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

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 7:25 PM, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> On 2/19/12 2:29 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
>>
>> The key problem here is that WP:UNDUE was expressly written to address
>> the problem of genuine ongoing controversies, and fringe views. In
>> this case there is no ongoing controversy, but the use of the policy
>> has for long been used to remove new research no-one has even refuted,
>> much less there being an intractable controversy over the issue.
>
> In some cases I think *that* is also the correct response, though it's
> difficult to sort out how to distinguish when it is and isn't. In my own
> field (artificial intelligence), there is a certain amount of excessive
> recentism in Wikipedia articles--- some new paper will come out with a grand
> new result or critique, will get a flurry of coverage in New Scientist and
> similar publications, and the Wikipedia article will be updated with this
> "cutting-edge AI" result.

I completely agree that *sometimes* it the correct response. I
completely disagree that it is a WP:UNDUE issue. Maybe we should have
a WP:SPECULATIVE policy page.

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