[WikiEN-l] While we're at it, NOR line-by-line

[Mark Gallagher]

G'day Will,

> Sure, but if James Joyce really is "one of the most significant
> writers of  
> the 20th century" then we should have no problem finding a source
> which states  
> that.

We have a camel's nose problem there.  I say: "James Joyce is one of the most significant writers of the 20th Century."  Will says, quite correctly: how do we know?  That statement is unsourced!  So I change it to, "According to Phil Sandifer, author of /Significant Writers of the 20th Century/, James Joyce is quite an important chap."  Then Will Johnson, being the respectable, responsible person he is, will say --- "But who is Phil Sandifer?  Why should we take *his* word on James Joyce?"  So now we need a source to explain why Phil's views are relevant to the article about Joyce.  But how do we verify the significance of *that* source?

Sooner or later, we have to use our own damn judgment.  We can use it to determine that Source Omega is sufficiently reliable to verify Source Alpha, which verifies Source Z, which verifies Source A, which verifies ... or, and here's a wacky idea, we can use it to decide which statements need to be sourced and which --- drumroll, please --- *don't*.

> Remembering that we don't give credence to expert editors because
> they  
> *know* details they can ramble off, but rather, because they know
> where *to  look* 
> to find the sources.

Er, no.  *No*.  My favourite encyclopaedia defines "expert" as, "someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely is accorded authority and status by their peers or the public. An expert, more generally, is a person with extensive knowledge or ability in a particular area of study."  An expert can tell you where to find sources.  More importantly, an expert can also tell you *when* to find sources.

Wikipedia is remarkably democratic (without, of course, being a *democracy*) --- you don't *have* to be an expert to write there.  I often write (well, wrote) on subjects on which I had no expertise, and I find it liberating to be able to do so without anybody swooping in and saying, "Here, what makes you think *you* can talk on this subject?"  That doesn't mean we don't need experts, or that experts need to pretend they're ordinary editors.  However, it does appear to be the ultimate outcome if we take our poorly-written policies literally.

I'm proud of what I've contributed to Wikipedia.  I'm proud of Wikipedia for allowing such contributions.  I'm proud of what we've all accomplished, despite a lack of expertise.  In short, I'm proud of the way we treat non-experts.  But I'm not proud of the way we treat experts.  When we adopt the Bloody-Minded Approach to Sourcing, we're being democratic in the Harrison Bergeron sense --- we're not providing The People the opportunity to contribute to the Sum of Human Knowledge.  Instead, we're taking away from experts the ability to do the same.  We're handicapping the very people who could provide the most value.  We're belittling their abilities and their accomplishments, mocking their intentions, driving them away.

An anti-intellectual encyclopaedia is an interesting concept, and I bet Conservapedia would kill to find out how we managed to come so close.  Our intention, our passion, our vision, is noble.  Our policy contradicts that.  One of the features, I think, of my wiki-career was my knowledge of How Things Work --- and my disdain for policy and process.  Phil Sandifer is much the same.  He has come to recognise, and with his posts has convinced me, that written policy has become so out of touch with How Things Work, and has become so important in the minds of newer editors, that it cannot further be ignored as a minor annoyance.  It needs to be rewritten.  NOR and V are incompatible with what Wikipedians have achieved, and what we hope to achieve in the future.  In short: it sucks, and if we don't want Wikipedia to suck, we need to address that.

Has anyone filed a request to be allowed to consider maybe thinking about allowing the concept to tentatively cross someone's mind to maybe if the process-campers agree opening up a discussion to begin a poll to attempt to start a dialogue on altering some minor working of these policies?

> We, are not sources.  I wouldn't support any position that claims
> that  we, 
> as editors, are also sources.

Wikipedia editors, if I may use the vernacular, write shit.  That's what we're for.  We write shit.  We try to make it relevant and interesting to an encyclopaedia's readership.  If I go down and take a picture of the new Glenloch Interchange and then describe what I see ("the traffic cones have been removed, there is a new loop road connecting Parkes Way with the GDE, formerly Caswell Drive"), there's nothing wrong with that.  There's all sorts of things I could do to dress it up --- but I'm not violating core principles of Wikipedia.  If you try to stop me by slapping silly rules on me, then *you are*.

We started with this idea of people writing shit.  We've added layers of process and policy to that to help manage a project that is bigger than any volunteer effort that has ever existed (with the possible exception of the Crusades ...).  That's fair and reasonable and to be expected.  However, much like the Crusades (let's face it, that "you'll be absolved of all sins you commit while away" thing was a BIG mistake), we need to periodically review what we're doing and decide whether or not it's really such a good idea.

NOR exists for two purposes.  Most obviously, to stop kooks from filling Wikipedia with psychoceramic nonsense.  It's hung around on top of that because, well, "NOR" works quite well for an encyclopaedia.  We don't want people advancing novel theories about *anything*, kookery or not.  We're not here for advancing original research; we're not even here for synthesis of primary sources in exciting and novel ways.  However, we don't want people interpreting poorly-worded *policies* in exciting and novel ways either, and that's what's happened in the past couple of years.  Every time we ignore the purpose of policy in favour of bloody-mindedly enforcing the wording, we create suckage.

And suckage of any level of suckitude is something we should be trying to avoid.  After all, we're Wikipedia.  We make the Internet not suck.

-- 
Mark Gallagher