Re: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources some of these babi es are ugly
At 04:08 AM 5/23/2010, Ray Saintonge wrote: Philip Sandifer wrote: On May 15, 2010, at 10:12 AM, Gregory Maxwell wrote: [...]I can't say that these points really apply in many cases that we appear to be applying them: We would reject as reliable sources many hobbyist blogs (or even webcomics) with a stronger reputation to preserve, less obviously-compromised motivations, and _significantly_ greater circulation than some obscure corner of Fox News's online product. What can be the explanation for this discrepancy? Two reasons. 1) Egregious anti-expert bias. 2) A fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the written record of humanity. 1) Our policies are explicitly and deliberately written to try to allow content decisions to be made without any actual knowledge of the subject. That is, we have actively tried to write policy that rejects any thinking about sources beyond the surface level readings, and that take as a premise that, given a large enough pile of books, anybody can adequately write or edit an article on any topic. This premise is dubious at best. Indeed. We needed the adhocracy to rapidly develop a broad project, but we failed to incorporate and implement procedures to move beyond that, imagining, I suspect, that we could do it later. But by the time later arrived, constituencies had formed that were broad enough, at the core, to prevent the necessary extensions. It's a common problem with organizations that work when small but break down as the scale increases. Given that projects based on the idea that experts -- i.e., professionals -- should control articles, for free distribution, failed, what would have remained was amateur experts, who will, indeed, freely contribute content. But an impolite term for amateur expert is POV-pusher. (The parallel term for professional expert is COI POV-pusher. Experts are rarely neutral!) Experts, however, will not make stupid misinterpretations of sources, as routinely happens with non-experts, and as even often happens with professional media, as anyone who is closely familiar with a topic has become accustomed to noticing when an article appears in a newspaper on what they know. The potential is for Wikipedia to do better than professional media, but it would require structure that was not developed. The key is that experts, indeed, should not control articles, but those who will use the articles should. An expert opinion that is not effective in communication to non-experts is useless except perhaps as a salvo in a battle between experts. Those of us who *need* a neutral encyclopedia will want to insist that expert opinin is used to prevent stupid mistakes, but that where there is variation in expert opinion, it is fairly represented so that we can understand the range of views. Wikipedia sometimes does well with this, but not when political debates and entrenched positions exist between experts. I argued, in RfAr/Abd-William M. Connolley, that those claiming expertise should be considered COI, which was preposterously taken as asserting that they should be sanctioned, a revealing assumption indeed. No, they should be protected, simply not allowed to *control* articles, but rather invited and encouraged to *advise* the community, and to point out supporting sources where possible. It will not always be possible, or it may be possible, but only with more work than we can expect an expert to contribute. At one point, there was some practice of, where a controversy broke out in an article where expert opinion could be valuable, seeking out expert opinion by emailing experts. That's what a professional encyclopedia would have done. In peer-reviewed journals, private communication with X as a source is often seen. We did use and should have continued to use this, as equivalent to unreviewed opinion from someone reasonably expected to have an informed opinion. (It's the same as a blog opinion by a recognized expert, an example of where self-published work is sometimes allowed.) None of this will work without true consensus process in place. The famous anti-expert bias of Wikipedia was a result of failing to develop such process. Obviously, genuine consensus process should not and would not exclude experts! I don't believe that there is such a thing as a reliable source. Most people will believe exactly what they want to believe, with a remarkable preference for not having their beliefs encumbered by facts. That's the default, without deliberative process. Because deliberative process can be tedious and can more or less force people to re-examine their beliefs (or abandon the discussion and decision, or turn it into a battle and personality conflict), and because such process was not formalized early on, it has been and continues to be interrupted, and those with special privileges, or with bias that they do not wish to examine, often see it as a waste of time.
Re: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources— some of these babi es are ugly
Philip Sandifer wrote: On May 15, 2010, at 10:12 AM, Gregory Maxwell wrote: But I can't say that these points really apply in many cases that we appear to be applying them: We would reject as reliable sources many hobbyist blogs (or even webcomics) with a stronger reputation to preserve, less obviously-compromised motivations, and _significantly_ greater circulation than some obscure corner of Fox News's online product. What can be the explanation for this discrepancy? Two reasons. 1) Egregious anti-expert bias. 2) A fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the written record of humanity. 1) Our policies are explicitly and deliberately written to try to allow content decisions to be made without any actual knowledge of the subject. That is, we have actively tried to write policy that rejects any thinking about sources beyond the surface level readings, and that take as a premise that, given a large enough pile of books, anybody can adequately write or edit an article on any topic. This premise is dubious at best. I don't believe that there is such a thing as a reliable source. Most people will believe exactly what they want to believe, with a remarkable preference for not having their beliefs encumbered by facts. Data from the corporate world is presumed to be biased in all of its details. While corporations will indeed spin information to their own advantage, it's still important to recognize what comes from their own documentation as proof of what they say about themselves. If a corporation claims that its product is Made in the U.S.A. that needs to be noted, but so too must it be shown if its claim is based solely on legal technicalities. 2) We also make the actively false assumption that all significant knowledge is written down, and that the written record is simply a transcription of human knowledge. Neither statement is true - in virtually every field of knowledge, because fields of knowledge organize around communities, there is a substantial oral tradition of disseminated knowledge that is often crucial to understanding the overall subject. The contents of this oral tradition may be written down, but not in a systemic and organized way, while in practice the oral tradition often is fairly systemic. At its most basic level, this translates to There are things in any field that everybody knows, and since everybody knows them nobody has bothered to write them down. It takes a certain degree of sophistication and wisdom to grasp that. As a society we manage to support a fallacy of certainty that rejects any information that has not been rigorously proven. In Lilla's article, The Tea Party Jacobins (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/may/27/tea-party-jacobins/?pagination=false ), he observes: Americans are and have always been credulous skeptics. They question the authority of priests, then talk to the dead; they second-guess their cardiologists, then seek out quacks in the jungle. Like people in every society, they do this in moments of crisis when things seem hopeless. They also, unlike people in other societies, do it on the general principle that expertise and authority are inherently suspect. In theory the skepticism protects us from quacks and scammers, but not without a cost. In medicine innovative treatments are often rejected solely because they have not received rigorous testing, never mind that funding for such testing is unavailable because no-one wants to fund research into unproven technologies. In areas that are less life-critical, such as history, premises are even less likely to be questioned. There is more to this than simple unwritten information. Expressions become idiomatic and remain so long after the underlying context and zeitgeist have disappeared. A tight rein becomes a tight reign to those whose buggies are all automotive. In the preface to The Annotated Lolita Alfred Appel brings our attention to a point where Valeria, Humbert's first wife, was deep in 'Paris-Soir'. If you don't know that this newspaper was a part of the sensationalist press of the time, you will certainly be more disadvantaged in understanding the situation. Notwithstanding, the story would become laborious if the author had to explain every detail in remembrance of lost allusions. Ec ___ 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] Reliable sources— some of these babi es are ugly
On Thu, 20 May 2010, Carcharoth wrote: The combination results in a badly distended view of knowledge that has wrecked more than a handful of articles on Wikipedia. Some examples may help. I already gave an example of the Marion Zimmer Bradley article: a published author has a dispute with a fan. The published author's side of the story is in normal sources. The fan's side of the story is self-published. Wikipedia won't accept self-published sources that make claims about other people; therefore, only one side of the story gets into Wikipedia. ___ 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] Reliable sources— some of these babi es are ugly
On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 5:19 AM, Shmuel Weidberg ezra...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 10:12 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: Though he remains the president of the Wikimedia Foundation, ... 'He had the highest level of control, he was our leader,' a source told FoxNews.com. When asked who was in charge now, the source said, 'No one. It’s chaos.' I'm not sure what the issue with this news article is. It is essentially accurate. It sounds funny, but the fact is that Jimbo had the ability and the authority to make unilateral decisions before, and now he's given some of that up. Sure the news has a slant, is sensationalized, and bears the inaccuracy of being written by a non-community member for non-community members, but it remains as accurate as could be expected. The purpose of requiring reliable sources is so that people can't make things up and put them in the articles. Using this as a source will show more or less the truth. Unfortunately it is a limitation of general news media that it always distorts whatever it reports and there is no good reason to consider any news reports as reliable, especially when it comes to details. Jimmy isn't the president of the Wikimedia foundation. He's one of ten board members as has been the case for years (well, the number of board members has changed). Michael Snow is the chair of the board. Jimmy is the president of _wikia_, an unrelated commercial wiki host, as noted on his WP bio page, which I guess is the origin of this clam which has since been regurgitated by several other journalists. Continuing the pattern, A majority of the non-trivial statement of fact in the article are incorrect. has relinquished his top-level control over the encyclopedia's content... Wales is no longer able to delete files, remove administrators, assign projects or edit any content He's still an administrator on the english Wikipedia, able to delete page and, like everyone else, edit content, though he'd has already long since voluntarily declined to perform blocking there due to the resulting drama. Even substituting commons, he's never been a visible participant in the commons community, certainly not a leader there for which there is now a vacuum. He still has the same ability to edit there— but not the authority of a low level administrator, he now has the same technical abilities there as the general public. This also greatly misunderstands the structural model involved. Charles Matthews explained it better than I could. their existence was revealed exclusively by FoxNews.com, Fox was only reporting on the letter by sanger which had been widely circulated its author, and was covered by the register. Not exactly an exclusive. he'd ordered that thousands more be purged, that isn't correct. He performed a some deletions himself and indicated strong support for other persons who would delete things. This isn't an order. They could have factually claimed that he ordered people not to undelete things, but that is not the same. It's also continuing the implication that Jimmy has the authority to order such things, but he didn't. Wales had personally deleted many of the images this is correct, though perhaps a bit misleading: Jimmy personally deleted 70 images, which might count as 'many', but it's out of 450 or so total deleted images, or out of a few thousands of fairly explicit images most of which weren't deleted. Now many of those images have been restored to their original web pages. Holy crap, a non trivial factual statement which isn't wrong or misleading. Hundreds of listserve discussions among Wikimedia board members... okay, well, hundreds of _messages_. This is basically accurate too, but not all that informative. which legal analysts say may violate pornography and obscenity laws No one competent would say it did after an analysis of the facts, but anyone can say may— so this isn't helpful or informative. If they gave a name with a reputation to uphold and they made a statement stronger than a completely empty may it might be interesting. The author of the Fox news article _may_ be a Ewok from the planet Endor. The debate heated up when FoxNews.com began contacting high profile corporations This isn't accurate, it implies a chain of causality that doesn't exist. To the best of my knowledge, Jimmys first actions on commons happened before anyone at Wikimedia was aware of Fox's activities. Several of those donors contacted the foundation to inquire about the thousands of images I know for a fact that some simply called to warn that Fox was trying to stir up trouble, though I suppose some could have inquired about images on the site. I don't see how fox would have any factual way of knowing about the content of any calls placed by donors. There also are graphic photo images of(...) The word also implies that the child pornography they mentioned people asking about in the prior sentence was also hosted on the
Re: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources— some of these babi es are ugly
On 17 May 2010 14:57, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: You could make an argument that the article might give an uninvolved party a reasonable feel for the situation, but there still would be effectively no way to incorporate the _facts_ from this article into Wikipedia in a manner which would not reduce the accuracy of the encyclopaedia. We use citations to source the factual details of our articles, and this work generally gets the details wrong. The article is basically not even wrong. And that's because they really don't care, and literally just made up some shit: http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/16/jimmy-wales-fox-news-is-wrong-no-shakeup/ Sources of this type, even if owned by a large media company, need to be taken with an extra grain of salt. - d. ___ 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] Reliable sources— some of these babi es are ugly
David Gerard wrote: The article is basically not even wrong. And that's because they really don't care, and literally just made up some shit: http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/16/jimmy-wales-fox-news-is-wrong-no-shakeup/ Sources of this type, even if owned by a large media company, need to be taken with an extra grain of salt. I would say the point of the Fox article is the subtext: no one rules the WMF, ergo they would have no way to comply with legal requirements such as a take-down order. NB the subtle solecism free reign (for free rein) that turns the wiki ideal on its head, and the wholely misleading suggestion that Jimbo could ever assign projects as man-management (other than to employees), rather than operate as a low-level administrator does, by building small teams. Charles ___ 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] Reliable sources— some of these babi es are ugly
On 17 May 2010 16:32, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: I would say the point of the Fox article is the subtext: no one rules the WMF, ergo they would have no way to comply with legal requirements such as a take-down order. NB the subtle solecism free reign (for free rein) that turns the wiki ideal on its head, and the wholely misleading suggestion that Jimbo could ever assign projects as man-management (other than to employees), rather than operate as a low-level administrator does, by building small teams. I wouldn't go so far as to say it has that much point; it constructs a plausible fictional description that would be accepted by people who don't know how Wikipedia works. On his SharedKnowing list, Dr Sanger notes he's just joined Wikipedia Review and heartily recommends it to all. - d. ___ 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] Reliable sources— some of these babi es are ugly
David Gerard wrote: On his SharedKnowing list, Dr Sanger notes he's just joined Wikipedia Review and heartily recommends it to all. Yes, an ideal place to complain about getting blocked from enWP for editing [[Talk:History of Wikipedia]] on the assumption that Wikimedia Commons is part of the 'pedia. Still, it's after his time as editor, and they'll make him welcome on WR. Plenty of room in the [[Cave of Adullam]]. Charles ___ 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] Reliable sources— some of these babi es are ugly
On Sun, 16 May 2010, Nathan wrote: Obviously it would be an impossible task to study all potential sources and make a proactive determination of reliability. We hope to some extent that folks citing academic sources have vetted them in some way as to their credibility, but with mainstream news sources even that expectation is set aside. So instead, perhaps we could have a reactive policy of reassessing the assumption of reliability for specific sources based on a history of errors. When Fox News articles are shown to be riddled with errors of basic fact, indicating that no effort was made to verify claims, we should stop granting it the same deference we extend to other institutions with more integrity. If riddled with errors means has more (frequent) errors than other sources, then this makes some sense. If riddled with errors means has errors that we have recently had our attention called to or has errors that happen to be about some subject we are personally pissed off about, then it's a very bad idea. ___ 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] Reliable sources— some of these babi es are ugly
On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 3:27 PM, Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net wrote: If riddled with errors means has more (frequent) errors than other sources, then this makes some sense. If riddled with errors means has errors that we have recently had our attention called to or has errors that happen to be about some subject we are personally pissed off about, then it's a very bad idea. I agree, and that's why I suggested any decision to delist a source as presumptively reliable be based on an analysis of a selection of published content. Shmuel wrote that the purpose of identifying reliable sources is to keep editors from making stuff up -- but we exclude all sorts of sources that aren't editors making stuff up, based on a potentially faulty assumption about their editorial review. So rather than aiming to prohibit hoaxes, rules about RS are an attempt to weed out chronically unreliable sources. If we find that a traditionally reliable source of facts has become chronically unreliable, then it should face the same scrutiny as blogs or personal websites prior to being cited. Nathan ___ 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] Reliable sources— some of these babi es are ugly
But I can't say that these points really apply in many cases that we appear to be applying them: We would reject as reliable sources many hobbyist blogs (or even webcomics) with a stronger reputation to preserve, less obviously-compromised motivations, and _significantly_ greater circulation than some obscure corner of Fox News's online product. What can be the explanation for this discrepancy? This is more an indication that we need to start using blogs as sources rather than that we have a problem with how we use major media. I recently had to leave a one-sided paragraph in [[Marion Zimmer Bradley]]: For many years, Bradley actively encouraged Darkover fan fiction and reprinted some of it in commercial Darkover anthologies, continuing to encourage submissions from unpublished authors, but this ended after a dispute with a fan over an unpublished Darkover novel of Bradley's that had similarities to some of the fan's stories. As a result, the novel remained unpublished, and Bradley demanded the cessation of all Darkover fan fiction. We have the fan's side of this. It puts a very different spin on things, but it's in a Usenet post in the thread at http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/browse_thread/thread/2649a35b264175b8/b91ef5c1e50f3439?#b91ef5c1e50f3439 and it's completely unusuable under Wikipedia sourcing policies (even as a self-published source, since it makes claims about other people). ___ 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] Reliable sources— some of these babi es are ugly
To return to the topic of the original post, we have a practice of assuming reliability based on content categorization. We've never examined Fox News and determined Fox News has substantial quality control at the editorial level, including fact checking and high journalistic standards. Similarly, our presumptive stance against citing blogs is not based on the evaluation of any particular blog. What Greg points out is that our generalizations fail, sometimes spectacularly, at the level of the individual source. Obviously it would be an impossible task to study all potential sources and make a proactive determination of reliability. We hope to some extent that folks citing academic sources have vetted them in some way as to their credibility, but with mainstream news sources even that expectation is set aside. So instead, perhaps we could have a reactive policy of reassessing the assumption of reliability for specific sources based on a history of errors. When Fox News articles are shown to be riddled with errors of basic fact, indicating that no effort was made to verify claims, we should stop granting it the same deference we extend to other institutions with more integrity. If I had any technical ability at all, I'd run some sort of query that would tell me how many times Fox News is cited inside reference tags. Perhaps evaluating a random sample of cited articles could tell us if their Wikimedia articles (citing a banned editor as the only non-public source quoted?) are representative or anomalous. Nathan ___ 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] Reliable sources— some of these babi es are ugly
Gregory Maxwell wrote: I don't believe that this is, by any means, only a problem with Fox although they might be the most obvious and frequent example. To a first approximation, mainstream media reporting about Internet institutions is largely worthless. They mostly know what a webpage is, and look at institutions in terms derived from models they know (the newspaper with its mainly top-down management, the technology corporation). Such reporting can be redeemed by worthly journalism that investigates what actually goes on. The current rumpus being an example of WP being successfully trolled by Sanger with the cooperation of Fox, it is not really surprising that Fox's reporting is slanted. I think we can expect more of this: it is a position of honour, as far as taking the brunt of Rupert Murdoch's war recently declared on free content is concerned (with Google, of course, and the other search engine companies that dare take advantage of non-noindexed pages on the Web). I think the conclusion should be that admins (such as the one quoted) who mouth off about the doings in the usual hyperbolic terms that we get used to on mailing lists, might have to reconsider their approach to commenting so freely in public, given that this is going to be war of attrition against tabloid tactics. Charles ___ 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] Reliable sources— some of these babi es are ugly
Charles Matthews wrote: I think the conclusion should be that admins (such as the one quoted) who mouth off about the doings in the usual hyperbolic terms that we get used to on mailing lists, might have to reconsider their approach to commenting so freely in public, given that this is going to be war of attrition against tabloid tactics. A simpler representation: Don't feed the tabloids. Ec ___ 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] Reliable sources— some of these babi es are ugly
On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 9:28 PM, stevertigo stv...@gmail.com wrote: Emily Monroe bluecalioc...@me.com wrote: I think Charles was saying that admins aren't always good at dealing with the public. Well it's journalistically improper to use admins as sources. At the very least they would have to find an official cabal member. Can someone point me to the admins as sources bit? On IRC earlier today User:Ottava_Rima appeared to be claiming to be their source, though I could have been completely misunderstanding him. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
