Mark, I agree that "verifiability, not truth" has done a good job in keeping out original research of the kind you describe. I just think that the situation with regard to OR is no longer what it was five years ago -- there has long been a critical mass of editors who know that Wikipedia is not the right place to add interesting bits of personal, but unpublished, knowledge.
When I started editing Wikipedia, I had to think long and hard about that sentence, "verifiability not truth", and I appreciated the insight. I just think its time has come and gone, and that it does more harm than good now. A. --- On Thu, 12/5/11, Mark <delir...@hackish.org> wrote: > From: Mark <delir...@hackish.org> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Otto Middleton (a morality tale) > To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Date: Thursday, 12 May, 2011, 22:15 > On 5/11/11 2:40 AM, Andreas Kolbe > wrote: > > A while ago there was a discussion at WP:V talk > whether we should > > recast the policy's opening sentence: > > > > "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is > verifiability, not truth— > > whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia > has already been > > published by a reliable source, not whether editors > think it is true." > > > > (As usual, the discussion came to nought.) That > sentence -- whose > > provocative formulation has served Wikipedia well in > keeping out original > > research -- is a big part of the problem. > > I think that sentence serves a good purpose in the > *opposite* direction, > though. An opposite common source of Wikipedia-angst is > people who have > good first-hand knowledge that something is both true and > notable, but > sadly, lack any good sources to back that up. So it's worth > emphasizing > up front that our criterion is verifiability as a > descriptive matter, > not truth and notability in some sense of absolute truth. > So, some > legitimately interesting and important stuff may be > excluded, at least > for now, because it hasn't been properly covered in any > source we can > cite. We just aren't the right place to do original > research on a > person, music group, or historical event that the existing > literature > has somehow missed, *even if* it's a grave oversight on the > part of the > existing literature. I wrote a bit more about this > elsewhere: > http://www.kmjn.org/notes/wikipedia_notability_verifiability.html > > But it does get more problematic in the opposite direction, > as you say. > I see the motivation there too: there is a sense in which, > if something > is being discussed a lot, it becomes something we have to > cover just by > virtue of that fact. Meta-notability is also notability, so > it would be > absurd imo to claim that [[Natalee Holloway]] shouldn't be > covered. > Regardless of your opinion on the merits of her media > coverage, she > received such a large amount of it that her disappearance > is an > important event in early-21st-century popular culture. > Heck, if we > wanted *absolute* and philosophical rather than descriptive > notability > standards, I would delete almost every article on a > 21st-century noble > family as irrelevant nostalgic garbage (should anybody care > who's the > pretender to the French throne?). > > As one of the replies to your post notes (sorry, I seem to > have > misplaced who it was by), one of the problems is more > pragmatic. Perhaps > we *should* cover some such figures, but only in a limited > sense. But > once we have an article, there's a slippery slope where > everything > tangentially related now can flood in. Perhaps that's what > we should > tackle, though. Is it possible to improve our methods of > keeping > marginal junk out of an article, while stopping short of > entirely > deleting and salting the article? > > -Mark > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l