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

[Mike Godwin]

On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 7:06 PM, George Herbert
<george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

> Any policy - or policy change - we can think of will have unforseen
> consequences.

I agree with you. But we can't let this paralyze us in responding to a
problem that is no longer "unforeseen," but that in fact has occurred.
At minimum, the Haymarket article ought to edited to accommodate a
well-documented minority scholarly analysis -- surely we agree about
that.

> Is it possible that you being Mike Godwin is leading to a selection
> bias, where a large fraction of the actual experts with actual
> problems with process who did anything about it came to or through you
> on their way to solving or reporting the problem?

It's entirely possible. But it happens with enough frequency for me to
be able to articulate a credible hypothesis that this is happening too
often. Certainly there's no "selection bias" problem associated with
the sheer fact of the Chronicle of Higher Education article itself --
its existence is something that nobody here disputes, regardless of
how we interpret it. And I think there is a second hypothesis that is
also credible, which is that the Chronicle article very likely hurts
Wikipedia reputationally.

> It seems that there are a large surplus of the latter, and only a few
> of the former, statistically.  Assuming that's accurate, that should
> inform the policy discussion.

Certainly.


--Mike