Science doesn't espouse things like evolution and gravity because they have popular support; they are considered scientific fact because of the wealth of evidence supporting them, and when new evidence comes to light, even well-established theories get thrown out on their ear. Popular support won't get you very far in science unless you have solid, credible evidence to back it up.
This is a myth. What counts as evidence and what does not is a consensual matter. New evidence never really falsifies any one empirical statement; as Quine argued so well, if a fact contrary to predictions comes up, there are endlessly many beliefs one could give up; which one is indeed given up is a consensual matter.
I'm not saying anything outrageous here. This has been generally accepted in history of science since the late 50's (e.g. Thomas Kuhn): that folk stories like the one you tell about how scientific knowledge moves on, however dear they may be to scientists, do not fit the actual reality at all when you look at how they work.
A key point, of course, is that when I talk about consensus, I mean consensus among scientists, not among the general public. That is, we have a social institution, Science, which invests certain people with the authority to tell us what we should regard as empirical truth. These people fight over it all the time, they do all sorts of backhanded shit to get better jobs and grants and stuff, to deny those to their competitors. They often lie outright, falsify data, etc. They write pop science books to appeal to a general audience that's unqualified to judge their work, and they fill these books with strawman attacks and misrepresentations of their adversaries. And so on.
Yet, somehow, it's still good enough that we manage to e.g. put satellites in orbit that retransmit events around the globe live.
Unlike major encyclopedias (which might go through 2 or 3 pairs of eyes tops), though, everything on Wikipedia gets peer reviewed many times over.
Well, I'm not questioning the factual accuracy of this statement, but rather its relevance. You presume that more pairs of eyes are always better than a carefully chosen 2-3 pairs of eyes. I don't think such a generalization holds.
In general, I find you Wikipedia people to be victims of an extreme form of naivete, which commonly affects OSS zealots: to think that good software/encyclopedia articles/whatever naturally comes out from having lots of people chip away at the same project in an uncoordinated manner. But that's just nonsense. The method, whevever applied strictly, doesn't produce a coherent result (and apparent counterexamples are only apparent; e.g. the Linux kernel isn't really a "bazaar", it's a reimplementation of an old design, with one guy who has absolute say over decisions).
I don't see that the Wikipedia model would be conducive to, e.g. radically altering the structure of an article to make data access better, simply because the model promotes incremental additions from a bunch of people who just will not be on the same page.
I recall a specifc project in Social Studies that requied the class to make an economic comparison of the G7 countries. My only source was the Encyclopedia Britannica and the information was already six years out of date.
Well, we can be happy you're not an economic analyst basing your analyses on encyclopedia data. But come on, it's a school project-- the point is for you to learn certain skills, and the fact that the data is old doesn't really matter.
A dictionary definition is the credentialed information you are arguing for... and you're willing to disavow that just to win what you see as an argument?
A dictionary definition is credentialed information indeed, but it's not the sort of information that you are assuming it to be. Dictionaries (of the sort you cited) are not designed to be exhaustive guides to the use of the words they define; they're designed to be brief.
It doesn't matter if it's a "trusted opinion" if you know, for example, how and why popular quackery is bulls**t. [my emphasis]
This is irrelevant. The whole point behind the discussion is what's the rational choice when you do *not* know something.
If two sources conflict, you should try to find out the possible reasons for the conflict.
There is no upper bound on the amount of information and effort needed to make a principled decision in such cases. What if the knowledge required to adjudicate the conflict can only be learned from what amounts, for all practical purposes, to a medical degree?
Your problem is that you are not considering the time and effort constraints that the real world puts on decision making. If there were limitless time to devote to a single individual conflict between sources, your procedure would be the optimal one. If conflicts between sources occur over and over, and there is little time to adjudicate, the credentials of a source will do a good job often enough.
So, you're not qualified to write an article for an encyclopaedia, and yet you think you're qualified to say who IS qualified to write articles for the encyclopaedia?
Yes. Why do you ask?
Presumably because you think you've caught me in a contradiction. But you haven't.
Re:Constant Reorganization Gives The Illusion....
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The definition of Encyclopaedia does not include 'credentialed information'.
A dictionary definition is not an argument.
Your argument is based on the fact that you have been taught to trust credentials.
Nope, the argument is based on the fact that trusting credentials is the rational thing to do for the target audience of an encyclopedia, whether they're "taught" to do so or not.
Authoritative information does not necessarily have to come from someone with credentials. A Mechanical Engineer with a PhD may be able to explain the concepts of the Wankle Rotary engine, but it takes a *Mechanic* to tell you how to maintain it. And it takes a driver to tell you how to drive a car with a Wankle.
And it takes a competent editor to decide which of these is a credible author for a given article, so this is besides the point.
I'm not assuming a degree makes you inherently qualified to write encyclopedia articles. I'm a few months away from a Ph.D., and I'd disqualify myself right away from writing an encyclopedia article on my discipline. I'm a strong critic of the conventional understanding of my discipline, and thus I couldn't convey such an understanding fairly. That is, I think that given the current state of expert opinion, the correct way to write an encyclopedic article is to put in a lot of stuff that I believe is fundamentally wrong. (And my reasons for believing so don't belong anywhere near such an article.)
With every post you two contribute to this thread you show further and further that you don't understand how encyclopedias work. Accurate knowledge is just one of many factors that make for a good author. And not even the most important one.
You do not focus on the person, I agree. You focus on trails of letters; you focus on the alphabet soup, and that's worrisome. If credentials stood for everything authoritative, medical doctors wouldn't be paying malpractice insurance.
If we follow your logic, you should get medical treatment from random people on the web, because doctors do fuck up all the time. That would not be a rational course of action...
Alphabet soup is not a panacea, but it's better than nothing. We're discussing this in the context of Wikipedia, where there's nothing whatsoever to lend credibility to articles.
Again, I am perfectly aware that an article on a topic I know nothing about could be wildly inaccurate even if it's written by a Ph.D. and reviewed by three others. Still, if I have to choose between that and Wikipedia, it's irrational to accord Wikipedia more credibility.
And this is still granting your unstated assumption that encyclopedias are there to collect accurate statements. Nope. They're there to present expert opinion. Since such opinion will inevitably be revised, to ask factual accuracy of an encyclopedia is too much (other than accuracy at reporting expert opinion).
Dictionary entries are not arguments. If dictionary entries tried to tell everything about the term they try to define, they'd be even longer than encyclopedia articles.
You're just pulling shit out of your ass.
Nope. I've observed how real encyclopedias are made (a group of editors asks a set of experts to write draft articles, give the drafts to other experts for review and comments, then pass the comments back to the authors), and I've carefully considered what the use of an encyclopedia is from the perspective of a reader who doesn't know *anything* about the topic. If an encyclopedia weren't authoritative, why should its target audience trust it?
You, on the other hand, have done nothing but:
falsely claim that I've attacked you personally;
state my claims incorrectly so as to support your fake ad hominem;
assume the conclusions I'm questioning, and/or baldly assert them;
presented nothing better as an argument than a dictionary definition, and one that does not contradict my claim;
failed to address my substantive points about how, given the target audience, authority is more important than accuracy to an encyclopedia.
What does that have to do with the credibility and accuracy of an article?
It has a hell of a lot to do with my ability to determine whether I should trust an article on a topic I know nothing about. I.e. trust trumps accuracy in this domain.
Re: academic papers vs. wikipedia peer reviewing
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Most peer reviewed articles have only between 3-7 reviewers, those reviewers are often not paid for their efforts and the effort they make is highly variable.
Agreed. Though now I see that there's a complication sneaking in: we're in risk of mixing up peer review of journal and encyclopedia articles. But let's go on.
With Wikipedia, the number of peer reviewers is unlimited.
In principle, yes. In practice? And how exactly does it follow that a large number of reviewers makes for better articles?
In specialist or highly technical fields, the number of participants is still limited, so peer review cannot compete with specialist journals in the academic world. On the other hand, most encyclopedias don't really contain such specialist information in the first place.
Yes. Journals aren't really all that good a comparison. I propose we consider the peer review process that would apply to encyclopedia articles: the editor sends off articles for comments to experts in the topics in question, making it clear that this article is intended for a general audience, and they should judge it accordingly.
The efforts individual contributors make to Wikipedia is, of course, also highly variable as in the case of peer-reviewed journal papers.
Yes. But you leave out the facts that (a) pretty much everybody in the process is anonymous (yes, journals use anonymous reviewers, but there's an editor who isn't anonymous), (b) a contributor could be anybody. I.e. you have no information on the reviewers/contributors. To put it in terms of security, there's a trust issue. Also, there are issues having to do with the fact that the persons who contribute to Wikipedia articles are a very self-selected group.
Unlike peer-reviewed journals, however, there is no deadline for the final manuscript after which no error can corrected.
This is not strictly true. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy doesn't have such deadlines. You're confusing review by competent experts with electronic publishing.
Hell, I remember when I was a child, we had the World Book encyclopedia, which was edited on a yearly basis. They also put out Yearbooks where they included the updated articles from that year's edition-- they came with stickers for you to put on the start of the old article, saying that you had a newer version. Even in the world of paper, your argument doesn't follow.
Finally, whereas many journals will have a two-stage review process (a preliminary review, notice of acceptance/rejection, subsequent requests for elaboration/changes) over a matter of a few months -- limiting the interaction between the peers to a few discrete instances -- peer review on Wikipedia allows constant revision of the article and, using the talk pages, unlimited discussion as well.
I don't see how this improves the quality of the content, and I certainly don't think it addresses the trust issue.
Sure, there also are trust issues involved with journals and traditional encyclopedias. And abuses, even. But they're not as extensive as with Wikipedia.
To be honest, I have no fondness for a lot of Wikipedia articles. I think anime is ridiculously overweighted in the 'Japanese culture' articlese and it depresses me to think of the amount of time spent on articles such as the homestar runner article...
A function of self-selection in the editorial process.
What i did claim (in response to you utterance "Have you considered the possibility that there's a good reason for not including them?") is that a larger ammount of articles is better.
I agree. But my point is that, for all either of us knows, there are good reasons for not including an article on psychics. Space limitations (the number of articles can't be allowed to become too large), lack of credible experts, etc.
So now, instead of assuming the conclusion, you've progressed to bald assertion. Cool. Maybe next you'll even argue for the point.
You seem to think that encyclopedias need some sort of certification. That's bullshit.
It is not. It is the natural consequence of what an encyclopedia is supposed to do: provide authoritative information on a variety of topics for a non-expert audience. Wikipedia does not meet the criterion of authoritativeness. It is an encyclopedia "wannabe".
You focus more on the person than the accuracy of what is said.
I focus on the authoritativeness of the information as ascertained by the credentials of the person providing it. The target audience of an encyclopedia article has no other choice, because it's precisely his inabilty to know the accuracy of the article that make them into the target audience.
I think I am qualified to write any article on things I am knowledgeable about.
Not in any venue. Quite simply, the requirements of an encyclopedia article are such that merely incidental knowledge of the topic, however accurate, isn't enough; it's authoritativeness that counts.
Firstly, you still haven't answered my question: why should an encyclopedia not contain an article on psychics.
I'm not an encyclopedia editor. I don't have to answer that question.
Secondly, what don't you understand about the fact that people want information on many diverse topics that is in a summary form (ie. encyclopedic). That is the whole motivation for buying an encyclopedia.
Of course I understand this. Now what you don't understand is that the fact that the buyers of encyclopedias want information on diverse topics, there is no one topic whose inclusion or exclusion will make or break the encyclopedia's chances for a sale.
Which is, actually, a pretty good reason why an encyclopedia doesn't need to have an article on psychics. If you care about that topic specifically, you can get a book. It's just a random topic, well, there's always going to be random topics left out from an encyclopedia. Or not covered well enough. Or covered in such a way that doesn't answer your specific question. That's a non-complaint.
Pardon me - but traditional academia has *limited* peer review. Metzger pointed that out in a book, "Academic Freedom In The Age of the University". If you haven't read it, feel free to peruse it from the armchair you're sitting in.
Dude, if you want to discuss the very real problems with peer review in academia, I bet we'll find lots to agree on. But my claim is that peer review in academia establishes far more trust in its products than the supposed counterpart in Wikipedia.
And how do you know that experts aren't writing for wikipedia?
I don't. That's the point, isn't it? Whereas for a real encyclopedia, I do.
It's a matter of trust, not of accuracy. Suppose there's some topic where I know absolutely nothing. What should I prefer: (a) an article by somebody who I can verify to be an expert, and has in turn been reviewed by experts, or (b) one by a random collection of anonymous persons on the net?
Of course, from my uninformed perspective, (a) is the correct choice. It could even be the case that the (b) was a factually more accurate article, and still (a) would be the best choice, because I have no way of establishing trust for the second one.
Of course, in real life, the real encyclopedias have better articles than Wikipedia as a general rule anyway.
...that a lot of people, when they go out and buy an encyclopedia, thumb through it to find whether there's an article on psychics. If you're really interested in that one topic, you're the target audience for a book on it. If you're not, then it's just one more topic you don't individually consider when buying an encyclopedia.
Also, you may have heard that there are such things as libraries. Where you can actually check out a book without buying it-- and even photocopy an encyclopedia article (or even several ones). Go figure.
You stated yourself that because of my age, I am incapable/should not be able to write for wikipedia, no matter what the content is.
I said no such thing. I'll make up for your lack of ethics, and quote myself:
Have you considered the possibility that, if you're still in secondary school, you might not exactly be qualified to write encyclopedia articles?
That's not a statement, that's a yes/no question. And before you say that there's an implied statement in that question, let me point out that in no point I said or questioned whether you are qualified to write Wikipedia articles-- I questioned whether you are qualified to write encyclopedia articles. By equating these two claims, you are sneakily trying to assume a point that's at stake-- that Wikipedia is not a genuine encyclopedia, and that it's dishonest to claim otherwise.
Since you seem to be fond of listing fallacies such as "ad hominem", I'll pull out the high school debate club manual and give this one a name: Assuming the Conclusion.
Why, exactly, are you attacking -me-, and not whether what I write is correct or not?
I've not attacked you. I suggested you're not qualified to write encyclopedia articles. And you keep on confirming it in deeds.
It's not the fact that you are attacking me, it's the fact that you are saying I am not intellectually capable of writing a decent article (or even a correction!) for wikipedia, simply because of my age.
First of all, you're assuming the conclusion again by sneaking in "wikipedia". I'll mentally substitute "an encyclopedia" in there, in order to treat my claims fairly where you have failed to do so.
With that proviso, how is that an attack? You assume that it somehow diminishes you that you're not qualified to write an encyclopedia article. This assumption tells a lot about you, but I'll let that pass.
Let's put it this way, if it makes it less of a blow for you. You're not qualified to write an encyclopedia article-- and neither am I. Now, if we assume that I'm not attacking myself by saying that (i.e. we rule out "self ad hominem"), since I'm saying the same thing about myself, then it follows that I can't be attacking you.
Also, you keep on talking about how I'm not an "expert". Are you saying that "experts" are never wrong?
Experts are wrong all the time. Science is, after all a progression of mistakes. An encyclopedia article is not primarily intended to be "right"-- it is intended to provide a fair, balanced, authoritative survey of expert opinion on a topic, for a non-expert audience.
Your failure to understand the task, as demonstrated by what you say, disqualifies you from writing encyclopedia articles.
I for one would rather buy an encyclopedia with articles on psychics than one without such articles.
You're not the only one who votes with your dollars. And makers of real encyclopedias know that.
In any case, if you're that much interested on a single topic, you're better served by getting books entirely devoted to it, not an encyclopedia which happens to contain an article on it.
and as far as Wikipedia goes, you have the information *peer reviewed* by everyone who sees them... Unlike most academic papers.
Excuse me, but peer review is a quintessential hallmark of academia.
Anyway, you should concentrate on what the word "peer" means. In an academic journal on, say, criminal sociology, where sociologists submit articles tom, "peer" means other sociologists. On a free "encyclopedia" where random bozos on the net submit articles, "peer" means random bozos on the net.
You need the right kind of peers to safeguard basic intellectual standards. Wikipedia doesn't provide them.
With a real encyclopedia, you get the name of the authors of any article, and their qualifications. Do you really want us to use the opinions of random people in the internet as authoritative reference on topics one doesn't know?
They only know whether the information he gave was useful or not.
They don't, because they have no way to check on his credentials. Sure, experts may theoretically fool article readers in a real encyclopedia, but (a) encyclopedia articles are subject to peer review by other experts, (b) article authors are not anonymous and may face consequences for pulling your leg.
So yes, if I'm reading up a reference article on a topic I don't know, I do want to know who wrote it, where he studied the topic, etc. That's the reasonable thing to do.
I made the claim that people in high school are not qualified to write encyclopedia articles. How exactly is this a personal attack? It isn't even about *you* personally. If I'd said something like "LordK3nn3th is an Aspergers-riddled 16-year old slashdot poster, therefore what he claimed is wrong", then we'd have an ad-hominem. But we do not.
Rather, we have the ages-old trick of the fake ad hominem: "Look, he's attacking me personally! Therefore, he is WRONG! I WIN THE ARGUMENT!!! YIPPEEE!!!!!!!"
(I should mention that the irony of the "fake ad hominem" is that it is itself an ad hominem...)
Again, you have yet to comment on what I've written about.
I commented on what you wrote. Let me comment some more:
But Wikipedia is a really good resource-- I've contributed to it myself.
What exactly is supposed to be the argument here? You present these two ideas as a single sentence, implying there is a logical connection. Which of the following do you mean?
Wikipedia is a good resource, and because of that, you've contributed to it yourself.
Wikipedia is a good resource, because you have contributed to it yourself.
If you mean the first one, then one's gotta ask you why do you think the fact that you've contributed to it is relevant to your claim. If you mean the second one, then the question becomes why do you think that the reason Wikipedia is good is because you contributed to it.
In either case, you come out as somebody who's somewhat full of yourself.
And before you drag out your high school debate club list of fallacies, that was a conclusion, not a premise, and therefore, not part of a genuine ad hominem argument.
because I'm 16, I'm instantly not capable of writing an encyclopedia-type article?
Yes. Because encyclopedia articles, being primarily consumed by non-experts on the topic thereof, need to be credible. The consumers are not going to find a 16-year old, still in high school, a credible author.
And note that I've made no assumptions about whether the 16-year old is right or wrong. Which given the educational level and intellectual maturity of the typical 16-year old, is quite charitable.
Oh, and how many encyclopedias include information on those subjects...?
Have you considered the possibility that there's a good reason for not including them?
Slashdot Mirror
This is a myth. What counts as evidence and what does not is a consensual matter. New evidence never really falsifies any one empirical statement; as Quine argued so well, if a fact contrary to predictions comes up, there are endlessly many beliefs one could give up; which one is indeed given up is a consensual matter.
I'm not saying anything outrageous here. This has been generally accepted in history of science since the late 50's (e.g. Thomas Kuhn): that folk stories like the one you tell about how scientific knowledge moves on, however dear they may be to scientists, do not fit the actual reality at all when you look at how they work.
A key point, of course, is that when I talk about consensus, I mean consensus among scientists, not among the general public. That is, we have a social institution, Science, which invests certain people with the authority to tell us what we should regard as empirical truth. These people fight over it all the time, they do all sorts of backhanded shit to get better jobs and grants and stuff, to deny those to their competitors. They often lie outright, falsify data, etc. They write pop science books to appeal to a general audience that's unqualified to judge their work, and they fill these books with strawman attacks and misrepresentations of their adversaries. And so on.
Yet, somehow, it's still good enough that we manage to e.g. put satellites in orbit that retransmit events around the globe live.
Well, I'm not questioning the factual accuracy of this statement, but rather its relevance. You presume that more pairs of eyes are always better than a carefully chosen 2-3 pairs of eyes. I don't think such a generalization holds.
In general, I find you Wikipedia people to be victims of an extreme form of naivete, which commonly affects OSS zealots: to think that good software/encyclopedia articles/whatever naturally comes out from having lots of people chip away at the same project in an uncoordinated manner. But that's just nonsense. The method, whevever applied strictly, doesn't produce a coherent result (and apparent counterexamples are only apparent; e.g. the Linux kernel isn't really a "bazaar", it's a reimplementation of an old design, with one guy who has absolute say over decisions).
I don't see that the Wikipedia model would be conducive to, e.g. radically altering the structure of an article to make data access better, simply because the model promotes incremental additions from a bunch of people who just will not be on the same page.
In short: too many cooks spoil the broth.
Well, we can be happy you're not an economic analyst basing your analyses on encyclopedia data. But come on, it's a school project-- the point is for you to learn certain skills, and the fact that the data is old doesn't really matter.
A dictionary definition is credentialed information indeed, but it's not the sort of information that you are assuming it to be. Dictionaries (of the sort you cited) are not designed to be exhaustive guides to the use of the words they define; they're designed to be brief.
This is irrelevant. The whole point behind the discussion is what's the rational choice when you do *not* know something.
If two sources conflict, you should try to find out the possible reasons for the conflict.
There is no upper bound on the amount of information and effort needed to make a principled decision in such cases. What if the knowledge required to adjudicate the conflict can only be learned from what amounts, for all practical purposes, to a medical degree?
Your problem is that you are not considering the time and effort constraints that the real world puts on decision making. If there were limitless time to devote to a single individual conflict between sources, your procedure would be the optimal one. If conflicts between sources occur over and over, and there is little time to adjudicate, the credentials of a source will do a good job often enough.
Yes. Why do you ask?
Presumably because you think you've caught me in a contradiction. But you haven't.
A dictionary definition is not an argument.
Your argument is based on the fact that you have been taught to trust credentials.
Nope, the argument is based on the fact that trusting credentials is the rational thing to do for the target audience of an encyclopedia, whether they're "taught" to do so or not.
Authoritative information does not necessarily have to come from someone with credentials. A Mechanical Engineer with a PhD may be able to explain the concepts of the Wankle Rotary engine, but it takes a *Mechanic* to tell you how to maintain it. And it takes a driver to tell you how to drive a car with a Wankle.
And it takes a competent editor to decide which of these is a credible author for a given article, so this is besides the point.
I'm not assuming a degree makes you inherently qualified to write encyclopedia articles. I'm a few months away from a Ph.D., and I'd disqualify myself right away from writing an encyclopedia article on my discipline. I'm a strong critic of the conventional understanding of my discipline, and thus I couldn't convey such an understanding fairly. That is, I think that given the current state of expert opinion, the correct way to write an encyclopedic article is to put in a lot of stuff that I believe is fundamentally wrong. (And my reasons for believing so don't belong anywhere near such an article.)
With every post you two contribute to this thread you show further and further that you don't understand how encyclopedias work. Accurate knowledge is just one of many factors that make for a good author. And not even the most important one.
You do not focus on the person, I agree. You focus on trails of letters; you focus on the alphabet soup, and that's worrisome. If credentials stood for everything authoritative, medical doctors wouldn't be paying malpractice insurance.
If we follow your logic, you should get medical treatment from random people on the web, because doctors do fuck up all the time. That would not be a rational course of action...
Alphabet soup is not a panacea, but it's better than nothing. We're discussing this in the context of Wikipedia, where there's nothing whatsoever to lend credibility to articles.
Again, I am perfectly aware that an article on a topic I know nothing about could be wildly inaccurate even if it's written by a Ph.D. and reviewed by three others. Still, if I have to choose between that and Wikipedia, it's irrational to accord Wikipedia more credibility.
And this is still granting your unstated assumption that encyclopedias are there to collect accurate statements. Nope. They're there to present expert opinion. Since such opinion will inevitably be revised, to ask factual accuracy of an encyclopedia is too much (other than accuracy at reporting expert opinion).
Dictionary entries are not arguments. If dictionary entries tried to tell everything about the term they try to define, they'd be even longer than encyclopedia articles.
You're just pulling shit out of your ass.
Nope. I've observed how real encyclopedias are made (a group of editors asks a set of experts to write draft articles, give the drafts to other experts for review and comments, then pass the comments back to the authors), and I've carefully considered what the use of an encyclopedia is from the perspective of a reader who doesn't know *anything* about the topic. If an encyclopedia weren't authoritative, why should its target audience trust it?
You, on the other hand, have done nothing but:
- falsely claim that I've attacked you personally;
- state my claims incorrectly so as to support your fake ad hominem;
- assume the conclusions I'm questioning, and/or baldly assert them;
- presented nothing better as an argument than a dictionary definition, and one that does not contradict my claim;
- failed to address my substantive points about how, given the target audience, authority is more important than accuracy to an encyclopedia.
Give it up.It has a hell of a lot to do with my ability to determine whether I should trust an article on a topic I know nothing about. I.e. trust trumps accuracy in this domain.
Agreed. Though now I see that there's a complication sneaking in: we're in risk of mixing up peer review of journal and encyclopedia articles. But let's go on.
With Wikipedia, the number of peer reviewers is unlimited.
In principle, yes. In practice? And how exactly does it follow that a large number of reviewers makes for better articles?
In specialist or highly technical fields, the number of participants is still limited, so peer review cannot compete with specialist journals in the academic world. On the other hand, most encyclopedias don't really contain such specialist information in the first place.
Yes. Journals aren't really all that good a comparison. I propose we consider the peer review process that would apply to encyclopedia articles: the editor sends off articles for comments to experts in the topics in question, making it clear that this article is intended for a general audience, and they should judge it accordingly.
The efforts individual contributors make to Wikipedia is, of course, also highly variable as in the case of peer-reviewed journal papers.
Yes. But you leave out the facts that (a) pretty much everybody in the process is anonymous (yes, journals use anonymous reviewers, but there's an editor who isn't anonymous), (b) a contributor could be anybody. I.e. you have no information on the reviewers/contributors. To put it in terms of security, there's a trust issue. Also, there are issues having to do with the fact that the persons who contribute to Wikipedia articles are a very self-selected group.
Unlike peer-reviewed journals, however, there is no deadline for the final manuscript after which no error can corrected.
This is not strictly true. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy doesn't have such deadlines. You're confusing review by competent experts with electronic publishing.
Hell, I remember when I was a child, we had the World Book encyclopedia, which was edited on a yearly basis. They also put out Yearbooks where they included the updated articles from that year's edition-- they came with stickers for you to put on the start of the old article, saying that you had a newer version. Even in the world of paper, your argument doesn't follow.
Finally, whereas many journals will have a two-stage review process (a preliminary review, notice of acceptance/rejection, subsequent requests for elaboration/changes) over a matter of a few months -- limiting the interaction between the peers to a few discrete instances -- peer review on Wikipedia allows constant revision of the article and, using the talk pages, unlimited discussion as well.
I don't see how this improves the quality of the content, and I certainly don't think it addresses the trust issue.
Sure, there also are trust issues involved with journals and traditional encyclopedias. And abuses, even. But they're not as extensive as with Wikipedia.
To be honest, I have no fondness for a lot of Wikipedia articles. I think anime is ridiculously overweighted in the 'Japanese culture' articlese and it depresses me to think of the amount of time spent on articles such as the homestar runner article...
A function of self-selection in the editorial process.
I agree. But my point is that, for all either of us knows, there are good reasons for not including an article on psychics. Space limitations (the number of articles can't be allowed to become too large), lack of credible experts, etc.
So now, instead of assuming the conclusion, you've progressed to bald assertion. Cool. Maybe next you'll even argue for the point.
You seem to think that encyclopedias need some sort of certification. That's bullshit.
It is not. It is the natural consequence of what an encyclopedia is supposed to do: provide authoritative information on a variety of topics for a non-expert audience. Wikipedia does not meet the criterion of authoritativeness. It is an encyclopedia "wannabe".
You focus more on the person than the accuracy of what is said.
I focus on the authoritativeness of the information as ascertained by the credentials of the person providing it. The target audience of an encyclopedia article has no other choice, because it's precisely his inabilty to know the accuracy of the article that make them into the target audience.
I think I am qualified to write any article on things I am knowledgeable about.
Not in any venue. Quite simply, the requirements of an encyclopedia article are such that merely incidental knowledge of the topic, however accurate, isn't enough; it's authoritativeness that counts.
I'm not an encyclopedia editor. I don't have to answer that question.
Secondly, what don't you understand about the fact that people want information on many diverse topics that is in a summary form (ie. encyclopedic). That is the whole motivation for buying an encyclopedia.
Of course I understand this. Now what you don't understand is that the fact that the buyers of encyclopedias want information on diverse topics, there is no one topic whose inclusion or exclusion will make or break the encyclopedia's chances for a sale.
Which is, actually, a pretty good reason why an encyclopedia doesn't need to have an article on psychics. If you care about that topic specifically, you can get a book. It's just a random topic, well, there's always going to be random topics left out from an encyclopedia. Or not covered well enough. Or covered in such a way that doesn't answer your specific question. That's a non-complaint.
Now, please, compare it to Wikipedia's "peer review" process. Thanks.
Dude, if you want to discuss the very real problems with peer review in academia, I bet we'll find lots to agree on. But my claim is that peer review in academia establishes far more trust in its products than the supposed counterpart in Wikipedia.
I don't. That's the point, isn't it? Whereas for a real encyclopedia, I do.
It's a matter of trust, not of accuracy. Suppose there's some topic where I know absolutely nothing. What should I prefer: (a) an article by somebody who I can verify to be an expert, and has in turn been reviewed by experts, or (b) one by a random collection of anonymous persons on the net?
Of course, from my uninformed perspective, (a) is the correct choice. It could even be the case that the (b) was a factually more accurate article, and still (a) would be the best choice, because I have no way of establishing trust for the second one.
Of course, in real life, the real encyclopedias have better articles than Wikipedia as a general rule anyway.
Also, you may have heard that there are such things as libraries. Where you can actually check out a book without buying it-- and even photocopy an encyclopedia article (or even several ones). Go figure.
I said no such thing. I'll make up for your lack of ethics, and quote myself:
That's not a statement, that's a yes/no question. And before you say that there's an implied statement in that question, let me point out that in no point I said or questioned whether you are qualified to write Wikipedia articles-- I questioned whether you are qualified to write encyclopedia articles. By equating these two claims, you are sneakily trying to assume a point that's at stake-- that Wikipedia is not a genuine encyclopedia, and that it's dishonest to claim otherwise.Since you seem to be fond of listing fallacies such as "ad hominem", I'll pull out the high school debate club manual and give this one a name: Assuming the Conclusion.
Why, exactly, are you attacking -me-, and not whether what I write is correct or not?
I've not attacked you. I suggested you're not qualified to write encyclopedia articles. And you keep on confirming it in deeds.
It's not the fact that you are attacking me, it's the fact that you are saying I am not intellectually capable of writing a decent article (or even a correction!) for wikipedia, simply because of my age.
First of all, you're assuming the conclusion again by sneaking in "wikipedia". I'll mentally substitute "an encyclopedia" in there, in order to treat my claims fairly where you have failed to do so.
With that proviso, how is that an attack? You assume that it somehow diminishes you that you're not qualified to write an encyclopedia article. This assumption tells a lot about you, but I'll let that pass.
Let's put it this way, if it makes it less of a blow for you. You're not qualified to write an encyclopedia article-- and neither am I. Now, if we assume that I'm not attacking myself by saying that (i.e. we rule out "self ad hominem"), since I'm saying the same thing about myself, then it follows that I can't be attacking you.
Also, you keep on talking about how I'm not an "expert". Are you saying that "experts" are never wrong?
Experts are wrong all the time. Science is, after all a progression of mistakes. An encyclopedia article is not primarily intended to be "right"-- it is intended to provide a fair, balanced, authoritative survey of expert opinion on a topic, for a non-expert audience.
Your failure to understand the task, as demonstrated by what you say, disqualifies you from writing encyclopedia articles.
You're not the only one who votes with your dollars. And makers of real encyclopedias know that.
In any case, if you're that much interested on a single topic, you're better served by getting books entirely devoted to it, not an encyclopedia which happens to contain an article on it.
Excuse me, but peer review is a quintessential hallmark of academia.
Anyway, you should concentrate on what the word "peer" means. In an academic journal on, say, criminal sociology, where sociologists submit articles tom, "peer" means other sociologists. On a free "encyclopedia" where random bozos on the net submit articles, "peer" means random bozos on the net.
You need the right kind of peers to safeguard basic intellectual standards. Wikipedia doesn't provide them.
With a real encyclopedia, you get the name of the authors of any article, and their qualifications. Do you really want us to use the opinions of random people in the internet as authoritative reference on topics one doesn't know?
They only know whether the information he gave was useful or not.
They don't, because they have no way to check on his credentials. Sure, experts may theoretically fool article readers in a real encyclopedia, but (a) encyclopedia articles are subject to peer review by other experts, (b) article authors are not anonymous and may face consequences for pulling your leg.
So yes, if I'm reading up a reference article on a topic I don't know, I do want to know who wrote it, where he studied the topic, etc. That's the reasonable thing to do.
I forgot. The 1337 information source is anonymous, unaccountable g**ks on the net. Free information, dude. And bongs.
I made the claim that people in high school are not qualified to write encyclopedia articles. How exactly is this a personal attack? It isn't even about *you* personally. If I'd said something like "LordK3nn3th is an Aspergers-riddled 16-year old slashdot poster, therefore what he claimed is wrong", then we'd have an ad-hominem. But we do not.
Rather, we have the ages-old trick of the fake ad hominem: "Look, he's attacking me personally! Therefore, he is WRONG! I WIN THE ARGUMENT!!! YIPPEEE!!!!!!!"
(I should mention that the irony of the "fake ad hominem" is that it is itself an ad hominem...)
Again, you have yet to comment on what I've written about.
I commented on what you wrote. Let me comment some more:
What exactly is supposed to be the argument here? You present these two ideas as a single sentence, implying there is a logical connection. Which of the following do you mean?- Wikipedia is a good resource, and because of that, you've contributed to it yourself.
- Wikipedia is a good resource, because you have contributed to it yourself.
If you mean the first one, then one's gotta ask you why do you think the fact that you've contributed to it is relevant to your claim. If you mean the second one, then the question becomes why do you think that the reason Wikipedia is good is because you contributed to it.In either case, you come out as somebody who's somewhat full of yourself.
And before you drag out your high school debate club list of fallacies, that was a conclusion, not a premise, and therefore, not part of a genuine ad hominem argument.
Well, my claim essentially would be that Wikipedia is to encyclopedias as /. is to meaningful discussion.
It is not.
because I'm 16, I'm instantly not capable of writing an encyclopedia-type article?
Yes. Because encyclopedia articles, being primarily consumed by non-experts on the topic thereof, need to be credible. The consumers are not going to find a 16-year old, still in high school, a credible author.
And note that I've made no assumptions about whether the 16-year old is right or wrong. Which given the educational level and intellectual maturity of the typical 16-year old, is quite charitable.
Oh, and how many encyclopedias include information on those subjects...?
Have you considered the possibility that there's a good reason for not including them?