On 12/21/06, zero 0000 <nought_0000(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
From: jayjg
<jayjg99(a)gmail.com>
On 12/21/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006(a)dpbsmith.com> wrote:
> From: "Steve Bennett"
<stevagewp(a)gmail.com>
>
> On 12/21/06, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>> A while back I wrote about a self-publicising vanity author.
One of
>>> the details I'd liked to have
note was the complete (or near-
>>> complete)
>>> absence of his books in public library catalogues, but it's
almost
>>> impossible to actually find a way to
cite a "negative search"
much
>>> less a positive result...
>>
>> Indeed, that would end up being OR - quite simple OR, but OR all
the
>> same. It's annoying when you know
something that apparently
no-one
> has
> published, but there isn't much we can do about it. (Unless you
> happen
> to be an expert on the subject and can publish it yourself)
If that is OR then WP:NOR is a broken rule.
A citation is essentially a very simple piece of research that can
easily be reproduced by anyone without specialist knowledge.
I don't see what that can't be broadened just a bit. For example,
let's suppose a library has an online catalog... let's say an
online
catalog that's accessible to anyone. (Two
that come to mind are the
Cornell University Library, and the 16,000-volume public library of
Bergen-op-Zoom in the Netherlands... well actually it seems to be
offline but it was available a few years ago).
You can't prove a negative, but you can certainly say "his book is
not in the Cornell University Library" or whatever, and cite a link
to the search or a description of how to do the search. This
doesn't
seem very different to me from a citation.
No, you absolutely cannot do that, for reasons eloquently stated
elsewhere. The claim that it is not in the Cornell University Library
is a novel conclusion based on your own original research; this seems
so trivially obvious to me that it astonishes me that others would
claim otherwise. You might as well promote a novel claim in physics,
and point people to the calculations you have made to prove your
theory. If a reliable source says "the book is not found in the
Cornell University Library", then quote them. Otherwise, move on.
Jay.
Jay, I don't agree with everything Daniel and Steve have written
about this, but I also find your reply quite problematic. Surely
the library catalogue is the most reliable and verifiable source
for what is in the library.
It's the most reliable source we have for what is in the library at
that time. However, we, as searchers of that catalog, are neither a
reliable or verifiable source for what is in the catalog.
Concerning negative information, consider "John
Smith's latest
murder novel Killers of Wiki did not reveal the identity of the
murderer." Can't I cite the novel for that? Anyone can get
the book and verify the information, so it is reliable and
verifiable. I don't think it is necessary to wait until some
third party makes this observation about the book. (Obviously
it would be a different matter if the claim needed some actual
thinking or analysis beyond mere looking.)
Well, to begin with, that claim is not trivial; one would actually
need to read the entire book to be sure that the murderer's identity
is not revealed, and be sure one had read it correctly, and not
drifted off one night while reading page 344, and missed the critical
paragraph. Moreover, if that particular fact is notable or
interesting, it is most likely to have already been stated in a book
review of some sort. And, of course, John Smith's rabid fan X is
likely to show up and say "Are you kidding? The identity is of course
indirectly yet deliberately revealed via these means". I suppose you
could get away with it if the claim is entirely non-controversial (if
there actually is such a thing as a non-controversial claim on
Wikipedia), but it would be better practice not to.
It seems to me that
citing a library catalogue as a source for saying that a book
is not there is fine. I can't think of why one would want to do
that in a Wikipedia article but I don't think it is illegal.
As I've stated elsewhere, books are published, the contents of a
specific edition don't change once published, and quoting from a page
is a simple task that any non-expert can verify. Catalogs are
ephemeral, their contents change all the time, they inevitably contian
bad records and are missing records, searching them is non-trivial,
and the best we can do is verify that Zero0000's specific search on a
specific date did not return any results.
Jay.