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

[Peter Gervai]

On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 03:35, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

> By far the majority of people who come up and "buck the system" or
> challenge established knowledge in this manner are, in fact, kooks or
> people with an agenda.  This started - as others have pointed out -
> with a few fields where this is narrowly but clearly established, but
> has been successfully generalized.
>
> Let us acknowledge some obvious truths here, that we had bad info in
> an article, that we had a scholar unfamiliar with WP process whose
> first attempt to correct it went somewhat (but not horrifically)
> wrong, that the engagement of a number of WP editors/administrators
> failed to identify the credibility of the scholar and wrongness of the
> info.
>
> To simply toss UNDUE in response seems a mistake.  UNDUE is, every
> day, actively helping us fight off crap trying to fling itself into
> WP.

Okay, I preacknowledge that this is not a "solution" but for me it
seems that the problem is to differentiate kooks from experts in
regard of not widespread information or selfmade but published
research which is important for the articles etc.

So far editors have a tool, UNDUE, to hush away kooks. I'd envision an
IAMEXPERT template which would inform the editors that the expert in
question considers himself an acknowledged expert (and therefore there
are other experts who consider him one), the information was in fact
peer reviewed and would kindly ask the editors to allocate a bit more
consideration.

What if the template is used by kooks? Well, they should somehow back
up the facts, how are they acknowledged as experts, what kind of peer
review happened, and most importantly establish why the "minority
fact" is important. Do the kooks they fight against possessing proof
of their expertise in the field? Do they have reviewed sources? If
yes, this hack wouldn't even work. But if all the kooks are just
selfmade evangelists of kookery they'll simply fail to prove their
right. The template would be just a request for the editors to
strongly consider the appropriateness of UNDUE. Could be nicely
phrased and offer the background. A tool for the other side.

grin