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

[Achal Prabhala]

On Wednesday 22 February 2012 01:36 PM, Peter Gervai wrote:
> 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


Jokes aside :) the problem here is exemplary of what Wikipedia *doesn't* 
do well, which is to find ways to assess the legitimacy of 
not-yet-legitimised knowledge - whether the 'truth' is new analysis 
backed up by serious scholarship (as in this case), or things that have 
not yet made it to reliable print scholarship (knowledge that's 
circulated orally, whether in conversations or social media). The core 
of the problem would appear to be our insistence on the narrowest and 
smallest possible definition of 'legitimate knowledge'. And I'd imagine 
that the solution is to find a workable, sensible and cross-culturally 
translatable version of legitimacy that is a lot better, bigger and more 
generous than what we have.


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