[Foundation-l] Ensuring veracity of articles based on print sources

Mon Oct 9 07:02:00 UTC 2006

Andrew Gray wrote:

>On 06/10/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>  
>
>>Andrew Gray wrote
>>
>>>It would be simpler just to toss the name into copac.ac.uk or
>>>catalog.loc.gov and see if it appears! But this still doesn't tell us
>>>anything beyond "I am claiming this book supports me".
>>>      
>>>
>>Absolutely!   And that claim is only sometimes a hoax.  It can as easily
>>be a good-faith misinterpretation of the information.
>>    
>>
>But of course.
>
>The problem is, the original proposal here was to deal with people
>making up sources - an explicitly bad-faith action. But the suggested
>system is a system that is equally suceptible to being gamed in
>bad-faith. You want to game this? You make a false claim with regards
>to a reputable (but hard to identify) work. Done.
>
>So instituting this system wouldn't deal with the bad-faith people in
>any way, and just create vast amounts of (admittedly automatible, but
>still) make-work for "verifiers". Which doesn't really help the
>project, it just plasters around the original problem...
>  
>
>>>It still doesn't get past the fact that I belive David when he says
>>>"This band does indeed appear on page seventeen of Australian Indie
>>>Rock Monthly, August 1979", but am slightly less inclined to believe
>>>the unknown chap claiming he's found something earthshattering in a
>>>1937 issue of a Russian underground newspaper...
>>>      
>>>
>>It takes a long time to build trust, and there are still many long
>>standing Wikipedians whose judgement I would question on some issues but
>>I would trust on others.  I'm sure we all keep personal lists of that
>>source.  The newbie who quotes the 1937 Russian newspaper in support of
>>his point could very well be right.  It would a gross assumption of bad
>>faith to reject his citation solely on the basis that he is a newbie.
>>    
>>
>Oh, indeed. It's just... there's a difference between "assuming good
>faith" and "assuming trust"
>
To me what it all comes down to is that absolutely everything needs to 
be fact checked and re-checked, but that may be a total impossibility.  
So we have to priorize our checking.  Counterintuitive material,. 
negative comments about a person and familiarity with the author are all 
going to be factors in establishing our priorities.  From the checker's 
perspective, familiarity with the subject matter and access to sources 
are also going to be factors.

Ec