[Foundation-l] New Proposal: WikiMemory

Fri Sep 16 19:39:56 UTC 2005

Just a quick reply to Mark on peer review. The memoirs would not be anonymous. Any reporter worth his or her salt would try to track down the witness to see if he/she were credible.  If the source could not be found, or was found to be less than credible, then the reporter/researcher wouldn't use him/her. This is SOP in all credible journalism, and works the same for all sources, no matter where they come from.  Moreover, if a user (such as a reporter) finds that a source is not credible, then this could be added to the metadata (a bit like the discussions on Wikipedia entries). 

You are certainly right that controversial events will attract POV accounts, and even falsified accounts. We'll have to trust that users will understand this, and help identify bad actors.  But I would say that for the vast majority of memoirs, POV won't really come into play.  I saw one of the last Led Zeppelin concerts with the original line up.  My POV is that it was great, but I have a lot of other observations that Zep fans and folks interested in the history of Rock and Roll will be interested in. Particularly in 100 years.

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org on behalf of Delirium
Sent: Fri 9/16/2005 3:24 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] New Proposal: WikiMemory

Traroth wrote:

>Well... Why not ? Are you people OK with testimonies
>like "I was there when US army shooted on Hotel
>Palestine in Bagdad" or "I was in the jails of Abu
>Graib" ?
>  
>
I think this sort of thing would be very problematic.  When it comes to 
contentious topics, like Israel-Palestine, people have repeatedly 
demonstrated that they are willing to completely fabricate eye-witness 
accounts to make one or the other side look bad.

Published eye-witness accounts can also be fabricated, of course, but 
have the benefit that since they're in the public sphere of published 
work, the more questionable oens have often attracted published 
refutations.  Similarly, books on controversial subjects are often 
reviewed in the 'book review' sections of journals.  A purported 
eyewitness account added directly to a wiki doesn't benefit from any of 
that sort of peer review.

-Mark

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