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. > > 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." > > The combination results in a badly distended view of knowledge that has > wrecked more than a handful of articles on Wikipedia. > > > Second try at sending this... here goes nothing. (gmail, man up!)
While this is not a reply specifically to what Greg raises, it is a fact that we aren't just giving the cold shoulder to "silent knowledge", but also stuff written down in a language not our own, when it happens to exist. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
