[Foundation-l] Black market science

Tue Jul 19 08:54:21 UTC 2011

On 07/18/11 2:10 AM, Andrea Zanni wrote:
> 2011/7/18 Ray Saintonge<saintonge at telus.net>
>
>> On 07/09/11 2:06 PM, Andrea Zanni wrote:
>>> My point (working in an academic digital library and just seeing the
>>> amount
>>> of thesis, dissertation, articles passing by) is that if for people is a
>>> difficult, overcomplicated burden to upload a PDF in an institutional
>>> repository (5 minutes of their time, even less), how can we wikilibrarians
>>> think that they will come to us and upload and "curate" their text? I
>>> clearly remeber the "Screw it" feeling I had the day after I graduated,
>>> meaning that I would not even touch my thesis again for the next months (and
>>> so it was).
>>>
>> If 5 more minutes of an author's time is too much for uploading a thesis
>> that he has worked in for months or years that's his problem. He could
>> even pay someone to upload for him.  It suggests he doesn't have much
>> faith in his own work.  It's not our job to hold his hand.
> I agree that 5 minutes are an acceptable time:
> what I wanted to say (probably my English is worse than what I think :-)
> is that "curation" of a thesis on Wikisource doesn't take 5 minutes, but
> even 5 hours.
> 5 hours and a lot of knowledge in Wikisource policies, mediawiki, templates
> and so on.
> I perfectly know that having your own thesis in wikitext on Wikisource is a
> good thing, but I don't honestly know if it is worth the labor.
>
> Aubrey

I see that point.  For the person who doesn't want to turn uploading his 
thesis to Wikisource into a career in itself, the rules that he needs to 
observe should be minimal.  I still support the notion that it must have 
been previously published in an accessible and verifiable form, which 
need not be a Wikimedia project. For otherwise unpublished theses, the 
degree granting institution is probably the only one in a position to 
verify the official version.  With theses that are first published in 
electronic form we have only the uploader's word that it is a true 
version.  This is not even about dishonest uploaders, but about ones who 
believe that the uploaded version contains improvements on the 
original.  Maybe the improvements really are that. but the ultimate 
reader needs to know what improvements were in fact made.

Policy wonks tend to give policies too much importance.  Templates are 
often used to impose an unachievable perfection and uniformity on a 
text.  A minimum is still necessary, but anything beyond the essential 
minimum must be justified by the person seeking to impose it in every 
circumstance.

Ray