[Foundation-l] The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia (from the Chronicle) + some citation discussions

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 11:44 AM, Mike Godwin <mnemonic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Jussi-ville writes:
>
>>> The policy, misused in the course of POV struggle, is a way of excluding
>>> information with interferes with presentation of a desired point of view.
>>
>> I think you are being way too generous. ... Let me repeat in more concise form.
>> The policy was written to enable serious work on hard topics, it as it
>> stands, hinders work, making it hard to edit simple facts.
>
> I think the article in The Chronicle of Higher Education is a
> must-read. Here you have a researcher who actually took pains to learn
> what the rules to editing Wikipedia are (including No Original
> Research), and who, instead of trying to end-run WP:NOR, waited years
> until the article was actually published before trying to modify the
> Haymarket article. To me, this is a particularly fascinating case
> because the author's article, unlike the great majority of sources for
> Wikipedia articles, was peer-reviewed -- this means it underwent
> academic scrutiny that the newspapers, magazines, and other popular
> sources we rely on never undergo.
>
> I think the problem really is grounded in the UNDUE WEIGHT policy
> itself, as written, and not in mere misuse of the policy.
>

Yes, that is what I said in my previous posting, the policy as it
originally was written was fine, but people deliberately edited the
policy in such a way that the letter of the policy in the strict sense
makes this kind of abuse possible, and not merely possible, but
commonplace. Some of the editors might have had excusable motives of
not only removing fringe beliefs from wikipedia but also things they
considered too inconsequential to be in an encyclopaedia. I think they
were fundamentally and comprehensively wrong to take this view, but I
cannot deny that from their philosophical perspective, removing what
they consider dross but others might not, is from their perspective a
good thing no matter how much they must twist the original intent of
the policy document.

 A collateral of this and a few other policies similarly co-opted and
edited beyond the original aims and intent of the policy in effect was
to leverage power to the experienced editors who knew how to quote
chapter and verse from the policies, and to dissuade new editors from
protesting the validity of their case. I do believe this might have
some relevance to the low retention rate of new editors.


-- 
--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]