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When a Primary Source Isn't Good Enough: Wikipedia
unixluv writes "Evidently, Wikipedia doesn't believe an author on his own motivations when trying to correct an article on his own book. A Wikipedia administrator claimed they need 'secondary sources.' I'm not sure where you would go to get a secondary source when you are the only author of a work. Thus, in a lengthy blog post for The New Yorker, Roth created his own secondary source. He wrote, 'My novel The Human Stain was described in the entry as "allegedly inspired by the life of the writer Anatole Broyard." ... This alleged allegation is in no way substantiated by fact. The Human Stain was inspired, rather, by an unhappy event in the life of my late friend Melvin Tumin, professor of sociology at Princeton for some thirty years.' The Wikipedia page has now been corrected."
Convince someone else first, then convince Wikipedia.
I don't pretend that I understand the internal machinations or politics of WikiPedia, but I have had several edits reverted because someone out there didn't like certain information being revealed. I included proper references for those edits, but when they go against the agenda of someone on the inside, you can't compete.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
This is how Wikipedia is like a failed software project: they value their process more than their goal.
I could go out and make the most amazing, society-altering discovery ever, but I wouldn't be allowed to tell Wikipedia about it, because it would be "original research" and it would require "secondary sources."
If or when Wikipedia dies, this, along with the oft-reviled entrenched fiefdoms, will be the reason.
This reminds me of the Rodney Dangerfield movie "Back to School".
The English professor gives and assignment to read and write and analysis on a Kurt Vonnegut novel. Dangerfield's character hires Kurt Vonnegut himself to write the analysis.
The professor, during fit of scorn, throws the paper at Dangerfield and yells "and you don't understand the first thing about what Vonnegut meant!"
Vonnegut himself has a non-speaking cameo where Dangerfield tells him he's stopping payment on the check and Vonnegut flips him off.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
The article in the NYT, directly from the author in question, is a primary source. Wikipedia has no problems using primary sources. What Wikipedia isn't is a primary source itself, nor should it be.
IMO, this is exactly how Wikipedia should work, with the exception that the unsupported statements about Anatole Broyard should have been removed when it was pointed out that they were unsupported.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
While it sounds dumb on Wikipedia's part, it does make sense when you think about it. WIkipedia is more like a Factoid Aggregator, listing information that can be backed up elsewhere. They don't want to become the sole source of information, because then it isn't backed up and can't be referenced - say, in case someone needs to verify something or restore it after a clumsy edit (looking at edit history isn't good enough since you still need to verify the fact is true).
It may sound weird that some guy's blog is more trustworthy than Wikipedia, but in this instance that does seem to be the case.
Back in the 19th century people believed in science. Science is based on the belief that there is a real world out there that has properties anyone can discover. What made this world "real" was that these properties did not depend on anybody's opinion, so you didn't have to give a damn about anybody else's opinion of your research either; you could discover the truth yourself, and be right even if everybody in the world disagreed with you.
In the 21st century we no longer have science. Now we have social science. It's based on the belief that reality is defined by majority opinion. Naturally, one man's opinion is worthless, and only when a consensus is reached can you state that you know anything.
How would one cite Roth's direct edit on Wikipedia...without citing Wikipedia?
"Personal knowledge of Author, 07 September, 2012"?
This is where the argument of "why can't he just change Wikipedia?" falls apart.
Just ask George Lucas whether or not Han shot first...
A few months back I saw people having trouble editing the page for a court case. The citation they had provided was the actual court findings as published by the court. There were a couple of Wikipedia moderators that didn't like the topic at hand, so they slapped a big banner saying something to the effect of "Warning: this is all unsubstantiated hokum and will burn down your house if you read it" at the top of the page. They said that the court findings as published by the court were not good enough, that you actually needed an article written about the court case published by a journal instead. They supplied an article published by a journal. This was then also rejected because it was published by a law firm. Kafka would have been rolling his eyes at this point.
People seem to have lost sight of the fact that a wiki is effective because it drastically lowers the barrier to editing. Wikipedia now fetishises process and is about as far away from the spirit in which wikis were conceived as possible. It's not a wiki if bureaucracy makes it impossible to contribute without reading hundreds of pages on process and you have to fight somebody who seemingly devotes all of their time to controlling their favourite subjects.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Do you want George Lucas to go edit the Wiki pages on Star Wars and note that Greedo always shot first? Enforcing a secondary source means he first has to convince some citable source that it's what happened, which provides a check that Wikipedia's crowdsourced model on its own can't.
http://compsoc.man.ac.uk/~shep/
If you actually read the New Yorker article, you'll find that Philip Roth is just using this Wikipedia thing as an ironic way of introducing a piece that's really about his book and not about Wikipedia. It isn't a serious complaint.
It's a tertiary source. Always has been. This is by design.
It relies on things that have been recorded and documented. The benefit of this is that if something is in dispute, you can go to the secondary source and verify it. The primary source may change his mind, or may not be around after a certain time.
This seems the most obvious rationale anyway. There's no particular reason to make an exception here.
It seems in this particular case that Wikipedia editors wanted something they could cite. This strikes me as rather reasonable. If I read the statement "according to the author, the book was inspired by an unhappy event in the life of his late friend Melvin Tumin," with no citation, how could I possibly verify that? If the citation was "the author sent Wikipedia private correspondence, trust me," is that any better? For all you criticizing this decision, is that what you want the encyclopedia to look like?
Asking the author to put a previously unknown fact into a citeable public record before reflecting it in the Wikipedia article is a process that I am personally in favor of, since it now allows me to follow up and see exactly where that information came from and why it's in the article.
Wikipedia does have its problems with overzealous and protective editors, but this particular case doesn't seem to be one. Perhaps there is some additional detail that I've missed in this case but reading TFA actually makes me more confident in the information in Wikipedia.
The "big deal" is the systemic flaw (although I concede my description of it as a "flaw" could be argued as a "feature" by others) which prevents the actual primary source from being cited as what it is. Wikipedia is a passable experiment in group mechanics - but is itself not credible for anything unless continually fact-checked. And by continually, I mean that one can never be sure of its accuracy, fairness, or completeness on any topic, and since edits are so trivial to make, its accuracy, fairness, and completeness must be virtually thrown out at each edit and reexamined - and by definition, reexamined by persons who are not the primary source.
Rather reminds me of AOL chat rooms at times, honestly.
(A/S/L, anyone?)
Ever wondered why there are so many more biographical entries on athletes (even 2nd rate ones) than academics on Wikipedia?
That is because athletes are much more likely to be interviewed and have biographical information published.
Contrast this with finding biographical data on some researchers. Even high profile ones with a long publication record will usually at best have some self-reported biographical data if any (e.g. Facebook). Hence it will be rejected by Wikipedia due to their secondary source policies.
And so the largest Internet encyclopedia operates like your local high-school where all the attention goes to the sport jocks and nobody cares about the nerds.
I'm ancient by the standards of both Slashdot and Wikipedia.
One thing that is pretty much forgotten on Wikipedia is that Primary Sources used to be preferred for references. There were a series of edits over time to the reliable sources policy, each one appeared mostly grammatical at the time, and nobody really picked up on the fact that Primary Sources had been demoted in priority and Secondary Sources had been promoted in priority. There was basically zero discussion at the time that a fundamental sourcing policy had been radically changed.
Those changes went unchallenged, newbies joined the project and were taught that Secondary Sources were preferred, and eventually most people forgot that the policy used to be effectively the reverse and that the change had been made accidentally without significant review.
Oh you poor oversocialized shmuck... The best method we have for judging whose truth is the right one is observation and logic. Consensus is irrelevant to reality, and asking a hundred scientists to effectively guess at the right answer is no different than having you making the guess yourself. Conclusions not based on physical evidence are invalid regardless of how numerous they may be. To know that a theory is correct, all you need is to verify that it's predictions are consistent with observation. If you want to prove the world is not flat, walk around it.
Yes, there is, but determining the validity of your evidence and the nature of it not fitting is an entirely separate task from using it to verify your theories. Yes, you need to be careful in your experimentation to ensure you are seeing what you are seeing. That is true of all endeavours you may choose to undertake. The evidence that "doesn't fit" may invalidate your theory or it may be due to another unrelated factor. To know which is which you only need to apply the laws of logic. If you walk around the world in 40 days, you should first check your compass.
Yes, science really is something anyone can do. There is nothing inherently difficult in assessing scientific evidence. If you understand how to think logically, you can do science. An expert merely knows many more factors that may influence an experiment in his field. A layman walking around the world might not know that the magnetic pole is displaced from the rotational one, but that will not prevent him from demonstrating that the world is round. He will, in fact discover this and other relevant facts as he does science his way. The only difference between what he can do and what an expert can do is that an expert can do it faster by not having to learn so many things for himself.
Common sense is never dependable, whether in the amateur or an expert. Science is not about making "sound judgements" or using common sense (although these can sometimes help your conclusions come faster). It is about applying logic to observation of reality. You don't pass judgement on what is right - reality passes judgement on what is right. You only need to be able to recognize when this happens.
And you are still falling into the error of believing that truth needs to be communicated to be true. Once truth is found, you by definition know that you have found it. Whether you can communicate it is irrelevant to science. Reality doesn't care if you are the only one who knows the truth. A truth does not change based on how many people know it, how many people disagree with it, or how many people hate you for knowing it. People are simply irrelevant here. The truth is in your mind, and that's all that matters.
Yes, it does work exactly
With trivia sections, you get articles with a small main body followed by a very long list of unrelated facts under Trivia because it's easier to add one line to the existing list than to integrate it into the article. That's just a bad way to organize an article.
The content in the trivia sections is usually fine, you just need to find a way to include it in the main body of the article so that it reads like an encyclopedia entry should.