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After professor Messer-Kruse's struggles with the Haymarket riot (http://chronicle.com/article/The-Undue-Weight-of-Truth-on/130704/ http://chronicle.com/article

After professor Messer-Kruse's struggles with the Haymarket riot (http://chronicle.com/article/The-Undue-Weight-of-Truth-on/130704/ http://chronicle.com/article/The-Undue-Weight-of-Truth-on/13...), I submit Roth's approach is entirely appropriate.

tptacek 14y ago
Did you take the time to read the article linked above? What part of it did you not find compelling? It's a rant, yes, but it contains a series of direct refutations of Roth.
- niels_olson 14y ago
  I did, and found it quite hyperbolic. It seems the basis of the complaint is that someone in the world with more public influence than a Wikipedia admin took their complaint to a public forum with a wider reach than Wikipedia talk pages. Nowhere did I suggest Roth is perfectly correct. But the general assertion of this line of dissent is that Roth should suck Wikipedia eggs until he groks Wikipedia, and until he does, he should otherwise keep quiet. Roth, his biographer, or both, seem to not thoroughly understand Wikipedia. I'm not arguing that. However, even with an imperfect understanding, the nature of his solution to the problem is correct in the first iteration.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    That's not the general assertion the article makes. Roth complained about an interpretation of _The Human Stain_ that had been made in numerous extremely reputable secondary sources, despite the fact that the article included a recitation of Roth's own intent. That's the core argument beneath the rant. Is that argument _wrong_? If not, it seems pretty compelling, regardless of how the rant itself is written. Facts don't become not facts simply because they're written hyperbolically.
    - niels_olson 14y ago
      I will agree that was the core argument, the line of dissent, I called it. But I don't think that is the reason he wrote the article, nor the reason for the shrill tone. He's pissed that someone with more public influence took their gripe to a larger public forum. In calmer waters, Oliver would express complete willingness to educate Roth, and his biographer, on Wikipedia policies. But my sense is that, like many domain experts, especially in subjects further from hard science, for Oliver bucking the established order is to be met with only the fiercest rebuke.
      - tptacek 14y ago
        I don't have much to say about his tone ("drops mic" and all that). But the core issue here, just to make it very clear: Roth disagreed with a critical interpretation of _The Human Stain_ (albeit an interpretation that was grounded in fact --- "which acquaintance of Roth was the story inspired by"), and felt that his standing as the book's author gave him the authority to demand the removal of that interpretation from the encyclopedia. I respectfully submit that you don't have to be a rules lawyer to accept the encyclopedia's refusal to do that.
        niels_olson 14y ago
        Ok, FWIW, I have over 1000 wikipedia edits, run multiple mediawiki wikis, have started a number of articles on the English wikipedia, and am currently in a minor dispute about a template merger. My nephrology professor said there are two camps: the clumpers and splitters. While there may be some rules-based reason to make a distinction between the plights of Professor Messer-Kruse and Philip Roth, I think that to the first order they are both aggrieved experts outside the social circles of Wikipedia. To the second order, they both have a misunderstanding of Wikipedia's rules. To the third order, it appears the Wikipedia admins are not without fault in their willingness to move goalposts and parse ever further into a seemingly bottomless list of rules. To the fourth order, we are all enjoying a fair bit of hindsight: it probably wasn't so clear to anyone at the time Roth sat down to type this out. I'm not disagreeing with you. My only point was that what Roth did passes the common sense test every bit as much as what the Wikipedians did, regardless of how much the Wikipedia admins may chafe under the pressure of someone bringing external pressure to their kingdom.
- FreakLegion 14y ago
  > What part of it did you not find compelling? The parts where it was 1. unnecessarily vitriolic, 2. self-important, and where it 3. prioritized strict, literal interpretation over common sense. I'll take these in order, although the most important point is probably the last one. 1. Philip Roth is going on 80 years old. It's not reasonable to expect him, or anyone else really, to fully grasp the ins and outs of Wikipedia. And let's face it, there's plenty about Wikipedia to criticize, as HNers often do. You don't get to institute byzantine editorial policies and then condemn people who work around them. There's more than a hint of the Kafkaesque to Wikipedia's "official channels." 2. Wikipedia is cool, and the veracity problem is a hard one, but there's no excuse for punting on it. He's "not convinced that there’s a solution to this problem"[1]? I don't care. Try anyway. People get way too defensive about this stuff when they should be channeling their inner Josiah Bartlet: "we can do better, and we must do better, and we will do better, and we will start this moment today." 3. Finally -- and a better example of le mot juste I've not seen in a while -- a central plot element of The Human Stain is the power of allegation, even when false. The line Roth objected to was about the alleged inspiration for his character. Note, as Andreas Kolbe does in the first comment to Oliver's blog, that this comment was filed under Roth's bio page, where it really had no place, and not, as Oliver's blog examines, the page of The Human Stain itself, where a broader overview of critical reaction to the book makes sense. So if we're picking nits, Roth was actually right, and Oliver was shifting the goalposts, a common informal fallacy. [1] That's from his follow-up post: http://quominus.org/archives/981 http://quominus.org/archives/981

tptacek 14y ago

Did you take the time to read the article linked above? What part of it did you not find compelling? It's a rant, yes, but it contains a series of direct refutations of Roth.

niels_olson 14y ago
I did, and found it quite hyperbolic. It seems the basis of the complaint is that someone in the world with more public influence than a Wikipedia admin took their complaint to a public forum with a wider reach than Wikipedia talk pages. Nowhere did I suggest Roth is perfectly correct. But the general assertion of this line of dissent is that Roth should suck Wikipedia eggs until he groks Wikipedia, and until he does, he should otherwise keep quiet. Roth, his biographer, or both, seem to not thoroughly understand Wikipedia. I'm not arguing that. However, even with an imperfect understanding, the nature of his solution to the problem is correct in the first iteration.
- tptacek 14y ago
  That's not the general assertion the article makes. Roth complained about an interpretation of _The Human Stain_ that had been made in numerous extremely reputable secondary sources, despite the fact that the article included a recitation of Roth's own intent. That's the core argument beneath the rant. Is that argument _wrong_? If not, it seems pretty compelling, regardless of how the rant itself is written. Facts don't become not facts simply because they're written hyperbolically.
  - niels_olson 14y ago
    I will agree that was the core argument, the line of dissent, I called it. But I don't think that is the reason he wrote the article, nor the reason for the shrill tone. He's pissed that someone with more public influence took their gripe to a larger public forum. In calmer waters, Oliver would express complete willingness to educate Roth, and his biographer, on Wikipedia policies. But my sense is that, like many domain experts, especially in subjects further from hard science, for Oliver bucking the established order is to be met with only the fiercest rebuke.
    - tptacek 14y ago
      I don't have much to say about his tone ("drops mic" and all that). But the core issue here, just to make it very clear: Roth disagreed with a critical interpretation of _The Human Stain_ (albeit an interpretation that was grounded in fact --- "which acquaintance of Roth was the story inspired by"), and felt that his standing as the book's author gave him the authority to demand the removal of that interpretation from the encyclopedia. I respectfully submit that you don't have to be a rules lawyer to accept the encyclopedia's refusal to do that.
      - niels_olson 14y ago
        Ok, FWIW, I have over 1000 wikipedia edits, run multiple mediawiki wikis, have started a number of articles on the English wikipedia, and am currently in a minor dispute about a template merger. My nephrology professor said there are two camps: the clumpers and splitters. While there may be some rules-based reason to make a distinction between the plights of Professor Messer-Kruse and Philip Roth, I think that to the first order they are both aggrieved experts outside the social circles of Wikipedia. To the second order, they both have a misunderstanding of Wikipedia's rules. To the third order, it appears the Wikipedia admins are not without fault in their willingness to move goalposts and parse ever further into a seemingly bottomless list of rules. To the fourth order, we are all enjoying a fair bit of hindsight: it probably wasn't so clear to anyone at the time Roth sat down to type this out. I'm not disagreeing with you. My only point was that what Roth did passes the common sense test every bit as much as what the Wikipedians did, regardless of how much the Wikipedia admins may chafe under the pressure of someone bringing external pressure to their kingdom.
FreakLegion 14y ago
> What part of it did you not find compelling? The parts where it was 1. unnecessarily vitriolic, 2. self-important, and where it 3. prioritized strict, literal interpretation over common sense. I'll take these in order, although the most important point is probably the last one. 1. Philip Roth is going on 80 years old. It's not reasonable to expect him, or anyone else really, to fully grasp the ins and outs of Wikipedia. And let's face it, there's plenty about Wikipedia to criticize, as HNers often do. You don't get to institute byzantine editorial policies and then condemn people who work around them. There's more than a hint of the Kafkaesque to Wikipedia's "official channels." 2. Wikipedia is cool, and the veracity problem is a hard one, but there's no excuse for punting on it. He's "not convinced that there’s a solution to this problem"[1]? I don't care. Try anyway. People get way too defensive about this stuff when they should be channeling their inner Josiah Bartlet: "we can do better, and we must do better, and we will do better, and we will start this moment today." 3. Finally -- and a better example of le mot juste I've not seen in a while -- a central plot element of The Human Stain is the power of allegation, even when false. The line Roth objected to was about the alleged inspiration for his character. Note, as Andreas Kolbe does in the first comment to Oliver's blog, that this comment was filed under Roth's bio page, where it really had no place, and not, as Oliver's blog examines, the page of The Human Stain itself, where a broader overview of critical reaction to the book makes sense. So if we're picking nits, Roth was actually right, and Oliver was shifting the goalposts, a common informal fallacy. [1] That's from his follow-up post: http://quominus.org/archives/981 http://quominus.org/archives/981