[WikiEN-l] Re: Plagiarism Policy, was A Missing Policy

[Ray Saintonge]

Haukur Þorgeirsson wrote:

>>Hmmm... or is it just more that it might be embarrassing that the
>>actual article sources are not that authoritative? (indeed perhaps
>>just coming from a website!)
>>
>>Wikipedia's detractors aren't making stuff up out of thin air, often
>>merely drawing on, and exaggerating, the cases where we fail.
>>
>>I would suggest that in many cases where sources are not cited, it's
>>because they aren't good sources. And this happens all the time on
>>less scrutinised Wikipedia articles.
>>
>>Doesn't mean it's not plagiarism though to use someone else's work and
>>not accredit it just because it's awkward for you to do so.
>>    
>>
>But plagiarism is the founding principle of Wikipedia! ;)
>Okay, not quite. But if there had been strict requirements
>on using good references in the proper way from the
>beginning I wonder if the project would ever have gotten
>off the ground.
>
>Maybe it would have, just a bit more slowly, and be all
>the better for it. I honestly don't know.
>  
>
That's speculative but a good point nevertheless.  I suspect that you're 
right.  Our first contributors may very well have been individuals who 
had a hard time with the confines of academia, but who still had 
something to say.  The first point that had to be made was that 
absolutely anybody could contribute within the confines of a few very 
simple limitations like NPOV.   That idea is totally subversive!  That 
subversion has some very far reaching implications for the operation of 
the intellectual marketplace.

Once the public was empowered with the idea that everybody could 
contribute we had to look at our credibility, and that included looking 
at the things that academia did right.  Asking, "Where does that idea 
come from?" is a part of what Academia does right.  But we can back into 
that question without preconceptions.  The social pressure of 
credentialization is no longer there.  Our results do not depend on 
positive grades from a professor with the power to dictate that right or 
wrong depends on following his pet theories.

I believe in the idea of a Wikiversity, and have believed in the 
underlying concept since long before I heard of Wikipedia.  For it to be 
succesful requires avoiding two dangers.  On the one hand we need to 
avoid the conformist pressures of established systems; on the other hand 
we need to protect ourselves from lunatics.

Ec