A lot of those questions are (presumably, I haven't RTFA) meant to establish the respondent's political orientation/bias, and are not counted as questions of fact.
All surveys are subject to sampling and nonresponse bias. Unless you have access to the complete population and the authority to force them to take the survey (which introduces its own problems in the quality of the responses), you are always going to be limited to the people you can reach and who agree to talk to you. That in itself doesn't make this survey more flawed than any other.
As for question #35, adding a preamble that "some people have suggested..." is a common method in survey question design to defuse any reluctance the respondent might have to answer honestly because they are afraid of being judged for their opinions or beliefs. It's essentially a way of communicating that there's no pressure, that no particular answer should be seen as the right one, by framing it as "some people think this, others think that, what do you think?"
The phrasing of survey questions is a very subtle art. You need to have some hypothesis of the likely main sources of bias, and target them specifically. There's no way to avoid any and all bias, that's impossible in principle. You do the best you can and accept that what you'll get is never more than an indicator of reality.
The thing is, the 1984 movie was never very popular, and is widely remembered as a box office bomb. (See Harlan Ellison's rant... errr, "essay," on how Universal screwed up the film's chances before it was even released.) Maybe a few people who saw it (and hadn't read the book) liked it, but a lot of others didn't, and most people didn't see it.
So I wouldn't stick to any elements from the Lynch version, but I wouldn't make any efforts to wipe it out, either. Just let it be forgotten.
I'm sure you're right, but it's also true that most whistle-blowers have petty and selfish motives, and that they are often driven by personal grudges (which they tend to have a lot of, since they are generally quarrelsome and problematic people). Deep Throat apparently exposed Watergate because he was bitter about losing a promotion.
It takes an unreasonable person to go up against the system and against the culture of one's organization. These people may not be personally admirable in the way we might like for a Hollywood good-guy/bad-guy story, but that doesn't make whatever revelations they provide less important. Nor does it make it OK to persecute them for it.
Now maybe Dymovsky was arrested for some other shit he was involved in, but given Russia's history with internal critics, that would not be my first guess.
Actually, if a small scratch got infected in 1200 AD, your body's immune system would most likely fight it off and you'd be fine. Just like it would today. Sure, in some cases your immune system might be weak or you might have got a more aggressive bug, and you would end up with septicemia and die (or tetanus, in those pre-vaccine days), but generally a minor infection would not be, and is not, fatal.
I certainly don't advocate living without antibiotics, but if I get a non-serious infection I still wait a few days to let my immune system have a crack at it before I call up a doctor (unless it's worsening or particularly painful, of course).
Hygiene, vaccines and nutrition are very likely nearly as important factors as antibiotics in the rise of life expectancy since the middle ages.
Exactly. The first example that came to my mind was The Shivah, which not only deals with religious (Jewish) themes, but is also an engaging and playable murder mystery. I believe the developer started with an idea for a style of game he wanted to make, combined that with the story and topic, and generated many of the game mechanics based on that.
It certainly helps that it does not try to evangelize. Even though it ends up presenting an argument for a Jewish commandment I don't personally sympathize with (Jews should marry other Jews), it portrays it as one character's spiritual point of view, and helped me understand that perspective and refine my own thinking.
Elsewhere in the discussion, someone complained that editors win edit wars by citing references to off-line sources that other contributors don't have access to (and which they can therefore claim say whatever they want). If both sides complain that the process is biased in favor of the other, perhaps that suggests that it's fair?
I've never experienced or seen evidence of either of these problems myself. (The only remotely similar instance was someone raising doubt about an assertion that had been dug up from a 40-year old newspaper article, but that caused a discussion on the talk page rather than a deletion, and after the editor who added it mentioned the library archive where he had found it, and excerpted the paragraph making the claim, he was believed.)
Respectable print sources are definitely acceptable references (in many ways they are preferable to online sources), so any attempt to dismiss them out of hand is against Wikipedia policy and an editor error. In any case, most academic literature has an online presence anyway (abstracts or at least bibliography-format publication data of papers, journal details in library databases, conference web sites).
But when did Lilith come to be associated with vampires? I don't know (the impressively exhaustive Wikipedia page doesn't mention a link--though she was sometimes equated with the in some traditions vampire-like Lamia), but I'll bet that it was a modern literary invention.
And that's generally the problem, I think, in jumping too quickly to assumptions about what creatures of superstition originally meant in folklore. The versions we know are so thoroughly influenced by literary and pop-culture versions that we cannot trust our intuitions. We need to go back to the actual stories and beliefs as they existed before Gothic fiction got its hands (or claws, as it were) on them.
That's not to say that a lot of fairy tale monsters aren't about sex. Of course they are. Monsters are about the things people are afraid of and things that are taboo, and sex has always come with a lot of scary, forbidden stuff. No one seriously disputes this, surely?
That's fair enough, but not all editors know a particular subject well enough to verify a fact or locate a reliable source. They may still be able to tell that something needs a reference, though.
I can understand not liking the way [citation needed] breaks up the text, but the little tag does provide useful info. It alerts the reader that the claim has not been verified, and that the article or section doesn't get enough attention from serious editors to actually put it in order, which is a red flag about its accuracy in general. And of course, if the reader does happen to know a reference, it lets him or her know that one is wanted. To the editor who made the assertion, it's a helpful reminder to back it up. So it's a pretty useful little tag. I would compare it to leaving a TODO comment in your code (or, I guess, someone else's code).
I don't use it much myself, because on the rare occasions when I make drive-by edits, I usually follow one of your two suggested approaches.
Hey, no problem. It's just that since I have some deletionist sympathies (I think Wikipedia articles should live up to some minimum criteria--like not consisting of random gibberish--and those that don't should eventually be deleted), I'd rather not see it used as a synonym for "jerk," you know.
The sexual orientation of a fictional character is... well, hard to define, for one thing. If it's not expressed directly in the work itself, it's tough to say if it even exists. The direct assertion of the creator (akin to JK Rowling's "Dumbledore is gay") should certainly be listened to, but not everything an author says in interviews or press junkets is necessarily authorative. Oftentimes they'll joke, lie, or just change their mind later. I think it was Neil Gaiman (an interesting Wikipedia case study in his own right) who said "Never trust the storyteller. Only trust the story." It's almost definitely worth mentioning in the article, though.
Incidentally, while folklore, mythology and fairy tales are certainly amenable to psychological interpretation, I believe the vampires-sex link comes primarily from literature, with Ossenfelder, Polidori, Le Fanu and Stoker establishing the seductive creature of the night template. It's an interesting discussion, but I think we're getting off topic...
Perhaps a technological solution could help here. Like the Slashdot system, articles could have ratings, so poor articles wouldn't be deleted, they would just be invisible to most visitors by default, until they improved enough.
It should also be policy for new articles by new users to not be deleted outright (when called for), but rather moved to the user's talk space. That way it wouldn't seem like Wikipedia actively rebuffed your attempt to contribute, just that your work maybe wasn't ready to go up yet.
That sounds like a bad experience, but it doesn't really have anything to do with deletionism. It's just a dispute over facts.
Deletionists are editors who think that Wikipedia shouldn't include "non-notable" information, and therefore delete it. Their argument is that the vast majority of the trivia that people try to add to Wikipedia every day has no interest to anyone but the person writing it, is impossible to verify, reduces the level of quality of the articles, is vulnerable to spamming, astroturfing and other manipulations, reduces the signal-to-noise ratio of the content, wastes the time of admins, and would hurt Wikipedia's image if allowed to remain. Reasonable people can disagree about where to draw the line (and about how this policy ends up being experienced by new and casual editors), but it's hard to dispute that a lot of the crap people post absolutely does not belong in anything calling itself an encyclopedia.
Editors trying to enforce their own preferred version of reality, or just locking down an article the way they like it, has a lot more to do with editor bias and personal fiefdoms. In my opinion that's worse than deletionism (though it's an easy trap to fall into; if you've spent hours crafting the introduction to an article until it's just right, and some random schmoe comes and changes it in a way that makes it worse--in your opinion--wouldn't you change it back?), but it's also against Wikipedia policy. If you had had the will or energy to fight it, and learn the ins and outs of the system, you could probably have prevailed in the end. I don't blame you for walking away, though. Who wants to deal with Internet bullies?
So you're telling me that a "very very important scientist" doesn't have any publications s/he could cite? No articles in peer-reviewed journals? No books or book chapters? No proceedings from conferences held by scientific societies?
Or is your scientist friend just not used to providing references for claims that are based on others' work? (That would certainly explain the lack of publications.)
I can understand that "ordinary people" have problems with the "citation needed" thing on Wikipedia. Most people aren't used to being asked to back up whatever they say, and don't have the training to know what a reliable source is. But knowing the literature and thoroughly sourcing your statements (to grab one book from atop the nearest pile, 'The Origins of Biblical Monotheism' by Mark S. Smith is 200 pages of text followed by 100 pages of notes) is what academia is all about; within your field of expertise you should be able to name relevant papers and monographs off the top of your head. If there are any people who should have no problem with the citation requirements of Wikipedia, it's academics.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of those questions are (presumably, I haven't RTFA) meant to establish the respondent's political orientation/bias, and are not counted as questions of fact.
All surveys are subject to sampling and nonresponse bias. Unless you have access to the complete population and the authority to force them to take the survey (which introduces its own problems in the quality of the responses), you are always going to be limited to the people you can reach and who agree to talk to you. That in itself doesn't make this survey more flawed than any other.
As for question #35, adding a preamble that "some people have suggested..." is a common method in survey question design to defuse any reluctance the respondent might have to answer honestly because they are afraid of being judged for their opinions or beliefs. It's essentially a way of communicating that there's no pressure, that no particular answer should be seen as the right one, by framing it as "some people think this, others think that, what do you think?"
The phrasing of survey questions is a very subtle art. You need to have some hypothesis of the likely main sources of bias, and target them specifically. There's no way to avoid any and all bias, that's impossible in principle. You do the best you can and accept that what you'll get is never more than an indicator of reality.
The thing is, the 1984 movie was never very popular, and is widely remembered as a box office bomb. (See Harlan Ellison's rant... errr, "essay," on how Universal screwed up the film's chances before it was even released.) Maybe a few people who saw it (and hadn't read the book) liked it, but a lot of others didn't, and most people didn't see it.
So I wouldn't stick to any elements from the Lynch version, but I wouldn't make any efforts to wipe it out, either. Just let it be forgotten.
(BTW, you misspelled "grammar.")
I'm sure you're right, but it's also true that most whistle-blowers have petty and selfish motives, and that they are often driven by personal grudges (which they tend to have a lot of, since they are generally quarrelsome and problematic people). Deep Throat apparently exposed Watergate because he was bitter about losing a promotion.
It takes an unreasonable person to go up against the system and against the culture of one's organization. These people may not be personally admirable in the way we might like for a Hollywood good-guy/bad-guy story, but that doesn't make whatever revelations they provide less important. Nor does it make it OK to persecute them for it.
Now maybe Dymovsky was arrested for some other shit he was involved in, but given Russia's history with internal critics, that would not be my first guess.
Actually, if a small scratch got infected in 1200 AD, your body's immune system would most likely fight it off and you'd be fine. Just like it would today. Sure, in some cases your immune system might be weak or you might have got a more aggressive bug, and you would end up with septicemia and die (or tetanus, in those pre-vaccine days), but generally a minor infection would not be, and is not, fatal.
I certainly don't advocate living without antibiotics, but if I get a non-serious infection I still wait a few days to let my immune system have a crack at it before I call up a doctor (unless it's worsening or particularly painful, of course).
Hygiene, vaccines and nutrition are very likely nearly as important factors as antibiotics in the rise of life expectancy since the middle ages.
Exactly. The first example that came to my mind was The Shivah , which not only deals with religious (Jewish) themes, but is also an engaging and playable murder mystery. I believe the developer started with an idea for a style of game he wanted to make, combined that with the story and topic, and generated many of the game mechanics based on that.
It certainly helps that it does not try to evangelize. Even though it ends up presenting an argument for a Jewish commandment I don't personally sympathize with (Jews should marry other Jews), it portrays it as one character's spiritual point of view, and helped me understand that perspective and refine my own thinking.
Elsewhere in the discussion, someone complained that editors win edit wars by citing references to off-line sources that other contributors don't have access to (and which they can therefore claim say whatever they want). If both sides complain that the process is biased in favor of the other, perhaps that suggests that it's fair?
I've never experienced or seen evidence of either of these problems myself. (The only remotely similar instance was someone raising doubt about an assertion that had been dug up from a 40-year old newspaper article, but that caused a discussion on the talk page rather than a deletion, and after the editor who added it mentioned the library archive where he had found it, and excerpted the paragraph making the claim, he was believed.)
Respectable print sources are definitely acceptable references (in many ways they are preferable to online sources), so any attempt to dismiss them out of hand is against Wikipedia policy and an editor error. In any case, most academic literature has an online presence anyway (abstracts or at least bibliography-format publication data of papers, journal details in library databases, conference web sites).
But when did Lilith come to be associated with vampires? I don't know (the impressively exhaustive Wikipedia page doesn't mention a link--though she was sometimes equated with the in some traditions vampire-like Lamia), but I'll bet that it was a modern literary invention.
And that's generally the problem, I think, in jumping too quickly to assumptions about what creatures of superstition originally meant in folklore. The versions we know are so thoroughly influenced by literary and pop-culture versions that we cannot trust our intuitions. We need to go back to the actual stories and beliefs as they existed before Gothic fiction got its hands (or claws, as it were) on them.
That's not to say that a lot of fairy tale monsters aren't about sex. Of course they are. Monsters are about the things people are afraid of and things that are taboo, and sex has always come with a lot of scary, forbidden stuff. No one seriously disputes this, surely?
That's fair enough, but not all editors know a particular subject well enough to verify a fact or locate a reliable source. They may still be able to tell that something needs a reference, though.
I can understand not liking the way [citation needed] breaks up the text, but the little tag does provide useful info. It alerts the reader that the claim has not been verified, and that the article or section doesn't get enough attention from serious editors to actually put it in order, which is a red flag about its accuracy in general. And of course, if the reader does happen to know a reference, it lets him or her know that one is wanted. To the editor who made the assertion, it's a helpful reminder to back it up. So it's a pretty useful little tag. I would compare it to leaving a TODO comment in your code (or, I guess, someone else's code).
I don't use it much myself, because on the rare occasions when I make drive-by edits, I usually follow one of your two suggested approaches.
Hey, no problem. It's just that since I have some deletionist sympathies (I think Wikipedia articles should live up to some minimum criteria--like not consisting of random gibberish--and those that don't should eventually be deleted), I'd rather not see it used as a synonym for "jerk," you know.
The sexual orientation of a fictional character is... well, hard to define, for one thing. If it's not expressed directly in the work itself, it's tough to say if it even exists. The direct assertion of the creator (akin to JK Rowling's "Dumbledore is gay") should certainly be listened to, but not everything an author says in interviews or press junkets is necessarily authorative. Oftentimes they'll joke, lie, or just change their mind later. I think it was Neil Gaiman (an interesting Wikipedia case study in his own right) who said "Never trust the storyteller. Only trust the story." It's almost definitely worth mentioning in the article, though.
Incidentally, while folklore, mythology and fairy tales are certainly amenable to psychological interpretation, I believe the vampires-sex link comes primarily from literature, with Ossenfelder, Polidori, Le Fanu and Stoker establishing the seductive creature of the night template. It's an interesting discussion, but I think we're getting off topic...
Perhaps a technological solution could help here. Like the Slashdot system, articles could have ratings, so poor articles wouldn't be deleted, they would just be invisible to most visitors by default, until they improved enough.
It should also be policy for new articles by new users to not be deleted outright (when called for), but rather moved to the user's talk space. That way it wouldn't seem like Wikipedia actively rebuffed your attempt to contribute, just that your work maybe wasn't ready to go up yet.
That sounds like a bad experience, but it doesn't really have anything to do with deletionism. It's just a dispute over facts.
Deletionists are editors who think that Wikipedia shouldn't include "non-notable" information, and therefore delete it. Their argument is that the vast majority of the trivia that people try to add to Wikipedia every day has no interest to anyone but the person writing it, is impossible to verify, reduces the level of quality of the articles, is vulnerable to spamming, astroturfing and other manipulations, reduces the signal-to-noise ratio of the content, wastes the time of admins, and would hurt Wikipedia's image if allowed to remain. Reasonable people can disagree about where to draw the line (and about how this policy ends up being experienced by new and casual editors), but it's hard to dispute that a lot of the crap people post absolutely does not belong in anything calling itself an encyclopedia.
Editors trying to enforce their own preferred version of reality, or just locking down an article the way they like it, has a lot more to do with editor bias and personal fiefdoms. In my opinion that's worse than deletionism (though it's an easy trap to fall into; if you've spent hours crafting the introduction to an article until it's just right, and some random schmoe comes and changes it in a way that makes it worse--in your opinion--wouldn't you change it back?), but it's also against Wikipedia policy. If you had had the will or energy to fight it, and learn the ins and outs of the system, you could probably have prevailed in the end. I don't blame you for walking away, though. Who wants to deal with Internet bullies?
So you're telling me that a "very very important scientist" doesn't have any publications s/he could cite? No articles in peer-reviewed journals? No books or book chapters? No proceedings from conferences held by scientific societies?
Or is your scientist friend just not used to providing references for claims that are based on others' work? (That would certainly explain the lack of publications.)
I can understand that "ordinary people" have problems with the "citation needed" thing on Wikipedia. Most people aren't used to being asked to back up whatever they say, and don't have the training to know what a reliable source is. But knowing the literature and thoroughly sourcing your statements (to grab one book from atop the nearest pile, 'The Origins of Biblical Monotheism' by Mark S. Smith is 200 pages of text followed by 100 pages of notes) is what academia is all about; within your field of expertise you should be able to name relevant papers and monographs off the top of your head. If there are any people who should have no problem with the citation requirements of Wikipedia, it's academics.