On 2/19/12 4:12 PM, Sarah wrote:
On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 6:44 AM, Mike Godwin<[email protected]> wrote:
I think the article in The Chronicle of Higher Education is a
must-read. Here you have a researcher who actually took pains to learn
what the rules to editing Wikipedia are (including No Original
Research), and who, instead of trying to end-run WP:NOR, waited years
until the article was actually published before trying to modify the
Haymarket article. To me, this is a particularly fascinating case
because the author's article, unlike the great majority of sources for
Wikipedia articles, was peer-reviewed -- this means it underwent
academic scrutiny that the newspapers, magazines, and other popular
sources we rely on never undergo.
I think the problem really is grounded in the UNDUE WEIGHT policy
itself, as written, and not in mere misuse of the policy.
--Mike
I agree. It's the way UNDUE is written that is problematic, and it has
led, for years, to significant-minority viewpoints being excluded --
on the grounds that the views are not sufficiently well-represented by
reliable sources; or that the reliable sources, even if peer-reviewed,
belong to the wrong field.
The history of why it's written that way is interesting to keep in mind.
As far as I recall and can reconstruct, the main three targets were: 1)
fringe-physics advocates; 2) alternative-medicine advocates; and 3)
advocates of heterodox theories of WW2 and the Holocaust. There was an
influx of all three circa 2003-05, once Wikipedia started getting
internet-famous (featured on Slashdot, etc.).
WP:NOR was a first-cut reaction to exclude the totally fringe stuff,
like some Usenet people who had migrated to Wikipedia and were trying to
make it their own personal original-physics playground. But what about
minority views that *are* published somewhere, just not widely held? The
response was WP:UNDUE, that those should indeed be covered, but in an
appropriate, limited sense--- it should not be the case that every
single article on a subatomic particle would include a section
explaining the heterodox view according to $very_minor_fringe_theory,
even though the theory itself should have an article, and perhaps a
brief mention in one of the top-level articles (e.g. in some sort of
"alternative views" section of a particle-physics article). Same with
including minority historical views in every single article on the
Holocaust, or on the Civil War, even in the case of minority views held
by respectable scholars.
What I find discussing this is that, put in that context, the majority
of people (at least that I've talked to) think the policy is correct and
makes sense in that context. So the trick seems to be that it makes less
sense in other contexts.
-Mark
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