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

[Mike Godwin]

On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 6:35 PM, George Herbert
<george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

> If the answer to one is "yes", then "These things happen" is an
> explanation but not an excuse, and should be a prompt to help us all
> get better at detecting that.  These things do happen, but should not.
>  These things do happen, but we should expect better on the average.

Apart from the question of whether this particular article -- on the
Haymarket bombing -- has been hurt by editors' ill-considered
application of UNDUE, there's the larger question of what it means for
our credibility when a very respected journal, The Chronicle of Higher
Education, features an op-ed that outlines, in very convincing detail,
what happens when a subject-matter expert attempts to play the rules
and is still slapped down. If I thought this author's experience is
rare, I wouldn't be troubled by it. But as someone who frequently
fielded complaints from folks who were not tendentious kooks, my
impression is that it is not rare, and that the language of UNDUE --
as it exists today -- ends up being leveraged in a way that hurts
Wikipedia both informationally and reputationally.


--Mike