[WikiEN-l] Do experts have a moral obligation to contribute to Wikipedia?
WJhonson at aol.com
WJhonson at aol.com
Mon Aug 3 04:59:58 UTC 2009
But who is heard when people read a Wikipedia article? *An expert* is not
heard, that is, no particular expert is heard, because we have no
attribution. Cited sources are heard, where sources are cited, for a particular
sentence. But even then we get citation creep when those sentences are not
enquoted. That is, people will modify or hitch a ride on a sentence with
additional quips not found in the underlying source.
So in our Marilyn Monroe article we *had* cited a source claiming that her
father's country of origin was cited as Norway on her birth certificate.
Which is a claim with no evidence. And the source cited, did not state
this either. Someone had hitched that "Norway" onto a sentence which had
simply read that her father's name was Mortenson on her birth cert. A casual
reader cannot disentangle these overlying changes, but may assume this is
the voice of the cited expert. I fail to see how when reading any of our
articles, a person is actually reading the words of any particular expert.
In a *relatively few* articles sources are cited and the actual extracted
sentence is enquoted. Those I find the most useful, as you can be fairly
sure the source actually states what the quoted sentence states, without
repeating the look-up.
Will Johnson
In a message dated 8/2/2009 9:24:53 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
lunasantin at gmail.com writes:
I don't think I'd ever go chiding someone over it, but he brings up a solid
point: if you hope to be heard, you need to speak in such a way that people
will listen -- this may sometimes include speaking *where* people will
listen.
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