Wikipedia talk:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards/Archive 1

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How does this differ

How does this differ from a community of peer review editors? [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (hopefully!)]] 02:47, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for taking a look... I'm hoping that this will stimulate discussion on drafting new policies that will encourage higher standards and encourage subject-area expects to stay with the project. In the past there have been proposals for creating a system of editorial review. The initial statement is very broad; so please elaborate on it if you want or come up with some ideas for the page. 172 03:01, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Interested

I'm interested but I'm still hazy on the details. I'm hardly an 'expert' in economics, despite doing three years of undergraduate economics I am only really familiar with concepts, I'm not good at modelling or advanced economic mathematics. Still, I'll hang around if you want me here! Some economic pages I've substantially written are contingent valuation, behavioural finance, equity premium puzzle, endowment effect and much of market power. Psychobabble

Contacting User:Adam Carr

I have left a message for User:Adam Carr and I suggest we ask his input, as he had written up careful articles about the Holocaust and then withdrew, due to his frustration with having to put up with non-encyclopedic edits to his highly academic work. See his comments at User talk:Adam Carr#Note to visitors: "I have decided to scale back substantially my involvement in the Wikipedia project, since I no longer believe it is capable in its present form of achieving its objectives...When and if Wikipedia adopts a structure that protects serious editors and prevents fools and fanatics from sabotaging their work I will return to editing in other areas. I will be posting a longer piece giving my views on Wikipedia soon. Adam 14:24, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)" I think that he should serve as a prominent guide for this project. IZAK 03:53, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Agreed, Many valuable and talented editors with goodwill like Adam left because of the actions of a few dozen or so trolls and malignant POV pushers. GeneralPatton 10:43, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Here's the edit by Ruy Lopez to Great Purge which started the chain of events which precipitated Adam Carr's blowup, [1], This edit was reverted by Adam [2] with the comment, "this is now progessing towards being a respectable article and this ridiculous stalinoid rubbish will not be allowed". Restored [3] by Everyking with the comment, "rv, i think it's quite useful to include this pov in the article, don't see why it wouldn't be"; Adam again removed it [4] with the comment, "because it is a pathetic attempt to drag absurd red herrings into a factual account of what happened, and should be tolerated by serious editors". The final straw was when I slightly modified and again put it back in [5] with the comment, "modify and restore Stalinist perspective". At that point he blew up and made these edits, [6] and [7] with these comments: "well if apparently sensible editors think it is acceptable to include complete rubbish like this in a serious historical article I am withdrawing from it." and "as a parting expression of my disgust, i am returning the article to the crap state it was in before i began attempting to rescue it." Now, Ruy Lopez adding Molotov's viewpoint on the Great Purge is certainly a point of view addition, but there is some opinion out there still, after all the revelations, that the Great Purge was somehow justified and Molotov's take on it part of what they offer up. So Adam didn't leave "because of the actions of a few dozen or so trolls and malignant POV pushers" but because he disagree with permitting a viewpoint he disagreed with to be included in an article. Fred Bauder 19:37, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)

I think that he had been upset with trolls and POV pushers for a long time, and this was just a symptom of that. Jayjg 19:50, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Proposed guidelines: Referencing

Dubious sources

I've found that simple citation of sources is insufficient in making a case for the use of those sources. Too often, single person sources, like personal websites, blogs, opinion pieces are given too high of a weight. Any ideas on improvements to the current guidelines which we could use to appropriately compare those sources, and give them appropriate weight within an article? -- Netoholic @ 06:14, 2004 Nov 16 (UTC)

  • One possible partial solution to this might be an additional namespace in which the strengths and weaknesses of various sources can be discussed. Really major sources deserve an article in the Wikipedia itself (such as the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica), but most don't.
    • The real problem with Wikipedia, IMHO, is lack of proper sources (or poisonous false and nonexistant sources), not the reliability of sources. Let's face it, most of the changes posted to Wikipedia have no references whatsoever, and those references that are made are often in a form that can't be easily verified (e.g. my favorite so far was an extensive quotation out of an academic review that didn't actually exist, reviewing a journal article that didn't exist, attributing a primary source that never made the statement quoted anywhere. Cost to falsify the source: about $25, cost to the bastard that made the quotation up: priceless). The primary purpose of citing a work is to establish a "lineage of knowledge," where an idea of fact came from. The authority of a source arises from consensus about its correctness borne from subsequent debate. Academics have these principles bred into the bone and defer to consensus by default in most editorial decisions. Non-academics seem to often rely on pre-socratic methods for reconciling truth. Its not about elitism and anti-elitism as some would suggest, its about standing on the shoulders of giants versus the tiresome process of sorting through the giants toenail lint. Wikipedia too often retreads debates that were had generations before us, and I'd suggest that the real elitism of Wikipedia is thinking just because we are the latest to have the debate that we somehow are possessed with a knowledge or intelligence unpossesed by our forebearers. That's a historically common form of cultural chavunism that frankly requires a bit of education to overcome. If you can't instill that kind of education in Wikipedia's users before they start contributing, you need a systemic mechanism to enforce encylopedic standards. It seems to me that relying on people's goodwill will ultimately prove to be ineffective and economically infeasible. --Modemx 19:08, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • There is definitely a difference between what sources should be considered reliable on matters of fact vs. what sources are quotable for opinions.
  • There is also a difference between what is acceptable sourcing for presumably uncontroversial information (members of a band, somebody's birthdate) vs. controversial information (number of casualties in a battle in an ongoing war). -- Jmabel | Talk 06:49, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)
    • Why wouldn't most source works deserve articles? If a one-season TV show deserves an article, then certainly a work upon which WP's credibility rests is at least as deserving. I generally create articles for any reference work I use more than once (see American Beetles for instance). Where else are you going to be able to record other authorities' opinions on the quality or other characters of the source? Likewise for the authorities themselves; we want to know if the opinionated "Joe Blow" is a chairman at Harvard or a substitute teacher at Podunk High. We need the whole chain of authority, not just the first level. Stan 00:49, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
      • I really like this line of thought. Should we persue making some sort of standard that says before something can be referred to as a source or reference, that source must also have an established article on Wikipedia? -- Netoholic @ 07:44, 2004 Nov 17 (UTC)
        • Sounds to me like we need isnads... - Mustafaa 11:17, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
        • What happens if the source goes up for VfD and loses? We remove the information from the article? Also, for some subjects we're going to rule out a lot of information if we only take sources notable enough for wikipedia. Shane King 11:55, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)
          • Interesting, I didn't know about the isnads. The VfD issue could be solved with a change of policy, because it's a nebulous "notability" issue, and we could just announce that sources are now automatically deemed articleworthy. No need to change any other policy - in practice only the small number of people interested in the chain of authority are going to work on building this sort of underpinning, everybody else can keep on doing what they're doing now. Stan 18:05, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
          • I'm largely with Stan. If a source is a genuine reference then it should have an article. My definition of a genuine reference would be among other things academic references, primary sources (non web), or a website which is referenced in a number of places across the web. Of course, we should not use this rule to let in every website on the planet, only the notable ones. One should not worry too much about the credentials of the source (see later), because if it isn't a credible source the Wikipedia article would make that clear. :ChrisG 00:00, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Academic sources

Speaking as a budding historian, my principal interest is establishing ground rules for the use of sources on historical articles. One of the most difficult tasks for a historian is to remain objective in the writing history. On Wikipedia, this has meant speaking with a neutral voice, which I find a laudable goal. However, we cannot sacrifice historical fact at the altar of equivocation. Part of a historian's task is to recognize which sources are more valuable or more reputable than others. I think what we must do, above all else, is define what is an academically reputable source and what is not. I call upon our PhD's out there to weigh in on this matter. For my part, I would say that the bare minimum is that the book or article in question has been peer-reviewed, and that those peers include mainstream scholars. Thoughts? Mackensen (talk) 06:51, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hear, hear. Adam 06:56, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC) (PhD)

Actually, I disagree. In most areas (e.g. articles about thousands and thousands of cities), we will end up with nothing if we can't cite primary documents, web sites, etc. Certainly in uncontroversial matters, these should be acceptable sources: try finding a peer reviewed source about what is at Seattle Center or event about the Palace of the Parliament in Bucharest. Even in controversial matters, I think it would be absurd to say we can't cite primary documents: for example, in Sabra and Shatila massacre, are you really saying we shouldn't cite UN resolutions or the Kahan Commission Report? In United for Peace and Justice, are you saying we can't cite the group's own web site for quotations from its "Unity statement"? -- Jmabel | Talk 07:48, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)
My concern is over the use of secondary sources. Naturally primary documents are a different matter. Mackensen (talk) 15:17, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Alas, as I'm sure you know, sometimes even with primary sources you have to "recognize which sources are more valuable or more reputable than others", as you so well put it. I've recently been working on research for a new revision of the 47 Ronin article, with Prof. Henry Smith of Columbia, to get rid of a number of errors, and some of the material he has provided to me is pretty amazing, in terms of flat disagreements among primary sources. Alas, sometimes people have real impetus for mendacity. (Not that this changes anything, just a note of reaction on seeing your comment immediately above.) Noel (talk) 00:49, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
As a general hierarchy, the gold rule is the blind juried journal, second the juried journal, then journals not peer-reviewed. In texts it is much more squiffy, with state of the field articles (synthesis of current published research), textbook chapters, case studies/research reports, and everything else as very fuzzy categories. Popular press, commentary, and other third hand reports become very questionable except when no other cite is available.
A question I have just come across is; what about citations which are exclusively abstracts of unpublished papers? - Amgine 23:58, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The critical issue is not whether a source deserves an article on Wikipedia because it is valuable, but whether the material is being used as a reference outside of Wikipedia. If a source is being frequently referenced then it requires a Wikipedia article. It is equally important to debunk dubious, frequently used sources as it is to have an articles about valuable sources. A Wikpedia article by its very nature will clearly establish the credibility of any source.
Indeed why not create templates and categories for source material? We could create different templates for the different types of journal for instance, which could give the reader an accurate understanding of the value of that source as a reference. :ChrisG 00:13, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

In many fields in the social sciences and humanities, non-peer reviewed books ultimately have greater influence and are more important sources of authoritative knowledge. There are a couple of criteria I can think of, for separating good books from bad (broadly defined, I know people will always argue over what is good or bad). First, that it is written by a PhD. who has also published in poeer-reviewed journals. Second, that the book is published by a university pres. Third, that the book is cited in peer-reviewed articles. I don't mean all three conditions must apply, but any one of them is a sign that it is probably a good book. You might insist that peer-reviewed jouranl articles is the gold-standard -- but when I look at those articles, I see that the themselves rely on many books. My sense is that the experimental sciences, and studies involving quantitative methods, typically publish original research in journals -- because their data can be represented in tables and the argument can be stated in few pages. But in the humanities and social sciences, often times original research is presented in books because article-length is insufficient. Not all disciplines operate according to the same principles. Slrubenstein

Best of both worlds?

I do think we need to take steps to produce an organizational system that can produce more authoritative content; i.e. content people can rely on. I think that librarian had something of a point (although I think that her original comments were a bit too one-sided, as she later seems to have agreed). We have the strong disclaimers because at any instant, any page could contain literally anything. If we want to become really reliable - in the original meaning of the word, as something people can rely on - we need some sort of formal system that can guarantee that people get known good content. And I also really sympathize with experts whose careful work gets edited away by people who don't really know what they are talking about.

At the same time, I don't want to lose what make this place so good, which is the ability of people to come in and contribute. I also do not want to get too expert-bound, either.

However, it is inevitable that as the Wikipedia "grows up" we'll have to make changes in how we operate. So I think we need a system that tries to add the reliability, without removing the openness, easy editing, etc, that has been so powerful.

I have some ideas on what mechanisms would work here, but let me stop with this, to see if people agree so far. Noel (talk) 13:25, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I see quite simple solution to this: there should be a sort of flag that marks some version of article as reviewed and approved. The mechanism could work so that writers could apply to some Board of Reviewers for article approval. Then, if it gets approved some admin (or Board member perhaps) marks the submitted version as 'Approved'. There could also be need to protect the pages in process of review so that minor errors like typos could be corrected comfortably. From that time on readers are presented with approved version of article with an option (a new tab between 'Article' and 'Discussion' perhaps) to view latest development version. Yes, editors are free to modify the page as they like but their version is not presented to readers initially. The 'Edit' tab gets user to editing last development version of course.
The downside: the database scheme would had to be modified so as to add that marker field or even another table (like 'cur' in present scheme). Also in user preferences there should be an option: view approved version (default) vs view latest version vs. view latest version on watched pages only.
Of course the system could be expanded so that several kinds of flags are used denoting 'applied for review', 'in review' etc. but this shouldn't be a must since combination of page protection and suitable template would do. -- Forseti 21:35, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I think the problem is one of balance. Experts views are needed in articles, and I can see why some would get annoyed that non-experts try to remove their contributions. But non-experts are needed too. Remember, this aims to be the sum of all human knowledge. Surely the views of non-experts (even if wrong) are part of the sum of human knowledge. Basically I think the problem stems when one side tries to remove other side(s) views from the article. Experts are guilty of this too, although possibly to a lesser extent.
So I think we need expert views in articles, because they are under-represented at the moment. However, I also think it shouldn't be done at the expense of opposing views. To an extent, I'd argue whether the experts are right or wrong doesn't matter. The NPOV policy pretty much says "we don't know if there's an objective truth, and we don't care", at least as I read it. The only problem is too many people are ignoring that, and insisting things be stated as fact, rather than as views held by people. Admittedly, the people holding those views may well be experts in their field! Shane King 05:05, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)
Actually, I rather like Forseti's idea of a flag - but I would modify the meaning. I would suggest the flag be applied as "stable", if the substantive elements of an article are reviewed and not disputed by a panel of senior editors (hopefully with recourse to experts.) If the articles are sent out in a formal review process (ala juried journals), they will include a review form with a variety of check-offs and a section for commenting. We could make sure in this form that we're worried about factual/journalistic accuracy and that the article is not expected to be a research paper.
The flag, however would be tied to the number of edits to the article subsequent to the review as "stable", and if many edits occur subsequently it would be automatically brought back to the board for review. - Amgine 15:11, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Forseti's idea has a lot of potential. Maurreen 17:46, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Push-pull

As an undergraduate student (majoring in education and religious studies) with three years of Sanskrit, I've had to slug it out a number of times in articles on eastern religion, philosophy, and Indo-European languages with editors whose religious and/or philosophical commitments bar them from being NPOV, and/or who can't or won't distinguish between credible and non-credible sources, and also to try to provide clarity for well-intentioned editors who simply didn't have the academic or linguistic background to know fact from fiction in the muddy world of internet knoweldge. So I certainly have a basic sympathy with the idea that Wikipedia needs to be more encyclopedic. However, I'm a little nervous about the idea that this is to be done by appealing to the PhDs out there ("Is there a doctorate in the house?", as it were) or by insisting that sources be peer-reviewed. We already have encyclopedias that work like that; I think Wikipedia is something else, and while I would like to see us be able to eliminate the nonsense, I don't think the way to do it is by appeal to a traditional system of epistemological authority contrary to some of the best aspects of the wiki as a tool for the construction of knowledge. However, I do like the idea of a place where disgruntled content-specialists can go to exchange their sympathies with one another, or to the creation of groups of such specialists, possibly within the WikiProject system, possibly not, who can try to field questions that editors bring them about the validity of sources and questions of obscure fact (in the community of Buddhism article editors, for example, I occasionally help folks get more accurate in the translation and explanation of Sanskrit terms), without having coercive or normative power (even implicitly) over article content beyond that which is held by every wikipedia editor. Just throwing that out there. -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 19:37, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

My ideal of a historical article is one that presents (and, in all honesty, favors) the views of reputable historians, particularly in situations where there exists scholarly debate. For example, a PhD in History isn't just a collection of post-nominal letters, it's a stamp of recognition by other historians, that this person is of sound mind and judgement, that this person is knowledgeable about history and historical methods. Those books that are considered reputable by professional historians are those which have been heavily researched and, at least for my field (late nineteenth/early twentieth century German history), are heavily grounded in archival research. I've been heavily reworking the article on Helmuth Johann Ludwig von Moltke (Moltke the Younger), to reflect the recent research by Annika Mombauer and Terence Zuber. Both books make heavy use of the German archives. Because they use the archives, I'm more inclined to trust them than random clever polemics published by people with an axe to grind. Our original article on Moltke was a travesty of shibboleths that did not reflect modern research. Mackensen (talk) 20:15, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I don't oppose the idea of PhD's ::grin::, and while there are plenty of certificated wackos wandering around, I do put credence in certificates. However, not all knowledge in the universe is in the hands of those with such certificates, and I'm not willing to hold all editors hostage to confirmation of the academic elite--that's entirely against the mission of Wikipedia as I undertand it. Wikipedia is about tapping into the common knowledge and intellectual resources of everyday people as much as it is those of people with recognized authority. Also, I have no problem rejecting "random clever polemics published by people with an axe to grind," but I don't think that doing so is purely dependent on an expert-verification or peer-review model; or at least, I haven't been convinced of this yet. Nor am I sure it's always that easy to sort the wheat from the chaff.... -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽
I don't want to suggest that we hold articles hostage to an elite (which goes very much against the wiki ethos), but I do think when a factual dispute arises on an article peer-reviewed academic sources should take precedence. Mackensen (talk) 23:15, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Hmm. Well, I certainly agree with that in the vast majority of cases. However, I'm not willing to confirm it as a rule just yet; human judgment is absolutely indispensible in deciding between sources of information. Not everything peer-reviewed is automatically good; I've seen some remarkably awful scholarly publications where a load of discipline-specific jargon and a topic current within the discipline if not to others were sufficient to secure publication. Beyond which, how do we resolve the question of deciding in contests between multiple peer-reviewed sources. I think people may be placing too much faith in peer review. -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 01:35, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Toward a Hermeneutic Theory of Gravity or some such title... a totally bogus article which was accepted, reviewed, and published by a fairly well-known journal.
I don't believe this. Can you provide the facts?Slrubenstein\
Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity And may I comment, good faith? - Amgine 18:51, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I've heard of this before; it was an article written by a physicist, I think, and submitted to a postmodern sort of journal; it was essentially empty rhetoric of a kind that sounded postmodern enough, or whatever, to get it through the journal, but was submitted purely as a joke and as a critique of the community to which it was submitted. But I don't recall the author, title, or publication--wait, ::checks Nihilartikel::--there it is; see Sokal Affair. But I have no idea whether or not the journal in question is peer-reviewed. -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 18:42, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Well, if you are right and Amgine was refering to the Sokal Affair, then it actually goes against Amgine's point and makes a strong case for peer review. The Sokal article was not submitted to or published by a peer-review journal. The editors of the journal were from the humanities and were suspicious of Sokal's claims and asked him to make changes, but he refused. It was important for them to publish an article by a physcial scientists, so they published it with reservations. They assumed that since he had a PhD. and an academic position, he could be trusted. So this is most definitly not an example of peer-review failing. By the way, it isn't an example of PhD.s' being stupid either. SOkal knew what he wrote was garbage. The proglem is not that a PhD. might actually be ignorant; the problem is that academic degrees significy only intellectual achievement, not moral achievement. Slrubenstein
Well, I'm not sure it makes a strong case for peer review in Wikipedia, but I agree that it doesn't serve to discredit the idea. Also, The Schon widget can stand in place of Sokal in Amgine's argument, though I don't think we need to discredit the whole concept of peer review in order to consider that perhaps it needn't be an important part of Wikipedia.. -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽
Ah, reading down, I see that the journal is not peer-reviewed. So, this whole tangent may not have been profoundly pertinent. On the other hand, any conversational turn that lets me reference Nihilartikels is worth something, isn't it? -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 18:45, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Hmm. But the Sokal article also mentions the "Schon scandal", which did involve peer review. So maybe that's of use. -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 18:49, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Furthermore, many juried journals are known to have biases (JAMA, for example, is noted for it's high rejection rate of everything from Nurse Researchers) while others are regretfully known as places where articles rejected by more prestigious journals get published.
Remember, though, that journal articles do not always simply get published and are accepted as fact; it is not unusually for an article to collect a wave of critiques in the literature and research conferences. Follow-up research is usually more painstakingly precise as it is either written to support a challenged research, or to refute the previous research. - Amgine 05:37, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't object in principle to this, but only genuinely neutral contributors—"serious editors"—should be involved, not just purported "experts". So I've decided to withdraw my participation until or unless some of that is cleared up. Everyking 20:38, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Specialties

As someone who edits heavily in a variety of areas (with varying degrees of competence, heh), I'd like to observe that there are large areas of the encyclopedia that see little or no conflict between editors. For instance, naval stuff has dozens of editors with varying levels of knowledge, and I can only think of one edit war (over whether John Paul Jones was a war criminal) in the past two years. Tree of Life is another such area - thousands of articles, many high-quality and in-depth, and the fiercest dispute I know of has been over - I kid you not - the capitalization of species names, and it turns out we're not alone, the world's top authorities on systematics are fighting over the very same thing. Conversely, areas like politics and modern history are a daily battleground, and to someone who only works in those, WP is likely to seem more like a losing cause. So it might be useful to think about why some areas are more problematic than others, and focus on solutions specifically for those. Stan 01:21, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The bigger conflicts on Wikipedia seem to follow along the bigger conflicts in the world: the longstanding feuds in the Israel/Palestine articles; the disputes surrounding everything relating to Jesus; etc. (On the other hand, I have avoided developing the articles in my area of greatest interest due to worries about the sheer breadth of jargon requisite, since there *have* been conflicts about jargon.) - Amgine 05:42, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)