Re: [WikiEN-l] Scientists told "publish in Wikipedia or else"
Hi, Thanks for clarifying. > This is an excellent experiment. With Wikipedia's open edit process I am > confident that the plan will adjust as it is implemented and I, for one > would like to see more academic journals take on this tact of publishing > their results under GFDL (on Wikipedia or their own journal). Knowledge is > power only if there is access to that knowledge. The issue I have, though, is that I feel that Wikipedia is doing a bad job of giving people "knowledge". Many scientists (I would assume--the proof of the concept is in the editing, I suppose) would agree with my position. These people might object to having their "knowledge" placed on Wikipedia to be torn apart and/or built up by the ignorant masses (no offense intended). The idea might work, but I'm willing to step out and say that I don't think it will. On the other hand, I might be pleasantly wrong :-). --Thomas Larsen ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] The Community vs. Scholarly Consensus
In a message dated 12/18/2008 6:12:45 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, snowspin...@gmail.com writes: I mean, I agree with you on what you say should be allowed. The problem is that Wikipedia policy does not agree with us.>> - Derida writes in English. Are you saying a reasonable, educated person cannot understand Derida whatsoever? No possible way, they can even get any grasp on what he is saying? Is that what you're saying? Will Johnson **One site keeps you connected to all your email: AOL Mail, Gmail, and Yahoo Mail. Try it now. (http://www.aol.com/?optin=new-dp&icid=aolcom40vanity&ncid=emlcntaolcom0025) ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] The Community vs. Scholarly Consensus
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 11:15:10AM -0500, Phil Sandifer wrote: > I am not sure the point applies as well to NOR, where we do actually run > into the problem that we need to have some way of differentiating > between an acceptable interpretation of a source and an unacceptable > one. The only method we have is to engage in discussion on the talk page. I often say something like "Anybody can edit Wikipedia, but not everyone can edit every article". In practice, I find that it's not specialized topics that are more difficult, but topics that are associated with actual political or religious debates. One incident I remember involved an article where an editor wanted to introduce a certain type of proof that the editor found more intuitively clear. In the editor's opinion, the way that the proof is ordinarily presented in the literature is non-ideal because of the way that certain basic parts of the field are organized. Responding to this sort of proposal is extremely difficult without a broad knowledge of how the literature as a whole deals with a particular topic, because there's no single source that can be consulted to settle the debate. This type of high-level decision about the fundamental organization and due weight of ideas in a certain article will always require a broad knowledge of the field. - Carl ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] The Community vs. Scholarly Consensus
On Dec 18, 2008, at 11:03 AM, Carl Beckhorn wrote: > > This topic came up on this list a while back, and Jimbo Wales > posted what I thought was a very reasonable opinion at > http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2008-April/092995.html And that's a very good point about NPOV - I've actually long thought that NPOV is a very clever way of dealing with the problem of deviant epistemologies - from Lyotard to radical Christian fundamentalists. I am not sure the point applies as well to NOR, where we do actually run into the problem that we need to have some way of differentiating between an acceptable interpretation of a source and an unacceptable one. -Phil ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] The Community vs. Scholarly Consensus
Phil, This is a On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 10:01:01PM -0500, Phil Sandifer wrote: > Yes. I agree. (Though I quibble with your use of interpretation) It's a general fact of life that Wikipedia talk is out of touch with critical theory. This is partially because the population at large is not well educated about it, partially because CT is stereotyped as pomo navel-gazing by some critics, and partially because Wikipedia was founded by an Objectivist. So, even if we all know that every act of writing is an act of interpretation, and that there is no such thing as a pure uninterpreted source text, for the purposes of WP the terminology in WP:NOR is meant to be read in a naive, uneducated sense. This makes some sense, as NOR would not be improved by adding a long introduction to critical theory at the top. This topic came up on this list a while back, and Jimbo Wales posted what I thought was a very reasonable opinion at http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2008-April/092995.html - Carl ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] The Community vs. Scholarly Consensus
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 09:56:07AM -0500, Phil Sandifer wrote: > An article that heavily relies on Searle to summarize Derrida would be a > disaster. And yet the best ways to counterbalance Searle involve primary > sources. I see what you are saying. I have the same issue with mathematics research papers, if they are considered "primary sources". My personal solution, which allows me to reconcile NOR with actual practice, is that Derrida's essay in response to Searle is not a "primary source" from the point of view of NOR. According to NOR, primary sources are: "Other examples include archeological artifacts; photographs; historical documents such as diaries, census results, video or transcripts of surveillance, public hearings, trials, or interviews; tabulated results of surveys or questionnaires; written or recorded notes of laboratory and field experiments or observations; and artistic and fictional works such as poems, scripts, screenplays, novels, motion pictures, videos, and television programs." Note that "peer-reviewed papers making analytic or synthetic arguments" are not included in that list. If "primary source" for NOR actually included Derrida's response to Searle, but not Searle's argument, then the problem you see would be genuine. However, if Derrida's argument is considered a primary source, then Searle's should also be considered a primary source. Unfortunately, due to the wide range of things that are considered "primary sources" by different fields, I don't think there is really much hope for a clear PSTS section in the NOR policy. Recently I have just been ignoring it. If you make any progress in clearing up the language on the NOR page, that would be wonderful. - Carl ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] The Community vs. Scholarly Consensus
On Dec 18, 2008, at 9:19 AM, Carl Beckhorn wrote: > This is not a very common issue in mathematics except for certain > philosophical > aspect, and fringe/pseudoscience topics. But I think it would be > more important > in writing about Derrida. Derrida is perhaps the most thorny example you could pick here, given that one of the biggest controversies over him is whether he engages in intentional obfuscation. That is, his critics accuse him of saying nothing sensible at all. This has obvious limitations for the purposes of summarizing Derrida. But even beyond that, one of the fiercest critics of Derrida, John Searle, runs into the major problem that he egregiously and systematically misunderstands Derrida. Derrida, in fact, has an 82 page essay taking him to task for doing that. Searle, in his major engagement with Derrida, accuses Derrida of saying things that it is transparently clear that Derrida never said, and that virtually nobody who is sympathetic to Derrida thinks he said. And, of course, the primary respondent to Searle's critiques? Derrida, who ripped them to shreds. So now we've got a double problem - Derrida mounted such an effective response to Searle that nobody has seen much value in repeating the effort. Certainly Derrida's response gets a great deal of priority, and is largely responsible for Searle's importance as a main critic of Derrida (since he is one of the critics Derrida has spent the most time engaged with). An article that heavily relies on Searle to summarize Derrida would be a disaster. And yet the best ways to counterbalance Searle involve primary sources. The correct solution is to summarize Derrida's essay, summarize Searle's response, then summarize Derrida's response to Searle. Then you have the conflict neatly described. And you work with your fellow editors to make sure that everybody agrees with the descriptions of what is claimed in each essay, and you get to a decent result. And inasmuch as the Derrida article deals with these issues, that is what happened. But that is manifestly not what NOR allows. And what NOR allows would not lead to a good Derrida article. -Phil ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] The Community vs. Scholarly Consensus
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 09:12:26AM -0500, Phil Sandifer wrote: > "a primary source may be used only to make descriptive claims, the > accuracy of which is easily verifiable by any reasonable, educated > person without specialist knowledge." The way I have always read that par of NOR, books ''about Derrida'' are secondary sources, which do not have this "without specialist knowledge" proviso. It's only if you want to write your article directly from Derrida's work that the primary sources issue comes into play. - Carl ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] The Community vs. Scholarly Consensus
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 08:40:27PM +1100, Mark Gallagher wrote: > Phil has hinted at it, but the primary reason we should be able to summarise > and rephrase the words of humanities experts is that if we don't, our > articles > won't make any gosh-darned sense ... Not only the humanities. This same issue appears in technical science and mathematics articles equally well. And the current practice is that we can indeed summarize and reword technical material to make it more accessible. There are three main requirements (all informal, nowhere spelled out). (1) the summary should be in agreement with the consensus of written opinion in the field N.B. The only way to tell if an article satisfies (1) is to have a very good sense of the overall consensus in the literature. In practice this means actually being familiar with a large chunk of literature in the field. But this is already implicit in the principle of undue weight - how can you decide if something has undue weight without knowing how that thing is covered in the literature? (2) the summary should not introduce new theories or new interpretive frameworks For example, contemporary mathematics is all about finding very general systems of which various specialized systems are just concrete examples. But in WP articles we avoid creating any ''new'' general systems, even if it appears possible to do so. This is a common error in new editors, who may try to develop an entirely new taxonomy of some area, or try to replace theorems with more general theorems that don't appear in the literature. That would be OK in print, if you could get it published, but not on WP. (3) when there are several conflicting opinions in the literature, the article's summary should give due weight This is not a very common issue in mathematics except for certain philosophical aspect, and fringe/pseudoscience topics. But I think it would be more important in writing about Derrida. - Carl ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] The Community vs. Scholarly Consensus
On Dec 18, 2008, at 4:52 AM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: > Surely we can figure out how to summarize Derida, or anyone else, > without > injecting too much of our own overt positioning into the summary. I don't think that's the problem, Will. I think most anyone who would want to summarize Derrida on Wikipedia can do that. The problem is that WP:NOR says explicitly that they're not allowed to. It says, and I quote, "a primary source may be used only to make descriptive claims, the accuracy of which is easily verifiable by any reasonable, educated person without specialist knowledge." Now, perhaps you don't think that explicitly rules out Derrida. But on the face of it, it does. And in plenty of people's interpretations, it does. I mean, I agree with you on what you say should be allowed. The problem is that Wikipedia policy does not agree with us. -Phil ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] The Community vs. Scholarly Consensus
On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 10:01:01PM -0500, Phil Sandifer wrote: > But current policy explicitly forbids even summary of sources that > require expert knowledge to understand. I use such sources all the time for mathematics articles. There's simply no way to require verifiability but also exclude the best sources as "too technical". If there is a policy document that actually forbids these sources, that can be changed. But I don't think that NOR actually does forbid them, at the moment. - Carl ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] The Community vs. Scholarly Consensus
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 9:52 AM, wrote: > Surely we can figure out how to summarize Derida, or anyone else, without > injecting too much of our own overt positioning into the summary. You start right here, Will... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derrida Crack open one of his books. Click the "edit this page" button up top. And away you go! :-) Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Scientists told "publish in Wikipedia or else"
2008/12/18 David Goodman : > WP is a survey of knowledge at the encylopedic level--it does not > include each scientific report separately, but at the summary level > that would correspond ,ore closely to a published review article. If > a journal publishes an article on something, of particular interest, > almost always other journal articles will deal with the subject > also--and the Wikipedia article on the subject should be written to > present an account of all of them together--with the paper in RNA or > other particular paper only one of several references. > > To the extent that the journal publishes papers that are sufficiently > broad to meet the description of a summary at the integrative level of > an encyclopedia (and the first one mentioned does seem to be of this > sort), then they are suitable for WP. I would be surprised if all or > even the majority of the papers in any particular scientific journal > were of this nature. It's not just quality, or appropriate level of > writing, its sufficient generality. But that's the great thing about a wiki - we can come along afterwards and merge articles and otherwise fiddle around with them to get them to meet our requirements. We don't need to turn down contributions just because they're not perfect. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] The Community vs. Scholarly Consensus
In a message dated 12/18/2008 1:41:10 AM Pacific Standard Time, m...@formonelane.net writes: Phil has hinted at it, but the primary reason we should be able to summarise and rephrase the words of humanities experts is that if we don't, our articles won't make any gosh-darned sense ...>> You *can* summarize and rephrase the words of humanities experts. That isn't the issue. The issue is whether you can, as an expert editor, create new synthesis and analysis, never before published. I suggested quoting, and paraphrasing, would make the article more readable. I never suggested that it be an article of quotes. Surely we can figure out how to summarize Derida, or anyone else, without injecting too much of our own overt positioning into the summary. Will Johnson **One site keeps you connected to all your email: AOL Mail, Gmail, and Yahoo Mail. Try it now. (http://www.aol.com/?optin=new-dp&icid=aolcom40vanity&ncid=emlcntaolcom0025) ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] The Community vs. Scholarly Consensus
G'day Will, > In a message dated 12/17/2008 1:16:27 PM Pacific Standard Time, > writes: > Short of simply quoting Derrida verbatim, there is very little that > > can be gleaned from Derrida without any specialist knowledge.>> > --- > Then why be short? > Quote him. > If you want the general reader to agree on your summary of Derida's > belief > on A, then quote Derida discussing A. I don't know if you've looked at our articles discussing deconstructionism lately, but the absolute *last thing* we need is more impenetrable writing. Quoting Derrida can be likened to pouring oil on troubled fires. Phil has hinted at it, but the primary reason we should be able to summarise and rephrase the words of humanities experts is that if we don't, our articles won't make any gosh-darned sense ... Cheers, -- Mark Gallagher 0439 704 975 http://formonelane.net/ "Even potatoes have their bad days, Igor." --- Count Duckula ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
