[WikiEN-l] jguk case: amended FoF brought

Mon Jun 20 16:45:28 UTC 2005

Doesn't this just get at the first and most primary difficulty in
content arbitration: Whose authority to go by?

If it was me, I'd ask the people who run Chicago Manual of Style. But
I know what they'd answer: In academia, this actually isn't that
contentious a battle, you go with what you feel most, and those who
use BCE/CE consider it less offensive, those who don't, don't. Which
doesn't give policy.

Would they call up some professor and ask them what they thought we
should do? Would anybody abide by that?

Would it be a quantitative thing? Would we add up all the citations on
one online search engine versus another? (Would we be careful enough
to realize that a search for "BC" is likely to also pick up any usages
of "BCE" on most of them?) Do these search engines necessarily reveal
academic consensus? (Academia is a culture in which quality matters a
lot more than quantity, in my opinion; a few major players insisting
on something often matters a lot more than a lot of minor players
doing things their own way).

Do we even think "Academia" is the gold standard? Aren't the editors
of the Catholic Encyclopedia just as erudite and scholarly?

I go both ways on content arbitration. Part of me says, "Yes, call up
a well-respected academic, they'll tell you what the 'mainstream'
consensus is; most of us know that pretty well, our full time jobs
involve doing nothing but reading things other academics have
written!" The other part of me realizes that this is a not entirely
defensible position, and that wars of experts won't work unless
somebody "from above" (i.e. Jimbo) gives a hard and fast rule
determining how these things will work, and doesn't worry about
whether it is logically or ethically defensible.

The other problem I have is that I know that other institutions that
rely on "expert advice" from outside often take care to pick the
experts that reflect their version of "consensus." This happens again
and again in politics, in the courts, in journalism, in academia
itself. I don't see any reason that this wouldn't happen on Wikipedia.
There is, by the way, a large literature on the use of "experts" out
there, in sociology, science studies, legal studies, etc., so we don't
necessarily have to re-invent the wheel as we hash this over.

FF

On 6/20/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Can you actually provide any citations to support your position?
> > I only ask because in my experience the BCE/CE notation is really
> > quite common and has been used in the majority of scholarly research
> > I've read (well the majority hasn't mentioned an era at all, but what
> > does uses BCE/CE). I am aware that it isn't so universally used in all
> > fields, but I was taught the BCE/CE notation in grade school...
> > Perhaps this is just because I am in the United States.
> >
> > Your rewrite makes it sound like it is only used by an insubstantial minority.
> >
> > In any case, the arbcom isn't and shouldn't be deciding if we should
> > use AD/BC or CE/BCE as it appears the larger community has decided
> > that the issue isn't currently clear enough and we don't care.
> 
> 
> So why does web of knowledge throw up far more results for BC than BCE?
> 
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>