful information. Nobody could realistically do that. Our standard is to aim for and have quality controls to not be worse than the world at large in a given field. I.e., we accept on first assertion that external fields' internal peer review is "good enough", though we will usually at least listen to counterarguments that some sources may in fact be better or worse than that.
We are absolutely not the first determiner of truth / first peer review instance. We aren't, we can't be with this type of volunteer structure, and we should not be asked to be.
We reflect the consensus of others as published in works we can reliably cite. We're a tertiary source preferably.
On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 3:06 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis xekoukou@gmail.com wrote:
For subjects that aren't controversial, the peer reviewing structure of a university or journal might work.
In general though, a peer review is as good as the credibility of the peer reviewer. A reference is as good as the credibility of the referencer,etc... That is the essence of the pagerank algorithm that is used by google to compute the credibility of an internet page.
The solution to this problem is really easy IMO. Let all articles be forked and provide a personalized reputation system that will only fetch only one page per article for every user.
2012/10/27 George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
Right. We (Wikipedia) are not qualified to judge if these original claims are accurate, reasonable, worthy of consideration, unlikely, incorrect, or batshit insane.
Attempting to publish novel theories via Wikipedia - no matter how well supported - is completely the wrong approach. Scientific inquiry is not a single-handed enterprise. It depends on peer review of theories and evidence and conclusions. That peer review must be by qualified peers in the field.
-george william herbert
On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 9:40 AM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
It's pretty simple, publish original work elsewhere first.
Fred
Greetings –
I hope this is a good place to send a weighty message to Wikipedia. You’ll want to read all through.
I am a scientist who has always liked the Wikipedia idea, and I like your implementation. Lately I’ve started making contributions. Although I’m a cognitive scientist who taught biological psychology at degree level for several years and have done AI research since the ‘80’s, I’ve diverted for a decade or more to resolve a set of major evolutionary puzzles.
John V. Jackson.
http://sciencepolice2010.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/sciencepolice2010-launches...
http://sciencepolice2010.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/sciencepolice-14-latest...
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
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On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 8:50 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
John, I want to say -- and I suspect many others here agree -- this is absolutely an appropriate list to bring this up on, and I'm glad you did. Interacting in an open community like Wikipedia takes some getting used to. I think in a discussion like this, you'll almost always get somebody musing about whether or not you've chosen the right forum. Sometimes that's useful feedback; other times it's noise best ignored. I encourage you to go with your own judgment; an argument about the proper forum probably doesn't benefit anybody, but even if a couple folks don't feel this is the right place, the discussion can still go on (as you can see).
Have a good weekend, -Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
That's all well and good, except it ignores the very good reasons why any discussion of Mr. Jackson's specific circumstances should remain on-wiki. In a list such as wikipedia-l or wikien-l etc., his comments are quite unlikely to encounter anyone with expertise in his field. Without such expertise, we might not see past the quite scientific-sounding language he uses to discover the fact that his "book" is self-published on Amazon. We might not be aware that he is the host and former host of a multitude of blogs that appear to serve as the only public forum for his theories, which seemingly have found minimal or no acceptance in academia.
Obviously Mr. Jackson is extremely intelligent and very familiar with his subject matter, and I suspect that the members of this list are ill-equipped to respond to his complaints with the appropriate context and full knowledge of the circumstances. If he were to engage these experts, as has been suggested, they might also be prompted to investigate the many cases where Mr. Jackson has cited himself for the insertion of material of dubious scientific merit into Wikipedia articles.
Nathan
On Oct 26, 2012, at 6:48 PM, Nathan wrote:
On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 8:50 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
John, I want to say -- and I suspect many others here agree -- this is absolutely an appropriate list to bring this up on, and I'm glad you did.
<snip>
That's all well and good, except it ignores the very good reasons why any discussion of Mr. Jackson's specific circumstances should remain on-wiki. In a list such as wikipedia-l or wikien-l etc., his comments are quite unlikely to encounter anyone with expertise in his field. Without such expertise, we might not see past the quite scientific-sounding language he uses to discover the fact that his "book" is self-published on Amazon. We might not be aware that he is the host and former host of a multitude of blogs that appear to serve as the only public forum for his theories, which seemingly have found minimal or no acceptance in academia.
<snip>
Nathan
Nathan, your point is well taken. However, I don't think it reveals anything "wrong" with posting to this list. After all, nobody on this list has deferred to John's expertise or endorsed the idea that his version of the article should be approved; and even if we did, it wouldn't be worth much (off-wiki) in establishing consensus to change the article.
Much as I appreciate your point, I think it's worthwhile to be gracious about the forum people choose to engage in. Wikipedia is an impenetrable maze even for many experienced contributors. I think the various responses posted here illustrate that this is a perfectly good venue for having this discussion, even if it isn't ideal for meeting some of John's objectives.
John had frustrations and questions about Wikipedia's policies and culture; from where I sit, that's fair game for an email list about Wikipedia.
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
On 10/27/12 2:28 AM, George Herbert wrote:
Our standard is not to try and attain a perfect level of only totally truthful information. Nobody could realistically do that. Our standard is to aim for and have quality controls to not be worse than the world at large in a given field. I.e., we accept on first assertion that external fields' internal peer review is "good enough", though we will usually at least listen to counterarguments that some sources may in fact be better or worse than that.
The way I usually think of it is that Wikipedia's end result, if it were successful, would be an accurate summary of the current consensus in all fields of human knowledge. Our physics articles would reflect the current state of physics research; our history articles the current historical consensus on each era (with discussion of significant dissenting views and uncertainties); and so on. Now whether any of those are *right*, that's a whole other problem. It's hard to enough to produce a complete summary of the current state of physics and historical research without also attempting to *fix* anything that might be wrong with the current state of physics, and *revise* historical understanding of various subjects. That's just not in our scope.
Beyond practicality, I think that's actually a useful result. When I read Wikipedia on 14th-century France, I want a capsule overview of what historians currently think about 14th-century France, not a revisionist take that a group of Wikipedia editors thinks is more truthful. As a tertiary source, an accurate summary of the current state of the literature is what I want and expect to read.
-Mark
It might interest list readers to know that Mr. Jackson (user Strangetruther[3]) was so incensed by my 188-word comment in this thread that he wrote a nearly 5,000 word screed against me on his blog[1]. In it, he calls me a liar, a psychopath, mendacious, a Wiki-wanker (Oh no!), refers to me incorrectly as a Wikipedia "manager" or member of the hierarchy, etc.
He did a bit of research into my background, but predictably got it wrong. That doesn't stop him from planning to warn my company that I'm prone to irresponsible lying (as opposed to that responsible sort of lying I ought to be doing?). In case you might think I was his only target, he also offered a similar takedown of Matt Martynuik (user MMartynuik)[2].
He goes on to suggest that anyone wanting to insert their favorite theories into Wikipedia should simply register multiple accounts, use TOR proxies, and manufacture a consensus - or at least, a filibuster. Tactics I'm sure he theorized all on his own.
Obviously the behavior of a dedicated, conscientious scientist of the highest order. The wages of posting on a public mailing list under my real name, I suppose.
[1]http://sciencepolice2010.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/the-wiki-wankers-2-nathan-... [2]http://sciencepolice2010.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/the-wiki-wankers-1-matt-ma... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/Strangetruth...
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