[WikiEN-l] "It's what some editors feel..." The reality of editorial authority

Mon Feb 14 12:27:51 UTC 2005

On the citing sources/original research front, I now want to muse a bit 
on the other side. This was prompted by an article that was, in my 
opinion, high-quality listcruft. Don't want to get too specific because 
I was personally involved. It's a silly list article that happened to 
appeal to me and that, I thought on the whole, should be kept. Survived 
VfD with significant opposition.

During the discussion, an editor, who advocated deletion, said nothing 
but sensible and reasonable things. Among them, he said:

"Basically [this is a list of] what some editors feel are [X].... While 
I agree with some of the POVs on the page, it's just not verifiable. It 
comes down to original research."

The situation is similar to that of many lists. What was in dispute in 
this article was NOT whether item Y belongs in list X. That had been 
partially sorted out over time in the development of the page. The list 
has an element of subjectivity, yet there are many values of Y for 
which you can say "Y is an X" and nobody will disagree; and there were 
continuing discussions in progress on the Talk page about borderline 
items. In other words, the list was reasonably neutral. Even in 
something like a "list of tall buildings" you have subjective elements 
regarding how height should be measured (does the height of the Empire 
State Building include the height of the dirigible mooring mast that 
once surmounted it, etc).

The objection was that the list, and the items on it, could not be put 
entirely into the mouths of non-Wikipedians, with cited sources. It 
reflected the well-founded consensus opinion of those Wikipedians who 
chose to work on the article.

Without passing judgement on this particular list, which is borderline, 
what I want to muse about is this:

a) The reality of the situation is that _most_ of Wikipedia's content, 
as with print encyclopedias, rests primarily on the knowledge, 
judgement, and opinion of editors.

b) That's neither entirely bad nor entirely good. It's just the reality.

c) The difference between Wikipedia and a print encyclopedia is that 
Wikipedia is based on the group consensus authority of those 
self-appointed persons, usually anons, who choose to edit an article, 
whereas print encyclopedias are based on a traditional top-down 
hierarchical authority structure starting from the editor-in-chief.

d) While citing sources is always good, and should be strongly 
encouraged, and we don't do it enough, we should not pretend that 
there's anything wrong with personal authority. The only thing that's 
wrong is inaccuracy.

There is a faction, whom I will label "Gradgrinds," who seem to feel 
that there is a way of eliminating judgement and opinion from the 
process altogether. A very extreme and aberrant case occurred over a 
statement I once made about a writer, whose 1960s paperback editions 
usually had language like "sizzling blockbuster" on the cover. I said 
that a particular novel "combined good writing, a strong story, and 
numerous more-or-less-gratuitous scenes of explicit sex." This was 
challenged by an editor, not on the grounds of being unsourced, but on 
the grounds of being POV. It was clear, however, that this was a 
challenge on principle; it's not that he personally knew the book or 
thought it was _poorly_ written or that the sex scenes were 
_necessary_.

Now, I eventually fixed the problem by replacing my statement with a 
similar statement from a newspaper review of the book. I think that was 
an improvement, _but I don't think it was necessary_.

Here is how I think _most_ of Wikipedia is written. Well, let's be 
specific: it's what _I_ do.

In many cases, I write on something for which material is lacking for 
which I think I have personal knowledge. I write things that I believe 
are "universal general knowledge." That is, they are so far inside the 
borders of what I think I know, that I feel confident that anyone who 
knows about the topic "just knows" it. I cannot believe anyone 
knowledgeable on the topic would challenge it.

So, I don't bother to look for sources, I just write.

As I write, _if_ it's a good day and I'm being a responsible Wikipedian 
I will do some quick Googling and World Almanac riffling and 
old-college-textbook flipping to check my memory on things and make 
sure I'm being accurate. And, as I follow an interesting line and 
realize that the paragraph really should say something about 
thus-and-such, but I don't really _know_ thus-and-such--THEN I bother 
to seek out information. And, having bothered to use a source, 
naturally I will cited it.

After I've written it, a number of things can happen. Most commonly, 
_almost nothing happens_ to the _content._ Editors will come through 
and copyedit or even tweak wording, but not alter the sense of what's 
been written. In these cases, I can't tell whether anyone else 
knowledgeable has glanced at the content and implicitly improved it by 
failing to change it.

Hot disputes can happen, but that's rare.

More pleasantly, an article will develop over time as a collaborative 
effort.

The point I want to make is that even in the case of collaborative 
many-eyes effort, a good part of what's on the page is written _on the 
personal authority of the editors as a group._ If we get to nit-picking 
about what's unsourced, I think we would have to throw out most of 
Wikipedia.

Consider the Featured Article about Albert Einstein. The first words on 
the page are "Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 - April 18, 1955) was a 
theoretical physicist who is widely regarded as the greatest scientist 
of the 20th century."

Where do the dates come from? Did someone actually make a point of 
checking them? They're sourced in a sense because there are a bunch of 
links to Web biographies of Einstein, but the article doesn't say 
specifically where the dates came from or what the authority is. I 
mean, what would I do? I'd google a couple of sites, if they both have 
the same dates, bam, in they go. I wouldn't hop on a plane to 
Wurttemburg and take a cab to the Office of Vital Statistics, that's 
for sure.

As some are aware, there are rare occasions where there is a dispute 
about someone's dates, and WIkipedia was raked over the coals on one of 
them--was it John Adams?

But on to the next sentence.

"Widely regarded as the greatest scientist of the 20th century."

Wow. Weasel-words and everything!

Now, there are two directions one could go in this point. One could 
discuss how to fix this "problem." By replacing it with a verifiable 
factual statement like "won the Nobel price." Or finding a citable 
source. "In an article published the day after his death, The New York 
Times said 'Dr. Albert Einstein was respected above all others by 
scientists the world over as the outstanding intellect in modern 
times.'" (Yeah, that's real, I just looked it up).

Or, we can acknowledge the truth, which is that the sentence is fine as 
it stands because it has passed the muster of Wikipedia's editors--the 
self-appointed people who chose to work on the Einstein article. The 
commonsense general knowledge of such a group is enough to know whether 
this is a controversial statement or not, and it isn't.

The group consensus that the statement is OK is good enough. It does 
not need a New York Times citation to buttress it. Such a citation 
_might_ _improve_ it, but it is not _necessary_.

For another example, look at some science and mathematics articles. 
"Force" leads off: "In physics, a net force acting on a body causes 
that body to accelerate; that is, to change its velocity. The concept 
appeared first in the second law of motion of classical mechanics. It 
is usually expressed by the equation F = m · a." Boom. And there's not 
a citation or reference in the darn thing, other than a Web calculator 
for converting U. S. Customary units to metric.

Oh, F = m · a, does it? SEZ WHO? Well, you can look at the article 
history. But it's just a bunch of self-appointed anons.

Is this a problem? I don't think so.

I think "citing sources" can be used as a selective way to attack 
articles. When it is used in this way it is dishonestly raising the bar 
for purposes of attack.

I am happy with F = m · a on the authority of Tarquin or 134.93.196.222 
or whomever it was. Because... well, f _does_ equal m · a  and 
everybody knows it.

And Einstein _is_ widely regarded as the greatest scientist of the 
twentieth century.

And Ethelbert Nevin really _is_ a one-hit wonder in classical music.

Well, you didn't _really_ think this wasn't personal, did you?

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/