[WikiEN-l] WP and Deep Web, was Re: Age fabrication and original research

[stevertigo]

David Goodman wrote:
> 1. The best role of a librarian is to teach other people how to do research,

Well, are they "librarians" or "teachers" in information science?

> ''How Wikipedia Works''  (http://howwikipediaworks.com/ the free online
> version.)

Ah. Apparently only chapter 12 is "free." Does someone here have a
copy they would like to share? Or maybe a torrent link?

> 2, Another excellent goal is to help people do their searches,,
> because it is not the least trivial to  "formulate search strings."
> and have someone else run them on the data bases they have access to.

I think that for the most part, the way to formulate search strings
begins as a written expression: The statement in the request comes in
the form of some ostensibly factual expression -- one that simply
needs corroboration with some similar expression to be validated and
sourced. Then others -- even those who aren't going to perform the
search itself -- can reformulate those expressions into search
strings, while leaving the core expression intact. The resulting
phrases can then be compared side-by-side with the original
expression.

> The art of a librarian or other proper literature searcher is rather
> more complex: selecting the best database to run it , formulating the
> proper search statement, evaluating the preliminary  results, and then
> repeating the necessary number of iterations until one finds just what
> one does want or concludes it isn't there.

> I typically do about 3 or 4 intermediate searches  before I think I
> get it right-.

Well, it will no doubt be a challenge you can handle.

> If I get it right the first time, it's only because of
> many years of knowledge in doing these searches.  We're not
> technicians.

Its not always necessary to have expertise or even deliberate choice
in the matter, is it?  For example on [[Talk:American Dream]],
Binksternet was an unwitting "sourcewalla" -- not a truly neutral
sourcewalla, Binksternet in fact disliked my inserting the language
"ethos of prosperity" into the AD lede. He reverted my edit and
complained about it, but in a stroke of (helpful) genius, Bink listed
some Google Book search returns (string: 'ethos of prosperity') as
examples of my erroneous original research: None of these sources, he
said, at all validated my conceptualization "ethos of prosperity." My
contribution was then to simply read the sources he helped find, and
then to demonstrate in a detailed and obtusely incontrovertible way
how at least two of these sources actually *did corroborate my
language "ethos of prosperity," in absolutely no ambiguous terms.

Side note: In typical fashion, this opponent also just sort of dropped
the issue without conceding or undoing his unnecessary reverts. I had
also stated that his own unsourced writing (correcting mine) "ethos of
idealism" was "not even English." Which, in retrospect probably did
not inspire him to continue being helpful. So, the sourcewalla idea
does not just mean that partisanship can be removed from sourcing, but
that the citation onus is less asinine, article disputes can be
resolved more quickly, people such as myself will not feel the need to
resort to sarcasm and trout to overcome their obtuse opposition, and
the one(s) who do(es) the revert will also feel like actually undoing
their reverts (WP:CIVIL) instead of just walking away after making a
mess to begin with.

> 3. I do not advise testing how far  AGF gets us with  or some of the
> more hostile publishers in law and engineering.

In the views of these "hostile publishers," is it we who are the
"hostile publisher?"

-Stevertigo
"for all the honest world to feel...