[WikiEN-l] How's our coverage of medications?

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 4:01 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> I think the very best thing we can do in terms of serving the public
> is to have as clear, accurate and referenced information as we can, in
> a well-written article, i.e. what we do anyway.

Except we only do that *most of the time*. Millions of people per
month come to Wikipedia and instead see pages in some greater or
lesser degree of damage. There are few products where an acceptable
failure rate of multiple percent is acceptable, certainly not in
anything which is possibly life-critical.

It may not be in our power to fix that problem satisfactorily, but I'd
have no problem convincing an objective outsider that we're hardly
even trying.

Don't make the error of assuming that the contributors all care about
serving the public as many do not.  What then when our public duty is
"unwiki"?

On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 4:09 PM, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2008/11/25 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>:
>> There is only one way to prove any of that, though, and that's giving
>> it a go.
>
> Not so. I assume we keep the not English wikipedias around for a reason.

DE has it, and it's still ticking away.  Go look at the discussions on
EnWp: the counter is "De is not En". Quite true.  Proof really isn't
possible, and that really is what some people are *demanding*.


On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 4:06 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> There is only one way to prove any of that, though, and that's giving
> it a go. If we only make the flagged rev the default version for
> articles that are currently (semi-)protected keeping up with the
> sighting would be easy - that's the version of the proposal that
> should be completely uncontroversial.

You would think— But thats only true if the resistance is driven by a
risk analysis, it's not true for resistance driven by either a hard
philosophical objection (The "unwiki" position taken by many in the
discussions) or due to an attempt to thwart change in general. In
either of these cases you could demonstrate that it works great and
those opinions would not change. Moreover, the possibility that a test
may be successful and dispel fears is a reason to oppose testing for
opponents whom care about things other than success.

In any case, what you're saying has been proposed multiple times and
in multiple forms. It has failed to obtain consensus. So much for
completely uncontroversial.

On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 3:55 PM, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2008/11/25 David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:
>> So what will it take for us to get this switched on for en:wp?
>
> Proof that having the sighted revision as the standard view (which you
> have to for it to be meaningfully useful) doesn't result in a drop in
> editing rate.
>
> Proof that en would be able to keep up with the required rate of
> sighting (We have a hard time marking new pages as patrolled at the
> moment)

Well there is only one way to get *proof*, so we have a Catch-22.
Sure, persuasive evidence... we can get that, as far as I can tell,
we've always had it: If things were so fragile that twiddling a knob
will irreparably ruin it over night we would have been screwed long
ago.... but you're pretty much right on in saying that people are
demanding *proof*. But we can't have proof without doing it.

This is also true for any other change. Unexpected stuff happens. I'd
argue that for much of what we do or could do the unexpected results
are more numerous and significant than the expected ones.  So the
argument you expressed is basically saying that we can't change
anything ever.

(I'm careful to not call it yours— because I do not believe that
you're a proponent of it, but it's an argument I've seen other people
make on English Wikipedia in all seriousness)

I wonder what aspects of EnWP culture contribute to the audacious
solipsism of believing that its members can "no-consensus" away forces
as universal as change.

Not that I'm in favour of some non-consensus massive change: I'd
prefer reasonable stepping stones (like mostly replacing protection
with default-view flagging) to help build knowledge and confidence and
to allow an *informed* consensus to form. But that too is resisted,
after all— it's admittedly a possible stepping stone. This
unwillingness to *test* and explore possibilities with uncertain
outcomes is why I tend to characterize EnWP's behaviour as a foolish
attempt to avoid change, rather than the result of a reasonable
decision making process. What can not change will die.