[Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge

[David Goodman]

Using an exact quote , from video or print,  in an article is a
summary, because you are normally selecting a portion of the potential
material that you consider representative. But the link to the entire
item, as is the required practice, does make this at least audit-able,
in that anyone else can check what you chose to use, at least if the
link is to material that is permanently online--as will be the videos
under discussion.

But choosing to use the quote at all in the article is interpretation.
One normally cannot cite all possible sources. Choosing a source is
intrinsically interpretation. An editor chooses a source because they
consider the source useful to the article; what an editor considers
useful to the article depends on what they want to say, or support.
Wikipedia articles   edited by diverse editors can attain a NPOV
because other editors can also search for sources to use as quotes,
and the principle of crowd-sourcing is that they balance out.
Wikipedia articles not actively edited by multiple diverse individuals
are not NPOV.

How one presents a quote is interpretation and summary. How much
context does one give about where the quote comes from, and the likely
nature of bias from the source? It is impossible to give everything
relevant, while citing all informants or all printed sources as if
they were equal is even worse, and one cannot assume the reader will
be able to do this for themselves. They must judge the arguments for
themselves, but someone in a position to know must judge the sources
and this cannot be done without bias, which can only be partially
corrected by group participation and whatever conscious effort an
individual's skill and integrity make possible. .

Any one WP as a whole is not NPOV because the particular WP reflects
the interests and POV of the overall body of editors, which is not
representative of world opinion; I would argue that the enWP jas the
potential to be the most neutral because of the most diverse
editorship, with perhaps the fr and the es also having this advantage.
A conscious effort to try to surpass personal and cultural bias is
possible, and in this respect, I am less sure the enWP does very well.

I cannot give examples without getting into the related controversies,
which, however tempting, is not my present purpose.


On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 3:42 PM, Wjhonson <wjhonson at aol.com> wrote:
>
> David how is an exact quote a summary or interpretation?
> An exact quote, backed up by the actual audio track is... exact.
> You are not summarizing it, and you are not interpreting it either.
> You are presenting it.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Goodman <dggenwp at gmail.com>
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Wed, Jul 27, 2011 12:39 pm
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 2:27 PM, Wjhonson <wjhonson at aol.com> wrote:
>
>  For actual quotations from sources, you should quote the source exactly.
>  Then you will never be using original research.
>
>  You are going the next step and summarizing and interpreting.  Don't do that.
> But selecting what quotations to use, what parts of them to use, and
> n what context one uses them, and the language one uses to present
> hem, is a not a mechanical or necessarily neutral endeavor. It cannot
> e done without summarizing and interpreting.
> Certainly in Wikipedia and everywhere else the world also,
> nrepresentative of partial quotations are used to propagandistic or
> ontroversial effect--sometimes even deliberately, but more often
> ecause the particular quotation and manner fits what the editor
> esires to express. A person in the course of a long career will say
> any things on their main interests, and some will be  at  least
> artially contradictory. Selecting what represents the person's true
> iews, what represents a true change of opinion, what represent
> rratic misstatements --all of this require decisions which amount to
> hat we call original research and synthesis. It is not possible to
> rite any but the most trivial article without research and synthesis.
> reparing a summary of the state of a question intrinsically requires
> t. Deciding of the balance of an article necessarily involves having
>  POV--if one approaches a subject where one has none initially, by
> he time the article has been finished, one or the other position is
> ure to have been found more appealing, and a non-neural POV is sure
> o have developed.
> The writing of secondary and tertiary works   are inevitably
> ssociated with bias.  The way by which we avoid its worst
> anifestations in Wikipedia is not by being free from bias, but by
> aving articles written collectively by a diverse group of people.
> hat we lose in elegant prose we gain in objectivity. This is why it
> s important to  continually increase the number of active
> ditors--not just to increase the scope, but to ensure adequate eyes
> n the articles.
> But even so, the different Wikipedias will be inevitably different.
> Attention has recently been called on the  list to
> ttp://manypedia.com/.)  We need in particular more people with
> ultiple language ability to incorporate the diversity in the
> ndividual encyclopedias.    This is one reason why it is critically
> mportant to develop Wikipedias in the non-Western languages, so their
> iews too can be represented not just in their own language, but
> hroughout the project.
>  --
> avid Goodman
> DGG at the enWP
> ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG
> ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
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-- 
David Goodman

DGG at the enWP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG