Martin
You really think that it is ridiculous that encyclopaedias in general and Wikipedia in particular should be judged, among other criteria, on their reliability? If so, I disagree.
However, if you really believe that an encyclopadia does not ned to be reliable, then it seems that on this specific point we may need to agree to disagree. How about the other points I adduce, such as the millions of unreferenced or inadeqautely referenced articles discovered at https://wikimediafoundation.org/2019/04/03/can-machine-learning-uncover-wiki... -- is that evidence of success? The thousands of articles in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Unreferenced_BLPs -- is that evidence of success?
Thrapostibongles
On Tue, Jun 18, 2019 at 1:44 PM Martijn Hoekstra martijnhoekstra@gmail.com wrote:
No.
What I'm saying is this: setting meeting the reliable sources policy of wikipedia as a condition for success, or not meeting that policy as evidence of failure is ridiculous.
On Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 14:29 Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Martin, Dennis
The tenor of your arguments appears to be that Wikipedia is in fact reliable, because it uses reliable sources, but that it pretends not to
be
because it's too hard to prevent people writing article based on other articles. This is not in accord with the facts. As I pointed out, and
as
Foundation research has shown, millions -- literally millions, and when I say "literally" I literally mean "literally" -- of articles, about one in five, are not founded on reliable sources, and some thousands of those, being biographies of living people, should have been instantly deleted.
So
we cannot rely on any of those millions of articles, by your own reasoning. The reason why Wikipedia deems itself unreliable is that it
is
an open wiki, and all such sources are forbidden, because anyone can
write
anything on them: "Content from websites whose content is largely user-generated is also generally unacceptable." Wikipedia is cited in the policy as merely another example of such unreliable sources.
The way forward, however unpalatable this may be to people who would like to believe that this is somehow silly or sophistry, is to look the facts
in
the face and accept that some form of editorial policy, content workflow management and supervision of the volunteer effort is necessary to make Wikipedia what aspires to be, but is not currently, namely an encyclopaedia.
Thrapostibongles
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 11:06 PM Martijn Hoekstra < martijnhoekstra@gmail.com> wrote:
Wikipedia itself can never be more reliable than the sources it cites.
If
it's allowed to cite itself, then there is no "bottom" to lean on, and
its
quality would quickly drop.
That you conclude from that that wikipedia is unreliable and therefore failed is IMO such a silly proposition, that I dont know whether you seriously think this, in which case we should probably take this off
list,
or that you're engaging in sophistry and using arguments you don't
think
are reasonable in the first place.
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 19:56 Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Dennis,
I started this thread to discuss both conduct and content policies on Wikipedia, and indeed how the two interact. Wikipedia is a project
to
build an encyclopaedia. By its own criteria, encyclopaedias are
reliable
sources and Wikipedia is not a reliable source; hence by its own
criteria,
Wikipedia is not an encyclopaedia. That is, it is currently in a
state
of
failure with respect to its own mission.
One of the reasons for that state of failure is indeed the failure to provide a collegial working atmosphere.
Thrapostibongles
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 2:19 PM Dennis During dcduring@gmail.com
wrote:
"One (and not the most important) pieces of evidence for Wikipedia
being
in
a failed state is precisely that it does not, by the community's own admission, constitute a
reliable
source
"
You have made this argument more than once. That might be a piece
of
evidence seems both wrong and not relevant to the sense in which
people
here as saying WP has failed, which is as a welcoming, "safe"
environment
for contributors and would-be contributors.
It is good policy to make sure that contributors reach out to other sources, even when one believes that Wikipedia is as reliable as
the
average tertiary source we allow as a reference. It prevents us
from
relying exclusively on what can easily turn out to be a very narrow
set
of
points of view. Does/did the Encyclopedia Britanica cite other EB
articles
as references rather than include them as "see alsos"?
On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 8:27 AM Mister Thrapostibongles < thrapostibongles@gmail.com> wrote:
Vito
This rather tends to support my point. One (and not the most
important)
pieces of evidence for Wikipedia being in a failed state is
precisely
that
it does not , by the community's own admission, constitute a
reliable
source:whereas "Reputable tertiary sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TERTIARY, such as introductory-level university textbooks, almanacs, and
encyclopedias,
may
be cited". So Wikipedia fails in its aim of being an
encyclopaedia
on
one
of the most important tests one could imagine, namely
reliability.
And a
reason for that is its lack of effective content management
policies
and
mechanisms to put them into effect (in the old days we called
that
being
an
editor, but that word on Wikipedia now is more or less a
redundant
synonym
for contributor).
Now suppose that Wikipedia had effective editorial policies and
processes
that allowed it to assume the status of a reliable source, just
like
the
encyclopaedia it aims to be. You say that even in that
situation,
it
would
be easy to manipulate. On that assumption, how much easier it
must
be
to
"trick" it today when it has no such effective policies and
processes
in
place!
Thrapostibongles
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