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[edit] Why Wikipedia
- Encyclopedias are not usually appropriate for primary sources and should not be relied upon as authoritative (as some are doing). Jimbo [1] This quote for example may or may not be his. I honestly didn't check it, but if I want to, I can simply click at the referenced link.
- Nevertheless, Wikipedia is the best place to visit to find references for primary sources. I don't have a reference for this one, but I believe that it is true and that someone might have published a similar statement (if you find it, feel free to add a citation). It probably is not as comprehensive reference source for specific subjects as might some specialized encyclopedia be, but I think it is the best among general type encyclopedias.
- It is evolving. Anyone can contribute to it. Its content evolves, its policies evolve, by editing it we evolve. Some people think that spam and vandalism will eventually be greater than constructive contributions, but this is just a assumption that contradicts previous 5 years of Wikipedia history. Some articles may have had significant declines in the past, but overall, Wikipedia has become an impressive repository of information.
- It educates. Reading it is enjoyable experience, navigating from topic to topic, where ever curiosity is leading you. Finding unverified and similar tags on pages urges you to click on it. Clicking on it opens a new world of talk page discussions, and you are tempted to edit it. Editing it is enlightening experience. By editing you learn (besides English ;) things about the topic you are editing by discovering in talk page discussions why your edit was such and such, by learning of the policies that explain why such edit can remain there if it is modified much, by participating in the creation of new policies and guidelines. Talk pages, user pages, articles, policies, history pages, difference pages, citations, external links, user comments, arbitrations, deletions, creations, user psychologies, origins and biases; by analyzing all these when contributing to articles, you get a real insight into the process of creation of a complex system called Wikipedia.
Given that there are thousands of leading journals in the world ([2]), about 24,000 peer-reviewed research journals across all disciplines and languages, with about 2.5 million articles per year[3]. and that many of them are subscription based, it is becoming increasingly difficult (money wise) for researchers to access current research (although this is changing with the expansion of open access publishing,[4]). This may be another explanation of the finding that many scientists (78% in this [5] study model, and relevant primary sources [6]) do not always read papers that they quote. For more explanations, see note below. There is another side to this story. Given that much of research in the country is funded by government grants to universities, how come that tax payers do not have access to the results of these research, but have to rely on laymen interpretations and reports (if any) presented by mass media. I think that I should be allowed to access papers whose research was sponsored by the government without having to pay for it again (as I already did through taxes). Someone may argue that tax payers sponsored indirectly the research and not the publication of the same, but I tend to disagree, as many of these journals wouldn't be able to exist without the input of the research results.
By exploring this subject on the internet, I found that UK Committee on Science and Technology dealt with the similar issue: We have recommended that the UK Government fund the establishment of an inter-linked network of institutional repositories on which all research articles originating in the UK should be deposited and can be read for free. [7] ... Triple payment? It has been argued that public money is used at three stages in the publishing process: to fund the research project; to pay the salaries of academics who carry out peer review for no extra payment; and to fund libraries to purchase scientific publications. As one of our submissions asked, "what other business receives the goods that it sells to its customers from those same customers, a quality control mechanism provided by its customers, and a tremendous fee from those same customers? [8] The legislation is voted. [9]
Note Maybe when researchers read something that supports their theories and that can be quoted, they don't bother to check if it is indeed so. Yet another reason may be the simpliest one: even though researcher reads the original paper, often it is easier to copy/paste from the internet the citation that is already written in some other paper, than formatting it in format given by the journal. (In the study quoted above, paper cited is the first link in the search [10] and needs to be formated, while 3rd link has citation already formated for you. That is given you have internet, but since this paper originates in 1973, only part of citations originated since the internet age. And in fact, further analysis of misquotation should include years of papers that have them. [11]) Another test for the study above can be verification of whether researchers really quote ~1/4 of the references from the papers they cite.
[edit] Articles I started
- before Dec, 2005 [12] when the rules about the creation of new articles changed I used to be an anonymous editor. After Dec, 2005, I started:
Ko to tamo peva, Asymmetry, Repast, Diamond of opposites, My Name is Rachel Corrie, Academic American Encyclopedia, Intermittency, The Real Dirt on Farmer John, Angelic Organics, Michael Byster, Fidelio Magazine, The Washington Diplomat, Miroslav Lazanski, Slatina airport, Zeljava airport, Yale Scientific, Rudolf Peresin
- Deleted article Bios theory -- article, past talk page, deletion log , discussions on Talk:Chaos_theory and its archive pages. Due to personal involvement in bios, I will not start this article again, as editors could use that argument again for deletion of an article which content had only 1 part of a sentence (...the distribution of galaxies along the z (time-space) axis, the wave function as described by Schrödinger equation...) and 1 reference related to my work with bios. However, you are welcome to use User:Lakinekaki/Bios_theory for it, and add citations here that you find on bios.
I used material from this article to write with Sabelli H. a tutorial on bios which is available here[13].
WP:N: A topic is notable if it has been the subject of multiple, non-trivial published works with sources independent of the subject itself and each other. ... The "multiple" qualification is intentionally not specific as to number, except that it be more than one. ... multiplicity of works ... is one researcher or journalist writing and publishing a series of different articles on a single subject. One rationale for this criterion is that the fact that people independent of a subject have noted that subject in depth (by creating multiple non-trivial published works about it) demonstrates that it is notable.
Dozen authors affiliated to different institutions (including UIC and Rush University) have co-authored with Sabelli these published non-trivial works on bios in at least 6 distinct peer reviewed academic journals. Bios therefore does pass notability criteria (as defined by Wikipedia policy/guideline) there is no reason for it not to be included in Wikipedia. Some editors seem to be bothered by the fact that several of these authors participate in weekly discussions at CCCD, CH in particular, who writes about some hidden agenda (A.K.A. conspiracy). CCCD's agenda is so hidden that anyone can participate in these discussions! Also, editors here did a lot of WP:OR trying to challenge the validity of the published papers -- that is not their job. The only argument regarding notability that I can understand was presented by XaosBits, who challenged (among other things), the categorization of the article being related to dynamical systems, as there was no mention of it in Mathematical Reviews. Although article need not necessarily be created under the name 'Bios Theory' (as I did, as it seemed most natural to me, and I used Chaos Theory as a template for it), one can name it differently, or use part of it for smaller more specific article (i.e. Novelty, Creative processes, etc.), or use parts of it to expand related existing articles. Also, categorization is a thing to consider. What is interesting is that for editors involved it was easier deleting this article than investing effort in improving it. Good example is the definition of isometry. I explained it well on the article talk page, and editors did understand it (as some users' talk pages show this [14]), nevertheless, I did make a very simple mistake in the article itself[15], and this mistake remained there until article was deleted (few months). Why is this interesting? Because several mathematicians and physicists were arguing with me for months about isometry, and no one bothered to correct it. I somehow had just overseen this error.
To do:
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[edit] Politics
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This user is against hating. Please don't hate. |
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This user follows his/her own political ideals. |
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This user believes it is every citizen's duty to assess every candidate before voting. |
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[edit] Programming
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This user writes programs that access MySQL. |
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