Re: [Foundation-l] Subject: Re: The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia, (from the Chronicle) + some citation discussions
On 02/22/12 6:04 PM, David Goodman wrote: There are many subjects in which there would be multiple schools of thought with little agreement; anyone following book reviews in the humanities or social sciences or even some of the sciences would know the intensity with which the highest level scholars attack the work of those they disagree with. Appoint one as expert, and that field will have a substantial bias. Appoint several, and they will endlessly dispute with each other. We shouldn't expect ourselves to be exempt from this kind of academic discourse. We owe it to our readers to provide a clear and fair-minded presentation of these differences. We already have no problem with the true expert who is content to learn our rules and work by them. We do have problems accommodating the true expert who is right on his position but too impatient to learn and work by our practices. We're a medium of a certain unique sort, and what we need are the experts who can work within a communal system of editing. Communal editing , however, does not require rudeness: we can encourage those who could work here, but are reluctant to engage in our schoolyard level of discourse. We absolutely need to be severe with persistently rude admins. We need to be able to engage fairly with would-be editors, remembering that guidelines need to be flexible. What we do not want is the expert of whatever quality who intends to work by authority rather than discussion. When it comes to processes arguing on the basis of the wording in some policy page is working by authority. It takes advantage of the person who has no idea where to look for the rule that fits his particular situation. Ray ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Subject: Re: The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia, (from the Chronicle) + some citation discussions
On 24 February 2012 09:34, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote: On 02/22/12 6:04 PM, David Goodman wrote: There are many subjects in which there would be multiple schools of thought with little agreement; anyone following book reviews in the humanities or social sciences or even some of the sciences would know the intensity with which the highest level scholars attack the work of those they disagree with. Appoint one as expert, and that field will have a substantial bias. Appoint several, and they will endlessly dispute with each other. We shouldn't expect ourselves to be exempt from this kind of academic discourse. We owe it to our readers to provide a clear and fair-minded presentation of these differences. Isn't that what David is saying? That if we allowed partisans to hold sway by virtue of their expertise in the subject we are not going to get a fair minded presentation (either a one-sided one, or a major argument if two or more experts clash). By introduction lay editors with no specific interest or investment, except in writing a good article, we moderate this issue (not entirely, but there you go). Tom ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Subject: Re: The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia, (from the Chronicle) + some citation discussions
On 24 February 2012 09:34, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote: On 02/22/12 6:04 PM, David Goodman wrote: There are many subjects in which there would be multiple schools of thought with little agreement; anyone following book reviews in the humanities or social sciences or even some of the sciences would know the intensity with which the highest level scholars attack the work of those they disagree with. Appoint one as expert, and that field will have a substantial bias. Appoint several, and they will endlessly dispute with each other. We shouldn't expect ourselves to be exempt from this kind of academic discourse. We owe it to our readers to provide a clear and fair-minded presentation of these differences. Isn't that what David is saying? That if we allowed partisans to hold sway by virtue of their expertise in the subject we are not going to get a fair minded presentation (either a one-sided one, or a major argument if two or more experts clash). By introduction lay editors with no specific interest or investment, except in writing a good article, we moderate this issue (not entirely, but there you go). Tom Still original research. And even worse, not interesting. A cleaned up version that omits the research of those who are passionate about the subject would pretty much be a bucket of warm spit. Although I don't think we need to consider Howard Zinn an expert on anything but his own birthday. Footnote 49 from Haymarket affair: Some anarchists privately indicated they had later learned the bomber's identity but kept quiet to avoid further prosecutions. Howard Zinn, in A People's History of the United States suggests Rudolph Schnaubelt was an agent of the police posing as an anarchist and threw the bomb (thus giving police a pretext to arrest the leaders of Chicago's anarchist movement.) This theory does not have wide support among historians. Hardly surprising; as far as I can see, he just made it up. Fred ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Subject: Re: The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia, (from the Chronicle) + some citation discussions
Andrew Lih and Steven Walling and Timothy Messer-Kruse on NPR, discussing exactly this today: http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1t=1islist=falseid=147261659m=147261652 On Thursday 23 February 2012 08:11 AM, Robin McCain wrote: Well, I'm not an active academic, but I have been given to understand that the quality of the peer review process varies greatly. About 10 years back, I was briefly involved in an attempt to develop an online peer reviewed publications infrastructure. This was one of our concerns - is it better to have 10 second tier subject matter experts vote on whether or not to publish an article or rely solely on the opinion of one first tier expert (who might bitterly detest the author of the work under scrutiny for reasons not at all connected with the quality of the article). Perhaps a better choice for people with subject matter expertise would be graduate students who have no axe to grind as yet. It is the same old question of who will watch the watchers that has plagued every encyclopedic attempt in history. So I'd rather have a qualified subject matter *generalist* review for content than someone who is a /specialist/ with completely _unrelated_ credentials. The generalist probably knows enough about the field in question to be able to spot inappropriate content than someone who has an inflated ego but knows nothing of the subject. We strive for inclusiveness, but the Wikipedia US culture has become very exclusionary. Since this is a volunteer effort there is an attitude of take what you can get that leads to sloppy behaviors. It seems we need more effective and accessible training for everyone from readers to contributors and editors. There may be some such, but I haven't stumbled across it yet. Is there already a core of training material that could be converted into some kind of online interactive instructional tool? On 2/22/2012 6:04 PM, David Goodman wrote: I was one of the initial subject editors at Citizendium. One of its key problems was the poor choice of subject matter experts. The selection of which people to trust was ultimately in the hands of the founder, and he was unduly impressed by formal academic credentials without concerning himself about actual professional standing. But even had he a much closer understanding of the actual hierarchies in the academic world, the results would not have been much better, because there is nobody of sufficient knowledge and authority across the fields of all of human activity to select the true experts. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Subject: Re: The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia, (from the Chronicle) + some citation discussions
I was one of the initial subject editors at Citizendium. One of its key problems was the poor choice of subject matter experts. The selection of which people to trust was ultimately in the hands of the founder, and he was unduly impressed by formal academic credentials without concerning himself about actual professional standing. But even had he a much closer understanding of the actual hierarchies in the academic world, the results would not have been much better, because there is nobody of sufficient knowledge and authority across the fields of all of human activity to select the true experts. There are many subjects in which there would be multiple schools of thought with little agreement; anyone following book reviews in the humanities or social sciences or even some of the sciences would know the intensity with which the highest level scholars attack the work of those they disagree with. Appoint one as expert, and that field will have a substantial bias. Appoint several, and they will endlessly dispute with each other. (Citizendium did appoint several in each discipline, and tried to avoid disputes by dividing up authority on individual articles on the basis of whichever editor got there first. When these experts themselves wrote the articles, there was nobody with power to judge them. I understand things are somewhat better now, but very few of the original editors are active.) Even at Wikipedia, there is some fields where there are two active experts, who take diametrically opposite views, and try to decide things by trying to get each other thrown out of the project. We already have no problem with the true expert who is content to learn our rules and work by them. We do have problems accommodating the true expert who is right on his position but too impatient to learn and work by our practices. We're a medium of a certain unique sort, and what we need are the experts who can work within a communal system of editing. Communal editing , however, does not require rudeness: we can encourage those who could work here, but are reluctant to engage in our schoolyard level of discourse. But there will remain and ought to remain many who prefer to work within their own well-developed peer-reviewed system, and not impose themselves on ours. What we do not want is the expert of whatever quality who intends to work by authority rather than discussion. To destroy Wikipedia, make it like Citizendium. On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 12:51 PM, Robin McCain ro...@slmr.com wrote: I think you have inadvertently hit upon something essential. Content has some relative value. Someone has always had to put energy into creating content. More importantly for our current discussion, someone has always had to make a decision to invest in the REPRODUCTION of content. Printing (on paper) is historically an expensive process. Publishers could not afford to waste time, materials equipment on content of questionable value. So submitted content was always subjected to some sort of review process to weed out the trivial content. Someone made a value judgement. Historically that person(s) had a vested interest in the subject of that content. Whether peer reviewed or evaluated by a subject matter expert - printed matter has always had some sort of editorial process. That isn't to say we should necessarily trust the motives of that editorial process. Propaganda is by its very nature NOT objective. But there is a big difference between an article written for a local entertainment or business daily and an advertisement in that publication. For example: a theatrical publication pays for an advertisement (where they get to say what they will) - but a '''review''' by that same publication is the result of editorial control and is trusted as far more objective by the reader. Another example - the Reader's Digest - a publication trusted by millions, has now become the advertising platform of choice for the pharmaceutical industry. Every issue has multipage ads for expensive new drugs. The layouts of these ads make them LOOK authoritative - as though the staff of RD advocated their use. So the weight of RD remains about the same, though actual content of value is less, and the subscriber pays for the increased bulk mail costs. So - by a roundabout we come to the meat of the content issue. The reason we tend to trust printed material in general is because it is perceived to have been through some editorial value judgement. Most of the editing that is done in any publication process has noting to do with the value of the content - it is ERROR CORRECTION. Only a subject matter expert is qualified to do editing that is a VALUE JEDGEMENT. For Wikipedia to combine the two functions in an editor is not productive. We need a *two tiered* editorial process at work to become more efficient. If there are not enough subject matter experts - more need to be recruited. /Otherwise the trust level of
Re: [Foundation-l] Subject: Re: The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia, (from the Chronicle) + some citation discussions
Well, I'm not an active academic, but I have been given to understand that the quality of the peer review process varies greatly. About 10 years back, I was briefly involved in an attempt to develop an online peer reviewed publications infrastructure. This was one of our concerns - is it better to have 10 second tier subject matter experts vote on whether or not to publish an article or rely solely on the opinion of one first tier expert (who might bitterly detest the author of the work under scrutiny for reasons not at all connected with the quality of the article). Perhaps a better choice for people with subject matter expertise would be graduate students who have no axe to grind as yet. It is the same old question of who will watch the watchers that has plagued every encyclopedic attempt in history. So I'd rather have a qualified subject matter *generalist* review for content than someone who is a /specialist/ with completely _unrelated_ credentials. The generalist probably knows enough about the field in question to be able to spot inappropriate content than someone who has an inflated ego but knows nothing of the subject. We strive for inclusiveness, but the Wikipedia US culture has become very exclusionary. Since this is a volunteer effort there is an attitude of take what you can get that leads to sloppy behaviors. It seems we need more effective and accessible training for everyone from readers to contributors and editors. There may be some such, but I haven't stumbled across it yet. Is there already a core of training material that could be converted into some kind of online interactive instructional tool? On 2/22/2012 6:04 PM, David Goodman wrote: I was one of the initial subject editors at Citizendium. One of its key problems was the poor choice of subject matter experts. The selection of which people to trust was ultimately in the hands of the founder, and he was unduly impressed by formal academic credentials without concerning himself about actual professional standing. But even had he a much closer understanding of the actual hierarchies in the academic world, the results would not have been much better, because there is nobody of sufficient knowledge and authority across the fields of all of human activity to select the true experts. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
