Re: [Wikimedia-l] An encyclopedia must be conservative (?)

[Ziko van Dijk]

Hello people, thanks for the reactions!

I actually did not mean conservative in a strict political sense, and I am
a big fan of Reagle's book. It seems to me
that some people in the movement identify strongly with the (political)
term "progressive", and, depending on their personal
circumstances, that can be very understandable. The risk is that their
thinking about WP, WM and knowledge is very much
predetermined by these political views.

On the other hand, I see the risk that some other members of the movement
think that they - and the movement - are
automatically "modern" because they use wikis. With this attitude they may
not see much need for change.

Allow me some comments between the - very interesting - lines. See below

Kind regards
Ziko


Am Fr., 29. Mai 2020 um 09:43 Uhr schrieb Amir E. Aharoni <
amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il>:

> Aspect1: Fact-checking, trust, and reliability
> In non-wiki encyclopedias the writers
> are selected by the publisher: the publisher trusts the writers, and the
> readers trust the publisher's brand.  [...] The Wikpiedia attitude
> to sources, known as "Verifiability" in the English Wikipedia, solidified
> around 2005. It makes a lot of sense for a wiki encyclopedia, and it is one
> of our cornerstones, at least in the larger languages. (The details of the
> policy in each language may be different, but the general idea is the same.
> If it's significantly different in your language, please tell me.)
>

Indeed, cornerstone is a great word here. We don't check the contributors
as persons,
therefore we have to externalize the truth-question. So what does a
co-contributor check when seeing
the edit of a contributor? Not whether the contributor has thematic or
scientific competences but only whether she
has "publishing" or wirting competences - meaning, whether she is capable
of selecting good literature, using it
and writing accordingly an unpersonal encyclopedic text.

Within the wiki, it would be difficult to check whether she has scientific
competences. But it is possible to
check within the wiki whether she has writing competences, because we see
these writing competences in her previous
edits. So in Wikipedia, it works that we only care for the "wiki identity"
and "wiki status" of a contributor.

By the way, it would be an interesting research question: are there
Wikipedias that significantly differ from this cornerstone
(and other cornerstones)? In my own comparison between WP in EN, DE, NL, AF
and FY I did not find such a difference.


no access to academic publishing? Some people propose relaxing the demand
> for external reliable source for such topics, and while I'm totally on
> board with the social justice aspect of this attitude, it doesn't suggest a
> solution to the trust problem: some people will use it to enrich Wikipedia
> with information that can't be found elsewhere, but some people may abuse
> it to add made up stuff.
>

Yes, indeed. My thought was: if we allow sources of probably lesser
quality, e.g.
"grey literature" for marginalized people as an article topic, what would
that mean? That we
find it okay that a Wikipedia article about a woman is less reliable than
an article about a man?



> I have a proposed solution for this problem, and although some people would
> disagree, I call it conservative: Keep the demand for verifiability, and
> help people who have been historically disadvantaged get access to trusted
> academic institutions and conduct and publish their research outside of
> Wikipedia first.
>

Interesting. Some might ask whether this is a task of the Wikimedia
movement. (It all would depend on suitable partners and what the
role of the movement would be.)

If we see there a tunnel like this: reality - primary sources - secondary
sources - tertiary sources, then the
solution would not be at the final stage (tertiary source = Wikipedia and
its rules), but earlier, at the stage secondary sources
where there is a social filter.



> Aspect 2: Technology
> reasonably modern design principles and implementations. We are outdated in
> some ways: [...] We shouldn't be *too* progressive, though [...]
>
Talk pages are a particularly curious kind of disaster. Many Wikipedians
> tend to be very conservative about them and don't want any technology
> changes in them, but talk pages are not a continuation of any previous
> tradition of encyclopedic writing or of Internet culture—they are
> Wikipedia's own invention.


Good point, Amir. This is a dimension I have not looked at very thoroughly
in my research.
It blends in with the general question how software is interconnected to
content and to
the behaviour of the contributors. Maybe the current state of the software
used has for
some Wikipedians the function of a cultural marker or element of
self-identity.


> Aspect 3: Presentation style

[...]

> Like the bold font, it is also a typographic tradition. It
> has gotten out of hand in Wikipedia thanks to otherwise good things like
> the diversi

Re: [Wikimedia-l] An encyclopedia must be conservative (?)

[Amir E. Aharoni]

Most people in the world (or at least in the U.S.) use the terms
"conservative" and "progressive" when talking about politics, and associate
them with bundles of viewpoints on society, economics, religion, and so on.
The political aspect is partly relevant to Wikipedia, too, but if we just
take them as words with literal meanings, we'll have to talk about some
other aspects, too. Here are the ones I can think of, in a mostly-random
order:

Aspect1: Fact-checking, trust, and reliability

Fact-checking, trust, and reliability on Wikpiedia should be conservative,
but in a way that is thoughtful and open to challenging itself. It's a
difficult and often overlooked point. In non-wiki encyclopedias the writers
are selected by the publisher: the publisher trusts the writers, and the
readers trust the publisher's brand. I'm intentionally not saying "printed"
or "old" encyclopedias, but "non-wiki" encyclopedias. They are still being
produced, in print and digitally—see my Wikimania 2014 talk[1] for just one
example.

Our wiki model wants to let everyone write, and writers are not pre-vetted,
so our solution for trust is demanding reliable sources, which is why
Wikipedia articles in many languages have a lot of footnotes. Other
encyclopedias usually don't have footnotes, although some do have a
"further reading" or "bibliography" at the end of some articles, but they
are provided for further research and not for proof. The Wikpiedia attitude
to sources, known as "Verifiability" in the English Wikipedia, solidified
around 2005. It makes a lot of sense for a wiki encyclopedia, and it is one
of our cornerstones, at least in the larger languages. (The details of the
policy in each language may be different, but the general idea is the same.
If it's significantly different in your language, please tell me.)

The problem with this attitude is that it outsources trust to other
publishers: non-wiki encyclopedias, academic journals, newspapers and news
sites, and occasionally other sources. The better-known issue with it is
deciding which external sources are reliable. The less-known, but perhaps
even trickier issue is what to do about topics that should be covered in an
encyclopedia, but about which there is no coverage in what Wikipedia
editors would call "reliable sources" because of systemic bias, that is
because the people who are involved with the topic had historically less or
no access to academic publishing? Some people propose relaxing the demand
for external reliable source for such topics, and while I'm totally on
board with the social justice aspect of this attitude, it doesn't suggest a
solution to the trust problem: some people will use it to enrich Wikipedia
with information that can't be found elsewhere, but some people may abuse
it to add made up stuff.

I have a proposed solution for this problem, and although some people would
disagree, I call it conservative: Keep the demand for verifiability, and
help people who have been historically disadvantaged get access to trusted
academic institutions and conduct and publish their research outside of
Wikipedia first. The WMF and its partners can do it. It's not easy, but I
just don't see any other solution to the trust issue. I call this attitude
"conservative" because I want to preserve the trust in external knowledge
institutions, and keep the "outsourcing". It's not exactly what the current
strategy recommendation[2] says, and I respectfully doubt that that
recommendation is going to work.

Aspect 2: Technology

Should be reasonably progressive, of course, in the sense of using
reasonably modern design principles and implementations. We are outdated in
some ways: talk pages are a disaster, the jQuery JavaScript framework is
quite old (and is being gradually replaced), many templates are too
difficult to maintain, code review and feature deployment are not as robust
as they should be, and there are many other issues.

We shouldn't be *too* progressive, though: we should not jump on every
buzzword bandwagon and not to change design concepts and development
frameworks every year, as some sites do. It's probably good that we are not
jumping on the blockchain bandwagon at all, and that we are jumping on the
artificial "intelligence" bandwagon in a careful and measured way (ORES is
helpful, but keeps the human decision in the loop).

Talk pages are a particularly curious kind of disaster. Many Wikipedians
tend to be very conservative about them and don't want any technology
changes in them, but talk pages are not a continuation of any previous
tradition of encyclopedic writing or of Internet culture—they are
Wikipedia's own invention. Is it good that the community, or at least some
parts of it, is so conservative about it? Not really, and it causes serious
damage as time goes by, but arguing with these passionate people is
challenging.

Aspect 3: Presentation style

Should be conservative in the sense of continuing a centuries-old tradition
of writing encyclopedias,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] An encyclopedia must be conservative (?)

[FRED BAUDER]

Conservative in the sense that it contains significant information limited to 
that derived from reliable sources.

Progressive, to the extent we can include information that is not that well 
sourced but is derived from traditional sources or personal experience. For 
example the Hopi creation story, or a person's knowledge about their home town. 
With respect to medicine, I like to see information included that goes beyond 
the standard of care, but not with some aura of reliability attached to it, 
just the facts surrounding it, such as it being recent research or anecdotal 
reports of practitioners.

Wikipedia long ago lost the battle with respect to inclusion of some 
information which in only included due to the persistence of biased editors who 
have acquired skill in manipulating our guidelines. Generally, that tends to 
the authoritarian left. 

Fred Bauder

 
- Original Message -
From: Ziko van Dijk 
To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
Sent: Wed, 27 May 2020 09:36:20 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] An encyclopedia must be conservative (?)

Dear fellows,

Some time ago, Joseph Reagle wrote that an encyclopedia must be
progressive. In my personal view, something "progressive" sounds to me
intuitively more sympathetic than something "conservative". But of course,
these are only two words loaden with meaning, and reality is always more
complex.

It seems to me that many Wikipedians or Wikimedians think of themselves as
being progressive and modern. Our wikis are a tribute to science and
enlightenment. Spontaneity and a laissez-faire-attitude are held in high
regard; "productive chaos" and "anarchy" are typical for wikis.

When I had a closer look at our values and ideas, I got the impression that
the opposite is true. Many attitudes and ideals sound to me more like
bureaucracy and traditionalism:
* being thorough, with regard to content and writing about it
* community spirit
* treating everyone equally without regard of the person (the highest ideal
of the Prussian civil servant)
* individual initiative
* reliability

What do you think? Is this just my personal or national background, or has
Wikipedia been build up on a different basis than we usually tell ourselves
and others?

Kind regards
Ziko
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An encyclopedia must be conservative (?)

[effe iets anders]

In good encyclopedic tradition, a reference to that quote in context, is
probably in order. Ziko, I suspect you got this quote from this 2010
chapter? https://reagle.org/joseph/2010/gfc/chapter-2.html

If I look at this post, he talks about progressivism in the context of
methodology and technology used, much more than where it comes to content.
It is very well possible to be progressive in the way you edit your
encyclopedia, or to hold progressive values, and at the same time be
conservative in the decisions what knowledge to incorporate and what to
leave out. But maybe I'm reading it wrong?

But I'll let others read Reagle's chapter, and draw their own conclusions -
it's an interesting read either way.

Lodewijk

On Wed, May 27, 2020 at 6:46 AM Yaroslav Blanter  wrote:

> Hi Ziko,
>
> there is a long-standing problem of recentism. There are a lot of Wikipedia
> articles which are only based on new sources (though reliable) and not on
> serious academic literature. There are some which contain zero encyclopedic
> information because they basically only retell the news stories. There are
> twe whole classes of articles which are not even written in prose, such as
> all COVID-19 article (with a couple of exceptions). I have just given up at
> some point, I think we are beyond the point of no return. As soon as we are
> working on really notable topics and their quality is improving and not
> degrading I can live with this.
>
> This is just one aspect of what you mention but I think an important one.
>
> Best
> Yaroslav
>
> On Wed, May 27, 2020 at 3:36 PM Ziko van Dijk  wrote:
>
> > Dear fellows,
> >
> > Some time ago, Joseph Reagle wrote that an encyclopedia must be
> > progressive. In my personal view, something "progressive" sounds to me
> > intuitively more sympathetic than something "conservative". But of
> course,
> > these are only two words loaden with meaning, and reality is always more
> > complex.
> >
> > It seems to me that many Wikipedians or Wikimedians think of themselves
> as
> > being progressive and modern. Our wikis are a tribute to science and
> > enlightenment. Spontaneity and a laissez-faire-attitude are held in high
> > regard; "productive chaos" and "anarchy" are typical for wikis.
> >
> > When I had a closer look at our values and ideas, I got the impression
> that
> > the opposite is true. Many attitudes and ideals sound to me more like
> > bureaucracy and traditionalism:
> > * being thorough, with regard to content and writing about it
> > * community spirit
> > * treating everyone equally without regard of the person (the highest
> ideal
> > of the Prussian civil servant)
> > * individual initiative
> > * reliability
> >
> > What do you think? Is this just my personal or national background, or
> has
> > Wikipedia been build up on a different basis than we usually tell
> ourselves
> > and others?
> >
> > Kind regards
> > Ziko
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An encyclopedia must be conservative (?)

[Yaroslav Blanter]

Hi Ziko,

there is a long-standing problem of recentism. There are a lot of Wikipedia
articles which are only based on new sources (though reliable) and not on
serious academic literature. There are some which contain zero encyclopedic
information because they basically only retell the news stories. There are
twe whole classes of articles which are not even written in prose, such as
all COVID-19 article (with a couple of exceptions). I have just given up at
some point, I think we are beyond the point of no return. As soon as we are
working on really notable topics and their quality is improving and not
degrading I can live with this.

This is just one aspect of what you mention but I think an important one.

Best
Yaroslav

On Wed, May 27, 2020 at 3:36 PM Ziko van Dijk  wrote:

> Dear fellows,
>
> Some time ago, Joseph Reagle wrote that an encyclopedia must be
> progressive. In my personal view, something "progressive" sounds to me
> intuitively more sympathetic than something "conservative". But of course,
> these are only two words loaden with meaning, and reality is always more
> complex.
>
> It seems to me that many Wikipedians or Wikimedians think of themselves as
> being progressive and modern. Our wikis are a tribute to science and
> enlightenment. Spontaneity and a laissez-faire-attitude are held in high
> regard; "productive chaos" and "anarchy" are typical for wikis.
>
> When I had a closer look at our values and ideas, I got the impression that
> the opposite is true. Many attitudes and ideals sound to me more like
> bureaucracy and traditionalism:
> * being thorough, with regard to content and writing about it
> * community spirit
> * treating everyone equally without regard of the person (the highest ideal
> of the Prussian civil servant)
> * individual initiative
> * reliability
>
> What do you think? Is this just my personal or national background, or has
> Wikipedia been build up on a different basis than we usually tell ourselves
> and others?
>
> Kind regards
> Ziko
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
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[Wikimedia-l] An encyclopedia must be conservative (?)

[Ziko van Dijk]

Dear fellows,

Some time ago, Joseph Reagle wrote that an encyclopedia must be
progressive. In my personal view, something "progressive" sounds to me
intuitively more sympathetic than something "conservative". But of course,
these are only two words loaden with meaning, and reality is always more
complex.

It seems to me that many Wikipedians or Wikimedians think of themselves as
being progressive and modern. Our wikis are a tribute to science and
enlightenment. Spontaneity and a laissez-faire-attitude are held in high
regard; "productive chaos" and "anarchy" are typical for wikis.

When I had a closer look at our values and ideas, I got the impression that
the opposite is true. Many attitudes and ideals sound to me more like
bureaucracy and traditionalism:
* being thorough, with regard to content and writing about it
* community spirit
* treating everyone equally without regard of the person (the highest ideal
of the Prussian civil servant)
* individual initiative
* reliability

What do you think? Is this just my personal or national background, or has
Wikipedia been build up on a different basis than we usually tell ourselves
and others?

Kind regards
Ziko
___
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