I think George pretty well nailed it -- these issues come down to what should be expected,
and also what can reasonably be expected, of a project with Wikipedia's structure. In
general, there's nothing inherently wrong with pushing for a certain point of view;
it's a great thing to do, and should be encouraged. It's just that Wikipedia
isn't a good place to do it. It's not designed to adjudicate that kind of thing,
and efforts to push it in that direction will predictably and understandably be resisted
by those who care about what the site *is* designed to do, and capable of doing.
John, I want to say -- and I suspect many others here agree -- this is absolutely an
appropriate list to bring this up on, and I'm glad you did. Interacting in an open
community like Wikipedia takes some getting used to. I think in a discussion like this,
you'll almost always get somebody musing about whether or not you've chosen the
right forum. Sometimes that's useful feedback; other times it's noise best
ignored. I encourage you to go with your own judgment; an argument about the proper forum
probably doesn't benefit anybody, but even if a couple folks don't feel this is
the right place, the discussion can still go on (as you can see).
Have a good weekend,
-Pete
[[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Oct 26, 2012, at 5:28 PM, George Herbert wrote:
We are not trying to solve the greater peer review
problem. Society
and the world at large are not fraud or mistake proof; they happen,
they're corrected over time. The world moves on.
Our standard is not to try and attain a perfect level of only totally
truthful information. Nobody could realistically do that. Our
standard is to aim for and have quality controls to not be worse than
the world at large in a given field. I.e., we accept on first
assertion that external fields' internal peer review is "good enough",
though we will usually at least listen to counterarguments that some
sources may in fact be better or worse than that.
We are absolutely not the first determiner of truth / first peer
review instance. We aren't, we can't be with this type of volunteer
structure, and we should not be asked to be.
We reflect the consensus of others as published in works we can
reliably cite. We're a tertiary source preferably.
On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 3:06 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis
<xekoukou(a)gmail.com> wrote:
For subjects that aren't controversial, the
peer reviewing structure of a
university or journal might work.
In general though, a peer review is as good as the credibility of the peer
reviewer. A reference is as good as the credibility of the referencer,etc...
That is the essence of the pagerank algorithm that is used by google to
compute the credibility of an internet page.
The solution to this problem is really easy IMO. Let all articles be forked
and provide a personalized reputation system that will only fetch only one
page per article for every user.
2012/10/27 George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com>
Right. We (Wikipedia) are not qualified to judge
if these original
claims are accurate, reasonable, worthy of consideration, unlikely,
incorrect, or batshit insane.
Attempting to publish novel theories via Wikipedia - no matter how
well supported - is completely the wrong approach. Scientific inquiry
is not a single-handed enterprise. It depends on peer review of
theories and evidence and conclusions. That peer review must be by
qualified peers in the field.
-george william herbert
On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 9:40 AM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net>
wrote:
It's pretty simple, publish original work
elsewhere first.
Fred
> Greetings –
>
> I hope this is a good place to send a weighty message to Wikipedia.
> You’ll want to read all through.
>
> I am a scientist who has always liked the Wikipedia idea, and I like
> your implementation. Lately I’ve started making contributions.
> Although I’m a cognitive scientist who taught biological psychology at
> degree level for several years and have done AI research since the
> ‘80’s, I’ve diverted for a decade or more to resolve a set of major
> evolutionary puzzles.
>
> John V. Jackson.
>
http://sciencepolice2010.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/sciencepolice2010-launche…
>
http://sciencepolice2010.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/sciencepolice-14-lates…
>
>>
_______________________________________________
>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
>> Wikipedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>>
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
--
Sincerely yours,
Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l