[WikiEN-l] Troubling news on Citizendium

[Ray Saintonge]

Fastfission wrote:

> The problem is the categorization of disciplines can be a very
>
>controversial issue even if the discipline itself does not come with
>specific and explicit political or cultural agendas, much less tied up
>in questions of identity or the ability of individuals to make
>decisions on account of their cultural heritage.
>
IOW categorization itself can introduce biases and POVs.

>There is absolutely no easy answer to it. The question of where
>ethnic/gender studies (and its variants) fall within the organization
>of knowledge has been something the American academy has been
>periodically battling with for forty years (Peter Novick's _That Noble
>Dream_ has some great accounts of how the discipline of History in the
>US struggled with these issues in the 60s and 70s). The question of
>disciplinary disputes (what sociologists sometimes call "boundary
>work") has existed since before Copernicus (the question of whether
>mathematicians could make statements which impinged on areas of
>philosophy was a big one in his era). Categorization of knowledge was
>one of the most radical aspects of the original Encyclopedie, and some
>scholars (Robert Darnton in particular) have argued that it was in
>categorizing religion in the same tree as black magic (rather than a
>source of revealed truth) that really invoked the ire of the Church
>(rather than the snippy little asides poking fun at the Eucharist).
>
The problem is older than that.  The usual arrangement of the English 
translation of Aristotle's works puts "Categories" in the very first place.

>Which is just to say that while I don't think this is necessarily any
>example of systemic racism or sexism on Sanger's part (there are
>legitimate reasons for not considering these fields to be top-level
>categories, one need not attribute such opinions to philosophies of
>prejudice), it is an example of what some of the difficulties with an
>"expert-driven" system will be. The problem is, experts don't even
>agree on very basic things at times, such as whose knowledge counts as
>genuine, such as how knowledge should be organized, such as where a
>discipline stops and ends. No matter what decision is made in these
>sorts of issues, they will alienate entire disciplines of experts.
>
>I think Wikipedia gets around it, paradoxically enough, by not
>pretending to have any expert rule, as well as having a relatively
>democratic categorization system (things can be redundantly
>categorized). If you don't make the assumption that the material is
>heavily mediated by experts, then you don't feel quite as bad if it
>doesn't align with one point of view or the other. Or maybe experts
>just don't pay a lot of attention to issues like this on Wikipedia for
>one reason or another.
>
The premise that "Wikipedia is not paper" may help us on this.  We can 
add redundant categories without having to rewrite or re-arrange large 
quantities of data.  When a library changes its cataloging system it can 
be many years before everything is upgraded.  Some old less important 
material is never recatalogued.

>In any case... it will be interesting to see how Sanger works this out
>over time. He really can't afford to alienate the entire humanities
>and if he is perceived as shutting out or, god forbid, segregating
>ethnic/gender studies he will probably end up doing just about that.
>(I'm not saying he's doing that, I'm just talking about how he will be
>perceived.) If he insists on making determinations like this on his
>own (if that is indeed what he has done), he will likely end up
>stepping on a lot of toes.
>
In all fairness didn't the problem lay in his refusal to segregate 
ethnic and gender studies from their larger supercategories.  When you 
give special status to ethnic studies you bring attention to it.  When 
there is systemic bias recognizing that bias is a first step toward 
solving the problem, but if you overemphazixe a specific bias there is a 
risk that you will generate new biases.  Bias against African-Americans 
may be a significant problem in the United States, but other Wikipedians 
in other countries may see this as a particularly American problem.  The 
ethnic priorities in other countries can be quite different.  If America 
is indeed the great melting pot, what indeed is the point of classifying 
African-American literature as something separate from plain old 
American literature.