[Foundation-l] Oral Citations Sourcing

[M. Williamson]

Ziko, you raise the subject of "illiterates"... I feel that it is blatant
discrimination to assert that the only way illiterates can create sources
worthy of citation on Wikipedia is either by becoming literate, or by being
interviewed by a literate person. This to me indicates a value judgement,
that literate people are inherently "worth more" than illiterate people.


2012/2/25 Ziko van Dijk <vandijk at wmnederland.nl>

> Yes Ting, and for these cases there is the method of [[oral history]].
> This is a means to create what the Anglosaxons call "primary sources".
> It is recorded and can later be used by a scholar (historian,
> ethnologist etc.) for his research, for his "secondary sources".
> These, with their scholar reflections, can be used by an encyclopedia.
>
> There are good reasons for this way. One is, that it is not very
> practical to cite from audiotapes/audiofiles. Another, that what this
> individual is describing may be true for his personal environment but
> cannot be generalized to others. For that, one needs the scholar.
> Remember: witnesses are the most unreliable source ever. People tell
> you plain nonsense - not because they want to ly or are stupid but
> because the human brain is simply not created to be a historian. It
> has the greatest difficulties to store information truthfully. So you
> need to record, and compare the different assertions from different
> people.
>
> It is a possibility to record oral and visual expressions from
> illiterates, and only later to do something with it scholarly. But all
> this has nothing to do with Wikipedia.
>
> Kind regards
> Ziko
>
>
>
> 2012/2/25 Ting Chen <wing.philopp at gmx.de>:
> > Mountain, the first ever editor on zh-wp, and still active until today,
> told
> > me the following story one day (it was before the Oral Citation project
> but
> > I remembered the story very well):
> >
> > He came from the coast of Shandong, and his father told him that earlier
> > there was a local tradition where people went early morning to the coast
> to
> > catch crabs or mollusks (one of them). They used to use a special
> technique
> > to catch the animals. But meanwhile no one is using this technique
> anymore,
> > not only because there are now plenty of crabs or mollusks on the market
> > from the hydroculture, but also because the coast which was wild earlier
> are
> > now all urbanized, with oil terminals and harbors and those. When
> Mountain
> > told me that story he felt he would like to write down those stories
> because
> > in maybe 10 or 20 years, latest in 50 years, no one would ever know that
> > there was such a thing on the world. And that tradition would be lost for
> > ever. But he also felt he could not write them on Wikipedia because he
> had
> > no resources, because until now no of the ethmologists ever had
> interested
> > on such traditions and no academic resources ever mentioned it. With the
> > Oral Citations Sourcing it would be possible to interview the old people
> or
> > even let them show how the techniques worked.
> >
> > Greetings
> > Ting
> >
> > On 25.02.2012 09:02, wrote Lodewijk:
> >
> >> Hi Castelo,
> >>
> >> just to make the discussion clearer: could you just give say 5 or 10
> >> examples of topics where you believe oral citations are unavoidable?
> Then
> >> I
> >> hope that Ziko in his turn can explain how we can write about those
> >> examples without using them.
> >>
> >> Best regards,
> >> Lodewijk
> >>
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
> --
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland
> dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter
> http://wmnederland.nl/
> -----------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>