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This is exactly how Wikipedia is supposed to work. If you come up with a new theory that disagrees with scholarly/scientific consensus, an encyclopedia is not

This is exactly how Wikipedia is supposed to work. If you come up with a new theory that disagrees with scholarly/scientific consensus, an encyclopedia is not the place to publish it. You publish it in a journal; if it becomes a consensus, or at least generates significant serious response in that community, then it will be documented in an encyclopedia. If every single crank theory was accepted into Wikipedia, you'd have a wiki consisting entirely of holocaust denialism, homeopathy, Electric Universe, and woo-peddling. Wikipedia is not in the business of deciding what's true and what isn't; that's what the academic community is for.

TwoBit 15y ago
I mostly agree. This writer went about it the wrong way. Just because this author had personally determined that history books were wrong doesn't give him the right to unilaterally change Wikipedia. He needs to gather academic weight on his side. If he's correct then it should be fairly easy to accomplish. Of course the Wikipedia admins were buttheads and weren't constructive at all.
- mistercow 15y ago
  >He needs to gather academic weight on his side. If he's correct then it should be fairly easy to accomplish. Well, not necessarily. Unfortunately consensus is hard to change, even if it's wrong. But you still have to try. If everyone who thought the consensus was wrong edited Wikipedia to reflect their opinion, the result would be a less accurate encyclopedia.
moldbug 15y ago
Is there a specific reason you assume the academic community is doing a good job at this? Consider the case in point. The myth the Chronicle author was refuting was a political myth: that the Haymarket defendants were innocent men railroaded by a biased prosecutor who was not "credible." This myth had been repeated by generations of pro-labor historians with a big ol' axe to grind. As for the anti-labor historians? Oh wait, there aren't any anti-labor historians. At least, if by "historian" you mean "individual funded by the US Government to teach history." Thus, Wikipedia is simply recording in its pages the depressing result of a political power struggle in academia. Now that labor has become the establishment, an honest historian who is not pro or anti labor, just interested in the past, can discover from primary sources that gee whiz, the prosecution actually had a case. It's 2012 so he won't be purged for this. On the other hand, it's not clear how he's supposed to purge all his axe-grinding colleagues who continue insisting that the sky is green. Academia is just a thing called "academia." Science is just a thing called "science." The Soviet Union had both. Ours are better than the Soviet Union's, but they're still de facto government agencies. Jeebus didn't come down yesterday and make our government systematically infallible. Imagine Wikipedia in the Soviet Union. Would you want it to be a crowdsourced version of the Great Soviet Encylopedia? Or would you want it to do a little better? Wikipedia has done a great job of being a tertiary source, mostly. That doesn't mean it can't have higher ambitions for the future. When I stop being a child, I put aside childish things. It's childish to assume that "reliable sources" are reliable just because everyone says they are. Is Wikipedia all grown up now? If so, maybe it should at least think about starting to address its utterly circular definition of a reliable source. If there is no conceivable mechanism to distinguish between homeopathy and medicine, how do our existing mechanisms work? Are these mechanisms unique? Are they perfect? Can they be duplicated, improved, advanced?
- jakejake 15y ago
  You can't really expect Wikipedia to solve that when human beings cannot even reliably agree on "the truth" in many cases. History has always been written by the winners. Our written history is only a version of the truth. Wikipedia is not there to solve this human condition, it's just summarizing information that is most commonly recognized as factual. It's a collection of citations that are subjectively considered trustworthy.
- mistercow 15y ago
  I think the really important point here is that readers need to understand that an encyclopedia is a record of academic consensus rather than a compendium of solid facts. The former is a useful but imperfect tool. The latter is an impossible ideal to strive for which will inevitably result in something less reliable than the former.
Locke1689 15y ago
Perhaps one problem is that Wikipedia doesn't take into account the type of field being reviewed and the age of the citations? For example, a lot of publications have been made about Newtonian physics. I mean a lot. We're going all the way back to Newton here. And yet, from the perspective of a 1940s Einstein it would appear that Einstein is definitely correct, going purely by the academic and secondary source community. The problem is just the proliferation of years and years worth of outdated information on Newton. In other words, maybe Wikipedia would benefit from a decay mechanism? Newer academic publications would earn proportionately more worth and newer scientific consensuses would be favored stronger than old ones. This isn't a change to the fundamental policies of Wikipedia, it only makes it a more timely encyclopedia with a smaller reaction loop. Given the constant realtime editing happening every day, this seems more appropriate for Wikipedia than, say, Britannica.

TwoBit 15y ago

I mostly agree. This writer went about it the wrong way. Just because this author had personally determined that history books were wrong doesn't give him the right to unilaterally change Wikipedia. He needs to gather academic weight on his side. If he's correct then it should be fairly easy to accomplish. Of course the Wikipedia admins were buttheads and weren't constructive at all.

mistercow 15y ago
>He needs to gather academic weight on his side. If he's correct then it should be fairly easy to accomplish. Well, not necessarily. Unfortunately consensus is hard to change, even if it's wrong. But you still have to try. If everyone who thought the consensus was wrong edited Wikipedia to reflect their opinion, the result would be a less accurate encyclopedia.

moldbug 15y ago

Is there a specific reason you assume the academic community is doing a good job at this? Consider the case in point. The myth the Chronicle author was refuting was a political myth: that the Haymarket defendants were innocent men railroaded by a biased prosecutor who was not "credible." This myth had been repeated by generations of pro-labor historians with a big ol' axe to grind. As for the anti-labor historians? Oh wait, there aren't any anti-labor historians. At least, if by "historian" you mean "individual funded by the US Government to teach history." Thus, Wikipedia is simply recording in its pages the depressing result of a political power struggle in academia. Now that labor has become the establishment, an honest historian who is not pro or anti labor, just interested in the past, can discover from primary sources that gee whiz, the prosecution actually had a case. It's 2012 so he won't be purged for this. On the other hand, it's not clear how he's supposed to purge all his axe-grinding colleagues who continue insisting that the sky is green. Academia is just a thing called "academia." Science is just a thing called "science." The Soviet Union had both. Ours are better than the Soviet Union's, but they're still de facto government agencies. Jeebus didn't come down yesterday and make our government systematically infallible. Imagine Wikipedia in the Soviet Union. Would you want it to be a crowdsourced version of the Great Soviet Encylopedia? Or would you want it to do a little better? Wikipedia has done a great job of being a tertiary source, mostly. That doesn't mean it can't have higher ambitions for the future. When I stop being a child, I put aside childish things. It's childish to assume that "reliable sources" are reliable just because everyone says they are. Is Wikipedia all grown up now? If so, maybe it should at least think about starting to address its utterly circular definition of a reliable source. If there is no conceivable mechanism to distinguish between homeopathy and medicine, how do our existing mechanisms work? Are these mechanisms unique? Are they perfect? Can they be duplicated, improved, advanced?

jakejake 15y ago
You can't really expect Wikipedia to solve that when human beings cannot even reliably agree on "the truth" in many cases. History has always been written by the winners. Our written history is only a version of the truth. Wikipedia is not there to solve this human condition, it's just summarizing information that is most commonly recognized as factual. It's a collection of citations that are subjectively considered trustworthy.
mistercow 15y ago
I think the really important point here is that readers need to understand that an encyclopedia is a record of academic consensus rather than a compendium of solid facts. The former is a useful but imperfect tool. The latter is an impossible ideal to strive for which will inevitably result in something less reliable than the former.

Locke1689 15y ago

Perhaps one problem is that Wikipedia doesn't take into account the type of field being reviewed and the age of the citations? For example, a lot of publications have been made about Newtonian physics. I mean a lot. We're going all the way back to Newton here. And yet, from the perspective of a 1940s Einstein it would appear that Einstein is definitely correct, going purely by the academic and secondary source community. The problem is just the proliferation of years and years worth of outdated information on Newton. In other words, maybe Wikipedia would benefit from a decay mechanism? Newer academic publications would earn proportionately more worth and newer scientific consensuses would be favored stronger than old ones. This isn't a change to the fundamental policies of Wikipedia, it only makes it a more timely encyclopedia with a smaller reaction loop. Given the constant realtime editing happening every day, this seems more appropriate for Wikipedia than, say, Britannica.