<<In a message dated 1/6/2009 4:38:42 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
cbeckhorn(a)fastmail.fm writes:
It isn't necessary to go so far back. A large part of the important
mathematics of the 1980s and 1990s does not appear in textbooks, or
does so only implicitly, because there is little incentive for
anyone to rewrite it.>>
This is a contradiction. If work on Number Theory were "important" than
surely my new book on Number Theory would include it.
If editors are solely referring to old notebooks, than that's their own
issue.
That doesn't prevent the rest of us, from using only the newest textbooks if
we so choose.
The very definition of "important" is, that many people cite it.
If no one cites it, it's not important.
Will Johnson
**************New year...new news. Be the first to know what is making
headlines. (http://www.aol.com/?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000026)
I hope everyone is okay with the mass purging of "unimportant" articles in
bulk quantities. Just wanted to point out the obvious. You can now return to
whatever you were doing.
In a message dated 1/6/2009 5:40:09 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
cbeckhorn(a)fastmail.fm writes:
If by "community" you mean "WP policy" then no such decision has been
made. It is perfectly acceptable to write certain articles entirely from
primary sources. Indeed, many biographical articles are written entirely
from primary sources. But I agree that most articles that can be based
mostly off of secondary sources should be based off of secondary
sources.>>
-----------------------
No, by community I mean that our policy was and is the creation of our
policy editors. And then the policy instructs the editors, who then modify it
again, and it then instructs again, in a feedback loop. We as a community, set
our own policy, after the core nebulous concepts were outlined. I dispute
that it is acceptable to write using solely primary sources, or that our
policy states that. I also dispute that many of OUR biographical articles are
written entirely from primary sources. If they are they should be flagged as
problematic.
Will Johnson
**************New year...new news. Be the first to know what is making
headlines. (http://www.aol.com/?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000026)
<<In a message dated 1/7/2009 12:55:58 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
saintonge(a)telus.net writes:
Many new ideas are tangential to a general education about a
subject, but are no less important to the advancement of knowledge.
Textbooks are instruments for parroting the party line of received
wisdom. They do little to address controversial issues.>>
Controversial issues can be handled by citing two conflicting textbooks :)
I'm sure that the author of the controversy, wrote her own textbook on it,
shortly afterward.
If she didn't then we shouldn't *tttttthurst* her onto the main screen
either.
Will Johnson
**************New year...new news. Be the first to know what is making
headlines. (http://www.aol.com/?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000026)
You all may remember [[User:JarlaxleArtemis]], who has been "editing" the
English Wikipedia since 2004, at age 15. Originally he was an apparently
good-faith editor, but was sanctioned by ArbCom in early 2005 for somewhat
immature outbursts, copyright violations, and erratic behavior; eventually
he pulled such stunts as putting his teacher's e-mail address on his
userpage encouraging people to harass the "fucking bitch," e-mail bombing
people who deleted his copyvios, and finally impersonating users and
vandalizing with what would come to be hundreds of sockpuppets, all while
claiming to be the victim. He was banned:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/JarlaxleArte
mis_2
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Linuxbeak/Admin_stuff/Jarlaxl
eArtemis
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Linuxbeak/Admin_stuff/Jarlax
leArtemis&action=edit&oldid=117471376> &action=edit&oldid=117471376
He sockpuppeted and vandalized for a while after that, but apparently
disappeared in 2006. One would have hoped maybe he grew out of his teenage
phase and decided to get on with doing something productive instead.
But sadly, the story doesn't end there. In mid-2007, he reappeared with a
new "persona"... the move-vandal "Grawp." Unlike his ostensible predecessor
Willy on Wheels, who at least had a harmless light-hearted flair to him, as
"Grawp" Jarlaxle relished in specifically targeting users and sticking their
personal information (usually gleaned from Daniel Brandt's website) in his
page-move titles along with death threats and rape threats. Eventually we
discovered that Grawp was in fact JarlaxleArtemis, and he only got more
persistent and venomous (probably because as Jarlaxle, he was very open
about his real-life identity and location himself.)
About a week ago, having been one of Jarlaxle's recent targets, I decided to
take matters into my own hand, and found his mother's contact information
and wrote to her to inform her of the awful misdeeds her son's been up to.
(While Jarlaxle is 19, he lives with his mother, and performs most of his
vandalism from her Internet connection.) Instead of replying to me, however,
she complained to OTRS that I was falsely accusing her son, who she insisted
was JarlaxleArtemis but not Grawp. Jarlaxle then proceeded to prove her
wrong... by vandalizing multiple wikis as "Grawp" later that night from the
same IP address his mother sent her e-mail from. The ticket was handed to
ArbCom, who replied to her with this evidence and the assurance that her son
was in fact the one responsible... but received a response that she didn't
believe them, didn't care, and was blocking all further e-mail from
Wikimedia. (Though it's been suggested that Jarlaxle himself may have
written that mail.) And he's continued to vandalize as recently as tonight.
Personally, I'm utterly bamboozled. This kid is nineteen years old and in
college; he's an adult, and he has his entire life ahead of him. Yet he
still continues to anonymously threaten and harass people on the Internet,
even though he's clearly stepped into illegal territory, his identity is
known along with reams of evidence of his misdeeds connecting them to him,
and his parent upon whom he's still dependent has been alerted. And he still
soldiers on, using Mom's broadband to move pages on Wikipedia to titles "I
will rape and murder (insert admin here)." What could possibly be running
through his mind? And how can he be stopped?
-Fran
<<In a message dated 1/6/2009 6:13:58 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
cbeckhorn(a)fastmail.fm writes:
This is partially because the standards we permit for sources on
biographies of living people are incredibly lax. I view this as an
unfortunate side effect of the desirable goal of having thorough
sourcing. >>
I don't see why you claim on the one hard that the standards are lax, and
then you say "Encarta and Encyclopedia Brittanica".
You've lost me. Are you claiming that Brittanica is not a reliable source?
The standards for sources on BLPs are not lax imho, they are stronger than
anything else.
Perhaps if you made your point more clearly.
I don't see the issue you're trying to draw with the other sources.
My point is specifically primary versus secondary, not any other point.
Will Johnson
**************New year...new news. Be the first to know what is making
headlines. (http://www.aol.com/?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000026)
<<In a message dated 1/6/2009 7:11:00 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
cbeckhorn(a)fastmail.fm writes:
I would say it is an unsuitable source and we shouldn't be using it.
Imagine if I included a reference to Encarta in the next research paper
I write...>>
Apples and oranges.
It is typical that hard science research papers refer to journal articles,
and other published research papers.
It is typical that encyclopedia articles refer to other works of a similar
type, such as other encyclopedias.
This is not a lower form of citation, it is merely the normative behaviour.
Will Johnson
**************New year...new news. Be the first to know what is making
headlines. (http://www.aol.com/?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000026)
<<In a message dated 1/6/2009 5:55:30 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
cbeckhorn(a)fastmail.fm writes:
Another issue is the cyclical nature of academic research. It's
perfectly possible for a microfield to spring 25 peer reviewed papers in
a decade and then pass out of fashion or have all the accessible results
exhausted. Some of these microfields will get a book written about them,
some will not. All are of encyclopedic interest.>>
I suppose that depends on what you consider to be "encyclopedic". If 25
people in the world are interested in it, does that make it encyclopedic?
What is the cutoff? If you're stating that anything which can be researched
in some source, is encyclopedic, then sure.
However I think most people would say that we're interested in documenting
the important things. Not every size and shape of every screw ever created.
25 papers in a decade sounds a bit small by the way
Will Johnson
**************New year...new news. Be the first to know what is making
headlines. (http://www.aol.com/?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000026)
<<In a message dated 1/6/2009 5:33:44 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
cbeckhorn(a)fastmail.fm writes:
The idea that we have to wait a few years for secondary sources to sort
things out before we write about a piece of news would be very
surprising to the people who edit biographical articles about current
politicians and articles about the latest release in the Harry Potter
series. The general practice on wikipedia is simply that if material is
verifiable and a consensus of editors on a page favors it, then it can
be included. Why would academic articles be different - why would we
have to wait for history to judge a new mathematical theorem, when we
don't have to wait for history to judge some political scandal? >>
That's not quite the case.
"Verifiable" doesn't cover it all. That is why we have long side
discussions on reliability and types of sources.
That is why the talk pages of V and RS are some of the longest in the
project.
New textbooks are being written *every year* on every topic imaginable.
The idea that a person cannot find a new textbook on say "Differential
Equations" published in the last *five* years and therefore must refer to Journal
articles simply to establish notability, and then to introduce 14 new
concepts, never published in any secondary text, is simply untenable. The greater
likelihood is that they didn't try :)
Will Johnson
**************New year...new news. Be the first to know what is making
headlines. (http://www.aol.com/?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000026)
<<In a message dated 1/6/2009 5:25:55 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com writes:
Do you never get the urge, when discovering something interesting, to
see if it in Wikipedia? Sure, it should be put in the right place with
the right sources and the right weight. But that urge is still there
to educate and inform.>>
----------------------------------------------
I don't quite see how this relates to what I stated.
We are not in the position to decide what's important. We are in the
position to create articles based on what's important.
We determine what's important based on what the community who represents
those creators, researchers, editors, writers, professionals... believe is
important.
How do you do that? How do you determine, what some other group of people
think is important?
My thesis is that you do that by checking textbooks and doing google
searches to see what's being talked *up* and ... what's not.
This of course, only applies to *modern* items. Historical items will not
necessarily be amenable to the google searches, but they should be to the
textbook searches.
Will Johnson
**************New year...new news. Be the first to know what is making
headlines. (http://www.aol.com/?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000026)