[Foundation-l] Verifiability: Constitution? Question for Jimbo!

Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen at gmail.com
Mon Sep 18 18:39:36 UTC 2006


Hoi,
When some people have highlighted that in their opinion veriability and  
no original research are two sides to the same coin, it does not equate 
that everyone agrees with that. Not everyone does. When people make the 
effort to write an article for Wikipedia, it does not make them POV 
warriors; constantly on the lookout what is happening to their article. 
This invalidates your argument that they will "defend" their article in 
the first place. There are many people who have been disgusted by the 
policies about (in their opinion) nitwits who claim that an article is 
not "good" but do not argue WHY it is not good. The notion that 
something is not good because there are no sources provided is in and of 
itself not a conceptual argument, it is a formalistic argument.

On the topic of politics, the Hungarians know all too well that 
politicians lie. What proof is in the fact that something was said 
publicly. It is public knowledge that the voting machines are not 
reliable and politicians are still elected this way. The same is true 
with religion, every religion believes in their truth and consequently 
what an other religion says is an affront. The points that prove any 
point of view in this have sources, it is just what you want to 
believe.. in a similar vain, research has indicated that commercial 
healthcare result in a higher death rate but as this is not a fact that 
is acceptable this fact is ignored.

When the talk page is long, the facts and probably the sources are biased.

Constructive criticism.. I would love a definition for that.. is that 
not the criticism that says "you are on the right track but see the way 
of your errors" .. basically replacing one POV with another ..

When you think that things are self evident, think again.. The only 
point you may have is that there are loads of crackpots posting their 
ideas. The overwhelming mass of them is why you come up with these 
rationalisations.. They help you sometimes, but they are as likely to 
prove you wrong.

Thanks,
    GerardM

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5354972.stm

Daniel Arnold wrote:
> Am Montag, 18. September 2006 15:19 schrieb Christoph Seydl:
>   
>> I agree with Andre. The rules [[w:en:Verifiability]] are very strict.
>>     
>
> Quite some people already have highlighted that Verifiability and "no original 
> research" are two sides of the same medal.
>
> This means in especially: "Look outside not inside if you write articles." 
> [Jimbo said something like this somewhere TM]. This means an article about 
> Wikipedia necessarily primarily needs to be based on external views. Raw data 
> like size, transfer data and such are something different.
>
> Interestingly the question of Verifiability and "no original research" is 
> strictly correlated with the flame proof eternal debate on "relevance 
> criterias". There's an easy answer to it:
> * If an article with serious flaws is that much important for the authors that 
> they need to write long complains defending its serious flaws they probably 
> better invest the time improving the article.
> * If they're unable improving it, the article is obviously not really 
> important enough for its authors and thatfor lacks general relevance and thus 
> does not fit into Wikipedia.
>
> You will quickly notice that topics like "politics", "physics", "religion" are 
> important enough that you can draw from a large body of publications and that 
> there will be at any given time people that can and do improve such articles 
> if there is a serious flaw with them. The more narrow the topic is the harder 
> is it for the author writing something useful about it. For example an 
> article about "Joshi" is way harder but there were people that managed it 
> writing something really encylopedic about it.
>
> Another metric is:
> * If a discussion thread about an article is more than 10 times longer than 
> the article itself then there is something wrong with the style of that 
> particular debate.
>
>   
>> Who is deviant (better word than pathological)? The people who try to
>> enforce the established rules or the people who ignore them? In a big
>> community, it doesn't work to refer just to common sense because common
>> sense is POV. Everyone defines common sense differently.
>>     
>
> Well enforcing of policies in a bureaucracy way like: "There is something 
> wrong but I don't say what" does help nobody. I suppose everyone can sign 
> that. Constructive critics is the key but if someone does not listen to 
> constructive critics, well then we don't need further patience like a buddha 
> and should just execute what we consider necessary in that case without any 
> further debate.
>
>   
>> If you are not satisfied with the rules, try to change them. If there
>> are no rules how to deal with the daily conflicts, try to establish
>> legitimate rules.
>>     
>
> Well the best rules are rules nobody needs to write down. Do we need a 
> detailed written down policy on separating article and discussion? No. Our 
> interface inherits that policy already. Just look at other wikis and you see 
> that this key policy is not for granted.
>
> So please let us not write tons of detailed policies down; just the key 
> principles and brainstorm what we want to achieve in detail (synonym to 
> policy) and then how to make certain policies an obvious corollary of the 
> user interface structure so that you don't need to remind people about it 
> again and again.
>
> Cheers, Arnomane
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>
>   




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